"Once," hunter loquitur, "whilst out on a hunting excursion, I was pursued by a bull-moose. He approached me with his muscular neck curved, and head to the ground, in a manner not dissimilar to the attitude assumed by horned cattle when about to encounter each other. Just as he was about to make a pass at me, I sprang suddenly between his wide-spreading antlers, bestride his neck. Dexterously turning round, I seized him by the horns, and, locking my feet together under his neck, I clung to him like a sloth. With a mixture of rage and terror, he dashed wildly about, endeavouring to dislodge me; but, as my life depended upon maintaining my position, I clung to him with a corresponding desperation. After making a few ineffectual attempts to disengage me, he threw out his nose, and, laying his antlers back upon his shoulders, which formed a screen for my defence, he sprang forward into a furious run, still bearing me upon his neck. Now penetrating dense thickets, then leaping high 'windfalls,' (old fallen trees,) and struggling through swamp-mires, he finally fell from exhaustion, after carrying me about three miles. Improving the opportunity, I drew my hunting-knife from its sheath, and instantly buried it in his neck, cutting the jugular vein, which put a speedy termination to the contest and the flight."
After which we presume that he spitted the moose on a pine tree, roasted and ate it, and used its antlers for toothpicks. The adventure is worthy of Mazeppa or the Wild Huntsman. By the antlers forming a screen for the rider's defence, we are reminded of that memorable morning in the life of the great German Baron, when his horse, cut in two, just behind the saddle, by the fall of a portcullis, was sewn together with laurel-twigs, which sprouted up into a pleasant bower, beneath whose appropriate shade the redoubtable warrior thenceforward rode to victory. An awful liar, indeed, must have been the narrator of this "singular adventure," as Springer, who tells this story quite gravely, artlessly styles it. Doubtless such yarns are acceptable enough by the camp-fire, where the weary logger smokes the pipe of repose after a hard day's work; and they are by no means out of place in the logger's book, of which, however, they occupy but a small portion—by far the greater number of its chapters being filled with solid and curious information. The third and longest part, "River Life," upon which we have not touched, is highly interesting, and gives thrilling accounts of the dangers incurred during the progress down stream of the various "parcels" of logs, which, each distinguished like cattle by the owner's mark, soon mingle and form one grand "drive" on the main river. "Driving" of this kind is a very hazardous occupation. Sometimes the logs come to a "jam," get wedged together in a narrow part of the river or amongst rocks, and, whilst the drivers work with axe and lever to set the huge floating field of tree-trunks in motion again, lives are frequently lost. This is easy to understand. The removal of a single log, the keystone of the mass—nay, a single blow of the axe—often suffices to liberate acres of timber from their "dead lock," and set them furiously rushing down the rapid current. Then does woe betide those who are caught in the hurly-burly. Sometimes, the key-log being well ascertained, a man is let down, like a samphire-gatherer, by a rope from an adjacent cliff, on to the "jam." Then—
"As the place to be operated upon may in some cases be a little removed from the shore, he either walks to it with the rope attached to his body, or, untying the rope, leaves it where he can readily grasp it in time to be drawn from his perilous position. Often, where the pressure is direct, a few blows only are given with the axe, when the log snaps in an instant with a loud report, followed suddenly by the violent motion of the 'jam;' and, ere our bold river-driver is jerked half way to the top of the cliff, scores of logs, in wildest confusion, rush beneath his feet, whilst he yet dangles in the air above the trembling mass. If that rope, on which life and hope hang thus suspended, should part, worn by the sharp point of some jutting rock, death, certain and quick, were inevitable."
The wood-cutter's occupation, which, to European imagination, presents itself as peaceful, pastoral, and void of peril, assumes a very different aspect when pursued in North American forests. If any doubt this fact, let them study Springer, who will repay the trouble, and of whose volume we have rather skimmed the surface than meddled with the substance.
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.
BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.
CHAPTER VII.
Randal advanced—"I fear, Signior Riccabocca, that I am guilty of some want of ceremony."