The impedimenta are carried in this manner: A blanket, doubled to a suitable size, is laid upon the ground; you take your portage-strap, or tump-line as it is sometimes called, which is composed of strips of webbing or some such material, and is about twelve feet long, a length of about two feet in the center being made of a piece of broad, soft leather; you lay your line on the blanket so that the leather part projects, and fold the edges of the blanket over either portion of the strap. You then pile up the articles to be carried in the center, double the blanket over them, and by hauling upon the two parts of the strap bring the blanket together at either side, so that nothing can fall out. You then cut a skewer of wood, stick it through the blanket in the center, securely knot the strap at either end, and your pack is made. You have a compact bundle with the leather portion of the portage-strap projecting like a loop, which is passed over the head and shoulders, and the pack is carried on the back by means of the loop which passes across the chest. If the pack is very heavy, and the distance long, it is usual to make an additional band out of a handkerchief or something of that kind, to attach it to the bundle, and pass it across the forehead, so as to take some of the pressure off the chest. The regular weight of a Hudson's Bay Company's package is eighty pounds; but any Indian or half-breed will carry double this weight for a considerable distance without distress. A tump-line, therefore, forms an essential part of the voyageur's outfit when traveling, and it comes in handy also in camp as a clothes-line on which to hang one's socks and moccasins to dry. foot, is one of the softest, most elastic, and most pleasant couches that can be imagined; and, as the scent of the sap of the Canada balsam is absolutely delicious, it is always sweet and refreshing-which is more than can be said for many beds of civilization. Hunger is a good sauce. A man coming in tired and hungry will find more enjoyment in a piece of moose-meat and a cup of tea than in the most luxurious of banquets. Moreover, it must be remembered that some of the wild meats of North America can not be excelled in flavor and delicacy; nothing, for instance, can be better than moose or caribou, mountain sheep or antelope. The "moufle," or nose of the moose, and his marrow-bones, are dainties which would be highly appreciated by the most accomplished epicures. The meat is good, and no better method of cooking it has yet been discovered than the simple one of roasting it before a wood-fire on a pointed stick. Simplicity is a great source of comfort, and makes up for many luxuries; and nothing can be more simple, and at the same time more comfortable, than life in such a birchbark camp as I have attempted to describe. In summer-time and in the fall, until the weather begins to get a little cold, a tent affords all the shelter that the sportsman or the tourist can require. But when the leaves are all fallen, when the lakes begin to freeze up, and snow covers the earth, or may be looked for at any moment, the nights become too cold to render dwelling in tents any longer desirable. A tent can be used in winter, and I have dwelt in one in extreme cold, when the thermometer went down as low as thirty-two degrees below zero. It was rendered A camp such as that I have attempted to de- habitable by a little stove, which made it at the scribe is the best that can be built. An ordinary same time exceedingly disagreeable. A stove camp is constructed in the same way, but with sufficiently small to be portable only contained this difference, that instead of being in the form wood enough to burn for an hour and a half or of a square it is in the shape of a circle, and the so. Consequently some one had to sit up all poles on which the bark is laid are stuck into the night to replenish it. Now, nobody could keep ground instead of into low walls. There is not awake, and the result was that we had to pass half so much room in such a camp as in the for- through the unpleasant ordeal of alternately mer, although the amount of material employed freezing and roasting during the whole night. is in both cases the same. It may be objected The stove was of necessity composed of very that the sleeping arrangements can not be very thin sheet-iron, as lightness was an important luxurious in camp. A good bed is certainly an object, and consequently, when it was filled with excellent thing, but it is very hard to find a better good birch-wood and well under way, it became bed than Nature has provided in the wilderness. red-hot, and rendered the atmosphere in the tent It would appear as if Providence had specially insupportable. In about half an hour or so it designed the Canada-balsam fir for the purpose would cool down a little, and one would drop off of making a soft couch for tired hunters. It is to sleep, only to wake in about an hour's time the only one, so far as I am aware, of the co- shivering, to find everything frozen solid in the niferous trees of North America in which the tent, and the fire nearly out. Such a method of leaves or spicula lie perfectly flat. The conse- passing the night is little calculated to insure quence of that excellent arrangement is, that a sound sleep. In the depth of winter it is quite bed made of the short, tender tips of the Canada impossible to warm a tent from the outside, howbalsam, spread evenly to the depth of about a ever large the fire may be. It must be built at such a distance that the canvas can not possibly catch fire, and hence all heat is dispersed long before it can reach and warm the interior of the tent. It is far better to make a "lean-to" of the canvas, build a large fire, and sleep out in the open. A “lean-to” is easily made and scarcely needs description. The name explains itself. You strike two poles, having a fork at the upper end, into the ground, slanting back slightly; lay another fir pole horizontally between the two, and resting in the crotch; then place numerous poles and branches leaning against the horizontal pole, and thus form a framework which you cover in as well as you can with birch-bark, pine-boughs, pieces of canvas, skins, or whatever material is most handy. You build an enormous fire in the front, and the camp is complete. A "lean-to" must always be constructed with reference to the direction of the wind; it serves to keep off the wind and a certain amount of snow and rain. In other respects it is, as the Irishman said of the sedan-chair with the bottom out, more for the honor and glory of the thing than anything else. For all practical purposes you are decidedly out of doors. Although the scenery of the greater part of Canada can not justly be described as grand or magnificent, yet there are a weird, melancholy, desolate beauty about her barrens, a soft loveliness in her lakes and forest glades in summer, a gorgeousness of color in her autumn woods, and a stern, sad stateliness when winter has draped them all with snow, that can not be surpassed in any land. I remember, as distinctly as if I had left it but yesterday, the beauty of the camp from which I made my first successful expedition after moose last calling season. I had been out several times unsuccessfully, sometimes getting no answer at all; at others, calling a bull close up, but failing to induce him to show himself; sometimes failing on account of a breeze springing up, or of the night becoming too much overcast and cloudy to enable me to see him. My companions had been equally unfortunate. We had spent the best fortnight of the season in this way, and had shifted our ground and tried everything in vain. At last we decided on one more attempt, broke camp, loaded our canoes, and started. We made a journey of two days, traversing many lovely lakes, carrying over several portages, and arrived at our destination about three o'clock in the afternoon. We drew up our canoes at one of the prettiest spots for a camp I have ever seen. It lay beside a little sheltered, secluded bay at the head of a lovely lake some three or four miles in length. The shores near us were covered with "hard-wood" trees-birch, maple, and beech, in their glorious autumn colors; while the more distant coasts were clothed with a somber, dark mass of firs and spruce. Above the ordinary level of the forest rose at intervals the ragged, gaunt form of some ancient and gigantic pine that had escaped the notice of the lumberman or had proved unworthy of his axe. In front of us and to the right, acting as a breakwater to our harbor, lay a small island covered with hemlock and tamarack trees, the latter leaning over in various and most graceful angles, overhanging the water to such an extent as sometimes to be almost horizontal with it. Slightly to the left was a shallow spot in the lake marked by a growth of rushes, vividly green at the top, while the lower halves were of a most brilliant scarlet, affording the precise amount of warmth and bright coloring that the picture required. It is extraordinary how everything seems to turn to brilliant colors in the autumn in these northern latitudes. The evening was perfectly still; the surface of the lake, unbroken by the smallest ripple, shone like a mirror and reflected the coast line and trees so accurately that it was impossible to tell where water ended and land began. The love of money and the love of sport are the passions that lead men into such scenes as these. The lumberman, the salmon-fisher, and the hunter in pursuit of large game, monopolize the beauties of nature in these Canadian wilds. The moose (Cervus Alces) and caribou (Cervus rangifer) are the principal large game to be found in Canada. The moose is by far the biggest of all existing deer. He attains to a height of quite eighteen hands, and weighs about twelve hundred pounds or more. The moose of America is almost if not quite identical with the elk of Europe, but it attains a greater size. The horns especially are much finer than those to be found on the elk in Russia, Prussia, or the Scandinavian countries. The moose has many advantages over other deer, but it suffers also from some terrible disadvantages, which make it an easy prey to its great and principal destroyer, man. Whereas among most, if not all, the members of the deer tribe the female has but one fawn at a birth, the cow moose generally drops two calves-which is much in favor of the race. The moose is blessed with an intensely acute sense of smell, with an almost equally acute sense of hearing, and it is exceedingly wary and difficult of approach. On the other hand, it is but little fitted to move in deep snow, owing to its great weight. Unlike the caribou, which has hoofs specially adapted for deep snow, the moose's feet are small compared with the great bulk of the animal. If, therefore, it is once found and started when the snow lies deep upon the ground, its destruction is a matter of certainty; it breaks through the snow to solid earth at every step, becomes speedily exhausted, and falls an easy prey to men and dogs. Again, a large tract of land is necessary to supply food for even one moose. In summer it feeds a good deal upon the stems and roots of water-lilies, but its staple food consists of the tender shoots of the moose-wood, ground-maple, alder, birch, poplar, and other deciduous trees. It is fond of ground-hemlock, and will also occasionally browse upon the sapin or Canada balsam, and even upon spruce, though that is very rare, and I have known them when hard pressed to gnaw bark off the trees. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are nearly "settled up." More and more land is cleared and brought under cultivation every day; more and more forest cut down year by year; and the moose-supporting portion of the country is becoming very limited in extent. On the other hand, the moose is an animal which could easily be preserved if only reasonable laws could be enforced. It adapts itself wonderfully to civilization. A young moose will become as tame as a domestic cow in a short time. Moose become accustomed to the ordinary noises of a settled country with such facility that they may sometimes be found feeding within a few hundred yards of a road. A railway does not appear to disturb them at all. I have shot moose within sound of the barking of dogs and the cackling of geese of a farmhouse, in places where the animals must have been constantly hearing men shouting, dogs barking, and all the noises of a settlement. Their sense of hearing is developed in a wonderful degree, and they appear to be possessed of some marvelous power of discriminating between innocent sounds and noises which indicate danger. On a windy day, when the forest is full of noises-trees cracking, branches snapping, and twigs breaking-the moose will take no notice of all these natural sounds; but if a man breaks a twig, or, treading on a dry stick, snaps it on the ground, the moose will distinguish that sound from the hundred voices of the storm, and be off in a second. Why it is that the moose has developed no peculiarity with regard to his feet, adapting him especially to the country in which he dwells, while the caribou that shares the woods and barrens with him has done so in a remarkable degree, I will leave philosophers to decide. In the caribou the hoofs are very broad and round, and split up very high, so that when the animal treads upon the soft surface of the snow the hoofs spreading out form a natural kind of snow-shoe, and prevent its sinking deep. The frog becomes absorbed toward winter, so that the whole weight of the animal rests upon the hoof, the edges of which are as sharp as a knife, and give the animals so secure a foothold that they can run without fear or danger on the slippery surface of smooth glare ice. Now, the moose, on the con trary, is about as awkward on the ice as a shod horse, and will not venture out on the frozen surface of a lake if he can help it. His feet are rather small and pointed, and allow him to sink and flounder helplessly in the deep snows of midwinter and early spring. There are several ways in which the moose is hunted; some legitimate and some decidedly illegitimate. First of all there is moose-calling, which to my mind is the most interesting of all woodland sports. It commences about the beginning of September, and lasts for about six weeks, and consists in imitating the cry of the female moose, and thereby calling up the male. This may sound easy enough to do, especially as the bull at this season of the year loses all his caution, or the greater part of it. But the pastime is surrounded by so many difficulties that it is really the most precarious of all the methods of pursuing or endeavoring to outwit the moose; and it is at the same time the most exciting. I will endeavor to describe the method by giving a slight sketch of the death of a moose in New Brunswick woods last year. It was early in October. We had pitched our tents-for at that season of the year the hunter dwells in tents-upon a beautiful hard-wood ridge, bright with the painted foliage of birch and maple. The weather had been bad for calling, and no one had gone out, though we knew there were moose in the neighborhood. We had cut a great store of firewood, gathered bushels of cranberries, dug a well in the swamp close by, and attended to the thousand and one little comforts that experience teaches one to provide in the woods, and had absolutely nothing to do. The day was intensely hot and sultry, and if any one had approached the camp about noon he would have deemed it deserted. All hands had hung their blankets over the tents by way of protection from the sun, and had gone to sleep. About one o'clock I awoke, and sauntered out of the tent to stretch my limbs, and take a look at the sky. I was particularly anxious about the weather, for I was tired of idleness, and had determined to go out if the evening offered a tolerably fair promise of a fine night. To get a better view of the heavens I climbed to my accustomed lookout in a comfortable fork near the summit of a neighboring pine, and noted with disgust certain little black shreds of clouds rising slowly above the horizon. To aid my indecision I consulted my dear old friend John Williams, the Indian, who after the manner of his kind stoutly refused to give any definite opinion on the subject. All that I could get out of him was: "Well, dunno; mebbe fine, mebbe wind get up; guess pretty calm, perhaps, in morning. Suppose we go and try, or p'raps mebbe wait till to-morrow." Finally I decided to go out; for, although if there is the slightest wind it is impossible to call, yet any wise and prudent man, unless there are unmistakable signs of a storm brewing, will take the chance; for the calling season is short and soon over. I have said that an absolutely calm night is required for calling, and for this reason: the moose is so wary that in coming up to the call he will invariably make a circle down-wind in order to get scent of the animal which is calling him. Therefore, if there is a breath of wind astir, the moose will get scent of the man before the man has a chance of seeing the moose. A calm night is the first thing necessary. Secondly, you must have a moonlight night. No moose will come up in the daytime. You can begin to call about an hour before sunset, and moose will answer up to say two hours after sunrise. There is very little time, therefore, unless there is bright moonlight. In the third place I need scarcely observe that to call moose successfully you must find a place near camp where there are moose to call, and where there are not only moose, but bull-moose; not only bull-moose, but bulls that have not already provided themselves with consorts; for, if a real cow begins calling, the rough imitation in the shape of a man has a very poor chance of success, and may as well give it up as a bad job. Fourthly, you must find a spot that is convenient for calling-that is to say, a piece of dry ground, for no human being can lie out all night in the wet, particularly in the month of October, when it freezes hard toward morning. You must have dry ground well sheltered with trees or shrubs of some kind, and a tolerably open space around it for some distance-open enough for you to see the bull coming up when he is yet at a little distance, but not a large extent of open ground, for no moose will venture out far on an entirely bare, exposed plain. He is disinclined to leave the friendly shelter of the trees. A perfect spot, therefore, is not easily found. Such are some of the difficulties which attend moose-calling, and render it a most precarious pastime. Four conditions are necessary, and all four must be combined at one and the same time. Having once determined to go out, preparations do not take long. You have only to roll up a blanket and overcoat, take some tea, sugar, salt, and biscuit, a kettle, two tin pannikins, and a small axe, with, I need scarcely say, rifle and ammunition. The outfit is simple; but the hunter should look to everything himself, for an Indian would leave his head behind if it were loose. A good thick blanket is very necessary, for moosecalling involves more hardship and more suffering from cold than any other branch of the noble sci ence of hunting with which I am acquainted. It is true that the weather is not especially cold at that time of year, but there are sharp frosts occasionally at night, and the moose-caller can not make a fire by which to warm himself, for the smell of smoke is carried a long way by the slightest current of air. Neither dare he run about to warm his feet, or flap his hands against his sides, or keep up the circulation by taking exercise of any kind, for fear of making a noise. He is sure to have got wet through with perspiration on his way to the calling-place, which of course makes him more sensitive to cold. So I and the Indian shouldered our packs, and started for the barren, following an old logging road. Perhaps I ought to explain a little what is meant by a "logging road" and a "barren." A logging road is a path cut through the forest in winter, when the snow is on the ground and the lakes are frozen, along which the trunks of trees or logs are hauled by horses or oxen to the water. A logging road is a most pernicious thing. Never follow one if you are lost in the woods, for one end is sure to lead to a lake or a river, which is decidedly inconvenient until the ice has formed; and in the other direction it will seduce you deep into the inner recesses of the forest, and then come to a sudden termination at some moss-covered, decayed pine-stump, which is discouraging. A "barren," as the term indicates, is a piece of waste land; but, as all hunting-grounds are waste, that definition would scarcely be sufficient to describe what a "barren" is. It means in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick an open marshy space in the forest, sometimes so soft as to be almost impassable, at other times composed of good solid hard peat. The surface is occasionally rough and tussocky, like a great deal of country in Scotland. In Newfoundland there are barrens of many miles in extent, high, and, comparatively speaking, dry plateaus; but the barrens in the provinces I am speaking of vary from a little open space of a few acres to a plain of five or six miles in length or breadth. There has been a good deal of discussion as to the origin of these “barrens." It appears to me that they must have been originally lakes which have become dry by the gradual elevation of the land, and through the natural processes by which shallow waters become choked up and filled with vegetable débris. They have all the appearance of dry lakes. They are about the size of the numerous sheets of water that are so frequent in the country. The forest surrounds them completely, precisely in the same way as it does a lake, following all the lines and curvatures of the bays and indentations of its shores; and every elevated spot of dry solid ground is covered