adventures and profits of the day. They were just then speaking of a
bargain, in which, as I understood, somebody had cleared twenty-five
dollars. We glided by without speaking, close under the bank, within
a couple of rods of them; and Joe, taking his horn, imitated the
call of the moose, till we suggested that they might fire on us.
This was the last we saw of them, and we never knew whether they
detected or suspected us.

I have often wished since that I was with them. They search for
timber over a given section, climbing hills and often high trees to
look off,--explore the streams by which it is to be driven, and the
like,--spend five or six weeks in the woods, they two alone, a
hundred miles or more from any town,--roaming about, and sleeping on
the ground where night overtakes them,--depending chiefly on the
provisions they carry with them, though they do not decline what game
they come across,--and then in the fall they return and make report
to their employers, determining the number of teams that will be
required the following winter. Experienced men get three or four
dollars a day for this work. It is a solitary and adventurous life,
and comes nearest to that of the trapper of the West, perhaps. They
work ever with a gun as well as an axe, let their beards grow, and
live without neighbors, not on an open plain, but far within a
wilderness.

This discovery accounted for the sounds which we had heard, and
destroyed the prospect of seeing moose yet awhile. At length, when
we had left the explorers far behind, Joe laid down his paddle, drew
forth his birch horn,--a straight one, about fifteen inches long and
three or four wide at the mouth, tied round with strips of the same
bark,--and standing up, imitated the call of the moose,--_ugh-ugh-ugh_,