IN TIMBER AND BRtlLEE. 247 



conceivable angle, young trees, spruce, juniper, maple 

 and poplar had grown to a height of some ten or twenty 

 feet. 



It was quite late and the sun had already sunk when 

 from the top of the first of the woody mounds Ed 

 spied six caribou. The glass showed us that there was 

 not a shootable stag among them, which, however, did 

 not prevent our approaching and watching them while the 

 light lasted. Then we crept away, leaving them undis- 

 turbed, and returned to camp, where I fear we slept 

 little, so eager were we for the coming day ; the up-shot, 

 of course, being that when morning actually came we 

 did not awake until the sun struck on a large kettle and 

 reflected a blinding beam across my eyes. Breakfast 

 was swallowed in double quick time, and immediately 

 after it we were on the move through the glorious 

 upland air. There had been a frost during the night, so 

 that the sun sparkled upon a thousand thousand points 

 of crystal light, as though some giant hand had flung a 

 shower of diamonds across our little portion of the 

 world. The sky was deep blue ; across the lake a loon 

 cried ; the air mounted to one's brain ; it was good to be 

 alive. 



Of course, our objective was the First Look-out, as 

 we named the spot from which we had sighted those 

 six most inspiring caribou on the previous evening. 

 We spent a blank hour there, and we walked on from 

 knoll to knoll without a glimpse of deer, but passing, 

 nevertheless, a couple of torn and broken trees upon 

 which big stags had cleaned their horns earlier in the 

 season. At length we arrived at a point from which the 

 valley-bottom dropped some hundreds of feet into a 

 cleft, where it debouched upon another and a deeper 



