Moose 



moose. It was into this inviting camp that we stumbled long 

 after dark, scaring a little moose out of the very door-yard, not 

 two hundred feet from the cabin door. The frost came down 

 and cracked the trees that night till they popped with the cold 

 and the sound was like a skirmish of rifles. The next morning 

 when we awoke there was a thin glaze on the snow, and when 

 we walked abroad it was like treading on innumerable panes of 

 crackling window-glass. We heard three different moose get up 

 and run when we were a quarter of a mile off. . . . We 

 climbed the mountain for an hour. Then we came to the tracks 

 of two moose, fresh that very morning. The footprints were not 

 extra large, but the broken twigs on two trees showed where a 

 pair of antlers had scraped on either side and I could scarcely 

 touch the two trees at one time with my outstretched hands. 

 Moose with big horns do not always have large hoofs. 



"'They lie down about this time in the morning' said my 

 guide, . . . and after awhile, over the top of a fallen tree- 

 trunk I saw the mane of a great, black animal. The old fellow 

 has not seen us yet. He swings his great horns just a little. 

 The steam rises from his broad nostrils. Lazily he winks his 

 eye. I can see every hair on his back. Carefully I push the 

 camera above the prostrate tree-trunk first brushing the snow 

 away with my hand. Tick, goes the shutter and the great beast 

 is getting up. The antlers swing, he rises, two feet at a time, 

 like an ox, hesitates an instant, as a moose always does, shows 

 the little symptoms of fright so familiar to those who know the 

 habits of the moose, and then goes down the mountains like a 

 runaway locomotive." 



In the far Northwest moose were even more abundant, though 

 it is difficult to say how long they will withstand the sudden 

 flood of immigration which the gold fever has recently produced 

 in that direction. "The broad valley and mountain banks of the 

 Klondike" writes Tappan Adney, "are an admirable feeding ground 

 for the moose. The temperature in winter is exceedingly cold 

 and crisp, but the snowfall is light, and by reason of the intense 

 cold the snow does not settle or pack. There is so little wind, 

 especially through the early part of the winter, that the snow 

 accumulates on the trees in strange and often fantastic masses, 

 giving the landscape, especially on the mountain tops, the appear- 

 ance of having been chiselled out of pure white marble. On 



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