seuls avantages qu’ils retireraient, s’ils avaient le bon esprit de s’annexer au Canada !
On a, en Canada chassé aussi, longtemps comme des barbares, des Goths et des Ostrogoths.
Rien n’était respecté : on n’épargnait nul être emplumé. Il y a encore, nous le craignons, parmi ceux qui épaulent le fusil, des âmes abjectes, désavouées de saint Hubert, capables de tirer une bécasse sur son nid au printemps, de dénicher un merle, une bécassine, une perdrix ou même un canard branchu, pour en vendre les œufs. Il n’y a que l’amende ou la prison qui puisse faire respecter par ces misérables, le temps sacré de l’incubation des œufs, de l’éclosion des jeunes. C’est par le fouet de la loi seul que vous ferez comprendre à cette canaille que, pour chaque oiseau des espèces sédentaires tué au printemps, c’est une couvée entière, peut-être quinze individus de perdus pour l’automne.
been informed by an old and experienced hunter, that he believes that for every goose that is killed, above twenty must leave the bay without scaith, as although there is sometimes destruction dire among some lots that feed in quarters frequented by hunters, yet innumerable families of them alight on remote and quiet feeding grounds, remain unmolested and take wing when the cold sets in, with their numbers intact. I must allow the correctness of this remark, and the deduction to be drawn from it, is that 1,200,000 geese leave their breeding grounds by the Hudson’s Bay line of march for the genial south. Of the numbers to the westward along the arctic coast, that wend their way to their winter quarters straight across the continent, we can form but a very vague opinion, but computing it at two-thirds or more of the quantity supposed to leave the eastern of the arctic coast, we cannot have less than two millions of geese, composing the numerous battalions which pass over the continent between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, borne aloft generally like the scud, and as swiftly hastened on, by the force of the boreal blast.
« I ought to observe that the Brant geese, Bernicla Brenta, are not included in the above estimate. They are pretty numerous on the Atlantic coast, but are quite neglected by the Indians, in general, of Hudson’s Bay. »
