FURTHER DAYS. 269 



view. I was about to enjoy looking round the country 

 when, almost straight below me, I caught glimpses 

 through the trees of a herd of caribou, seemingly about 

 thirty strong, on a marsh round the edge of which I had 

 in the morning tracked the moose. I came down the 

 mountain at my best speed, and was soon lying hidden 

 among the bushes within a hundred yards of the caribou. 

 A very fine stag escorted this herd, and also two smaller 

 one's ; the big fellow's horns, though long and beauti- 

 fully curved, were comparatively light. I lay watching 

 them for upwards of an hour before an outlying doe 

 winded my trail of the morning and gave the alarm, when 

 the whole herd made the water fly in their frantic retreat. 



When they had gone I returned to the dead stag and 

 cut off his head and carried it back to camp, after a 

 day's hunting during which I saw more game within a 

 few hours than ever before or since in the same short 

 period of time in Canada. I found that Howard had 

 killed another caribou. Ross, Howard, and Gagnon all 

 agreed that the stag I had shot was the same that they 

 had seen a week earlier. 



The death of that stag completed my limit for the 

 year under the Provincial licence, and the rest of my 

 trip was taken up in searching for moose. 



Notwithstanding all my efforts, and those of Ed, 

 I failed to see a single one. Had the weather been less 

 boisterous, we might perhaps have tempted in a bull by 

 calling ; the nearest approach to success came to us one 

 evening, when I called and a bull answered. He was 

 coming in most promisingly when one of the French- 

 Canadians in the camp, a mile and a half away, began to 

 chop wood. We neither saw nor heard any sign of the 

 moose again. 



