48 THE DRAMA OF THE FORESTS 



familiar with its fauna and flora — of skilled but unconscious 

 naturalists, who knew no science . . . But theft such as 

 white men practice was a puzzle to these people, amongst whom 

 it was unknown." 



Another example worth quoting is taken from Sir William 

 Butler's "The Wild North Land": 



"The 'Moose That Walks' arrived at Hudson's Hope early 

 in the spring. He was sorely in want of gunpowder and shot, 

 for it was the season when the beaver leave their winter houses 

 and when it is easy to shoot them. So he carried his thirty 

 martens' skins to the fort, to barter them for shot, powder, and 

 tobacco. 



"There was no person at the Hope. The dwelling-house 

 was closed, the store shut up, the man in charge had not yet 

 come up from St. John's; now what was to be done? Inside 

 that wooden house lay piles and piles of all that the ' Moose 

 that Walks' most needed. There was a whole keg of powder; 

 there were bags of shot, and tobacco — there was as much as the 

 Moose could smoke in his whole life. 



"Through a rent in the parchment window the Moose looked 

 at all those wonderful things, and at the red flannel shirts, and 

 at the four flint guns and the spotted cotton handerchiefs, 

 each worth a sable skin at one end of the fur trade, half a six- 

 pence at the other. There was tea, too — tea, that magic 

 medicine before which life's cares vanished like snow in spring 

 sunshine. 



"The Moose sat down to think about all these things, but 

 thinking only made matters worse. He was short of ammuni- 

 tion, therefore he had no food, and to think of food when one is 

 very hungry is an unsatisfactory business. It is true that the 

 Moose that Walks had only to walk in through that parch- 

 ment window and help himself until he was tired. But no, 

 that would not do. 



"'Ah,' my Christian friend will exclaim, 'Ah, yes, the poor 



