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come glorious with a soft, yellow light, gradually dying out as the night crept on, till only in the western sky there lingered a faint glow fading into a pale, cold apple-green, against which the pines stood out as black as midnight, and as sharply defined as though cut out of steel. As the darkness deepened, a young crescent moon shone out pale and clear, with a glittering star a little below the lower horn, and above her another star of lesser magnitude. It looked as though a supernatural jewel-a heavenly pendant, two great diamond solitaires, and a diamond crescent -were hanging in the western sky. After a while, the moon too sank behind the trees, and darkness fell upon the earth.

I know of nothing more enchanting than a perfectly calm and silent autumnal sunset in the woods, unless it be the sunrise, which to my mind is more lovely still. Sunset is beautiful, but sad; sunrise is equally beautiful, and full of life, happiness, and hope. I love to watch the stars begin to fade, to see the first faint white light clear up the darkness of the eastern sky, and gradually deepen into the glorious coloring that heralds the approaching sun. I love to see Nature awake shuddering, as she always does, and arouse herself into active, busy life; to note the insects, birds, and beasts shake off slumber and set about their daily tasks.

Still, the sunset is inexpressibly lovely, and I do not envy the condition and frame of mind of a man who can not be as nearly happy as man can be when he is lying comfortably on a luxurious and soft couch, gazing in perfect peace on the glorious scene around him, rejoicing all his senses, and saturating himself with the wonderful beauties of a northern sunset.

So I sat quietly below, while the Indian called from the tree-top. Not a sound answered to the three or four long-drawn-out notes with which he hoped to lure the bull; after a long interval he called again, but the same perfect, utter silence reigned in the woods-a silence broken only by the melancholy hooting of an owl, or the imaginary noises that filled my head. It is extraordinary how small noises become magnified when the ear is kept at a great tension for any length of time, and how the head becomes filled with all kinds of fictitious sounds; and it is very remarkable also how utterly impossible it is to distinguish between a loud noise uttered at a distance and a scarcely audible sound close by. After listening very intently amid the profound silence of a quiet night in the forest for an hour or so, the head becomes so surcharged with blood, owing, I presume, to all the faculties being concentrated on a single sense, that one seems to hear distant voices, the ringing of bells, and all kinds of strange and impossible noises.

A man becomes so nervously alive to the slightest disturbance of the almost awful silence of a still night in the woods, that the faintest soundthe cracking of a minute twig, or the fall of a leaf, even at a great distance-will make him almost jump out of his skin. He is also apt to make the most ludicrous mistakes. Toward morning, about daybreak, I have frequently mistaken the first faint buzz of some minute fly, within a foot or so of my ear, for the call of moose two or three miles off.

About ten o'clock the Indian gave it up in despair and came down the tree; we rolled ourselves up in our rugs, pulled the hoods of our blanket coats over our heads, and went to sleep. I awoke literally shaking with cold. It was still the dead of night; and the stars were shining with intense brilliancy, to my great disappointment, for I was in hopes of seeing the first streaks of dawn. It was freezing very hard, far too hard for me to think of going to sleep again. So I roused the Indian and suggested that he should try another call or two.

Accordingly we stole down to the edge of the little point of wood in which we had ensconced ourselves, and in a few minutes the forest was reëchoing the plaintive notes of the moose. Not an answer, not a sound-utter silence, as if all the world were dead! broken suddenly and horribly by a yell that made the blood curdle in one's veins. It was the long, quavering, human, but unearthly scream of a loon on the distant lake. After what seemed to me many hours, but what was in reality but a short time, the first indications of dawn revealed themselves in the rising of the morning star, and the slightest possible paling of the eastern sky. The cold grew almost unbearable. That curious shiver that runs through nature-the first icy current of air that precedes the day-chilled us to the bones. I rolled myself up in my blanket and lighted a pipe, trying to retain what little caloric remained in my body, while the Indian again ascended the tree. By the time he had called twice it was gray dawn. Birds were beginning to move about, and busy squirrels to look out for their breakfast of pine-buds. I sat listening intently, and watching the blank, emotionless face of the Indian as he gazed around him, when suddenly I saw his countenance blaze up with vivid excitement. His eyes seemed to start from his head, his muscles twitched, his face glowed, he seemed transformed in a moment into a different being. At the same time he began with the utmost celerity, but with extreme caution, to descend to the ground. He motioned to me not to make any noise, and whispered that a moose was coming across the barren and must be close by. Grasping my rifle, we crawled carefully through the

