of a yearling calf, portions of which were discovered in the thickets a short distance from the clearing.  Here the patches of snow gave ample evidence of the passage of a very large bear.  When the sun was well up, Cantin sallied forth alone, with his gun and a small supply of ammunition,—­unluckily for him, a very small supply.  He did not return to dinner.  Shots were heard in the course of the day, at a considerable distance in the hills; and when the afternoon was far advanced, and Cantin had not made his appearance, several of his neighbors—­all the men of the settlement, indeed, and they made but a small party—­set out in search of him.  The snow-patches facilitated their search; and, having tracked him a good way, they suddenly saw him kneeling by a tree at the end of an open glade, with his hands clasped in an attitude of prayer.  He was a frightful spectacle when they raised his bonnet-bleu, which had fallen down over his face.  The entire facial mask had been torn clean from the skull by a fearful sweep of the bear’s paw, and hung from his collar-bone by a strip of skin.  He must have been dead for some hours.  Fifty yards from where he knelt, the bear was found lying under some bushes, quite dead, and with two bullet-holes through its carcass.  Cantin, it appeared, had expended all his ammunition, and the wounded beast had executed a terrible vengeance on him while the life-blood was welling through the last bullet-hole.  I saw this bear brought into Quebec, in a cart, on the following day; and it is to be seen yet, I believe, or at least the taxidermal presentment of it is, in the shop of a furrier in John Street of that city.  An enterprising druggist bought up the little fat left in the animal after its long winter’s fast; and such was the demand among sensational people for gallipots of “grease of the bear that killed Cantin,” that it seemed as if fashion had ordained the wearing of hair “on end.”

Of the other wild beasts of this hill-district, the commonest is that known to the inhabitants as the loup-cervier,—­a name oddly enough misconstructed by a writer on Canadian sports into “Lucifer.”  This is the true lynx,—­a huge cat with long and remarkably thick legs, paws in which dangerous claws are sheathed, and short tail.  Its principal prey is the common or Northern hare, which abounds in these regions:  but at times the loup-cervier will invade the poultry-yards; and he is even held to account, now and then, for the murder of innocent lambs, and the disappearance of tender piglings whose mothers were so negligent as to let them stray alone into the brushwood.  These fierce cats have been killed, occasionally, quite close to Quebec.  When thus driven to approach populous districts, it must be from scarcity of their accustomed food; for they are usually very savage and ravenous, when found in such places.  I know an instance, myself, in which a gentleman of Quebec, riding a little way from the town, was suddenly pounced upon and attacked by a loup-cervier, near the Plains of Abraham.  He struck the animal with his whip several times, but it persisted in following him, and he got rid of it only by putting spurs to his horse and beating it in speed.  The animal was killed soon afterwards, near the same place.