Of all wood-craft none is so difficult, none requires so rare a combination as this, of quickness of sight, wariness of tread, very instinct of the craft, and perfection of judgment. When resorted to, and performed to the very admiration of woodmen, it does not succeed once in a hundred times—therefore not by one man in a thousand is it ever resorted to at all, and by him, rather in the wantonness of wood-craft, and by way of boastful experiment, than with any hope, much less expectation of success. For once, in my illustration, the trick has been played, and the game wins—the whoop is pealing on the wind beyond the dark, sheltering pines and hemlocks—the herd is scattered to the four winds of heaven—but the monarch of the wilderness, the prime bull of the herd, bears down in his headlong terror full on the ambushed rifle. Lo! with how brave a bound he clears that prostrate log. But the keen eye of the woodman is upon him; another moment, and it shall glare along the deadly rifle; the sharp, short crack shall awake the echoes of the forest, and ere they shall have subsided into silence, the pride of the woods shall have gasped out his last sigh on the gory green-sward. But this you will say is fancy—scarcely fact. Be it so. What follows shall be fact, not fancy. For I shall beg leave to quote a few pages from Porter’s Hawker by that “Meadows,” whom I have already mentioned—since his is the best description of this noble sport extant; since to reproduce it, giving his thoughts in my own altered words were rankest plagiary; and since, if it meet his eye, he will be rather pleased than hurt that I have winged his words into a wider field and to a larger audience than he at first addressed them. I will premise only, that “Howard,” who figures as the hero, is a New Brunswicker, in New Brunswick; “Meadows,” the narrator, an English tyro visiting his friend in the province; Sabatisie, a Micmac Indian, henchman and guide of Meadows; and Billy, last not least, Howard’s pet bull terrier. Scene, daybreak! they have issued from the camp close to the hunting-ground where the Cariboo are supposed to “won”—as Chaucer would have written it—when lo! quoth Meadows—