94 -^^ iJ^^ Canadian Forests v 



to the Ewigkeit ! Adieu, my moose ! My Indian ! 

 " I told you so, most miserable of Micmacs. There 

 goes eight hundred pounds of moose meat to rot in 

 some horrible swamp — a useless death. . . ." (They 

 proceed to track this moose.) 



' Try, and try hard we must, for the ridges are 

 stony, and the swamps are " poached " by innumer- 

 able crossings and recrossings of tracks, more or 

 less recent, of wandering cows and bulls. What a 

 difficult piece to puzzle out is this, where the gray 

 limestone crops out from the soft green bog, with 

 only a moss-filled cranny here and there, or a bit of 

 Capettarie, with its dainty pink stems broken and 

 its dark green leaves crushed, to show where the 

 sharp-edged hoof has passed. Is that blood ? No, 

 not moose blood, at least, only the blood of Adonis, 

 wept for by apricot-cheeked Syrian women long ago 

 and far away, staining the anemone leaves. On, on, 

 squelching through the oozy morasses, scrambling 

 over the smooth, damp rocks, through the dense 

 thickets, over the slippery logs, hopelessly hoping 

 on. No large drop on stone or twig smeared off 

 from the wound as the mighty beast passed by. No 

 sign of hope, except that the position of the rare 

 hoof-marks shows that our quarry is walking slowly, 

 not going at his natural swinging trot, careless in his 

 strength, scattering the black peat over the green 

 moss as he goes, but that he is walking slowly per- 

 force. And see now ! how widespread the prints of 

 those giant hoofs, expanding under the weight of the 



