"Again the Chief called 'Ho!' and they all fell on their backs silent and motionless, with their feet towards the fire, while the Chief, with a loud voice, called upon the spirit of the nets to do its best to furnish them with food for themselves, their wives and their children. Then he addressed the fish, urging them to take courage and be caught, assuring them that the greatest respect would be paid to their bones."* * Parkman mentions this as a common ceremony among the Algonquin tribes of the Ottawa. Machecawa frequently took the boys with him when he visited traps on the "Carman Grant."* On one occasion they crossed the ice on snow-shoes, climbed the cliffs, and made their way through the woods to the head of a small stream in the midst of a great cedar swamp. They followed the stream through marsh and thicket, crawling on their hands and knees at times, and climbing over fallen trees, until they came to a large pond with a dam about thirty rods long. On one side the land was low, but on the opposite side a steep bluff of about thirty feet rose directly from the water. The bluff was covered with poplar and birch. Here beaver had made roads, or slides, from top to bottom, wonderfully smooth and neat, on which they slid the wood they had cut, some of which was eight inches thick, into the pond below. Machecawa, who had previously cut a gap in the dam and made a hole in the ice, where he had set two traps in about four inches of water, drew up the first of them. He discovered that a young beaver had been caught, and cut off his leg, leaving that in the trap to tell the tale. In the second was a huge male with flat, broad, scaly tail, which could not have been mistaken for any other creature than a beaver. He re-baited the traps with an aromatic substance called castor, which he had taken from the pouches of one caught a few days previously, and which entices the beaver from a great distance. * The present site of the city of Ottawa. "Machecawa," continued Rug, "then began to mutter a monotonous song which he afterwards explained was a song of praise to the great king of the beavers, who, he declared, was the forefather of the human race. In it he described their good qualities, and promised to respect the bones of the one which had been killed, and to keep them from the dogs. "'Surely, Machecawa,' I said, 'you do not believe that your grandfather was a beaver, do you?' "To this he replied: 'De fadder ob de fadder ob de fadder ob my fadder, she am de king of de beaver an' de fadder ob all men.' "I asked him," said Rug, "if in that case it were not wrong to kill a beaver, for I hardly knew how to reconcile the Indian's superstitious belief with his conduct. "'When de big Injun she am kill de beaver,' he replied, 'she praise de good beaver, and de king she am pleese an' she no get cross.'