130 CANADIAN NIGHTS 



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 sound — the 

 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 ludi- 

 crous mistakes. Towards morning, about day- 

 break, 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 de- 

 spair 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. 



