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Nowadays, owing to two centuries of incessant killing, the beasts and birds of Upper and Lower Canada are not nearly so abundant as they were a hundred years ago. When Canada proper was first discovered, the wapiti red deer was still found in the basin of the St. Lawrence; it has long since been extinct.
The "captain" rose up, placed his hand so as to shade his eyes from the sun, and, after looking for a second or two in the direction indicated, replied to the other's question by simply saying "Wapiti." "I'm no wiser than before I asked the question," said Francois. "Pray, enlighten me as to what a wapiti may be!" "Why, red deer; or elk, if you like." "Oh! elk now I understand you.
Naturalists are not certain, whether or not it be the same animal with the elk of Europe. Certainly the two are but little, if anything, different; but the name "elk" has been given in America to quite another and smaller species of deer the wapiti.
However, there are certainly two very distinct types, which differ almost as widely from each other as a wapiti does from a mule deer, and which exist in the same localities in most heavily timbered portions of the Rockies.
A more ambitious picture, "Wolves and wapiti fighting on the steps of the Athenaeum Club," found a purchaser at fifteen shillings. "And now what are your plans?" asked a young man who contributed occasional paragraphs to an artistic weekly. "I go back to Stolpmunde as soon as the ship sails," said the artist, "and I do not return. Never." "But your work? Your career as painter?"
"Very well then: the philosopher can tell us all about them before that." Lucien, thus appealed to, began: "There are few animals that have so many names as this. It is called in different districts, or by different authors, elk, round-horned elk, American elk, stag, red deer, grey moose, le biche, wapiti and wewaskish. "You may ask, Why so many names? I shall tell you.
Perhaps it's Nature's protest against your axiom that man's chief business is dollar-making. Still, I'm admitting that this is a blamed curious place for Nasmyth to figure on killing a wapiti in. Say, are you going to sleep here to-night, Derrick?" It was very evident that none of the big wapiti elks, as the Bushman incorrectly calls them could have reached that spot, but Nasmyth laughed.
I refused the shot, as we had meat of the finest quality that would keep for a week, and to kill another wapiti would be mere waste of life. In a couple of minutes occupied with this human reflection, yet sorely tempted to take the shot, the stag broke loose, and I heard it crashing full speed down the ravine, and my men shouting loudly that I should "look out!"
One morning, a week after we had been in camp, Tserin Dorchy and I discovered a cow and a calf wapiti feeding in an open forest. It was a delight to see how the old Mongol stalked the deer, slipping from tree to bush, sometimes on his knees or flat on his face in the soft moss carpet. When we were two hundred yards away we drew up behind a stump.
He said that he had lost his way after he left the Wapiti Woods, and should never have found it again, had it not been for a strange being who came upon him and took him to the camp of the White Hand Indians, and cared for him there, and sent him safely on his way again to Fort Luke.
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