MUSK-OX. 
49 
been sent upon a short journey in the woods for intelligence, and had eaten 
a considerable portion of his miserable victim. 
Dr. Richardson, watching this monster from hour to hour, perceived 
that he was evidently preparing and awaiting an opportunity to kill him, 
possibly dreading the punishment he deserved for his horrible crime, and 
perhaps thinking the doctor’s body would supply him with food till he 
could reach the settlements and escape : — anticipating his purpose, the 
doctor very properly shot him. 
Sir J ohn relates an instance in which all his efforts to obtain a skin 
of the black-tailed deer were baffled by the appetites of his hunters, who 
ate up one they killed, hide and all. Even on the fertile prairies of more 
southern portions of our continent, starvation sometimes stares the hunter 
in the face. At one time a fine specimen of the mule deer ( Cervus 
macrotis ), shot for us on the prairies far up the Missouri river, was eaten 
by our men, who concealed the fact of their having killed the animal until 
some days afterwards. 
Sir George Simpson, of the Hudson’s Bay Pur Company, most kindly 
promised some years ago that he would if possible procure us a skin of the 
Musk-Ox, which he thought could be got within two years — taking one 
season to send the order for it to his men and another to get it and send 
the skin to England. We have not yet received this promised skin, and 
therefore feel sure that the hunters failed to obtain or to preserve one, for 
during the time that has elapsed we have received from the Hudson’s Bay 
Company, through the kindness of Sir George, an Arctic fox, preserved 
in the flesh in rum, and a beautiful skin of the silver-gray fox, which were 
written for by Sir George at our request in 1845, at the same time that 
gentleman wrote for the skin of the Musk-Ox. We give an extract from 
Sir George’s letter to us : “ With reference to your application for skins 
of the Musk-Ox, I forwarded instructions on the subject to a gentleman 
stationed at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post of Churchill, on Hudson’s 
Bay, but the distance and difficulties of communication are so great that 
he will not receive my letter until next summer ; and he cannot possibly 
procure the specimens you require before next winter, nor can these be 
received in England before the month of October, 1847, and it is doubtful 
that they will be received even then, as those animals are scarce, and so 
extremely timid that a year might be lost before obtaining one.” 
Sir George Simpson was pleased to close this letter with a highly 
complimentary expression of the pleasure it would afford him to assist us 
in the completion of our work ; and among the difficulties and worrying 
accompaniments of such a publication as ours, it has been an unmixed 
gratification to have with us the sympathies and assistance of gentlemen 
VOL. III. — 7 
