LEAVE ST. FRANCIS. 59 



justifiable or not must be for others to decide; but 

 St. Francis was not long honoured with my presence. 

 Of moose-hunting I had seen enough for one season, 

 and for many a year not even my bosom friends knew 

 that I had ever made an attempt to slay the noblest 

 of all the deer family. 



In the close, warm weather of July and August this 

 game is much pestered with flies. To avoid these 

 plagues, the moose almost becomes aquatic 'in hi^s 

 habits ; for hours he will completely submerge himself, 

 with nought but his head above the surface. At this 

 season their principal food is the long, succulent limbs 

 and leaves of the water lily. In the tributary streams 

 that help to feed Moosehead Lake it is no uncommon 

 thing for the fisherman or tourist, on his aquatic 

 excursions, to come across moose floating, or see them 

 reach the shore in advance of him, alarmed either by 

 the voices or wind of the strangers. Such was my 

 fortune once when fishing in a tributary of Lake 

 Parmacheney. Trout had all day been on the feed ; 

 my gun lay carelessly at my feet, half buried in 

 blankets and other hunter's paraphernalia in the 

 bottom of my canoe, which I had permitted silently 

 to drift with the current. Suddenly I heard a splash, 

 as if all the fish in the river had collected to make a 

 simultaneous rise ; but, instead of fin, it was fur, and 

 a splendid moose, bearing a noble head of antlers, 

 plunged through the weeds, and soon disappeared in 

 the recesses of the forest. If I had been prepared, or 

 even had my gun been obtainable at a minute's 

 notice, I could almost with certainty have adminis- 

 tered the coup de grace. 



"When the season advances, and the sparse advent 



