APPENDIX. 357 



we espied them beating a slow retreat on the route they had ad- 

 vanced upon, and I determined to take the canoe and follow them 

 by water, leaving Stephen to prepare breakfast. The morning was 

 perfectly calm, fog here and there rising from the lake and along the 

 lines of the numerous brooks that emptied into it. I may here add, 

 that though I have named it Lake Merganser, owing to the numbers 

 of those birds frequenting it, it would have been fully entitled to 

 have been called Rocky Lake, as I think that both below and above 

 its surface rocks abound to a greater extent than in any other lake in 

 Nova Scotia, and that is saying a good deal. 



" Stealing over the lake's surface, and seated in the bottom of our 

 canoe, we could not well scan the woods by the margin, for the rocks 

 on the shore were fully eight feet high. However, at length we 

 sighted two large black objects ascending a hill. Peter called like a 

 bull, and this at once arrested them. They turned, and one, for a 

 moment lost to sight, appeared on the edge of the barren : another 

 step and he must have descended. It was a mighty bull moose. 

 He peered at us, and we, motionless and with restrained breath, 

 gazed upon him. After standing in that position for some minutes 

 he turned and looked towards where we had slept. I did the same, 

 and could plainly see the boy Stephen perched upon the rock beneath 

 which we had lain. Then he walked five or six steps, turned, and 

 gave us a full side view, twice picking some twigs from the bushes 

 which we could hear him munching with his teeth, so close were we. 

 During this wondrous sight the loud noise was made in the bush 

 three times, when out walked a cow moose. She, like to her lord, 

 looked hard at us, and I thought was " for oflF." Not a bit ; she 

 stopped head on for fully five minutes ; then turned, and faced the 

 hill, emitting several times the angry grunt so dreaded by the Indian 

 as a sign of ill-luck. The bull quietly took his departure, and we 

 watched them enter the forest. This bull had only one horn. Peter 

 declared that the other was a small stump — a malformation — but I 

 shall ever be of the opinion that he had lost it in battle, for on our 

 return to our rocky home, and when butchering the dead moose, we 

 found that he had been in the wars, and was much bruised about the 

 neck and ribs on the near side. 



" Parting with this most interesting couple, we paddled on to the 

 foot of the lake, and called a few times at the head of a bog. "We 

 were quickly answered, and up came a rattling moose. He was 

 astonished at first seeing us, I feel certain, and was for bolting, but 

 continued walking along the dry edge of the bog. Peter imitated a 

 bull's note, at which he turned fiercely round with mane, rump-hair, 

 and ears erect, and answered angrily. This was repeated fully six 



