After pushing through the alders and poling up
the dwindling stream for a couple of hours we reached the place
two miles up, by the stream. It was a big bull with no bell, horns
only two-thirds grown but 46 inches across, the tips soft and
springy; one could stick a knife through them anywhere outside of
the basal half.
Bezkya says they are good to eat in this stage; but we had about
700 pounds of good meat so did not try. The velvet on the horns is
marked by a series of concentric curved lines of white hair, across
the lines of growth; these, I take it, correspond with times of
check by chill or hardship.
We loaded our canoe with meat and pushed on toward the Buffalo
country for two miles more up the river. Navigation now became very
difficult on account of alders in the stream. Bezkya says that only
a few hundred yards farther and the river comes from underground.
This did not prove quite correct, for I went half a mile farther
by land and found no change.
Here, however, we did find some Buffalo tracks; one went through
our camp, and farther on were many, but all dated from the spring
and were evidently six weeks old.
