"We have found the good hunting," he said, as Rolf steadied the
canoe at the landing and Skookum, nearly well again, wagged his
entire ulterior person to welcome the wanderer home. The first
thing to catch the boy's eye was a great, splendid beaver skin
stretched on a willow hoop.
"Ho, ho!" he exclaimed.
"Ugh; found another pond."
"Good, good," said Rolf as he stroked the flrst beaver skin he
had ever seen in the woods.
"This is better," said Quonab, and held up the two barkstones,
castors, or smell-glands that are found in every beaver and which
for some hid reason have an irresistible attraction for all wild
animals. To us the odour is slight, but they have the power of
intensifying, perpetuating, and projecting such odorous
substances as may be mixed with them. No trapper considers his
bait to be perfect without a little of the mysterious castor. So
that that most stenchable thing they had already concocted of
fish-oil, putrescence, sewer-gas, and sunlight, when commingled
and multiplied with the dried-up powder of a castor, was
intensified into a rich, rancid, gas-exhaling hell-broth as
rapturously bewitching to our furry brothers as it is
poisonously nauseating to ourselves -- seductive afar like the
sweetest music, inexorable as fate, insidious as laughing-gas,
soothing and numbing as absinthe -- this, the lure and
caution-luller, is the fellest trick in all the trappers' code.
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