grass, crisp and noisy with frost, down to the edge of our island of woods, and there, after peering cautiously around some stunted juniperbushes, I saw standing, about sixty yards off, a bull moose. He looked gigantic in the thin morning mist which was beginning to drift up from the surface of the barren. Great volumes of steam issued from his nostrils, and his whole aspect, looming in the fog, was vast and almost terrific. He stood there perfectly motionless, staring at the spot from which he had heard the cry of the supposed cow, irresolute whether to The Indian was anxious to bring him a little closer, but I did not wish to run the risk of scaring him, and so, taking aim as fairly as I could, considering I was shaking all over with cold, I fired and struck him behind the shoulder. He plunged forward on his knees, jumped up, rushed forward for about two hundred yards, and then fell dead at the edge of the heavy timber on the far side of the barren.

come on or not.

We went to work then and there to skin and clean him, an operation which probably took us an hour or more, and, having rested ourselves a few minutes, we started off to take a little cruise round the edge of the barren and see if there were any caribou on it. I should explain that "cruising" is in the provinces performed on land as well as at sea. A man says he has spent all summer "cruising" the woods in search of pine timber, and, if your Indian wants you to go out for a walk, he will say, "Let us take a cruise around somewhere." Accordingly, we trudged off over the soft, yielding surface of the bog, and, taking advantage of some stunted bushes, crossed to the opposite side, so as to be well down wind in case any animals should be on it. The Indian then ascended to the top of the highest pine-tree he could find, taking my glasses with him, and had a good look all over the barren. There was not a thing to be seen. We then passed through a small strip of wood, and came out upon another plain, and there, on ascending a tree to look round, the Indian espied two caribou feeding toward the timber. We had to wait some little time till they got behind an island of trees, and then, running as fast as the soft nature of the ground would permit, we contrived to get close up to them just as they entered the thick woods, and, after an exciting stalk of about half an hour, I managed to kill both.

Having performed the obsequies of the chase upon the two caribou, we returned to our callingplace. By this time it was about noon: the sun was blazing down with almost tropical heat. We had been awake the greater part of the night, and had done a hard morning's work, and felt a decided need for refreshment. In a few minutes we had lighted a little fire, put the kettle on to

boil, and set the moose kidneys, impaled on sharp sticks, to roast by the fire; and with fresh kidneys, good strong tea, plenty of sugar and salt, and some hard biscuit, I made one of the most sumptuous breakfasts it has been my lot to assist at.

Breakfast over, I told the Indian to go down to camp and bring up the other men to assist in cutting up and smoking the meat. As soon as he had departed, I laid myself out for a rest. I shifted my bed-that is to say, my heap of dried bracken and pine-tops-under the shadow of a pine, spread my blanket out, and lay down to smoke the pipe of peace in the most contented frame of mind that a man can ever hope to enjoy in this uneasy and troublesome world. I had suffered from cold and from hunger-I was now warm and well fed. I was tired after a hard day's work and long night's vigil, and was thoroughly capable of enjoying that greatest of all luxuries-sweet repose after severe exercise. The day was so warm that the shade of the trees fell cool and grateful, and I lay flat on my back, smoking my pipe, and gazing up through the branches into a perfectly clear, blue sky, with occasionally a little white cloud like a bit of swan's-down floating across it, and felt, as I had often felt before, that no luxury of civilization can at all compare with the comfort a man can obtain in the wilderness. I lay smoking till I dropped off to sleep, and slept soundly until the men coming up from camp awoke me.

Such is a pretty fair sample of a good day's sport. It was not a very exciting day, and I have alluded to it chiefly because the incidents are fresh in my mind. The great interest of moose-calling comes in when a bull answers early in the evening, and will not come up boldly, and you and the bull spend the whole night trying to outwit each other. Sometimes, just when you think you have succeeded in deceiving him, a little air of wind will spring up; he will get scent of you, and be off in a second. Sometimes a bull will answer at intervals for several hours, will come up to the edge of the open ground, and there stop and cease speaking. You wait, anxiously watching for him all night, and in the morning, when you examine the ground, you find that something had scared him, and that he had silently made off, so silently that his departure was unnoticed. It is marvelous how so great and heavy a creature can move through the woods without making the smallest sound; but he can do so, and does, to the great confusion of the hunter.

