This afternoon's experience suggested to me how base or coarse are the motives which commonly carry men into the wilderness. The e...xplorers and lumberers generally are all hirelings, paid so much a day for their labor, and as such they have no more love for wild nature than wood-sawyers have for forests. Other white men and Indians who come here are for the most part hunters, whose object is to slay as many moose and other wild animals as possible. But, pray, could not one spend some weeks or years in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than these,--employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Where has it all gone? I remember that twenty years ago there were geese and cranes and ducks and grouse here, clouds of them!... ...And there are far fewer animals. Wolf and fox are rare, brother, not to mention bears or mink. There used even to be moose!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the Americans, in addition to the eagle and the Stars and Stripes and the more unofficial symbols of bison, moose and Indian, s...hould ever need another emblem, one which is friendly and pleasant, then I think they should choose the grapefruit. Or rather the half grapefruit, for this fruit only comes in halves, I believe. Practically speaking, it is always yellow, always just as fresh and well served. And it always comes at the same, still hopeful hour of the morning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The principal animals inhabiting the African jungle are moose, elks, and Knights of Pythias. Of course, you all know what a moose ...is, that's big game. The first day I shot two bucks. That was the biggest game we had.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The handsomest and most interesting flowers were the great purple orchises, rising ever and anon, with their great purple spikes p...erfectly erect, amid the shrubs and grasses of the shore. It seemed strange that they should be made to grow there in such profusion, seen of moose and moose-hunters only, while they are so rare in Concord.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though I had not come a-hunting, and felt some compunctions about accompanying the hunters, I wished to see a moose near at hand, ...and was not sorry to learn how the Indian managed to kill one. I went as reporter or chaplain to the hunters,--and the chaplain has been known to carry a gun himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its ...life than destroy it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But, on more accounts than one, I had had enough of moose-hunting. I had not come to the woods for this purpose, nor had I foresee...n it, though I had been willing to learn how the Indian manvred; but one moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The river ... banks were seven or eight feet high, and densely covered with white and black spruce,--which, I think, must be the c...ommonest trees thereabouts,--fir, arbor-vitæ, canoe, yellow and black birch, rock, mountain, and a few red maples, beech, black and mountain ash, the large-toothed aspen, many civil-looking elms, now imbrowned, along the stream, and at first a few hemlocks also.... The immediate shores were also densely covered with the speckled alder, red osier, shrubby willows or sallow, and the like. There were a few yellow lily pads still left, half-drowned, along the sides, and sometimes a white one. Many fresh tracks of moose were visible where the water was shallow, and the lily stems were freshly bitten off by them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? W...hy have no tail to speak of?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »