Tappan Adney Illustration - Moose Call

Here's a beautiful colour image by famed Bark Canoe historian Tappan Adney which appeared in Outing, October 1902, to accompany a poem entitled "The Moose Call". It features a beautifully illustrated Malecite style canoe with etched scrolls in the winter bark panel as well as a nice angle of a paddle being held by the standing guide.


"THE MOOSE CALL"
By TAPPAN ADNEY

THE autumn sun sinks low
Behind the wall of sombre fir
And paints with yellow glow
The mirror’d surface of the lake.
With face upturned and ear
Attuned to catch the very breath
Of dying day and year
The Indian hunter stands and sifts
The stillness far and near.
Close to the hunter’s side
The trusty paddle’s season’d blade,
By rip and torrent tried,
Now steady holds the frail canoe,
While rests upon his knee
The rudely twisted coil of bark-
Himself so still the tree
Against the fading Autumn sky
Is not more still than he.

At the gloomy edge
Of the forest dark a muskrat,
Sporting in the sedge,
Chippers to its dusky mate;
From out the misty hill
A night owl’s lonesome cry is heard—
A cry that sends a chill
Of fear through beast and sleeping
bird—
Then all again is still.
Hark! the hunter starts!
A sound borne softly on the air
The mighty stillness parts
And makes the hunter’s heart beat fast.
Tender, low, it thrills
The listening hunter’s inmost soul;
Yet resonant, it fills
The valley with an echo from
The everlasting hills!