e
salt.

Such a philosopher, whom no prison can dispossess of his peace of mind,
and whom no danger can deprive of his simple pleasures, deserves more
consideration than the naturalists have ever given him. I resolved on
the spot to study him more carefully. As if to discourage all such
attempts and make himself a target for my rifle, he nearly spoiled my
canoe the next night by gnawing a hole through the bark and ribs for
some suggestion of salt that only his greedy nose could possibly have
found.

Once I found him on the trail, some distance from camp, and, having
nothing better to do, I attempted to drive him home. My intention was to
share hospitality; to give him a bit of bacon, and then study him as I
ate my own dinner. He turned at the first suggestion of being driven,
came straight at my legs, and by a vicious slap of his tail left some of
his quills in me before I could escape. Then I drove him in the opposite
direction, whereupon he turned and bolted past me; and when I arrived at
camp he was busily engaged in gnawing the end from Simmo's ax handle.

However you take him, Unk Wunk is one of the mysteries. He is a
perpetual question scrawled across the forest floor, which nobody
pretends to answer; a problem that grows only more puzzling as you study
to solve it.

Of all the wild creatures he is the only one that has no intelligent
fear of man, and that never learns, either by instinct or experience,
to avoid man's presence. He is everywhere in the wilderness, until he
changes what he would call his mind; and then he is nowhere, and you
cannot find him. He delights in solitude, and cares not for his own
kind; yet now and then you will stumble upon a whole convention of
porcupines at the base of some rocky hill, each one loafing around,
rattling his quills, grunting his name _Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk!_ and doing
nothing else all day long.

You meet him to-day, and he is timid as a rabbit; to-morrow he comes
boldly into your tent and drives you out, if you happen to be caught
without a club handy. He never has anything definite to do, nor any
place to go to; yet stop him at any moment and he will risk his life to
go just a foot farther. Now try to drive or lead him another foot in the
same direction, and he will bolt back, as full of contrariness as two
pigs on a road, and let himself be killed rather than go where he was
heading a moment before. He is perfectly harmless to every creature; yet
he lies still and