A FLEET-FOOTED NEIGHBOR IN THE WOODS. 231 



tlirough tlie Adirondack woods, there was not much 

 choice of meat either at Paul Smith's, Bartlett's, or 

 the guide's camp ; it was pork or venison — which 

 would we have ? 1 need not say which we always 

 chose, and as a consequence the bill of fare was like 

 a delightful " theme with variations," thus : Break- 

 fast, venison — roast, broiled, or fried. Dinner, veni- 

 son — fried, broiled, or roast. Supper, da capo. 

 Twenty years after, when I went over exactly the 

 same extended route, I looked in vain for a sports- 

 man with his antlered game ; and at the table an elab- 

 orate menu, with a picture of a deer at the top, was 

 handed to me to choose ray dinner from — alas for 

 the wilderness ! it was no more. There was no such 

 word as venison on the card.* 



But of late years the game laws are beginning to 

 bear fruit, and the deer is again on the increase in 

 New York, Yermont, and New Hampshire. On 

 what does he subsist in the snowbound forests of the 

 North ? How does he endure the cold ? These are 

 questions not so difficult to answer. As soon as the 

 fall comes his hair grows twice as thick as it was in 

 midsummer, so thick, in fact, that it helps to float 



* Up to 1883 from five hundred to eight hundred deer were 

 killed annually for the preceding ten years ; that would make a 

 fair estimated total of six thousand five hundred slain in this 

 decade ; no wonder venison was scarce in 1887 ! 



