222 FRA^'K fokestek's field sports. 



selves to a tiTcater distance, unless disturbeil by hunters, than is 

 necessai'v to jirocure subsistence. 



To discover the " lie" of these yards, is the great object of 

 the Jiuiitci-; and in liower Canada, and Nova Scotia, in the 

 vicinity of the ganison towns, the Indians seek them out with 

 great skill and perseverance, well assuied of receiving a hand- 

 some rcmun(>r;ition for their trouble, from the numerous sports- 

 men \vlio are to he found in all her Majesty's regiments, and from 

 the civilians of the British Provinces; in the country districts of 

 which, generally speaking, many more resident gentlemen are 

 to be found, than in corresponding regions of the United States, 

 northwai-d at least of the Potomac, owing to the settlement of 

 much of the country, in military grants, by half-pay officers. 



When a yard is discovered, and a runner makes his appear- 

 ance in the settlements, or in a garrison, announcing the glad 

 tidings, great is the bustle and excitement, and great the ])re[)a- 

 ration among the old stagers, no less than the tyros ; for a tramp 

 after Moose in the northern wilderness, is no holyday's frolic 

 for boys, but rig' it strong work for stout men ; and is not to be 

 undertaken without due provision of the needful. 



On some occasions immense sport is realized, and it rarely or 

 never happens that the hunters, if they be willing to rough it, 

 and be endowed with the thews and nerves of men, fail of suc- 

 cess sufficient to compensate amply for fatiL,aie and hardship. 



" In the winter of 1S42, twenty-three officers," as we are in 

 formed by Porter, in his edition of Hawker, " of the Grenadier 

 and Coldstream Guards" — then in garrison at Quebec and Mon- 

 treal — " killed during a, sl'ort huutiiio: tour, iihirt ij-tlircc Moose ! 

 The Hon. Ciiptain (ii'imston also killed a Cariboo, tb.e only one 

 shot by any of the hunters, lhou'j;h their tracks were sien by 

 several of them. None of the parties were absent more than 

 fourteen days from the garrison, of which not above six or eight 

 were spent on the hunting-grounds." 



A more remarkable- fact was the killing of three Moose, a 

 few years since, with a common f twlingpiece, by an officer not 

 reputed to be very crack as a shot, or very thorough-going as a 



