That is, of course, a matter of long experience and lifetime habit.
Were it a question merely of this, the white man might also in time
attain the same skill. But the Indian is a better animal. His senses
are appreciably sharper than our own.
In journeying down the Kapuskasing River, our Indians--who had come
from the woods to guide us--always saw game long before we did. They
would never point it out to us. The bow of the canoe would swing
silently in its direction, there to rest motionless until we indicated
we had seen something.
"Where is it, Peter?" I would whisper.
But Peter always remained contemptuously silent.
One evening we paddled directly into the eye of the setting sun
across a shallow little lake filled with hardly sunken boulders. There
was no current, and no breath of wind to stir the water into betraying
riffles. But invariably those Indians twisted the canoe into a new
course ten feet before we reached one of the obstructions, whose
existence our dazzled vision could not attest until they were actually
below us. They _saw_ those rocks, through the shimmer of the
surface glare.
Another time I discovered a small black animal lying flat on a point of
shale. Its head was concealed behind a boulder, and it was so far away
that I was inclined to congratulate myself on having differentiated it
from the shadow.
"What is it, Peter?" I asked.
Peter hardly glanced at it.
"Ninny-moosh" (dog), he replied.
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