But we go a step further. We assert positively that wandering through
the wild woods is a healthy as well as a pleasant sort of thing. The
free air of the mountains and prairies is renovating, the perfumes of
the forests are salubrious; while the constantly recurring necessity for
leaping and scrambling is good for the muscles, and the occasional
tripping over roots, tumbling into holes, scratching one's face and
banging one's shins and toes against stumps, are good for--though
somewhat trying to--the temper.

Further still--we affirm that wandering through the wild woods is a
funny thing. Any one who had observed our friends March Marston, and
Redhand, and Bounce, and Big Waller, and Black Gibault, the trappers,
and Bertram the artist, and Hawkswing the Indian, one beautiful
afternoon, not long after the day on which they lost their canoe, would
have admitted, without hesitation, that wandering through the wild woods
was, among other things, a funny thing.

On the beautiful afternoon referred to, the first six individuals above
named were huddled together in a promiscuous heap, behind a small bush,
in such a confused way that an ignorant spectator might have supposed
that Bounce's head belonged to Big Waller's body, and the artist's
shoulders to Redhand's head, and their respective legs and arms to no
one individually, but to all collectively, in a miscellaneous sort of
way. The fact was that the bush behind which they were huddled was
almost too small to conceal them all, and, being a solitary bush in the
midst of a little plain of about a half a mile in extent, they had to
make the most of it and the least of themselves. It would have been a
refreshing sight for a moralist to have witnessed this instance of man--
whose natural tendency is to try to look big--thus voluntarily
endeavouring to look as small as possible!

This bundle of humanity was staring through the bush, with, as the
saying is, all its eyes, that is, with six pairs of--or twelve
individual--eyes; and they were staring at a wolf--an enormous wolf--
that was slowly walking away from the bush behind which they were
ensconced! It was a very singular wolf indeed--one that was well
calculated to excite surprise in the breast even of trappers. There was
something radically wrong with that wolf, especially about the legs.
Its ears and head were all right, and it had a tail, a very good tail
for a wolf; but there was a strange unaccountable lump unde