ean, and
reverberate with reports of hostile broadsides--to bear the flag of
their country in peace and commerce, too, to far-distant lands--all as
triumphantly as they had for ages wrestled only with the winds!

You laugh, Drake; and you are right, for I doubt if many of us thought
then in that strain. No, there is not much sentiment among lumbermen,
and as we regarded those mighty oaks and pines, it was principally with
speculative calculation as to how many solid feet of prime timber "that
'ar thicket would yield."

The first task was that of building log-houses--two for our twenty
hands. In each was an immense chimney-piece, a cooking-stove, and a bed
stretching the width of the house on the floor, with a mattress of
hemlock boughs. The rifles and shotguns hanging over the wide
fireplace, and a long pine table and rustic benches, completed the
furniture of our houses. The oxen and a company of hounds and mongrels
had their quarters in a low log barn between the houses. Our supplies
of fresh meat for the winter depended upon the good use of the firearms,
and each week some one man of our number was detailed as hunter.

That winter of 1824 proved the coldest ever remembered in America, but
the long mild autumn gave no threats of the season that was to succeed
it. Before the first snow--which was, I remember, on November 20--our
little forest colony was comfortably established, and a score of big
trees laid stretched in the leaves.

In our company were many fine, intelligent young men--all taught
somewhat, some tolerably well educated. None had been to college. I
little thought at that time of becoming a scholar and a clergyman. They
were frank, generous, honourable fellows--honest and brave, but
perfectly ungodly and reckless of Heaven's displeasure or the life
hereafter. After the day's labour, the evening was dissipated in
card-playing, swearing, and hard drinking. Many a scene of riot and
orgies did those log-walls witness. Such is generally the life in a
lumber-camp: hard, wholesome labour in the day, loud revelling at night.
The rough, adventurous life, with no home charm or female influence to
refine or restrain, is probably the principal reason of such low
practice of life in the lumberman's camp.

The worst character in our company--and he happened to be in the same
house with me--was a man of twenty-eight years of age, the son of a
French father and American mother, and whose mother's grandfa