184 A BLACK BEAR HUNT 



only irritated the feeding bears, one of which fiercely charged 

 them. They hastily abandoned their canoe and fled along the 

 shore pursued by the irate animal. In the morning, incredible as 

 it may appear, they found that the bears had dragged the huge body 

 of the moose, though it weighed as much as the heaviest of oxen, 

 many yards into the woods, where they had completely covered 

 it with ferns, withered leaves and grasses, and had skinned the 

 greater part of the carcass as neatly as a hunter could with his 

 knife. The men did not take much trouble to discover the where- 

 abouts of the bears, which were probably asleep after their gorge 

 in some neighbouring thicket. They ' trailed ' a gun, however, 

 and from their camp a couple of nights later they heard the air rent 

 by a rifle-shot. Next morning they found one of the marauders 

 quite dead with a bullet through his skull. 



The last day of the hunt saw our camping ground presenting 

 a most sporting appearance. Several bearskins were stretched 

 on rude frames in various stages of curing. For the last time I 

 listened to the inspiring reveille to the breaking dawn from the 

 throats of countless Kennedy birds, the only wilderness songsters 

 an unforgettable piping recitative. For the last time, as I bathed 

 in the pool, I watched the morning mists reeling before the sun- 

 rise into pearly shattered spirals. For the last time, as I returned 

 to where the tossing plume of blue smoke rose from our camp 

 fire over the sea of greenery, I watched the points of the opposite rock 

 terraces touched with topaz as the climbing sun flooded one after 

 the other with limpid light. For the last time, as I breakfasted, 

 I heard the cock grouse beat once more his regular morning tattoo 

 of muffled drumming on the fallen moss-shrouded birch trunk a 

 few yards away from the camp, in a hardwood grove which was 

 already beginning to blaze with many a shade of scarlet and gold 

 for, dolphin-like, the Canadian summer dies in a rich glow of 

 colour. 



As the light craft flew merrily down the dancing rapids on the 

 homeward way, regretfully I realized that I was about to exchange 

 the simple primitive pleasures of the forest for the inevitable 

 worries and chimeras of civilized life. When night overtook my 

 men cutting the tent-poles under the soft white radiance of the 

 rising moon, I found myself dreamily wondering how I had come 

 to be so steadfastly enamoured of the subtle charm of these bear- 

 haunted slopes and lonely pine groves, which were casting their 

 shadows into the infinite peace of a noble reach of quietly flowing 

 river ere it passed into the noisy travail of tumultuous rapids below. 

 While the beauty and impressiveness of forest and river seemed 

 multiplied tenfold in the luminous greyness of the moonlit night, the 



