120 THE CARIBOO. 



o' a lad, a fellur who used to come to my father's house 

 now an' agin offered to teach me how to write an' read 

 ef we'd feed him while tryin'. Wai, the old man thort 

 it 'ud be a fine thing to hev his boy able to read a 

 printed book, an' he agreed straight away. But I 

 guess that fellur gev it up as a bad job. He said the 

 paper looked as if a drunken bat had dipped his claws 

 in ink an' staggered over it. He couldn't make head 

 or tail o' this nigger's fist, you bet, an' so he jest hed to 

 make tracks an' find another log to winter in. Ye-es, 

 that he hed." 



Pierre and Gaultier laughed merrily at this termina- 

 tion of their companion's literary career. Presently 

 Pierre continued his account of the cariboo. 



" c lt is in Lower Canada,'" he said, "'and in the 

 woods of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, that this 

 deer attains its greatest development. Some have con- 

 sidered that it is an ungainly beast, thick -set and ill- 

 proportioned. But although it certainly loses by com- 

 parison with the more graceful species of the Cervidse, I 

 think these critics are too hard to please. I cannot 

 conceive a finer spectacle for a hunter's eye to rest on 

 than a band of these noble animals bounding swiftly 

 through the woods from the presence of danger. Their 

 fleetness and agility seem incompatible with the idea 

 of clumsiness of form. Probably those who complain 

 of the want of symmetry in the cariboo have never 

 seen the animal in its wild state, trotting springingly 

 with head and tail erect, and apparently braced for 



