A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



After a mild, starlight night I was surprised the next morn- 

 ing to gaze through the open front of our lean-to at whirling 

 clouds of falling snow and a whitened landscape. Both guide 

 and cook were peacefully snoring in their blankets, and the 

 only response from John was a gradual opening of one eye, a 

 moment's raising of the head, uncomplimentary remarks about 

 the weather, and an apparent resumption of sleep. However, 

 when he saw me pulling on my larrigans, he crawled out of his 

 blankets and followed me through the driving snow toward the 

 pond, muttering that no sane moose would travel in a blizzard, 

 and that the only bull we were apt to meet was the one I had 

 encountered the day before. We had not gone three hundred 

 yards through the hruUe when a cow loomed up black and un- 

 real against the white background for a moment, and then 

 trotted away, to be» instantly lost sight of in the blinding 

 snow. 



When within a few yards of the shores of the pond we stopped 

 to listen in a clump of snow-weighted spruces, and were re- 

 warded by hearing the splashing of water caused by moose 

 feeding at the far end. As we hurried along the game trail 

 which followed the w^ater's edge we were pleased to hear the 

 hoarse grunting of what sounded like a large bull, and upon 

 crawling through the leafless alders which covered our favorite 

 calling-point we found that we had not been mistaken. In 

 the centre of a small pond at one of the inlets of the bog, and 

 about one hundred yards distant, two feeding cow moose were 

 almost totally immersed in the black mud. They would thrust 

 their ungainly heads under this for a minute at a time, and then 

 raise them dripping with water, shaking themselves like huge 

 dogs, and contentedly chewing the mouthful of mud and roots 

 pulled up from the depths of the pond. One would occasionally 

 gaze anxiously to where her small, comical brown calf was 

 w^andering around in the shallower and safer water near the 

 opposite shore. 



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