330 THE TRAPPER. 



trees cracking with reports like rifle shots all around me, 

 I shuddered to think what my fate would have been 

 had fortune not directed me to the dead wood. Next 

 morning the sun rose bright, and at ten I was breakfasting 

 in camp. Andrew remarked jocularly, " Suppose two 

 nights man no come home, sartin he dead." There are 

 two things essential to safety which the solitary hunter 

 should never be without, viz. a box of matches and a pocket 

 compass. With these articles added to a little knowledge . 

 of woodcraft he runs little danger. 



I do not know a more fascinating study than that of 

 woodcraft. The forest is a perfect library. There is 

 hardly a day or a night in which the student may not learn 

 something new. Signs invisible to the unpractised eye 

 are as legible as the largest type to the old woodsman, who, 

 besides being a close and keen observer, must be a thinker 

 too, for every day he has to match his reason against the 

 wonderful instinct of the animals whose senses of hearing, 

 smelling, and seeing are many times more acute than those 

 of their two-legged hunter. Woodcraft enables him to live 

 in plenty and even in comfort, under circumstances in 

 which the man unread in forest lore would miserably 

 perish. 



The mysteries of trapping, though they are my delight, 

 might not interest my readers, so I shall only make a few 

 general remarks about them. For all fur-bearing animals 

 the wood-trap, or deadfall, is the surest. There are as many 

 varieties of these traps as there are fur-bearing animals. 

 They have to be set with the utmost nicety and precision, 

 so that while the deadfall shall come down surely on the 

 devoted back of the animal for which the trap is set, yet 



