"Once," hunter _loquitur_, "whilst out on a hunting excursion,
I was pursued by a bull-moose. He approached me with his
muscular neck curved, and head to the ground, in a manner not
dissimilar to the attitude assumed by horned cattle when about
to encounter each other. Just as he was about to make a pass
at me, I sprang suddenly between his wide-spreading antlers,
bestride his neck. Dexterously turning round, I seized him by
the horns, and, locking my feet together under his neck, I
clung to him like a sloth. With a mixture of rage and terror,
he dashed wildly about, endeavouring to dislodge me; but, as
my life depended upon maintaining my position, I clung to him
with a corresponding desperation. After making a few ineffectual
attempts to disengage me, he threw out his nose, and, laying his
antlers back upon his shoulders, _which formed a screen for my
defence_, he sprang forward into a furious run, still bearing
me upon his neck. Now penetrating dense thickets, then leaping
high 'windfalls,' (old fallen trees,) and struggling through
swamp-mires, he finally fell from exhaustion, after carrying
me about three miles. Improving the opportunity, I drew my
hunting-knife from its sheath, and instantly buried it in his
neck, cutting the jugular vein, which put a speedy termination
to the contest and the flight."
After which we presume that he spitted the moose on a pine tree,
roasted and ate it, and used its antlers for toothpicks. The
adventure is worthy of Mazeppa or the Wild Huntsman. By the antlers
_forming a screen for the rider's defence_, we are reminded of
that memorable morning in the life of the great German Baron, when
his horse, cut in two, just behind the saddle, by the fall of a
portcullis, was sewn together with laurel-twigs, which sprouted
up into a pleasant bower, beneath whose appropriate shade the
redoubtable warrior thenceforward rode to victory. An awful liar,
indeed, must have been the narrator of this "singular adventure,"
as Springer, who tells this story quite gravely, artlessly styles
it. Doubtless such yarns are acceptable enough by the camp-fire,
where the weary logger smokes the pipe of repose after a hard day's
work; and they are by no means out of place in the logger's book,
of which, however, they occupy but a small portion--by far the
greater number of its chapters being filled with solid and curious
information. The third and longest part, "River Life," upon which
we have not touched, is highly interesting, and gives thrilling
accounts of the dangers incurred during the progress down stream of
the various "parcels" of logs, which, each distinguished like cattle
by the owner's mark, soon mingle and form one grand "drive" on the
main river. "Driving" of this kind is a very hazardous occupation.
Sometimes the logs come to a "jam," get wedged together in a narrow
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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