I never can get any bacon in New York like that which I buy at a
little shop in Quebec to take into the woods. If I ever set up in
the grocery business, I shall try to get a good trade among anglers.
It will be easy to please my customers.
The reputation that trout enjoy as a food-fish is partly due to the
fact that they are usually cooked over an open fire. In the city
they never taste as good. It is not merely a difference in
freshness. It is a change in the sauce. If the truth must be told,
even by an angler, there are at least five salt-water fish which are
better than trout,--to eat. There is none better to catch.
IV
THE SMUDGE-FIRE
But enough of the cooking-fire. Let us turn now to the subject of
the smudge, known in Lower Canada as LA BOUCANE. The smudge owes
its existence to the pungent mosquito, the sanguinary black-fly, and
the peppery midge,--LE MARINGOUIN, LA MOUSTIQUE, ET LE BRULOT. To
what it owes its English name I do not know; but its French name
means simply a thick, nauseating, intolerable smoke.
The smudge is called into being for the express purpose of creating
a smoke of this kind, which is as disagreeable to the mosquito, the
black-fly, and the midge as it is to the man whom they are
devouring. But the man survives the smoke, while the insects
succumb to it, being destroyed or driven away.
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