These are largely studies of individual animals and birds. They do not attempt to give the habits of a class or species, for the animals of the same class are alike only in a general way; they differ in interest and intelligence quite as widely as men and women of the same class, if you but watch them closely enough. The names here given are those of the Milicete Indians, as nearly as I can remember them; and the incidents have all passed under my own-eyes and were recorded in the woods, from my tent or canoe, just as I saw them.
"THERE AT A TURN IN THE PATH, NOT TEN YARDS AHEAD, STOOD A HUGE BEAR" _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE "THE WHITE FLAG SHOWING LIKE A BEACON LIGHT AS SHE JUMPED AWAY" 9
"HER EYES ALL ABLAZE WITH THE WONDER OF THE LIGHT" 24
"PRESENTLY THEY BEGAN TO SWOOP FIERCELY AT SOME ANIMAL" 43
"GRIPPING HIS FISH AND _pip-pipping_ HIS EXULTATION" 53
"A DOZEN TIMES THE FISHER JUMPED, FILLING THE AIR WITH FEATHERS" 104
"BOTHERS AND IRRITATES THE PORCUPINE BY FLIPPING EARTH AT HIM" 118
"THEY WOULD TURN THEIR HEADS AND LISTEN INTENTLY" 145
"PLUNGING LIKE A GREAT ENGINE THROUGH UNDERBRUSH AND OVER WINDFALLS" 152
"A MIGHTY SPRING OF HIS CROUCHING HAUNCHES FINISHED THE WORK" 183
To this day it is hard to understand how any eyes could have found them, they were so perfectly hidden. I was following a little brook, which led me by its singing to a deep dingle in the very heart of the big woods. A great fallen tree lay across my path and made a bridge over the stream. Now, bridges are for crossing; that is plain to even the least of the wood folk; so I sat down on the mossy trunk to see who my neighbors might be, and what little feet were passing on the King's highway.
Here, beside me, are claw marks in the moldy bark. Only a bear could leave that deep, strong imprint. And see! there is where the moss slipped and broke beneath his weight. A restless tramp is Mooween, who scatters his records over forty miles of hillside on a summer day, when his lazy mood happens to leave him for a season. Here, on the other side, are the bronze-green petals of a spruce cone, chips from a squirrel's workshop, scattered as if Meeko had brushed them hastily from his yellow apron when he rushed out to see Mooween as he passed. There, beyond, is a mink sign, plain as daylight, where Cheokhes sat down a little while after his breakfast of frogs. And here, clinging to a stub, touching my elbow as I sit with heels dangling idly over the lazy brook, is a crinkly yellow hair, which tells me that Eleemos the Sly One, as Simmo calls him, hates to wet his feet and so uses a fallen tree or a stone in the brook for a bridge, like his brother fox of the settlements.