es like that of
the mining regions of the far West. There is a sprinkling of Canadians
among the lumbermen, and as a whole they are the most honest,
good-natured, childlike set of men in existence. They are the true
priests of those high and dim-green temple-aisles--priests of Nature
one might call them. The cabins of the bark-peelers are made of rough,
sweet-smelling hemlock planks. The smell of the hemlock bark is fresh
and tonical, and appetizing in the highest degree. The men eat fabulous
quantities of food: some require five meals a day. I well remember my
first meal in a mountain hemlock shanty. Imagine a long table of
unpainted boards with X-shaped legs, and along each side of the table
benches for seats. Let there be upon the table three large bowls of
black sugar, here and there towering stacks of white bread (the slices
an inch thick at least), and beside each cover a teacup and saucer, a
huge bowl filled to the brim with steaming-hot apple-sauce, together
with a bowl of the same dimensions containing beans. Now blow the
supper-horn, and hearken to the far halloo from the mountain-side.
Twenty blowzed and bearded men, ravenous and wild-eyed with hunger,
presently file into the room. They sit down: there is an awful and
solemn silence--they are evidently impressed with the momentous
importance of the occasion. You find your face growing long; you think
of funerals; make a timid and humble remark which you hope will be
acceptable and within the range of their comprehension. No answer: you
evidently have their pity. No word breaks the sullen silence, except an
occasional request to pass something, uttered with an effort as if the
speaker had the lockjaw. The meal is bolted with frightful rapidity,
generally in five or six minutes. I remember that I was considerably
scared and dazed, on my first acquaintance with these mountain-fauns,
at seeing such a systematic snatching and grabbing, such a ferocious
plying of knives and forks and rattling of cups, by those huge-limbed,
brawny, whiskered fellows.

It is difficult to describe the perennial beauty of the hemlock trees,
with their dark, rich foliage-masses and aromatic odor. It seems a
sacrilege to destroy them so ruthlessly. When stripped of their bark
and stained with the dark-red sap, they look like fallen giants spoiled
of their armor, lying there prone and white-naked, as if there had been
a battle of the giants and the gods. These giants were perfumed, it
se