CHAPTER XVII.
ANTICOSTA AND ITS FURS.
The island of Anticosta, lying in the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, runs parallel with the main land on its north shore and about twenty-five miles distant from it. Notwithstanding the close proximity to the continent and the straits, some winters blocked with ice fields, the martens on this island are peculiar and distinct in this manner, that almost without exception the forepaws and the end of the tail are tipped with white hair.
I traded one year several hundred pelts of Anticosta marten and with one or two exceptions they all showed this distinction from those we got on the north shore or mainland. I found this white ending of extremities even amongst the bears and foxes, and in some instances with the otter. Otherwise the marten are as well furred and as rich and deep in color as the far-famed Labrador ones.
Of bears there are on the island both black and brown; the latter are of immense size and very savage. One skin I got measured seven feet broad by nine feet long and showed the marks of no fewer than eleven bullet holes in his hide. The man from whom I purchased the skin told me he met the monster while traveling along the sea beach and fired at him. The bear dropped, but in a moment arose to his feet and rushed for the hunter. Fortunately there was a high rock near by, up which the man clambered with his gun, out of reach of the infuriated beast and from this "Coin de advantage" Arsenault loaded and fired round ounce balls into the bear until he was dispatched.
While on this trip I secured two of the finest and purest silver grey fox skins I ever handled. It is not generally known that a pure silver fox is much rarer than black or black silver. What I mean by pure silver is a fox that is silvered from the very head right down to the white tip of the tail. The majority of so-called silver foxes are black from the head to a third of the way down the back; a part of the body and rump alone being silvered.
In the Hudson's Bay Company trading posts, foxes are graded when purchased under the following names: black, black silver, silver grey, black cross, dark cross, ordinary cross, (first cousin to red) bright red, light red, white. I am aware that to make this list complete blue and grey foxes are wanting, but as they are only traded in one or two of the Company's posts and I was never at either, I will say nothing about them, but of the above grades and colors of foxes I have traded and trapped many.
A black cross is so very near a silver that it is only a savant that can tell the difference. A black cross has yellow hairs growing inside the ears and a patch of yellow near each fore leg, whereas a silver has none. Unscrupulous trappers very often try to get over these giving-away marks by plucking the hairs out of the ears and by greasing and smoking the side patches.
The first thing a trader does when a doubtful skin is offered is to look into the ears; if the hairs are wanting, he breathes on his hand and gently passes it down over the side. If the hand is blackened this is a proof number two and the smart "Alec" is found out.
Coming back to Anticosta; forty years ago the privilege of hunting was leased by the then owner of the seigniory to a man from Quebec, who each autumn repaired to the island with four or five men who hunted on shares, Mr. Corbett, supplying food, traps and ammunition, got a certain per cent. of the furs each caught.
They laid their small schooner up in a sheltered bay and Corbett used to cook and sweep the shanty while his men hunted and trapped.
Wrecks used to occur nearly every year of some late lumber-laden sailing vessel and in the spring, after the hunt was over, Corbett and his men would load their schooner with copper and iron from the hulls and sail for Quebec in June when the moderate summer winds had begun.
Five or six years ago M. Menier, the French chocolate king, purchased the island from the Seignorial heirs and has converted it into a game reserve. He has cut road, built wharfs and made many other improvements and is trying to acclimate animals that were not found on the island, such as moose, Virginia red deer, buffalo, beaver, etc.
A resident governor lives on the island the year around and has a steamer of a couple of hundred tons at his command that plies between the island and Quebec, as necessity requires. M. Menier, with a party of friends, comes from France each summer and passes a month on the island fishing and shooting. There are three salmon rivers, one where the fish are especially large and numerous.
After purchasing the island M. Menier secured from the Canadian Government the right to a three-mile belt of water, so when the owner is on "Anticosta" he is actually lord and master of all that he surveys.
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In the _Forest and Stream_ of Feb. 9 I have read the article written by H. de Puyjalon on the pekan or fisher. Mr. de Puyjalon appears to me to have attempted writing upon a subject in which he was very little versed and with no data upon which to base his assertions. As a matter of fact, prior to about the year 1860, the fisher or pekan was an animal unknown to the trappers on the north shore and Labrador, east of the Saguenay, and it was only after that year that an odd one was trapped in that lower country. In fact, when first the fisher made its appearance the Indians had no name for it, but after it became better known they adopted the Algonquin name it now bears. When an Indian, in the early sixties, was fortunate enough to have one in his pack he mentioned it as a big marten.
For many years the Saguenay River appeared to have been the boundary line for moose, red deer and pekan, none being known on the east side, while fairly numerous on the west bank. As the fisher was never very plentiful on the Labrador, and when found was only in the wooded part, it is not strange that a person of Mr. de Puyjalon's sedentary habits should have trapped only two.
I lived within hearing distance (that is, courier's reports) of Mr. de Puyjalon, while that gentleman resided on the coast, and apart from hearing that he set a fox trap or two about his shanty, never heard him mentioned as what we would call a trapper.
In his article he gives the pekan the credit of showing considerable cunning and finesses. As a matter of natural history they have no more of this than a marten, and will bungle into an ordinarily made dead-fall in the same way. The only thing to do when fisher are known to be about a line of marten traps is to make a larger sized house for him and extra heavy weight to keep him down when caught.
That the fisher decreases in number is quite contrary to facts. According to the last London sales of mixed furs in September, fisher stood at 4,926, in 1893 4,828, and in 1883 4,640, showing that they have increased slightly. In some parts of the country they stand in the returns about equal to the marten exported. I remember this very plainly, for at the time it struck me as peculiar. I was in charge of an out-post on Lake Superior. Our returns were principally beaver, foxes and lynx, very few marten, and in that year I had at the close of trade 96 marten and 96 fisher. This was impressed on my memory as being a strange coincidence, because the post I had been previously stationed at turned out over two thousand marten to eight or ten fisher. The prices for fisher in the Canadian market vary but little and we never have fluctuations as in silver foxes and marten. The skins are little used in any country except Russia and China, where they are used chiefly by the rich as coat linings. As they have a tough skin, and when prime a deep, rich fur, it is a wonder--since they are comparatively few on the market--that they do not command a better price.
The resort of the pekan is principally along the mountain ranges, never in the black spruce or flat barren country of the table land or to the north of it. Their food consists of rabbits, partridges, mice, squirrels and fruit when in season. When the mountain ash berries are plentiful and hang late in the autumn, both the fisher and the marten are difficult, if not impossible, to trap, as there is no meat lure you can bait with, that will induce them to leave the berries.
In a year of scarcity of fruits, when the fisher has to depend on his own adroitness in securing his food, I have read the signs and seen where one has been very persistent in running down a rabbit, the chase being up and down, in and out, until bunny was overtaken, killed and eaten.