we got within proper distance, and stole away into the woods, and we passed on.  As we rounded the point just below the lake there, and looked out upon the broad water, I saw the moose I spoke of, feeding.  We sat perfectly still, and permitted the boat to drift back down the stream until we were out of sight.  We then landed, and I crept carefully and silently to that clump of fir trees.  I had my own and my companion’s rifle both properly loaded.  Having got a right position, I sighted for a vital part, and fired.  The animal rushed furiously forward two or three rods, with its head lowered as if making a lunge at an enemy, then stopped, and looked all around, standing with its back humped up, and its short stump of a tail working and writhing at a furious rate.  I sighted it again with the other rifle, and pulled.  The animal plunged furiously for again for a few rods, stopped a moment, and then settled slowly down, and fell over on its side, dead.  It was a cow-moose and would weigh as killed five or six hundred pounds.  I was a pretty proud man then, as that was my first moose, and about as big feeling a chap as was Squire Smith the other day, when he brought down that buck.  I have shot two others here since, one at each visit I have made.”

The season for moose hunting along the water pastures, was nearly over.  They go back upon the hills in August, the food there being by that time abundant.  The tracks we saw were old ones, the animals having passed there several days previously.  I would not have it supposed that the moose are abundant in any portion of this wilderness.  They have come to be few and far between, and exceedingly wary at that.  I could hear of none having been killed the present season; but that there are some left, as well as bears, and wolves, and panthers, the tracks we saw gave unmistakable evidence.

We saw no appearance of trout in this lake, or in the outlet of it above the upper chain of ponds.  The stream swarmed with chub and dace, a rare circumstance with the streams of this region.  Towards evening, we saw numbers of little grey wood rabbits, hopping around among the dense undergrowth on the ridge where our tents were situated, squatting themselves down and cocking up their long ears, as they paused occasionally to examine the strange visitors who had come among them.  They were very tame, not seeming to regard our presence as a thing of much danger to them.

“Seeing those rabbits,” remarked Smith, “reminds me of an anecdote of my boyhood, which at the time occasioned me an amount of mortification equalled only by the amusement it affords me, when I think of it in after years.  On my father’s farm was a bush field, a place that had been chopped and burned over, and then left to grow up with bushes, making an excellent cover for wild wood rabbits.  I had seen them hopping about, when I went to turn away the cows in the morning, or after them at night.  I had a longing to ‘make game’ of them.