134 The Wilderness Hunter. 



and my washing kit. Fifty cartridges in my belt completed 

 my outfit. 



We walked in single file, as is necessary in thick 

 woods. The white hunter led and I followed, each with 

 rifle on shoulder and pack on back. Ammal, the Indian, 

 pigeon-toed along behind, carrying his pack, not as we did 

 ours, but by help of a forehead-band, which he sometimes 

 shifted across his breast. The travelling through the 

 tangled, brush-choked forest, and along the boulder-strewn 

 and precipitous mountain sides, was inconceivably rough 

 and difficult. In places we followed the valley, and when 

 this became impossible we struck across the spurs. Every 

 step was severe toil. Now we walked through deep moss 

 and rotting mould, every few feet clambering over huge 

 trunks ; again we pushed through a stiff jungle of bushes 

 and tall, prickly plants called " devil's clubs," which 

 stung our hands and faces. Up the almost perpendicular 

 hill-sides we in many places went practically on all fours, 

 forcing our way over the rocks and through the dense 

 thickets of laurels or young spruce. Where there were 

 windfalls or great stretches of burnt forest, black and 

 barren wastes, we balanced and leaped from log to log, 

 sometimes twenty or thirty feet above the ground ; and 

 when such a stretch was on a steep hill-side, and especially 

 if the logs were enveloped in a thick second growth of 

 small evergreens, the footing was very insecure, and the 

 danger from a fall considerable. Our packs added greatly 

 to our labor, catching on the snags and stubs ; and where 

 a grove of thick-growing young spruces or balsams had 

 been burned, the stiff and brittle twigs pricked like so 



