The birds of this country are the same as in Canada.  I observed no strange variety, except a species of curlieu that frequents the plains of Fort Alexandria in the summer.  Immense flocks of cranes are seen in autumn and spring, flying high in the air; in autumn directing their flight towards the south, and in spring towards the north.

Some of the Lakes abound in fish; the principal varieties are trout, carp, white fish, and pike.  Stuart’s Lake yields a small fish termed by the Canadians “poisson inconnu;” it seems as if it were partly white fish and partly carp, the head resembling the former; it is full of small bones, and the flesh soft and unsavoury.  The sturgeon has been already mentioned, but they are unfortunately too rare; seldom more than five or six are captured in a season; they weigh from one hundred to five hundred pounds.  A beautiful small fish of the size of the anchovy, and shaped like a salmon, is found in a river that falls into Stuart’s Lake; it is said they pass the winter in the lake, and ascend their favourite stream in the month of June, where they deposit their spawn.  They have the silvery scales of the larger salmon, and are exceedingly rich; but the natives preserve them almost exclusively for their own use.  There are four varieties of salmon, distinguished from each other by the peculiar form of the head; the largest species seems to be the same we have in the rivers of Britain, and weighs from ten to twenty pounds; the others do not exceed half that weight.

New Caledonia is inhabited by the Takelly or Carrier nation, and by a few families of Tsekanies on the north-eastern extremity of the district.  The Takellies are divided into as many tribes as there are posts—­viz. eight, who formerly were as hostile to each other as if they had been of different nations.  The presence of the whites, however, has had the beneficial effect of checking their cut-throat propensities, although individual murders still occasionally occur among them.

Before the introduction of fire-arms, the honourable practice of duelling prevailed among them, though in a fashion peculiar to themselves.  One arrow only was discharged, by the party demanding satisfaction, at his opponent, who, by dint of skipping about and dodging from side to side, generally contrived to escape it; fatal duels, therefore, seldom if ever occurred; and the parties, having thus given and received satisfaction, retired from the field reconciled.[1] They appear more prone to sudden bursts of passion than most Indians I have seen, and quarrel often and abuse each other in the most scurrilous terms.  With the Sauteux, Crees, and other tribes on the east side of the mountains, few words are uttered before the blow, often a fatal one, is given; whereas, with the Takellies, it is often many words and few blows.  In the quarrels which take place among them, the ladies are generally the causa belli—­a cause which would soon lead to the depopulation of the country, were all husbands to avenge their wrongs by shedding the blood of the guilty.