" Joe said, that, though the moose shed the
whole horn annually, each new horn has an additional prong; but I have
noticed that they sometimes have more prongs on one side than on the
other. I was struck with the delicacy and tenderness of the hoofs, which
divide very far up, and the one half could be pressed very much behind the
other, thus probably making the animal surer-footed on the uneven ground
and slippery moss-covered logs of the primitive forest. They were very
unlike the stiff and battered feet of our horses and oxen. The bare, horny
part of the fore-foot was just six inches long, and the two portions could
be separated four inches at the extremities.
The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it
stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail
to speak of? for in my examination I overlooked it entirely. Naturalists
say it is an inch and a half long. It reminded me at once of the
camelopard, high before and low behind,--and no wonder, for, like it, it
is fitted to browse on trees. The upper lip projected two inches beyond
the lower for this purpose. This was the kind of man that was at home
there; for, as near as I can learn, that has never been the residence, but
rather the hunting-ground of the Indian. The moose will perhaps one day
become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil
relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous
animal with similar branching and leafy horns,--a sort of fucus or lichen
in bone,--to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!
Here, just at the head of the murmuring rapids, Joe now proceeded to skin
the moose with a pocket-knife, while I looked on; and a tragical business
it was,--to see that still warm and palpitating body pierced with a
knife, to see the warm milk stream from the rent udder, and the ghastly
naked red carcass appearing from within its seemly robe, which was made to
hide it.
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