182 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



owl, on which another Indian on a former trip set so much store. 

 When the sun did appear the trip up the creek became very 

 enjoyable ; the deep chocolate brown water reflected the banks 

 and everything on them as in a mirror. The golden yellow 

 birches, the sombre spruces and balsams, the feathery larches 

 tamarac sometimes covered as in a mantle by long trailing grey 

 lichens ; the olive-green cedars, now in autumn picked out with 

 brown, were relieved by a splash of red here and there, while 

 near the water grew large-leaved ferns, now also turning yellow, 

 and bright green mosses. Oval lotus leaves floated on the water, 

 sometimes turning up their crimson under-surface, and long hair- 

 like grasses. Here we disturbed a pair of black ducks, or ruddy 

 mergansers, there a musk-rat, but bird life in the woods seemed 

 limited to woodpeckers, titmice, and moose birds. It was very 

 attractive to a lover of nature, and more particularly to us, for 

 every now and then we came upon unmistakable signs of moose. 

 Two days after leaving the creek we arrived at " our " lake, and 

 the great advantages of our position on the island very soon 

 became apparent. Moose were very fond of visiting this lake in 

 the evening and during the night, to bathe in its cool water and 

 feed on the roots of the yellow lilies and other water-plants ; the 

 Indian's " call " on his birch-bark trumpet from this elevated 

 and central spot echoed far and wide into the surrounding 

 country, and, if answered, we were enabled to locate the probable 

 whereabouts of the noble bull, launch our canoe, and silently 

 paddle to where he might be expected to leave the forest and 

 come down to the shore. 



At first no luck attended us ; we saw a big bull splashing in 

 the water and another walking along the shore, but did not get 

 either. One night we paddled close up to two bulls fighting on 

 the edge of the water, and heard their antlers clashing as they 

 fought their giant combat close to heaps of dead trees piled up 

 along the shore by ice and storms in inextricable confusion. 

 Urged by the Indian, who probably saw them better than I, to 

 shoot as they suddenly stopped the battle and crashed into the 

 forest, my bullets whistled harmlessly past the flying shadows, 

 for they were nothing more to me. "Big bulls dat, nebber see 

 dem 'gin," in a despairing voice, was all my companion uttered 

 with a grunt. I urged the impossibility of seeing sights or 

 barrels even, of judging distance in the more than uncertain 



