REMINISCENCES OF ANDREW DOWNS. XXI 



seven months, the latter as nearly resembling an overgrown juvenile 

 donkey as could well be imagined on the part of a member of the 

 deer family. The youngest of the cows had been for the past year 

 a much-admired resident in Downs's gardens, w^here, perfectly 

 domesticated, and roaming in a railed-off patch of its native 

 thickets, it had thriven and afforded much pleasure in contempla- 

 tion of its strange action and configuration, so often described as 

 uncouth, but so beautifully adapted to its natural state of existence. 

 The larger animal was three-quarters grown, the finest tame speci- 

 men I had ever seen; she had been brought in from a distant 

 settlement, the property of a farmer whose clearings verge on 

 woods where moose are plentiful, and had been long a pet of the 

 settlement, feeding with the domestic cattle and from the child- 

 ren's hands, and occasionally roaming at large in the woods. " 1 

 can't tell when I can bring her down."' said the settler to Downs, 

 when he offered to part with her; "I guess she's away off in the 

 woods just now."' But the next time her ladyship took a notion of 

 returning to a state of civilization, the stable door was shut on her, 

 and, driven into a roughly constructed cage of planks, she was 

 shipped and brought down to Halifax in a schooner. A few days 

 after her arrival J went to Downs's gardens to witness the packing 

 of the moose for their voyage to Boston. A little previous fasting, 

 and their excessive fondness for turnips, readily induced them to 

 step boldly into the narrow crates prepared for them, so narrow 

 that when we stuffed in the wadded bolsters to prevent their being 

 injured by struggling or motion on board the packet, it was as 

 tight a fit as could be imagined. " Pack them as tight as they can 

 stand," were the express orders. I never saw animals take such 

 sudden and close confinement so philosophically. Their long 

 heads and prehensile mouffles were stretched out of tlie apertures 

 in front, eagerly expecting the chopped turnips, without manifest- 

 ing the least alarm at the novelty of their position ; and they were 

 most quietly and satisfactorily drawn into town on a long truck, 

 and swung in their cages on to the deck of the packet. Mr. Downs 

 himself accompanied them, taking plenty of their natural food, i. e. 

 the tops of young birch and maple, and a few evergreen branches, 

 such as the Canadian hemlock and silver fir, to which they are like- 



