56 ' AMERICAN GAME, 
Rifles are hunted up, and bullets run, snow-shoes are 
buckled on, and the green-horns excite great sport for 
the old stagers, by kicking their own shins, and tumbling 
on their own noses at every second stride. Blankets, and 
baskets of provision, not forgetting the ammunition, the 
spirit-flasks, the tobacco-pipes, and the tea-kettle, are 
packed upon the tobogins, or Indian sledges, made of 
light wood, to be drawn by the red-hunters through the 
open forests, and then away for the wild, broad, bound- 
less snow-clad wilderness—the hard tramp by day, the 
blazing camp-fire, the leafy bed, the fragrant pipe, and 
the flowing bowl at night, and the sleep as sound and as 
warm beside the roaring pyre, with an untented heaven 
above, and a temperature 40 degrees. below you, as 
though it were taken in a silken chamber, pillowed on 
down and canopied with velvet. 
And now the yard is reached, and one, or perhaps two 
deliberate and murderous shots are fired, and then away 
through the treacherous snow-drifts, away over the de- 
ceitful ice-crusts flounder the huge beasts at their speed 
in mortal terror. Away, hard on their traces, flying on 
fleet snow-shoes, follow the impetuous and shouting 
hunters. 
Sometimes for days that headlong chase endures, the 
weary beasts and worn-out men, lying up or encamping, 
perhaps not a quarter of a mile asunder, when light fails 
them and they can run no longer, and with the break of 
dawn renewing the wild career for life or death, for de- 
