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Page 2
Wm. J. Long.
Stamford, September, 1900.
CONTENTS.
I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER
II. KILLOOLEET, LITTLE SWEET-VOICE
III. KAGAX THE BLOODTHIRSTY
IV. KOOKOOSKOOS, WHO CATCHES THE WRONG RAT
V. CHIGWOOLTZ THE FROG
VI. CLOUD WINGS THE EAGLE
VII. UPWEEKIS THE SHADOW
VIII. HUKWEEM THE NIGHT VOICE
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER.
[Illustration: Megaleep]
Megaleep is the big woodland caribou of the northern wilderness. His
Milicete name means The Wandering One, but it ought to mean the
Mysterious and the Changeful as well. If you hear that he is bold and
fearless, that is true; and if you are told that he is shy and wary
and inapproachable, that is also true. For he is never the same two
days in succession. At once shy and bold, solitary and gregarious;
restless as a cloud, yet clinging to his feeding grounds, spite of
wolves and hunters, till he leaves them of his own free will; wild as
Kakagos the raven, but inquisitive as a blue jay,--he is the most
fascinating and the least known of all the deer.
One thing is quite sure, before you begin your study: he is never
where his tracks are, nor anywhere near it. And if after a season's
watching and following you catch one good glimpse of him, that is a
good beginning.
I had always heard and read of Megaleep as an awkward, ungainly
animal, but almost my first glimpse of him scattered all that to the
winds and set my nerves a-tingling in a way that they still remember.
It was on a great chain of barrens in the New Brunswick wilderness. I
was following the trail of a herd of caribou one day, when far ahead a
strange clacking sound came ringing across the snow in the crisp
winter air. I ran ahead to a point of woods that cut off my view from
a five-mile barren, only to catch breath in astonishment and drop to
cover behind a scrub spruce. Away up the barren my caribou, a big herd
of them, were coming like an express train straight towards me. At
first I could make out only a great cloud of steam, a whirl of flying
snow, and here and there the angry shake of wide antlers or the gleam
of a black muzzle. The loud clacking of their hoofs, sweeping nearer
and nearer, gave a snap, a tingle, a wild exhilaration to their rush
which made one want to shout and swing his hat. Presently I could make
out the individual animals through the cloud of vapor that drove down
the wind before them. They were going at a splendid trot, rocking
easily from side to side like pacing colts, power, grace, tirelessness
in every stride. Their heads were high, their muzzles up, the antlers
well back on heaving shoulders. Jets of steam burst from their
nostrils at every bound; for the thermometer was twenty below zero,
and the air snapping. A cloud of snow whirled out and up behind them;
through it the antlers waved like bare oak boughs in the wind; the
sound of their hoofs was like the clicking of mighty castanets--"Oh
for a sledge and bells!" I thought; for Santa Claus never had such a
team.
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