Sometimes another bull appears upon the scene, and a frightful battle ensues; or a cow will commence calling and rob you of your prey; or you may get an answer or two in the evening, and then hear nothing for several hours, and go

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to sleep and awake in the morning to find that the bull had walked calmly up within ten yards of you. Very frequently you may leave camp on a perfectly clear, fine afternoon, when suddenly a change will come on, and you may have to pass a long, dreary night on some bare and naked spot of ground, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm. One such night I well remember last fall. It rained, and thundered, and blew the whole time from about eight o'clock, until daylight at last gave us a chance of dragging our chilled and benumbed bodies back to camp. Fortunately such exposure, though unpleasant, never does one any harm in the wilderness.

Occasionally a moose will answer, but nothing will induce him to come up, and in the morning, if there is a little wind, you can resort to the only other legitimate way of hunting the moose, namely, "creeping," or "still hunting," as it would be termed in the States, which is as nearly as possible equivalent to ordinary deer-stalking.

After the rutting-season the moose begin to "yard," as it is termed. I have seen pictures of a moose-yard in which numbers of animals are represented inside and surrounded by a barrier of snow, on the outside of which baffled packs of wolves are clamorously howling; and I have seen a moose-yard so described in print as to make it appear that a number of moose herd together and keep tramping and tramping in the snow to such an extent, that by mid-winter they find themselves in what is literally a yard-a hollow bare place, surrounded by deep snow. Of course such a definition is utterly absurd. A moose does not travel straight on when he is in search of food, but selects a particular locality, and remains there as long as the supply of provisions holds out; and that place is called a yard.

Sometimes a solitary moose "yards" alone, sometimes two or three together, occasionally as many as half a dozen may be found congregated in one place. When a man says he has found a "moose-yard," he means that he has come across a place where it is evident from the tracks crossing and recrossing and intersecting each other in all directions, and from the signs of browsing on the trees, that one or more moose have settled down to feed for the winter. Having once selected a place or "yard," the moose will remain there till the following summer if the food holds out, and they are not disturbed by man. If forced to leave their "yard," they will travel a long distance -twenty or thirty miles-before choosing another feeding-ground. After the rutting-season moose wander about in an uneasy state of mind for three weeks or so, and are not all settled down till the beginning of November.

In "creeping," therefore, or stalking moose, the first thing to be done is to find a moose-yard.

VOL. VII.-12

You set out early in the morning, in any direction you may think advisable, according to the way the wind blows, examining carefully all the tracks that you come across. When you hit upon a track, you follow it a little way, examining it and the ground and trees, to see if the animal is traveling or not. If you find that the moose has "yarded," that is to say, fed, and you can come across evidences of his presence not more than a couple of days or so old, you make up your mind to hunt that particular moose.

The utmost caution and skill are necessary. The moose invariably travels down wind some little distance before beginning to feed, and then works his way up, browsing about at will in various directions. He also makes a circle down wind before lying down, so that, if you hit on a fresh track and then follow it, you are perfectly certain to start the animal without seeing him. You may follow a moose-track a whole day, as I have done before now, and finally come across the place where you started him, and then discover that you had passed within fifty yards of that spot early in the morning, the animal having made a large circuit and lain down close to his tracks. The principle, therefore, that the hunter has to go upon is, to keep making small semicircles down wind so as to constantly cut the tracks and yet keep the animal always to windward of him. Having come across a track and made up your mind whether it is pretty fresh, whether the beast is a large one worth following, and whether it is settled down and feeding quietly, you will not follow the track, but go down wind and then gradually work up wind again till you cut the tracks a second time. Then you must make out whether the tracks are fresher or older than the former, whether they are tracks of the same moose or those of another, and leave them again and work up, and cut them a third time; and so you go on gradually, always trimming down wind and edging up wind again, until, finally, you have quartered the whole ground.

