178 HUNTING CAMPS. 



which time the old bulls will offer battle if disturbed. Little 

 chance had they against the Indian or trapper with his 

 muzzle-loader, who, having discovered the beaten paths 

 between the high walls of snow, set to work and shot them 

 down in cold blood for the price of their pelts, the horns 

 being abandoned, and the meat left to feed bear, bird, and 

 wolf, while their slayer sought the settlement. In this 

 manner the moose were killed out, and for many years the 

 great hunting-grounds of the 'fifties remained deserted. 

 Now, thanks to the enforcement of laws more or less ade- 

 quate, the moose are finding their way back to their old 

 haunts. First one bull is seen, then a couple of years later 

 two or three, so that if the country is not much disturbed 

 each year shows a slow increase, until the district may at 

 length be classed as re-populated. 



However, we have wandered far from the period just 

 antecedent to the " first snow/' when the floor of the woods 

 is like a vast sounding-board that carries timely warning 

 to the huge ears of A Ices americanus. Thus light frosts 

 and still days followed the evening which has been de- 

 scribed, with occasionally a little wind at sunset the very 

 worst weather for our purpose so that though we hunted 

 by day, and evening found us at the calling-place, we saw 

 no warrantable moose. More than once the tracks told 

 their own tale ; one evening a cow called, her weird love- 

 song echoing through the woods, and once a small bull 

 substituted himself for his betters. 



Continued ill-fortune at length drove us to change our 

 hunting-ground, and we travelled north until we reached a 

 small lake shaped like an hour-glass. Here a little tumble- 

 down hut, so diminutive that the shortest of men could 

 not have slept in it without discomfort, offered us shelter. 

 We dared light no fire, for, in the first place, we were within 

 an amphitheatre of hills where axe-strokes re-echoed, and, 

 in the second, the veering winds would have carried the 



