Note 56 — Secondly, Of Beasts.[45]

Wood (N. E. Prospect, l. c.) has but two kinds of deer: of which the first is the moose; and the second, called “ordinary deer,” and, in the vocabulary of Indian words, ottuck (compare attuck or noonatch, deer,—R. Williams, l. c.; but atteyk, in the Cree dialect, signifies a small sort of rein-deer,—Richardson, in Appendix to Franklin’s Journey, p. 665; and it is observable that Rasles’ word for chevreuil is norke), is our American fallow-deer. R. Williams also appears to distinguish with clearness but two; which are, perhaps, the same as Wood’s. Josselyn, in this book, passes quite over the common, or fallow-deer: but, making up in the Voyages for the fallings-short of the Rarities, he goes, in the former, quite the other way; reckoning the roe, buck, red deer, rein-deer, elk, maurouse, and maccarib. What is further said of these animals, where he speaks more at large, makes it appear likely that the second, third, and fourth names, so far as they have any value, belong to a single kind,—the “ordinary deer” of Wood (whose description possibly helped Josselyn’s), or our fallow-deer; to which the “roe” is also to be referred: and the “elk” he himself explains as the moose. But, beside these two kinds, Josselyn has the merit of indicating, with some distinctness, one, or possibly two, others,—the maurouse and the maccarib. The maurouse—of which only the Voyages make mention—“is somewhat like a moose; but his horns are but small, and himself about the size of a stag. These are the deer that the flat-footed wolves hunt after.”—Voyages, p. 91. This is to be compared with the mauroos, rendered “cerf,” of Rasles’ Dict., l. c., p. 382; and, in such connection, is hardly referable to other than the caribou, or rein-deer,—a well-known inhabitant of the north-eastern parts of New England, and likely, therefore, to have come to the knowledge of our author; while there seems to be no testimony to its ever having occurred in Massachusetts and southward, where Wood and Williams made their observations. The last, or the maccarib, caribo, or pohano, of Josselyn, is described above; and, in the Voyages (p. 91), he only repeats that it “is not found, that ever I heard yet, but upon Cape Sable, near to the French plantations.” The “round” hoofs of the maccarib might lead us to take this for the caribou of Maine; the round track of which differs much from that of the fallow-deer. But the former is more likely to have been the American elk; so rare, it should seem, where it occurred, when our author wrote, and so little known in the New-England settlements, that his fancy, fed by darkling hearsay, could deck it with the honors of the “unicorn.”