Perhaps the moose is feeding upon a hardwood ridge of beech and maples of, say, two or three miles in length and a quarter of a mile in width. Every square yard you must make good in the way I have endeavored to describe, before you proceed to go up to the moose. At length, by dint of great perseverance and caution, you will have so far covered the ground that you will know the animal must be in some particular spot. Then comes the difficult moment. I may say at once that it is mere waste of time trying to creep except on a windy day, even with moccasins on; and it is of no use at any time trying to creep a moose unless you are provided with soft leather moccasins. No human being can get within shot of a moose on a still day; the best time is

when windy weather succeeds a heavy fall of rain. Then the ground is soft, the little twigs strewed about bend instead of breaking, and the noise of the wind in the trees deadens the sound of your footsteps. If the ground is dry, and there is not much wind, it is impossible to get near the game. When you have determined that the moose is somewhere handy-when you come across perfectly fresh indications of his presence -you proceed inch by inch; you must not make the smallest noise; the least crack of a dead branch or of a stick underfoot will start the animal. Especially careful must you be that nothing taps against your gun-stock, or that you do not strike the barrel against a tree, for, naturally, any such unusual sound is far worse than the cracking of a stick. If, however, you succeed in imitating the noiseless movements and footsteps of your Indian, you will probably be rewarded by seeing him presently make a "point" like a pointer dog. Every quivering fiber in his body proves his excitement. He will point out something dark to you among the trees. That dark mass is a moose, and you must fire at it without being too careful what part of the animal you are going to hit, for probably the moose has heard you and is only waiting a second before making up his mind to be off.

Generally speaking, the second man sees the moose first. The leader is too much occupied in looking at the tracks-in seeing where he is going to put his foot down. The second man has only to tread carefully in the footsteps of the man preceding him, and is able to concentrate his attention more on looking about. The moment you spy or hear the animal you should imitate the call of a moose, first to attract the attention of the animal, which, if it has not smelt you, will probably stop a second to make sure what it is that has frightened him; secondly, to let the Indian in front know that the game is on foot. Moose-creeping is an exceedingly difficult and exciting pastime. It requires all a man's patience, for, of course, you may travel day after day in this way without finding any traces of deer. To the novice it is not interesting, for, apparently, the Indian wanders aimlessly about the woods without any particular object. When you come to understand the motive for every twist and turn he makes, and appreciate the science he is displaying, it becomes one of the most fascinating pursuits in which the sportsman can indulge.

Sometimes one may be in good luck and come across a moose in some glade or "interval," the result of the labors of former generations of bea

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dences of their labors have far outlived the work of aboriginal man. They dam up little streams and form shallow lakes and ponds. Trees fall in and decay; the ponds get choked with vegetation, fill up, and are turned into natural meadows of great value to the settler. Beavers have played an important part in rendering these savage countries fit for the habitation of civilized man.

The moose may also be run down in wintertime on snow-shoes. This may be called partly a legitimate, and partly an illegitimate, mode of killing the animal. If the snow is not very deep, the moose can travel, and to come up with him requires immense endurance on the part of a man, but no skill except that involved in the art of running on snow-shoes. You simply start the animal and follow after him for a day, or sometimes two or three days, when you come up with him and walk as close as you like and shoot him.

If the snow lies very deep in early spring, moose may be slaughtered with ease. The sun thaws the surface, which freezes up again at night and forms an icy crust strong enough to support a man on snow-shoes or a dog, but not nearly strong enough to support a moose. Then they can be run down without trouble. You find your moose and start a dog after him. The unfortunate moose flounders helplessly in the snow, cutting his legs to pieces, and in a very short time becomes exhausted, and you can walk up to him, knock him on the head with an axe or stick him with a knife, as you think best. Hundreds and hundreds of moose have been slaughtered in this scandalous manner for their hides alone. The settlers also dig pits for them and snare them, both of which practices, I need hardly say, are most nefarious. There is nothing sportsmanlike about them, and they involve waste of good meat, because, unless a man looks to the snare every day (which these men never do), he runs the chance of catching a moose and finding the carcass unfit for food when he revisits the place. I shall not describe the method of snaring a moose, for fear some reader who has followed me thus far might be tempted to practice it, or lest it might be supposed for a moment that I had ever done such a wicked thing myself.

