50 AMERICAN GAME. 



sultans meet in the presence of a single sultana, woe to 

 the weaker, for he must needs go to the wall after a 

 desperate conflict, fought out, as if by the knights of 

 old, in the presence of the queen of love if not of beauty, 

 whose caresses are to be the reward of the victor. 



Of this propensity foresters take advantage in the sea- 

 son, by imitating the call of the cow Moose, which is 

 easily done by blowing a peculiar note through a com- 

 mon cows-horn, the end of which is partially immersed 

 in water, or on a trumpet made of birch or alder bark 

 for this very purpose by the Indians, who are gi;eat 

 adepts at its use, and rarely fail to extract a reply from 

 tho bulls, and ultimately to lure him up within a fev/ 

 feet of the circle of hemlock^ or cedar-boughs among 

 which they await his coming full of amorous fury and 

 proud defiance, with the ready gun, which soon levels 

 his branched honors in the dust. 



It not unfrequently happens that two bull Moose will 

 be attracted by the same call, will bellow their responses 

 to it through the echoing ravines and gorges, and will 

 finally tear down through the rent and crashing under- 

 wood, and meeting with a roar of defiance do battle at 

 outrance in the presence of the ambushed enemy, who 

 watches for his advantage at every instant of the fray, 

 and rarely fails to bring down both of the competitors 

 for an imaginary fair one, by a cowardly and ignoble 

 triumph. And a magnificent spectacle it must be to 

 witness, alone and unassisted in the depths of the pri- 



