Hearne writes of Lake Athabasca that it swarms with fish, such as pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified.  Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. 74); this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and being a beautiful bright silver in colour.  The size of these gar-pike range from two feet to four feet in length.  Their flesh was delicately white and soft, but so foul and rank in taste that even the Indians would not eat it.  The trout in Lake Athabaska seem to have been enormous, weighing from 35 to 40 pounds, while pike were of about the same weight.

The Amerindian tribes and the early European explorers lived mainly on fish, which was a palatable and easily obtained food.  Yet it must be admitted that they had a splendid array of large and small game from which to take their toll.

Nor was the whole Dominion, from west to east and up to the Arctic zone, wanting in wild vegetable produce fit for man’s consumption.  The sugar maple (Acer saccharinum) and its ally the Negundo maple provided a delicious syrup; the bark of certain poplars and the bast of the sugar pine were chewed for their well-flavoured sweetness; the wild rice of the marshes will be further described in the next chapter.  The wild fruits included delicious strawberries, cherries, gooseberries, currants, black currants, grapes (in the south only), blackberries of many kinds, whortleberries, cranberries, pears of the service tree (Pyrus canadensis[8]), and raspberries of various types—­red, yellow, and black.  Southern Canada and Nova Scotia contained various nut trees of the walnut order (hickories, butter-nuts, &c.), and hazel nuts were found everywhere except in the north.

[Footnote 8:  Sometimes called Amelanchier canadensis.]

We have left undescribed what is still politically the most important part of the whole of British North America—­UPPER and LOWER CANADA.  These regions lie within the basin of the great St. Lawrence River, beyond all doubt the most important waterway of North America, more important even than the Mississippi.  The main origin of the St. Lawrence in the west is Lake Superior, the largest sea of fresh water in the world, which is connected with Lake Nipigon on the north.  The waters of Lake Superior are carried over the Sault Ste. Marie rapids into Lake Huron and find a huge backwater in Lake Michigan.[9] Out of Lake Huron again they flow past Detroit into Lake Erie.  From Duluth, at the westernmost extremity of Lake Superior, to Buffalo, on the easternmost point of Lake Erie, including all Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, with its bays and channels, a steamer can pass with just the one difficulty (easily surmounted) of the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.  But after you have left Lake Erie on the east you find yourself in the Niagara River, which at the Niagara Falls plunges several hundred