A BRUSH WITH A CARIBOU 



141 



pasture, carpeted with yellow mosses and the reindeer lichen, breaks 

 the evergreen forest. Such a spot then becomes a vast battlefield, 

 where bellowing stags fight furiously with one another till the great 

 herd gets split up into a number of smaller ones, each dominated 

 by a master stag who has fought his way fiercely to supremacy. 



In his sleepless efforts to maintain his sovereignty, never off his 

 guard for a moment, incessantly driving away less powerful rivals, 

 accepting every challenge from solitary bulls or lords of another 

 harem, the once grand and lordly looking stag soon becomes a 

 sadly ragged object, and is sometimes known to perish of sheer 

 exhaustion. 



The annual rendezvous of a large herd was known to Lucivee 

 Dick a place where open mossy glades alternated with evergreen 

 groves, at the foot of Big Bald Mountain, where caribou loved to 

 make their meeting-place. 



Hence it came to pass that when the October hard frosts had 

 changed the tremulous leaves of the maple to bright gold and scarlet, 

 a party of three stood on the shelving beach of the Restigouche 

 River the writer, and Dick, and a French half-breed Sebattis 

 (short for St. Jean Baptiste) and the thoughts of one at least of 

 the party flew with eager anticipation to expected adventures among 

 the blue hills that loomed in the distance. 



A party of lumber men going into camp for the winter were 

 towing upstream with a team of horses attached to a comfortable 

 house-boat. With these cheerful fellows, continually breaking 

 into songs and forest ' chanties ', we cast in our lot for a time, threw 

 aboard our luggage, and tied our slender cedar canoe to the rudder 



THE UPSALWICH RIVER. 



