170 A BLACK BEAR HUNT 



earth seems powerless to reclothe her nakedness save in tattered 

 shreds and patches of dwarf scrub. 



The hunter pursuing his game in these wilds often climbs to 

 the naked summit of one of those sugar-loaf mountains, bare 

 flattened domes of rock, which occur as they do in the Maine forests 

 at frequent intervals. From such a point of vantage he drinks in a 

 glorious wild view of forest and lake. The bare hills which undulate 

 below him look like a tossing ocean suddenly stilled. The valleys 

 which divide them are seen to be overlaced with the silver courses 

 of innumerable brooks, some of which, reaching back into solitudes 

 seldom trodden even by the lonely trapper, attain to considerable 

 volume, and at length swell into ample rivers. Another view 

 shows one vast canopy of the mingled light and dark-green foliage 

 of evergreen and hardwood forest, where the eye vainly essays to 

 trace the forms of individual trees. 



This broad tract of primeval untamed nature rejoices the heart 

 of the trapper by its unlimited possibilities of fur, and is dear to 

 the sportsman who, seeking the coveted trophies of the hunt now 

 and again, here attains the ne plus ultra of his wishes. 



It is the natural home of the giant moose, roaming the undis- 

 puted monarch of his giant demesne, wading the shallow tarns and 

 the cedar swamps on giraffe-like stilted legs, with long prehensile 

 tapir-like lip cropping the tender tops of the young deciduous 

 trees ; ' yarding ' in the winter time on the more sheltered hill- 

 sides. Here also roam bands of that most ancient type of deer, 

 the robust, thick-legged caribou, capable of sustaining life upon 

 glacial wastes on bitter lichens and sour mosses ; crossing the 

 winter snow-drifts and frozen lakes by means of the wide-spreading, 

 hair-cushioned foot furnished with curious shell-like cutting edges, 

 which is the beautiful Arctic adaptation to the rugged country 

 over which they roam. Here in a few sheltered valleys feed small 

 companies of the red or Virginia deer, creatures as delicate in 

 appearance as the fallow deer, as slender and graceful in limb and 

 head, but still able to thrive in spite of their stern winter environ- 

 ment. 



That most weird of the many discordant notes of the northern 

 wilderness the night howling of the big grey wolf, until recently 

 here mingled with the eerie hootings of the owl and the wild demoniac 

 laughter of the loon. This most fierce enemy of the calves of the 

 great deer, however, has of late quietly slipped out of this region ; 

 not becoming extinct by the hand of man, but by that noiseless 

 way which wild animals have of fading out of sight, ever retiring 

 into deeper solitudes as their haunts become encroached upon and 

 breeding grounds disturbed. 



