214 THE MOOSE 



a better season than the time of flowers, of the 

 sounds of birds, and the silver flash of salmon 

 running upstream ; and then again he knew that 

 there was no time like Alaskan summer-time, with 

 its joys of creeping dawn, and the silvery haze that 

 floated on the lake and crept ghostly through the 

 pathless woods. 



He might have been a hippopotamus about this 

 time instead of a moose — the days he spent in the 

 water. There he stood for hours and hours at a 

 stretch, idly pulling up the lily roots and ruminating, 

 or gazing across at the beaver colony busily trying to 

 deflect a tributary streamlet from its course. He 

 was always interested in beavers ; but for them the 

 marshlands would dry up, and the moose-grass 

 cease to grow. 



Later he established a sort of suzerainty over his 

 own particular bit of the forest, so that no other 

 bull moose dared frequent it without permission. 

 It took some time to impress this upon his brethren, 

 but after a while they accepted the situation, and, 

 bar coming down to the water to drink occasionally, 

 the lesser ones of his tribe yielded up the freedom 

 of the wild corner unmurmuringly. 



