GILPIN — ON THE MAMMALIA OF NOVA SCOTIA. 117 



stretching, reach after reach, with many a jutting point, for a mile 

 or two, takes the ice. Off goes every snow-shoe, and with mocca- 

 sined foot, they follow his deep scratches, and a blood red line 

 reaching from beneath their feet, till it loses itself in the far 

 distance. The pursued and the pursuers rejoice on the hard sur- 

 face, but it comes to an end, and he is again in the soft wood. 

 Many an anxious look is flung at the fading light, the long shadows 

 of the trees, and the red west, and again at his bleeding tracks, 

 smoking dung, great scoups goudged out of the snow by his teeth, 

 and deepening groove made by his tired hock in the snow. They 

 are pressing him hard, but the low wintry sun is leaving them. 

 As they are passing a running brook where water can be had, the 

 captain of the hunt says, " we must camp, and take him to-mor- 

 row." A fit spot is chosen, — a square perhaps twelve feet by five, 

 is marked out on the snow, — the snow is shoveld out by snow-shoes 

 till the ground is reached. This is speedily roofed over by uprights 

 stuck in the snow, — cross pieces, and poles reaching from the 

 ground to the cross pieces, and thatched by spruce branches. The 

 back and two sides are covered in, but before the front roars 

 already an immense fire. You line your snow hole with branches, 

 and creep into it, with the fire blazing about three feet above you. 

 In two or three hours it has melted the snow beneath it, and settled 

 down to your level. Had you not dug out your snow hole you 

 would have found yourself on the top of the snow, and before 

 midnight the fire in a deep pit below you. These hardy men now 

 boil their tea in their tin cups, fry a little pork on the end of a 

 ramrod, and, with hard bread, make their supper, and without an 

 extra covering sleep before their camp fire. I have myself passed 

 the night with the bread in my knapsack on which I pillowed ray 

 head frozen like a stone, my tin cup frozen to the brim, and my 

 green hide moccasin buried in the branches beneath me, to keep 

 them from the frost. A half mile beyond, as the noise of men and 

 dogs fades in his ear, has the tired deer flung his red and stiffened 

 limbs to rest on the snow. By day light the camp is broken up, 

 the dogs are laid on, and you pass his soiled and bloody 

 bivouac ; but his great strength is failing him — his en- 

 durance done. Men and dogs push with irresistible ardour to 



