a number of the fish, instantly reverses it in water, whips it up, and discharges its contents into the canoe.  This he repeats till his canoe is loaded, when he shoots out of the tail of the rapids, and makes for shore.  The fish will average three pounds, but individuals are sometimes two and three times that weight.  It is shad-shaped, with well-developed scales, easily removed, but has the mouth of the sucker, very small.  The flesh is perfectly white and firm, with very few bones.  It is boiled by the Indians in pure water, in a peculiar manner, the kettle hung high above a small blaze; and thus cooked, it is eaten with the liquid for a gravy, and is delicate and delicious.  If boiled in the ordinary way, by a low hung pot and quick fire, it is soft and comparatively flabby.  It is also broiled by the inhabitants, on a gridiron, after cutting it open on the back, and brought on the table slightly browned.  This must be done, like a steak, quickly.  It is the most delicious when immediately taken from the water, and connoisseurs will tell you, by its taste at the table, whether it is immediately from the water, or has lain any time before cooking.  It is sometimes made into small ovate masses, dipped into batter, and fried in butter, and in this shape, it is called petite pate. It is also chowdered or baked in a pie.  It is the great resource of the Indians and the French, and of the poor generally at these falls, who eat it with potatoes, which are abundantly raised here.  It is also a standing dish with all.

[Footnote 27:  This word is pronounced as if written so, not soo.  It is a derivative, through the French, from the Latin saltus.]

A Poetic Name for a Fish.—­The Chippewas, who are ready to give every object in creation, whose existence they cannot otherwise account for, an allegorical origin, call the white fish attikumaig, a very curious or very fanciful name, for it appears to be compounded of attik, a reindeer, and the general compound gumee, or guma, before noticed, as meaning water, or a liquid.  To this the addition of the letter g makes a plural in the animate form, so that the translation is deer of the water, an evident acknowledgment of its importance as an item in their means of subsistence.  Who can say, after this, that the Chippewas have not some imagination?

Indian Tale.—­They have a legend about the origin of the white fish, which is founded on the observation of a minute trait in its habits.  This fish, when opened, is found to have in its stomach very small white particles which look like roe or particles of brain, but are, perhaps, microscopic shells.  They say the fish itself sprang from the brain of a female, whose skull fell into these rapids, and was dashed out among the rocks.  A tale of domestic infidelity is woven with this, and the denouement is made to turn on the premonition of a venerable crane, the leading Totem of the band, who, having consented to carry the ghost of a female across the falls on his back, threw her into the boiling and foaming flood to accomplish the poetic justice of the tale.