THE MOOSE AND HIS HISTORY 



15 



"Of this lether, the Salvages make the best 

 shooes, and use to barter away the skinnes to other 

 Salvages, that have none of that kinde of bests 

 in the parts where they live. Very good buffe 

 may be made of the bids, I have seene a hide as 

 large as any horse hide that can be found. There 

 is such abundance of them that the Salvages, at 

 hunting time, have killed of them so many, that 

 they have bestowed six or seaven at a time, upon 

 one English man whome they have borne affection 

 to.''^° 



With the establishment of the Jesuit missions 

 in New France in 161 1 a new class of writers began 

 making contributions to the history of the moose. 

 The missionaries in their Relations, or reports 

 of the events in their forest parishes sent from 

 year to year to their superiors in the old country, 

 make frequent mention of the animal which they 

 call relan or rorignal. Like the Indians, the 

 priests were dependent on the moose for food in 

 winter, and like the Indians they went hungry 

 when for lack of deep crusted snow the hunters 

 with their primitive weapons were unable to 



New English Canaan (Amsterdam, 1637), pp. 74-75. Morton was 

 a lawyer of Clifford's Inn, London. His unpuritanical conduct twice 

 entailed banishment from New England, and after the publication of 

 his "scandalous book" his return to Boston brought him a year ia 

 prison. 



