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151 
white men. He told me that he was eighty-nine; but 
he was going a-moose-hunting that fall, as he had been 
the previous one. Probably his companions did the 
hunting. We saw various squaws dodging about. One 
sat on the bed by his side and helped him out with his 
stories. They were remarkably corpulent, with smooth, 
round faces, apparently full of good-humor. Certainly 
our much-abused climate had not dried up their adipose 
substance. While we were there, — for we stayed a 
good while, — one went over to Oldtown, returned and 
cut out a dress, which she had bought, on another bed in 
the room. The Governor said, that “ he could remem¬ 
ber when the moose were much larger; that they did not 
use to be in the woods, but came out of the water, as all 
deer did. Moose was whale once. Away down Merri¬ 
mack way, a whale came ashore in a shallow bay. Sea 
went out and left him, and he came up on land a moose. 
What made them know he was a whale was, that at first, 
before he began to run in bushes, he had no bowels in¬ 
side, but ”-and then the squaw who sat on the bed 
by his side, as the Governor’s aid, and had been putting 
in a word now and then and confirming the story, asked 
me what we called that soft thing we find along the sea¬ 
shore. “ Jelly-fish,” I suggested. “ Yes,” said he, 66 no 
bowels, but jelly-fish.” 
There may be some truth in what he said about the 
moose growing larger formerly; for the quaint John Jos- 
selyn, a physician who spent many years in this very dis¬ 
trict of Maine in the seventeenth century, says, that the 
tips of their horns “ are sometimes found to be two fath¬ 
oms asunder,” — and he is particular to tell us that a 
fathom is six feet, — 66 and [they are] in height, from the 
toe of the fore foot to the pitch of the shoulder, twelve 
