Hukweem the Night Voice. 135 



Ooooo-eee ! like woman lost in woods. An' dass his 

 tother cry." 



This comes nearer to explaining the wild unearth- 

 liness of Hukweem's'call than anything else I know. 

 It makes things much simpler to understand, when you 

 are camped deep in the wilderness, and the night falls, 

 and out of the misty darkness under the farther shore 

 comes a wild shivering call that makes one's nerves 

 tingle till he finds out about it — Where are you ? 

 O where are you? That is just like Hukweem. 



Sometimes, however, he varies the cry, and asks very 

 plainly : " Who are you } O who are you } " There 

 was a loon on the Big Squattuk lake, where I camped 

 one summer, which was full of inquisitiveness as a 

 blue jay. He lived! alone at one end of the lake, 

 while his mate, with her brood of two, lived at the 

 other end, nine miles away. Every morning and 

 evening he came close to my camp — very much 

 nearer than is usual, for loons are wild and shy in 

 the wilderness — to cry out his challenge. Once, 

 late at night, I flashed a lantern at the end of the old 

 log that served as a landing for the canoes, where I 

 had heard strange ripples ; and there was Hukweem, 

 examining everything with the greatest curiosity. 



Every unusual thing in our doings made him in- 

 quisitive to know all about it. Once, when I started 



