United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The marmots had descended into their burros, the snowshoe rabbit hopped, a lonely figure in the desolation, through the drifts. Such of the other little people that remained the weasel and the ptarmigan had turned to the hue of the snow itself. But now the snowshoe frames were done, wrought from tough spruce, and the moose hide cut into thongs and stretched across to make the webs.
It was astonishing how quickly the cubs learned that game is not to be picked up tamely, like huckleberries, and changed their style of hunting, creeping, instead of trotting openly so that even a porcupine must notice them, hiding behind rocks and bushes and tufts of grass till the precise moment came, and then leaping with the swoop of a goshawk on a ptarmigan.
as though this was something he had awaited, then disappeared no one knew where. Old Sveggum had seen it flying through the stream, as birds fly through the air, walking in the bottom of a deep pond as a Ptarmigan walks on the rocks, living as no bird can live; and now the old man said it had simply gone southward for the winter. But old Sveggum could neither read nor write: how should he know?
The medical officers were compelled to run from one to the other and rub them with snow, in order to restore animation; even thus it was found necessary to cut off several fingers of one poor fellow, and sixteen others were added to the sick list. Hunting excursions were organised, and reindeer, musk oxen, partridges, and ptarmigan were met with. Some of the former were killed.
It was thought safest not to remain long in the vicinity, as some of the Peel River Indians might track the murderer of their brother. The dogs had feasted on caribou as well as the men, and all could return to the long trail with redoubled energy. More large game was seen, and from this on there was no lack of venison. Ptarmigan, too, made a variety of eating.
"Besides," added the accountant, "I don't mean to come back to-night. To-morrow, you know, is a holiday, so we can camp out in the snow after visiting the traps, have our supper, and start early in the morning to search for ptarmigan." "Well, I will go," said Hamilton, after this account of the pleasures that were to be expected; "I am exceedingly anxious to learn to shoot birds on the wing."
As soon as luncheon was over Sir Reginald and the colonel set out for the spot were they had shot the bear in the morning, one of them being armed with a large-bore rifle and the other carrying a fowling-piece; and on their return somewhat late in the afternoon they bore not only the skin, skull, and claws of the defunct bruin, but also a goodly bag of ptarmigan.
Of birds, there are ducks, geese, cranes, ptarmigan, grouse, plovers, partridges, sand-larks, shear-waters, gannets, gulls, mollemokes, dovekies, and a score of other species. We personally know that the flesh of bears, reindeer, and some of the other animals, is most excellent: we have partaken of them with hearty relish.
I remember shooting ptarmigan, and that we ate them; flashes of memory recall the steady downpour of rain through the endless twilight of shaggy forests; dim days on the foggy tundra, mud-holes from which the wild ducks rose in thousands; then the stunted hemlocks, then the forest again.
Three pannikins of tea reposed on the green branches, their refreshing contents sending up little clouds of steam, while the ptarmigan, now split up, skewered, and roasted, were being heartily devoured by our three hungry friends. The pleasures that fall to the lot of man are transient. Doubtless they are numerous and oft recurring; still they are transient, and so supper came to an end.
Word Of The Day