OR, THE LAKE LANDS OF CANADA. 169 



put this down on the bird-shot and blaze away at this 

 animal. Prompted by this thought, I dropped a rifle car- 

 tridge into each barrel of my shot-gun and fired at the 

 moose's head. The old king of the forest did not imme- 

 diately change his position, but within a few seconds he 

 lowered his head and shook it violently, while at the same 

 time he stamped on the ground. It was evident that I 

 had only succeeded in enraging the old monster. He was 

 now acting like an infuriated bull which had been assailed 

 by the horseman and afterwards attacked by the banderil- 

 leros in a Spanish bull-fight. 



I did not stop to discuss the question, What will the 

 moose do under these circumstances ? In fact, the thought 

 uppermost in my mind at that moment was, What shall I 

 do ? How can I kill the monster ? I remembered that 

 after firing the shot I had thoughtlessly lowered the 

 muzzle of my gun, thus allowing the rifle-bullet to fall from 

 the barrel which I had not yet discharged. I now began 

 to search for another rifle cartridge. I finally found two. 

 The thought now occurred to me, it will be prudent to 

 reload the barrel that had been emptied. Unfortunately, 

 I had trouble in removing the empty cartridge. While 

 thus engaged, the animal began to move sluggishly, not 

 directly forward, but forward and slightly to the left. He 

 had not taken many steps when I succeeded in getting the 

 empty cartridge out of the barrel and a loaded one into 

 its place, then quickly the rifle cartridges were dropped on 

 the bird-shot. This work had been performed too tardily. 

 It is true the animal was still within sight. The gun was 

 quickly raised, but I was unable to draw a clear bead on 



