CHESUNCOOK. 
103 
by without speaking, close under the bank, within a 
couple of rods of them; and Joe, taking his horn, imi¬ 
tated the call of the moose, till we suggested that they 
might fire on us. This was the last we saw of them, 
and we never knew whether they detected or suspected 
us. 
I have often wished since that I was with them. 
They search for timber over a given section, climbing 
hills and often high trees to look off, — explore the 
streams by which it is to be driven, and the like, — 
spend five or six weeks in the woods, they two alone, a 
hundred miles or more from any town, — roaming about, 
and sleeping on the ground where night overtakes them, 
— depending chiefly on the provisions they carry with 
them, though they do not decline what game they come 
across, — and then in the fall they return and make 
report to their employers, determining the number of 
teams that will be required the following winter. Ex¬ 
perienced men get three or four dollars a day for this 
work. It is a solitary and adventurous life, and comes 
nearest to that of the trapper of the West, perhaps. 
They work ever with a gun as well as an axe, let their 
beards grow, and live without neighbors, not on an open 
plain, but far within a wilderness. 
This discovery accounted for the sounds which we 
had heard, and destroyed the prospect of seeing moose 
yet awhile. At length, when we had left the explorers 
far behind, Joe laid down his paddle, drew forth his 
birch horn, — a straight one, about fifteen inches long 
and three or four wide at the mouth, tied round with 
strips of the same bark, — and standing up, imitated the 
call of the moose,— ugh-ugh-ugh , or oo-oo-oo-oo , and then 
a prolonged oo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o, and listened attentively 
