As we
were advancing along the edge of this, rather more quietly than usual,
perhaps, on account of the freshness of the signs,--the design being to
camp up this stream, if it promised well,--I heard a slight crackling of
twigs deep in the alders, and turned Joe's attention to it; whereupon he
began to push the canoe back rapidly; and we had receded thus half a dozen
rods, when we suddenly spied two moose standing just on the edge of the
open part of the meadow which we had passed, not more than six or seven
rods distant, looking round the alders at us. They made me think of great
frightened rabbits, with their long ears and half-inquisitive, half-
frightened looks; the true denizens of the forest, (I saw at once,)
filling a vacuum which now first I discovered had not been filled for me,
--_moose-_men, _wood-eaters_, the word is said to mean,--clad in a sort of
Vermont gray, or homespun. Our Nimrod, owing to the retrograde movement,
was now the farthest from the game; but being warned of its neighborhood,
he hastily stood up, and, while we ducked, fired over our heads one barrel
at the foremost, which alone he saw, though he did not know what kind of
creature it was; whereupon this one dashed across the meadow and up a high
bank on the north-east, so rapidly as to leave but an indistinct
impression of its outlines on my mind.
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