United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was like a drunken man, and I looked many times for him to give up, but his was the strength of the strong, and his soul the soul of a giant, for he lifted his body through all the weary day. And he shot two ptarmigan, but would not eat them. He needed no fire; they meant life; but his thought was for Unga, and he turned toward camp.
The writer's team has had many a meal of ptarmigan, rabbits, quail, and spruce hen, while to enumerate other articles, on which at times and in stress for proper food, his dogs have sustained life and strength for travel, would be to enumerate all the common human comestibles. Dogs have been "tided over" tight places for days and days on horse oats boiled with tallow candles, working the while.
Somewhere, in the last three days, though he had no recollection how, he must have fallen and injured it. The ptarmigan had not flown. He doubled and redoubled the robe that had covered him, and humped it in the hollow between his right arm and his side. Resting the butt of the rifle on the fur, he fired again, and a bird fell.
'God bless you! said Buttercup's mother. 'Isn't your Buttercup at home to-day? asked the hag. 'No, that he isn't. He's out in the wood with his father, shooting ptarmigan. 'Plague take it', said the hag, 'for I had such a nice little silver knife I wanted to give him. 'Pip, pip! here I am', said Buttercup under the kneading-trough, and out he came.
When we reached the first trap, which was buried in snow, but found by a certain shrub which Mollie had in some way marked and now recognized, I threw myself upon the snow to rest and watch her movements. Around us we saw plenty of ptarmigan tracks, but no signs of foxes. A foot below the snow's surface, Mollie found her trap, and proceeded to reset it.
There was no life at first in the quiet scene, but, just as they passed through the last clump of bushes on the margin of the lake, a battalion of ptarmigan, seemingly a thousand strong, burst with startling whirr from under their very feet, and skimmed away like a snow-cloud close to the ground, while an Arctic fox, aroused from his lair by the noise, slank quietly off under the false belief that he had not been seen.
The valley was filled with the purr of running water; from their rocks the whistlers called forth their soft notes; up on the green plain the ptarmigan were fluting, and rising in white-winged flocks. These things soothed Thor, as a woman's gentle hand quiets an angry man.
One species of Grouse, and one of Ptarmigan, the latter white at all seasons; the former, I suppose to be, the Willow Grouse. The men would neither sell nor give us a single salmon, saying, that so strict were their orders that, should they sell one, the place might be taken from them. If this should prove the case everywhere, I shall not purchase many for my friends.
It seemed to Bob as though the Indians would never have enough to eat. Finally the storm cleared, and then it was discovered that the ptarmigans and rabbits, which had been so plentiful and constituted their chief source of food supply, had disappeared as if by magic. Not a ptarmigan fluttered before the hunter, and no rabbit tracks broke the smooth white snow beneath the bushes.
Staggering in the heavy sea the Discovery sailed northward, for Hudson had at last become convinced that no passage led to the orient through Hudson Bay. Ice retarded them and they were compelled to seek winter quarters. Their provisions were nearly gone and all that saved their lives was skill in hunting whereby they secured several hundred white partridges, or ptarmigan.
Word Of The Day