On they trudged, dropping various members of their little party as
they turned off to go to their homes. All agreed they had had a
delightful day.

F. E. S.

[Illustration: {The lynx, bear and eagle go after the hunters' buffalo
carcass}]

THE HAUNTS OF WILD BEASTS.

In crossing the forests which lie about that singular system of ponds
and lakes that occupy the northern interior of the State of Maine, the
tourist and hunter will often come upon well-beaten paths, running
through the woods, trodden hard, as if by the passage of myriads of
feet; and this in a region rarely, or never, entered by man. They are
the paths of wild beasts--bears, lynxes, wildcats, the moose, and the
carribou,--along which they pass from lake to lake, in pursuit of
their food, or upon hostile forays. When two lakes adjoin each other,
with no more than a mile or half a mile of forest between them, there
will nearly always be found, across the narrowest part of the isthmus,
a path of this sort, more or less worn, according as the locality
abounds with game, or the lakes with fish.

[Illustration: THE GRIZZLY BEAR.]

One of the widest and most used of these that I have ever seen, led
from the bank of Moose River up to the low shores of Holeb Pond, in
one of the not yet numbered townships near the Canada line--so near
that the high, dingy summit of the "Hog's Back" was plainly visible to
the north-westward. Starting out from between two large boulders on
the stream, which at this point is broken by rips, it runs crooking
and turning amid clumps of hazel and alder, till lost to view in a
wide flat, covered with "high bush" cranberries, but lost to sight
only, however; for its tortuous course still continues beneath the
thick shrubs, until at a distance of two hundred rods it emerges on
the pond.

Happening to cross it a year ago last autumn, in company with Rod
Nichols (my comrade on these tramps), the idea suggested itself that a
good thing might perhaps be done by setting our traps along the path.
For where there were so many passing feet, some of them might without
doubt be entrapped.

Rod thought it was the "beat" of some bears, or "lucivees," while I
inclined to the opinion that otters or "fishers" had made it.

So we brought up our traps,--half a dozen small ones, which we used
for sable and otter--from the dug-out (canoe) down on the stream, and
during the following