196 _WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
to bear a man on snow shoes, or his dog, and yet will let in 
the poor animal at every jump as deep as it can sink. Here 
it is like slaughtering sheep in a pen when hunters attack a 
“yard” of deer or moose, but in Kentucky the case is very 
different. The snow seldom or never falls deeper than two 
feet, and most frequently does not last a week. It never 
crusts sufficiently to impede, materially, the progress of large 
game, and all the sport is therefore confined to within the 
first few days; and the principal, if not only advantage 
the hunter gains, consisting in the increased facility with 
which the game is traced, either by himself or by the noses 
of his hounds. This makes the sport intensely exciting, for 
you sometimes pursue a single herd or sole animal for twenty 
miles before you get a shot; but as you are sure to get a 
glimpse of them, and hear their whistling snort of defiance 
as they bound on again every half hour or so, you are kept 
in a constant state of excitement, and beguiled, without heed- 
ing, over miles and miles that would otherwise have been 
weary enough to you. It is only when the coveted achievement 
has been really accomplished, and you have proudly thrown 
your noble quarry across the saddle, that you begin to realize 
fatigue in satiety, and self-reproach in the fatigue, as with 
aching limbs you turn your wearied horse through the strange, 
darkening woods towards the distant camp. Now the chill 
night wind whistles through the gnarled boughs, dashes the 
frozen snow in fine, sifted, searching particles into your face 
and bosom; now your hot blood chills and your fiery pulse 
sinks; the cutting nor’-wester searches the very “‘ marrow of 
annoy ;” and with sinking heart and shivering limbs, its very 
shadow as the owl sails by, causes your teeth to chatter, and 
its sudden hoot makes you almost leap from the saddle in 
nervous affright. Now, as the dreary way lengthers before 
you, the cheerful light of the solitary camp-fire seems far, far 
away, and an almost infinite distance of bog and bluff, of 
crag, ravine and tangled wood, seems stretched between you 
