horses and oxen. The bare, horny
part of the fore-foot was just six inches long, and the two portions could
be separated four inches at the extremities.

The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it
stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail
to speak of? for in my examination I overlooked it entirely. Naturalists
say it is an inch and a half long. It reminded me at once of the
camelopard, high before and low behind,--and no wonder, for, like it, it
is fitted to browse on trees. The upper lip projected two inches beyond
the lower for this purpose. This was the kind of man that was at home
there; for, as near as I can learn, that has never been the residence, but
rather the hunting-ground of the Indian. The moose will perhaps one day
become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil
relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous
animal with similar branching and leafy horns,--a sort of fucus or lichen
in bone,--to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!

Here, just at the head of the murmuring rapids, Joe now proceeded to skin
the moose with a pocket-knife, while I looked on; and a tragical business
it was,--to see that still warm and palpitating body pierced with a
knife, to see the warm milk stream from the rent udder, and the ghastly
naked red carcass appearing from within its seemly robe, which was made to
hide it. The ball had passed through the shoulder-blade diagonally and
lodged under the skin on the opposite side, and was partially flattened.
My companion keeps it to show to his grandchildren. He has the shanks of
another moose which he has since shot, skinned and stuffed, ready to be
made into boots by putting in a thick leather sole. Joe said, if a moose
stood fronting you, you must not fire, but advance toward him, for he will
turn slowly and give you a fair shot. In the bed of this narrow, wild, and
rocky stream, between two lofty walls of spruce and firs, a mere cleft in
the forest which the stream had made, this work went on. At length Joe had
stripped off the hide and dragged it trailing to the shore, declaring that
it weighed a hundred pounds, though probably fifty would have been nearer
the truth. He cut off a large mass of the meat to carry along, and
another, together with the tongue and nose, he put with the hide on the
shore to lie there all night, or till we returned. I was surprised that he
th