268 HUNTING CAMPS. 



caribou, I am afraid I wished for a moment that I had 

 never laid eyes upon him. 



Knowing, however, that moose do not invariably 

 travel far even when startled, I took up the trail and 

 followed it through a marsh scored all over with 

 caribou tracks, and then climbed the flank of a hill, of 

 which the slopes were covered with birch trees. On 

 the further side of this hill the bull had gone into some 

 thick green timber, where under the trees little snow 

 had penetrated, and the trail in consequence was hard to 

 take up. But I found his tracks where he had paused 

 between two trees, and the displaced snow on the 

 branches bore clear evidence of a spread of horn of over 

 four feet. In another half-mile I lost the trail com- 

 pletely, and it was nearly two hours later before I 

 crossed it again on the edge of an alder swamp at the 

 base of the hill, where, after a prolonged struggle with 

 the alders in which I certainly was not the victor, I 

 gave up the pursuit, and, passing back along the lower 

 ridges of the hill, came to a well-defined path that had 

 been cut by migrating caribou. This path was as wide, 

 though not as deep, as those which I had seen in New- 

 foundland ; it presented but few fresh tracks and, within 

 no very long distance, debouched on the shores of a 

 small lake, where I ate my lunch, and while I ate I 

 heard a cow moose call several times on the mountain 

 side above me. 



I passed the early part of the afternoon searching for 

 this moose, but when I at last discovered her tracks I 

 found she was alone, and therefore not worth following. 

 I next mounted to the top of the hill through the wood 

 of birches, and leaving this behind I came out above it 

 on the open hill-top, from which I gained a wonderful 



