still copious enough for them. I felt
that I stood, or rather lay, as near to the primitive man of America,
that night, as any of its discoverers ever did.

In the midst of their conversation, Joe suddenly appealed to me to
know how long Moosehead Lake was.

Meanwhile, as we lay there, Joe was making and trying his horn, to be
ready for hunting after midnight. The St. Francis Indian also amused
himself with sounding it, or rather calling through it; for the sound
is made with the voice, and not by blowing through the horn. The
latter appeared to be a speculator in moose-hides. He bought my
companion's for two dollars and a quarter, green. Joe said that it
was worth two and a half at Oldtown. Its chief use is for moccasins.
One or two of these Indians wore them. I was told, that, by a recent
law of Maine, foreigners are not allowed to kill moose there at any
season; white Americans can kill them only at a particular season, but
the Indians of Maine at all seasons. The St. Francis Indian
accordingly asked my companion for a _wighiggin_, or bill, to
show, since he was a foreigner. He lived near Sorel. I found that he
could write his name very well, _Tahmunt Swasen_. One Ellis, an
old white man of Guilford, a town through which we passed, not far
from the south end of Moosehead, was the most celebrated moose-hunter
of those parts. Indians and whites spoke with equal respect of
him. Tahmunt said, that there were more moose here than in the
Adirondack country in New York, where he had hunted; that three years
before there were a great many about, and there were a great many now
in the woods, but they did not come out to the water. It was of no use
to hunt them at midnight,--they would not come out then. I asked
Sabattis, after he came home, if the moose never attacked him. He
answered, that you must not fire many times so as to mad him. "I fire
once and hit him in the right place, and in the morning I find him. He
won't go far. But if you keep firing, you mad him. I fired once five
bullets, every one through the heart, and he did not mind 'em at all;
it only made him more mad." I asked him if they did not hunt them with
dogs. He said, that they did so in winter, but never in the summer,
for then it was of no use; they would run right off straight and
swiftly a hundred miles.

Another Indian said, that the moose, once scared, would run all day. A
dog will hang to their lips, and be carried along till he is swung
against a