id="Page_19" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[19]"/> of Moose antlers at the salt-lick (now the centre of the City Park of Bradford, McKean County) in 1819, and the prevalence of the Moose-Wood or Leather-wood, show that they were present in that section probably a generation earlier. C. W. Dickinson, born in 1842, a great authority on wild life topics, who resides at Smethport, McKean County, states that when he was a boy he heard some of the old gray-haired men say that they had been told that there were Black Moose on the headwaters of Pine Creek (Tiadaghton) in an early day, but that he never heard anyone say that they saw one. That would establish the presence of Moose in Northern Potter and Tioga Counties, completing the evidence that they lived at one time along the entire "Northern Tier" of Pennsylvania Counties. It is stated that the early Scotch-Irish settlers along the Juniata River referred to the Moose as the Black Elk. It is understood that this name was sometimes applied in Ireland to the extinct "Irish Elk" (Megaceros hibernicus); it would seem that the pioneers from the Emerald Isle noted the resemblance between the palmated antlers of the extinct forest monarch dug up in their own bogs and the Black Moose of their new Pennsylvania home. There are some who claim that the Black Moose was a regular resident of Pennsylvania, breeding in the State up to the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. As names, dates and places are lacking, and in the face of documentary evidence, and the views of naturalists like Rhoads and others to the contrary, it must be regarded as the veriest tradition. According to Boyd's "Indian Local Names," Chickalacamoose, now Clearfield, Clearfield County, signifies "It comes together," or "The meeting place." As before noted, according to Jesse Logan, it meant "meeting place of the Moose," a far more plausible translation of this ancient name. In Daniel G. Brinton's "Dictionary of the Lenni Lenape," the Delaware word for Moose was "Mos." John C. French, speaking of Potter County (Northern Pennsylvania) says: "None of our oldest men ever saw a Pennsylvania Moose, though Edwin Grimes (born 1830) heard some of the old men, back about 1840, tell of having killed or hunted 'the Original' about 1770 and earlier; both in Pennsylvania and New York. Capt. John Titus, born about 1784, said in 1881—he was nearly 97 years of age—that there had been none since he could remember in Western New York or Northern Pennsylvania, except an occasional traveller from farther north. He called them 'Woodeater' and said they were also called 'original' by some, as they were the largest—seven feet high at shoulders—and were thought to be older than any other deer species, that their short necks and long legs fitted them only for feeding on trees and briars, or in water where plants floated on the surface, roots three or four feet below. My grandfather, William French, born in 1788, said they sometimes came south of the lakes in New York to the Chemung River, while he was a boy living there.

Birthplace of Jim Jacobs. (Oldest House in Cornplanter Reservation, Warren County.)

The following is a memorandum of what my father told me, as he remembered, his grandfathers told him about the 'brown elk' as they called them. My great-grandfather, John G. Martin, who came from Ireland in 1775, to join the Continentals against England, and resided in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, after the war ended, for nearly fifty years, always called the 'Original' or Black Moose a brown elk. My father, born in 1818, never saw one; but his father, born in 1788, saw a few of them in Steuben County, New York, and along the Pennsylvania line in Tioga County, while a boy and spoke of them as Originals, and very rare—some of them very large."

IV. SUMMARY.

Irregular Migrations—Range—Habits—Moose Birds—Moose Hunters—Final Extermination—The Last Moose.

Needless to say it is pretty well established that the Black Moose was not a permanent resident in Pennsylvania during the past five hundred years, it was not even an annual visitor, and if it bred here, it was after its migrations North were stopped by the "ring of steel" of the army of Nimrods along the Delaware. During exceptionally cold winters up to the last decade of the Eighteenth Century, the Moose moved Southward out of their permanent abodes in the Adirondack wilderness, crossing the Mohawk River at some un-named point, thence following the Catskill wilderness through Schoharie, Greene, Ulster and Sullivan Counties to Narrowsburg, where they crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania. From thence they followed the main chain of the Allegheny Mountains in a southwesterly direction through Wayne, Lackawanna, Wyoming, Sullivan, Lycoming, Clinton, Centre, Clearfield, Blair, Cambria, Bedford and Somerset Counties to the Maryland line, the extreme southern limit of their wanderings. They remained true to this path of migration, and those seen or killed in Huntingdon, Mifflin, Westmoreland or Allegheny Counties were presumably driven there by dogs or Indians; except that evidently there was a regular migration line from Wayne County through Pike County, a region reminiscent of the Adirondacks with its evergreens and ponds, on through Monroe County to the Wind Gap of Northampton County. It is not clear in the writer's mind if this was the Original's ancient route into New Jersey or that the moose noted in the Wind Gap were driven there by dogs, but it seems a fair supposition that the Wind Gap was their route of ingress to New Jersey. No record has been kept of the habits of the Moose during their sojourns in Pennsylvania. It is agreed that they were of a confiding nature, indulging in their favorite browse in close proximity to hunters' cabins. In the winter it probably comforted itself much as it would during mild winters in the Adirondacks. Moose which remained in Pennsylvania in the Springtime were fond of bathing in the deep holes of their favorite streams. The old settlers learned from the Indians when to expect the coming of the Moose by the appearance of the Moose Bird or Canada Jay (Periosoreus Canadensis). This rather thickset, more plainly plumaged relative of the common Blue Jay of Pennsylvania, visited Pennsylvania for the same reason as the Moose, the extreme cold weather in the North. Dr. W. T. Hornaday in his "American Natural History," says: "The plumage of the Canada Jay has a peculiar fluffy appearance, suggestive of fur. Its prevailing color is ashy-gray. The nape and back of the head are black, but the forehead is marked by a large white spot. The wings and tail are of a darker gray than the body. The home of this interesting bird—the companion of the Moose, as well as of forest-haunting man—extends from Nova Scotia and Northern New England, throughout Canada to Manitoba, and northward to the limit of the great forests." As they came by wing it was natural that they could reach Pennsylvania a week or ten days before the arrival of the Moose. Their coming was the signal for the hunters to get ready and many a moose that otherwise might have escaped, was forced to run the gauntlet of the forewarned and fore-armed Nimrods. Probably an occasional Moose that was belated in returning