90 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



as he pocketed the dollars by a ready sale. " Joe, I thin] 

 I must come and look at your castle, at Indian Lake ; the] 

 say you have exchanged your camp for a two-store] 

 frame-house, and are the squire of the settlement. Do 

 you think you have left a moose or two in your pre-i 

 serves ? " 



"Well, Capten, I very glad to see you always when 

 you come along my way. I most too old, though, to 

 hunt with gentlemen — can t see very well." 



" We will make out somehow, Joe ; and Jem there 

 will help you through, if you come to a stand-still.'' 



" Oh, never fear," replied Mr. Cope (he always speaks 

 of himself as Mr. Cope), laughing ; " that Jem, he don't 

 know nothing ; I guess I more able to put him through 

 yet." 



And so we closed the bargain ; to wit, that we should 

 have a day or two's hunting together in what Joe fully 

 regarded as his own preserves and private property — the 

 woods around Indian Lake, distant twenty miles from 

 Halifax. 



What would the old Indians, at the close of the last 

 century, have said, if told that in a short time a stage- 

 coach would ply through their broad hunting-grounds 

 between the Atlantic and the Bay of Fundy ? Think of 

 the astonishment of Mr. Cope and his comrades of the 

 present age, perhaps just stealing on a bull-moose, when 

 they first heard the yell of the engine and rattle of the 

 car- wheels ! This march has been accomplished ; the 

 old Windsor coach, with its teams of four, after having 

 flourished for nearly half a century, has succumbed to 

 the iron-horse, and the discordant sounds of passing 

 trains re-echo through the neighbouring woods, to the no 



