MOOSE YARDS. 183 



till the snows melt, but maintain themselves by brows- 

 ing on the trees enclosed in their yard, which some- 

 times contains 10 to 20 acres of ground. 



Indians are sent out to discover the locality of these 

 moose yards, and on their bringing in this information 

 to the settlements, parties are made up to go on snow 

 shoes and shoot the moose. This furnishes the sports- 

 man with a good walk and the novel experience of 

 a snow camp in the forest, and many fine animals 

 are thus killed but they have shed their horns during 

 autumn, so that even the finest head thus obtained is 

 destitute of its principal ornament. In New Brunswick 

 and Nova Scotia, where moose were formerly immensely 

 numerous, professional skin-hunters have however 

 nearly killed them all off, by slaughtering these noble 

 animals in their yards in this way for the sake of their 

 hides. A time is chosen when the frozen crust upon 

 the snow is strong enough to bear a man, but breaks 

 through at once under the greater weight and smaller 

 foot of this great deer, who floundering helplessly in 

 the deep snows is easily overtaken and killed, by men 

 skimming along the frozen surface on snow shoes. 

 Many thousands were slaughtered in this way, as the 

 skins] were valuable, and it is said produced i each 

 in the raw state. 



There is probably no time when the glorious pine 

 forests of America are to be seen in all their stately 

 magnificence, to better advantage than during winter, 

 when heavy snows have recently fallen, and the atmo- 

 sphere is perfectly still, dry, and clear; at such a 

 moment the woods present an almost ideal scene of 

 unsurpassable grandeur and beauty, the whole landscape 

 being thickly buried under a canopy of freshly fallen 



