Then
the schoolroom was empty and the woods all still.
There is another curious habit of Megaleep; and this one I am utterly
at a loss to account for. When he is old and feeble, and the tireless
muscles will no longer carry him with the herd over the wind-swept
barrens, and he falls sick at last, he goes to a spot far away in the
woods, where generations of his ancestors have preceded him, and there
lays him down to die. It is the caribou burying ground; and all the
animals of a certain district, or a certain herd (I am unable to tell
which), will go there when sick or sore wounded, if they have strength
enough to reach the spot. For it is far away from the scene of their
summer homes and their winter wanderings.
I know one such place, and visited it twice from my summer camp. It is
in a dark tamarack swamp by a lonely lake at the head of the
Little-South-West Miramichi River, in New Brunswick. I found it one
summer when trying to force my way from the big lake to a smaller one,
where trout were plenty.
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