FURTHER DAYS. 239 



us the consoling assurance that travellers upon it must be 

 few and far between. On the second day the leading horse, 

 a powerful grey, fell through one of the many rough timber 

 bridges which occurred at intervals along our route, but by 

 a miracle it escaped unhurt. 



Shortly after this misadventure the whole party was 

 arrested by the calling of a cow-moose within a mile of 

 the road. We halted, and everyone listened while the 

 strange bellowing cry was repeated at the least a dozen 

 times, and was then, to our great satisfaction, answered 

 by a bull. As it was yet early in September, and the rut 

 had consequently only just commenced, the chances were 

 in favour of the bull being a large one. 



Ross and Howard generously insisted that I must try 

 my luck ; so, accompanied by Ed, I went off in the direc- 

 tion of the sound. Almost immediately on leaving the 

 road we found ourselves entangled in a long strip of alders, 

 but beyond this the forest appeared to thin. We pushed 

 our way through the alders and, wading a small brook, 

 took a line at right angles to the road, when we again heard 

 the cow calling and the bull answering, but by this time 

 they had moved into some very thick timber. Here, the 

 wind being in our favour, we soon got within a hundred 

 yards of the bull, which continued trampling and grunting. 

 But the growth of the forest was so dense that it was im- 

 possible to see more than a few yards in any direction, so 

 we were unable to locate the cow. Had the wind been 

 steady, or had the bull been alone, we could in all prob- 

 ability have approached near enough to see him, but after 

 advancing for another fifty yards we were forced to stop 

 and wait. The smell of the bull was quite perceptible even 

 to the human nostrils, but all sounds had ceased, and it 

 was evident that both animals had become suspicious and 

 were listening. The silence was broken by what we im- 

 agined to be the movement of the cow, which had circled 



