240 HUNTING CAMPS. 



round with the manifest intention of finding out the facts 

 of her surroundings by getting to windward of us. At this 

 moment we heard the bull again behind a thick bush within 

 thirty yards, for the cow must have communicated her 

 alarm to him, and at once there followed a series of crashes 

 as the couple decamped. Abandoning all precautions, we 

 ran forward in the hope of cutting off the moose, but failed 

 to catch sight of them, as their tracks showed us they had 

 turned and escaped over a wooded ridge, leaving us to 

 retrace our footsteps sorrowfully to the road, along which 

 we followed the buck-boards, reaching camp long after 

 dark. We were both much disappointed at our failure, the 

 more especially as, had the moose been in almost any other 

 part of the forest save the thicket into which they had 

 wandered, I should almost certainly have got a shot ; and 

 the matter was made still worse by the fact that, as far 

 as we could judge by the marks that the bull in his flight 

 had made with his h^rns on the trees and bushes, he must 

 have carried antlers with a very fine spread. 



We marched next day from the Mort, or death of the 

 waters, where we parted with all the buck-boards but one, 

 the monotony of the morning being only broken by the 

 shooting of a few Canada grouse which we killed with a 

 toy-like .22 rifle. On arriving at the river where Ed and 

 I had waited for our waggoner the previous year, we found 

 my old camp tenanted by a number of Frenchmen who 

 were fishing. Some of them were, to say the least of it, 

 very heavy men, and I could not help wondering how their 

 horses had managed to transport them over the bad road, 

 for, judging by the fishermen's figures, they certainly 

 looked incapable of walking very far. They were clothed 

 in a variety of colours, one wearing a football jersey in 

 broad green and white stripes. They were a delightfully 

 cheery party, and had had excellent sport, they told us, 

 catching trout up to 7 Ibs. in weight. 



