Favourite Winter Food of the Moose. 1 05 



witnessed the hounds " turned off," and all speeding along the 

 moose tracks, I struck across to an alder swamp for the purpose 

 of examining the natureof the food on which the animal browses 

 at this season, nor had I gone far before footprints and large 

 hollows where the herd had lain showed I was in one of their 

 yards, on the confines of a large barren, overgrown with 

 moosewood, aspen, poplars, and alder bushes, which they had 

 cropped and barked, many of the saplings having become 

 stunted in growth by depredations of former years. Looking 

 northwards, the eye ranged over a vast tract where once a 

 stately pine forest grew, now overspread by deciduous leaved 

 trees, with only here and there a solitary spruce or pine 

 which had not yet attained the height of the old charred 

 and black mast-like forms of its predecessors, towering many 

 feet above it, although nearly half a century had passed since 

 they were destroyed in the frightful conflagration known as 

 the " great Miramachi fire," that desolated the major half of 

 the central and northern portions of the province.* 



On surveying the enormous tract demolished by the fiery 

 hurricane, I was reminded of the remarks made by an old 

 man on the previous night ; — how, at the time referred to, he 

 and his wife, having an infant at her breast only a week old, 

 were driven from their little clearing in the forest, with 

 nothing beyond the clothes on their backs ; — how they 

 wandered about for hours, not knowing whither they were 

 going, half stifled by smoke, when night came on, and 

 hearing a disturbance in the wood close by, stumbled 

 against their only horse, and before knowing it found them- 



* Another memorable fire occurred during the summer of 1870. It 

 began in the upper provinces, and extended to New Brunswick, where 

 serious damage was occasioned. These periodical conflagrations seem 

 dependent on continued droughts and prevalence of high winds during 

 midsummer and early autumn. Like all such occurrences, they commence 

 with unimportant beginnings, and are sometimes made intentionally, but 

 are oftener the result of clearing tracts for settlements. In olden times the 

 Indians frequently set fire to the forests to annoy hostile tribes and the 

 early colonists. 