Many men prefer caribou-hunting to moosehunting, and I am not sure that they are not right. The American caribou is, I believe, identical with the reindeer of Europe, though the American animal grows to a much larger size, and the males carry far finer horns. The does have small horns also. I believe the caribou is the only species of deer marked by that peculiarity. Caribou are very fond of getting out on the lakes as soon as the ice will bear, and feeding round the shores. They feed entirely on moss and lichens, principally on the long gray

moss locally known as "old men's beards," which hangs in graceful festoons from the branches of the pines, and on the beautiful purple and creamcolored caribou-moss that covers the barrens. They are not very shy animals, and will venture close to lumber- camps to feed on the moss which grows most luxuriantly on the tops of the pines which the axe-men have felled. Caribou can not be run down, and the settlers rarely go after them. They must be stalked on the barrens and lakes, or crept up to in the woods, precisely in the same manner as the moose.

Such is a brief outline of some Canadian sports. Life in the woods need not be devoted entirely to hunting, but can be varied to a great extent by fishing and trapping. The streams and lakes teem with trout, and the finest salmonfishing in the world is to be found in New Brunswick and on the north shore of the gulf. In Lower Canada there is still a good deal of fur to be found. In New Brunswick and Nova Scotia beavers are almost extinct, and marten, mink, lynx, otter, and other valuable fur-bearing animals are comparatively scarce. It would be hard, I think, for a man to spend a holiday more pleasantly and beneficially than in the Canadian woods. Hunting leads him into beautiful scenery; his method of life induces a due contemplation of nature, and tends to wholesome thought. He has not much opportunity for improving his mind with literature, but he can read out of the great book of Nature, and find "books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." If he has his eyes and ears open, he can not fail to take notice of many interesting circumstances and phenomena; and, if he has any knowledge of natural history, every moment of the day must be suggesting something new and interesting to him. A strange scene, for example, which came within my observation last year, completely puzzled me at the time, and has done so ever since. I was in Nova Scotia in the fall, when one day my Indian told me that in a lake close by all the rocks were moving out of the water, a circumstance which I thought not a little strange. However, I went to look at the unheard-of spectacle, and sure enough there were the rocks apparently all moving out of the water on to dry land. The lake is of considerable extent, but shallow, and full of great masses of rock. Many of these masses appear to have traveled right out of the lake, and are now high and dry, some fifteen yards above the margin of the water. They have plowed deep and regularly defined channels for themselves. You may see them of all sizes, from blocks of, say, roughly speaking, six or eight feet in diameter, down to stones which a man could lift. Moreover, you find them in various stages of

progress, some a hundred yards or more from shore, and apparently just beginning to move; others half-way to their destination, and others again, as I have said, high and dry above the water. In all cases there is a distinct groove or furrow which the rock has clearly plowed for itself. I noticed one particularly good specimen, an enormous block which lay some yards above high-water mark. The earth and stones were heaped up in front of it to a height of three or four feet. There was a deep furrow, the exact breadth of the block, leading down directly from it into the lake, and extending till it was hidden from my sight by the depth of the water. Loose stones and pebbles were piled up on each side of this groove in a regular, clearly defined line. I thought at first that from some cause or other the smaller stones, pebbles, and sand had been dragged down from above, and consequently had piled themselves up in front of all the large rocks too heavy to be moved, and had left a vacant space or furrow behind the rocks. But, if that had been the case, the drift of moving material would of course have joined together again in the space of a few yards behind the fixed rocks. On the contrary, these grooves or furrows remained the same width throughout their entire length, and have, I think, undoubtedly been caused by the rock forcing its way up through the loose shingle and stones which compose the bed of the lake. What power has set these rocks in motion it is difficult to decide. The action of ice is the only thing that might explain it; but how ice could exert itself in that special manner, and why, if ice is the cause of it, it does not manifest that tendency in every lake in every part of the world, I do not pretend to comprehend.

My attention having been once directed to this, I noticed it in various other lakes. Unfortunately, my Indian only mentioned it to me a day or two before I left the woods. I had not time, therefore, to make any investigation into the subject. Possibly some of my readers may be able to account for this, to me, extraordinary phenomenon.

Even from the point of view of a traveler who cares not for field sports, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and in fact all Canada, is a country full of interest. It is interesting for many reasons which I have not space to enter into now, but especially so as showing the development of what in future will be a great nation. For whether in connection with this country, or as independent, or as joined to the United States, or any portion of them, that vast region which is now called British North America will assuredly some day support the strongest, most powerful, and most masterful population on the continent of America.

DUNRAVEN, in Nineteenth Century.

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