The Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Trails, Book I., by William J. Long

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Northern Trails, Book I.

Author: William J. Long

Release Date: December 5, 2003 [EBook #10389]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORTHERN TRAILS, BOOK I. ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Maria Cecilia Lim and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team

NORTHERN TRAILS

BOOK I

By

William J. Long

_WOOD FOLK SERIES BOOK VI_

1905

PREFACE

In the original preface to "Northern Trails" the author stated that,
with the solitary exception of the salmon's life in the sea after he
vanishes from human sight, every incident recorded here is founded
squarely upon personal and accurate observation of animal life and
habits. I now repeat and emphasize that statement. Even when the
observations are, for the reader's sake, put into the form of a
connected story, there is not one trait or habit mentioned which is not
true to animal life.

Such a statement ought to be enough, especially as I have repeatedly
furnished evidence from reliable eye-witnesses to support every
observation that the critics have challenged; but of late a strenuous
public attack has been made upon the wolf story in this volume by two
men claiming to speak with authority. They take radical exception to my
record of a big white wolf killing a young caribou by snapping at the
chest and heart. They declared this method of killing to be "a
mathematical impossibility" and, by inference, a gross falsehood,
utterly ruinous to true ideas of wolves and of natural history.

As no facts or proofs are given to support this charge, the first thing
which a sensible man naturally does is to examine the fitness of the
critics, in order to ascertain upon what knowledge or experience they
base their dogmatic statements. One of these critics is a man who has no
personal knowledge of wolves or caribou, who asserts that the animal has
no possibility of reason or intelligence, and who has for years publicly
denied the observations of other men which tend to disprove his ancient
theory. It seems hardly worth while to argue about either wolves or