I observed, while he was tracking the moose, a certain reticence or
moderation in him. He did not communicate several observations of interest
which he made, as a white man would have done, though they may have leaked
out afterward. At another time, when we heard a slight crackling of twigs
and he landed to reconnoitre, he stepped lightly and gracefully, stealing
through the bushes with the least possible noise, in a way in which no
white man does,--as it were, finding a place for his foot each time.
About half an hour after seeing the moose, we pursued our voyage up Pine
Stream, and soon, coming to a part which was very shoal and also rapid, we
took out the baggage, and proceeded to carry it round, while Joe got up
with the canoe alone. We were just completing our portage and I was
absorbed in the plants, admiring the leaves of the aster macrophyllus, ten
inches wide, and plucking the seeds of the great round-leaved orchis, when
Joe exclaimed from the stream that he had killed a moose. He had found the
cow-moose lying dead, but quite warm, in the middle of the stream, which
was so shallow that it rested on the bottom, with hardly a third of its
body above water. It was about an hour after it was shot, and it was
swollen with water. It had run about a hundred rods and sought the stream
again, cutting off a slight bend.
Pages:
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270