62. — THE ANTLERED RIVALS. ant'lers, branching horns. bells, bellows. de-scry', behold, discern. 1. LET us look together at something truly noble, — the masterpieces of Landseer. They form a drama in three acts, melancholy, but full of grandeur. The scene opens on the moorland. It is night, one of the deep, dark, silent nights of Scotland. It is night, and it is winter. The snow has already fallen. It whitens everything; both the mountains ruggedly cleft and broken, and the earth upon which, an image of sadness, lie two branchless and withered firtrees. From this shroud of snow, a deep lake, which doubles the depth of the night, detaches itself, mute and somber. Innumerable stars plunge their sharpened rays into the motionless waters. Heavy, blackish mists, unable to ascend, creep along the banks. 2. A stag is there, alone. More somber than the somber night, he bells aloud. His eyes penetrate the distance, and apparently descry an invisible being. Yet nothing appears and the waste is very dreary. But he has seen some one on yonder bank. Look well into the center of the lake. By the gleam of the stars, do you not see a haughty pair of antlers? It is his rival. He speeds towards him with the swiftness of an arrow ! 3. Behold them confronting one another. The night is not now so dark; the moon has risen; she glides pallidly into the mists. The awakened breeze takes captive the waters of the lake. For a moment even frigid nature seems somewhat moved. The combat has begun, and the weapons are equal. But the heart is troubled to see that in this terrible combat, this struggle to the death, nothing is visible of brutally savage passion. To hear only those foreheads dashing together, and those antlers locking in one another, you would think their hatred unrelenting. But look in their eyes. They see not, neither do they seek, the enemy. Full of grief, one might almost say of tears, they are gazing far away from the scene of strife. How gloomy is the fatality which changes into bitterness the sole happy moment of their existence ! 4. And now it is morning. In yon gray sky the dawn has begun to break. They are there still; but prone upon earth, motionless, dead! And what a death! In the struggle, and in the darkness, they have so entangled together their antlers that no effort since has been able to separate them. Cruel nature had willed their defeat. They have fallen together in a tragical embrace. MADAME MICHELET. 63. — THE MOOSE IN THE MAINE WOODS. branch, rivulet. ca-mel'o-pard, the giraffe. cow'er, to crouch in fear. c-las'tic, springy. gro-tesque' [tesk'], whimsical. paint'er, a rope at the bow of a boat. re-con-noi'ter, to examine. ret'i-cence, refraining to speak. 1. About two o'clock, we turned up a small branch three or four rods wide, which comes in on the right from the south, called Pine Stream, to look for moose-signs. We had gone but a few rods before we saw very recent signs along the water's edge, the mud lifted up by their feet being quite fresh, and Joe declared that they had gone along there but a short time before. We soon reached a small meadow on the east side, at an angle in the stream, which was for the most part densely covered with alders. 2. 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. 3. Our Nimrod 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 crea ture it was; whereupon this one dashed across the meadow and up a high bank on the northeast, so rapidly as to leave but an indistinct impression of its outlines on my mind. At the same instant, the other, a young one but as tall as a horse, leaped out into the stream, in full sight, and there stood cowering for a moment, and uttering two or three trumpeting squeaks. 4. I have an indistinct recollection of seeing the old one pause an instant on the top of the bank in the woods, look toward its shivering young, and then dash away again. The second barrel was levelled at the calf, and, when we expected to see it drop in the water, after a little hesitation it too got out of the water and dashed up the hill, though in a somewhat different direction. The Indian said that they were a cow and her calf,-a yearling, or perhaps two years old; but for my part I had not noticed much difference in their size. 5. It was but two or three rods across the meadow to the foot of the bank, which, like all the world thereabouts, was densely wooded; but I was surprised to notice that, as soon as the moose had passed behind the veil of the woods, there was no sound of footsteps to be heard from the soft, damp moss which carpets that forest, and long before we landed perfect silence reigned. 6. We all landed at once. My companion reloaded; the Indian fastened his birch, threw off his hat, adjusted his waistband, seized the hatchet, and set out. He proceeded rapidly up the bank and through the woods, with a peculiar, elastic, noiseless, and stealthy tread, looking to right and left on the ground, and stepping in the faint tracks of the wounded moose, now and then pointing in silence to a single drop of blood on the handsome, shining leaves of the clintonia borealis, which on every side covered the ground, or to a dry fern-stem freshly broken. I followed, watching his motions more than the trail of the moose. 7. After following the trail about forty rods in a pretty direct course, stepping over fallen trees and winding between standing ones, he at length lost it, for there were many other moose-tracks there. 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 reconnoiter, 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. 8. About half an hour after seeing the moose, Joe found the cow-moose lying dead, but quite warm, in the middle of the stream, with hardly a third of its body above water. It had run about a hundred rods and sought the stream again, cutting off a slight bend. I was surprised at its great size, horse-like, but Joe said it was not a large cow-moose. It was a brownish-black, or perhaps a dark iron-gray, on the back and sides, but lighter beneath and in front. 9. I took the cord which served for the canoe's painter and measured it carefully, the greatest distances first, making a knot each time. The painter being wanted, I reduced these measures that night with equal care to lengths and fractions of my umbrella, beginning with the smallest measures, and untying the knots as I proceeded; and when |