A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



opposite shore. After firing one shot, I realized that I would 

 probably only ruin the antlers by random shooting in the 

 dark; so we shivered in the damp cold until the coughing 

 ceased, and the dense, white mist became impenetrable to the 

 eyes. Then we groped our way back to camp in inky darkness. 



Early the next morning, when the three of us reached the 

 edge of the pond, prepared to skin and cut up the moose, we 

 were surprised to discover no signs of the animal where it had 

 fallen the night before. In an hour we had cut down sufficient 

 spruces with the axes to construct a precarious bridge across 

 the narrowest part of the pond. During the whole morning we 

 carefully quartered over the country for five hundred yards 

 from the edge of the water without finding a sign of blood. 

 The moss had been so tracked up by a number of moose wan- 

 dering through the country during the night that it was im- 

 possible to follow up the trail of the wounded bull. We returned 

 to camp for luncheon, but the afternoon found John and me 

 searching for blood farther back from the pond. About two 

 o'clock a whistle from the guide brought me to the spot where 

 he was examining a large pool of blood in the moss. We at 

 once took up the trail, which was marked by such a pool every 

 few yards, and led us into one of the thickest alder swamps 

 that I have encountered in New Brunswick. 



For an hour and a half we either crawled under, cut, or 

 forced our way through a solid mass of alders, some of them 

 the diameter of a man's leg, only to lose the trail altogether in 

 the densest portion of the swamp. On reaching the nearest 

 hardwood ridge and skirting the edge of the thicket for half an 

 hour, we were fortunate enough to recover the trail of the 

 moose, which, to judge from the tracks, had evidently been 

 joined by both cows in the swamp. 



While we were following the tracks of the three moose along 

 the side of a hardwood ridge, some time later, I had a momentary 

 glimpse of one of the cows walking among the white trunks of 



