152 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



far handsomer animal than our English Eeynard, whose 

 fur is quite dingy compared with the bright orange-red 

 coat of the American. 



" Ah ! I don't like to see this/^ said Noel, pointing out 

 some large tracks in the snow ; " these brutes been 

 huntin' about here some time. You see that track "? — 

 that wolf-track — two of them ; them tracks we seen 

 yesterday, when we thought dogs were chasing moose, 

 them was wolf-tracks." 



The day before we had noticed the tracks of what we 

 chen thought had been dogs chasing a young calf-moose. 

 At one place — a very deep, swampy bog — they had 

 nearly run into him, for, on the snow, we saw hair w^hich 

 they had pulled from his flanks. It seems that about ten 

 years ago wolves made their appearance in this province 

 in considerable numbers from New Brunswick, and their 

 nightly bowlings caused the farmers to look closely after 

 the safety of their stock and folds for some time in certain 

 settlements. They are, however, now rarely heard of. 



We had not been long on the barren ere we came on 

 last night's tracks of five cariboo, and we at once com- 

 menced creeping in earnest. Presently we found their 

 beds, deeply sunk in the snow, the surface quite soft, and 

 evidently just quitted. Their tracks showed that they 

 had, on rising, commenced feeding along very leisurely 

 on the mosses of the barren ; to get at which they had 

 scraped away the snow with their broad hoofs. It was 

 now a capital morning for creeping, as the surface of the 

 snow on the barren was quite soft, loosened by the power 

 of the sun. Now we enter a little bog, with scattering 

 clumps of spruce growing from its wet, mossy surface ; 

 at every step we sink ankle deep into the yielding moss. 



