CHAPTEE IX. 

 MOOSE DEER. 



(Cervus Alces.] 



I NEVER think of the State of Maine without the 

 most intense feelings of pleasure, for there among the 

 pine-clad hills and wood-embosomed lakes I have 

 enjoyed many, many weeks and months so free from 

 care, so productive of pleasure, that the recollection 

 can never pass away; but these pleasures are not with- 

 out alloy. Alas ! that we should grow old, and the 

 companions whose society we dearly cherished should 

 be no more, and that he in whom all our confidence 

 had been centred, and whose society we loved, should 

 in his youth be summoned to occupy a soldier's grave ! 



A truce to these painful reminiscences. Moose deer 

 and moose hunting is the subject; sentiment we will 

 leave to the poet or the love- sick schoolboy. 



The State of Maine is characterised by the numerous 

 labyrinths of lakes that are scattered over it in every 

 direction, divided from each other by mountainous 



