i 2 8 A MOOSE HUNT ON SNOW-SHOES 



Each of the tall, lithe, and burly hunters is armed with a small 

 axe and has a sheath-knife stuck in his leather belt. He also 

 carries firearms of fearsome description. It may be some family 

 heirloom, some gigantic prehistoric ' flint-lock ' converted by the 

 village blacksmith into a ' percussion ' ; else a ' three-dollar ' bit 

 of ' gas-pipe ' from the only village store, mounted on a painted 

 stock ; or perhaps a ' Queen Anne ' musket which may have helped 

 Wolfe to take Quebec. 



The thermometer shows nearly twenty degrees of frost, yet 

 the hardy hunter wears no coat. The sleeves of his grey shirt 

 rolled up above the elbows, and the neck open to the breast-bone, 

 expose a brown sun-tanned skin apparently indifferent to cold. 

 Each carries v the old-fashioned cow-horn as a powder flask, and 

 a leather pouch, full of slugs and bullets, attached to the belt. Slung 

 across the shoulders is a canvas bag containing two days' rations 

 of hard bread and fat pork, while from the bag hangs a pint mug 

 or small tin kettle. This completes the outfit, saving, of course, 

 the caribou or moosehide network snow-shoes not yet fastened 

 to the moccasined feet. A battered and shapeless apology for the 

 conventional colonial hat of soft felt, faded by the alchemy of 

 sun and storm into a rusty brown, is the ordinary head-gear. The 

 eyes of the men are bright with the fierce joy of the barbaric hunt 

 in which they are about to take part. Their gaze is keen and stead- 

 fast from long looking out beneath the open sky on forest, lake, 

 and stream, where their lives have been mostly spent. 



They are 'loggers', men who all the winter go on felling, trimming, 

 and hauling the forest trees until they accumulate huge piles of 

 logs on the river bank, which at the loosening of the ice they send 

 scurrying full-cry on the swollen stream towards the mill. 



Although it is a good time yet to the coming of spring, the 

 glittering carpet spread over plain and hill has changed its 

 winter condition. The snows, heated by the warm suns and frozen 

 up again at night, have acquired a ' crust ', hard enough to bear 

 dogs and men on snow-shoes, which is, however, easily broken through 

 by the comparatively small and sharp hoof of the massive moose. 

 In the soft green woods and spruce thickets, where winter lingers 

 long in the darkest recesses penetrated by no ray of sunlight, this 

 crust is much thinner and often absent together. The increasing 

 power of the sun has already loosened some of the mountain brooks, 

 and a heavy stream is hurrying beneath the bridge from the forest 

 country attracting the March run of big salmon from the sea. 



Although the best days for ' still hunting ' or stalking moose 

 are in wild windy weather when the branches of the forest are creak- 

 ing in the breeze, for successful ' crusting ' the state of the weather 