with trees exactly as are the little islands that so thickly stud the surfaces of the Nova Scotian lakes. Most of the lakes in the country are shallow, and in many of them the process by which they become filled up can be seen at work. The ground rises considerably in the center of these barrens, which is, I believe, the case with all bogs and peat-mosses. I have never measured any of their areas, neither have I attempted to estimate the extent of the curvature of the surface; but on a barren where I hunted last year, of about two miles across, the ground rose so much in the center that when standing at one edge we could see the upper half of the pine-trees which grew at the other. The rise appeared to be quite gradual, and the effect was as if one stood on an exceedingly small globe, the natural curvature of which hid the opposite trees. To return to our calling. We got out upon the barren, or rather upon a deep bay or indentation of a large barren, about four o'clock in the afternoon, and made our way to a little wooded island which afforded us shelter and dry ground, and which was within easy shot of one side of the bay, and so situated with regard to the other that a moose coming from that direction would not hesitate to approach it. The first thing to be done is to make a lair for one's self-a little bed. You pick out a nice, sheltered, soft spot, chop down a few sapin-branches with your knife, gather a quantity of dry grass or bracken, and make as comfortable a bed as the circumstances of the case will permit. Having made these little preparations, I sat down and smoked my pipe while the Indian climbed up a neighboring pine-tree to " 'call." The only object of ascending a tree is that the sound may be carried farther into the recesses of a forest. The instrument wherewith the caller endeavors to imitate the cry of a cow consists of a cone-shaped tube made out of a sheet of birchbark rolled up. This horn is about eighteen inches in length and three or four in diameter at the broadest end, the narrow end being just large enough to fit the mouth. The "caller " uses it like a speaking-trumpet, groaning and roaring through it, imitating as well as he can the cry of the cow moose. Few white men can call really well, but some Indians by long practice can imitate the animal with wonderful success. Fortunately, however, no two moose appear to have precisely the same voice, but make all kinds of strange and diabolical noises, so that even a novice in the art may not despair of himself calling up a bull. The real difficulty-the time when you require a perfect mastery of the art-is when the bull is close by, suspicious and listening with every fiber of its intensely accurate ear to detect any sound that may reveal the true nature of the animal he is approaching. The smallest hoarseness, the slightest wrong vibration, the least unnatural sound, will then prove fatal. The Indian will kneel on the ground, putting the broad end of the horn close to the earth so as to deaden the sound, and, with an agonized expression of countenance, will imitate with such marvelous fidelity the wailing, anxious, supplicating cry of the cow, that the bull, unable to resist, rushes out from the friendly cover of the trees, and exposes himself to death. Or it may be that the most accomplished caller fails to induce the suspicious animal to show himself; the more ignoble passion of jealousy must then be aroused. The Indian will grunt like an enraged bull, break dead branches from the trees, thrash his birch-bark horn against the bushes, thus making a noise exactly like a moose fighting the bushes with his antlers. The bull can not bear the idea of a rival, and, casting his prudence to the winds, not unfrequently falls a victim to jealousy and rage. He The hunter calls through his horn, first gently, in case there should be a bull very near. then waits a quarter of an hour or so, and, if he gets no answer, calls again a little louder, waiting at least a quarter of an hour-or half an hour, some Indians say, is best-after each attempt. The cry of the cow is a long-drawn-out melancholy sound, impossible to describe by words. The answer of the bull-moose, on the contrary, is a rather short, guttural grunt, and resembles at a great distance the sound made by an axe chopping wood, or that which a man makes when pulling hard at a refractory clay pipe. You continue calling at intervals until you hear an answer, when your tactics depend upon the way in which the animal acts. Great acuteness of the sense of hearing is necessary, because the bull will occasionally come up without answering at all; and the first indication of his presence consists of the slight noise he makes in advancing. Sometimes a bull will come up with the most extreme caution; at others he will come tearing up through the woods, as hard as he can go, making a noise like a steam-engine, and rushing through the forest apparently without the slightest fear. On the particular occasion which I am recalling, it was a most lovely evening. It wanted but about half an hour to sundown, and all was perfectly still. There was not the slightest sound of anything moving in the forest except that of the unfrequent flight of a moose-bird close by. And so I sat watching that most glorious transformation scene-the change of day into night; saw the great sun sink slowly down behind the pine-trees; saw the few clouds that hovered motionless above me blaze into the color of bright, burnished gold; saw the whole atmosphere be |