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

we arrived at Chesuncook the next day, finding a two-foot rule there, I reduced the last to feet and inches; and, moreover, I made myself a two-foot rule of a thin and narrow strip of black ash, which would fold up conveniently to six inches.

10. All this pains I took because I did not wish to be obliged to say merely that the moose was very large. Of the various dimensions which I obtained I will mention only two. The distance from the tips of the hoofs of the fore-feet, stretched out, to the top of the back between the shoulders, was seven feet and five inches. The extreme length was eight feet and two inches. Another cowmoose, which I have since measured in those woods with a tape, was just six feet from the tip of the hoof to the shoulders, and eight feet long as she lay. The length of the spinal projections between the shoulders is very great.

11. Only the male has horns, and they rise two feet or more above the shoulders, - spreading three or four, and sometimes six feet, which would make him, in all, sometimes eleven feet high! According to this calculation, the moose is as tall, though it may not be as large, as the great Irish elk of a former period, of which Mantell says that it "very far exceeded in magnitude any living species, the skeleton" being "upward of ten feet high from the ground to the highest point of the antlers."

12. 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.

13. 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? It reminded me at once of the camelopard; 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. 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 lichen in bone to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!

THOREAU

64. HUNTING THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT.

dis'lo-cat-ed, put out of joint.

fal'cons [faw'kns,] species of hawk.

1. WE had ridden nearly thirty miles, having seen large quantities of game, including antelopes, buffaloes, giraffes, and rhinoceroses, none of which we had hunted, as we were in search of elephants. This was the country where the aggageers, or hock-cutters, had expected without fail to find their game.

2. We dismounted and rested the horses for half an hour, while the hunters followed up the tracks on the bed of the stream. Upon their return they reported the elephants as having wandered off upon the rocky ground, that rendered further tracking impossible. We accordingly re

mounted, and upon arrival at the spot where they had lost. the tracks, we continued along the bed of the stream.

3. We had ridden about a mile, and were beginning to despair, when suddenly we turned a sharp angle in the water-course, and Taher Sherrif, who was leading, immediately reined in his horse and backed him towards the party. I followed his example, and we were at once concealed by the sharp bend of the river. He now whispered