148 The Wilderness Hunter. 



mouthful of a peculiar kind of moss, or cropped off some 

 little mushrooms. But the beasts themselves had evi- 

 dently left the hemlock ridge, and we went on. 



We were much pleased at finding the sign in open 

 timber, where the ground was excellent for still-hunting ; 

 for in such thick forest as we had passed through, it 

 would have been by mere luck only that we could have 

 approached game. 



After a little while the valley became so high that the 

 large timber ceased, and there were only occasional groves 

 of spindling evergreens. Beyond the edge of the big tim- 

 ber was a large boggy tract, studded with little pools ; and 

 here again we found plenty of caribou tracks. A caribou 

 has an enormous foot, bigger than a cow's, and admirably 

 adapted for travelling over snow or bogs ; hence they can 

 pass through places where the long slender hoofs of 

 moose or deer, or the rounded hoofs of elk, would let 

 their owners sink at once ; and they are very difficult to 

 kill by following on snow-shoes a method much in vogue 

 among the brutal game butchers for slaughtering the 

 more helpless animals. Spreading out his great hoofs, 

 and bending his legs till he walks almost on the joints, a 

 caribou will travel swiftly over a crust through which 

 a moose breaks at every stride, or through deep snow 

 in which a deer cannot flounder fifty yards. Usually he 

 trots ; but when pressed he will spring awkwardly along, 

 leaving tracks in the snow almost exactly like magnified 

 imprints of those of a great rabbit, the long marks of the 

 two hind legs forming an angle with each other, while the 

 forefeet make a large point almost between. 



