om the
haunts of man, they chop and hew; in the summer, they form the timber,
boards, staves, &c., into rafts, which are conveyed down the great lakes
and the rivers St. Lawrence and Ottawa to Quebec--on these rafts they
live and have their summer being. Hard fare in plenty, such as salt pork
and dough cakes; fat and unleavened bread, with whiskey, is their diet.
Tea and sugar form an occasional luxury. Up to their waists in snow in
winter, and up to their waists in summer and autumn in water, with all
the moving accidents by flood and field; the occasional breaking-up of
the raft in a rapid, the difficulty of the winter and spring transport
of the heavy logs of squared timber out of the deep and trackless woods,
combine to form a portion of the hard and reckless life of a lumberer,
whose _morale_ is not much better than his _physicale_.

Picture to yourself, child of luxury, sitting on a cushioned sofa, in a
room where the velvet carpet renders a footfall noiseless, where art is
exhausted to afford comfort, and where even the hurricane cannot disturb
your perusal of this work, a wood reaching without limit, excepting the
oceans either of salt or fresh water which surround Canada, and where to
lose the track is hopeless starvation and death; figure the giant pines
towering to the clouds, gloomy and Titan-like, throwing their vast arms
to the skyey influences, and making a twilight of mid-day, at whose
enormous feet a thicket of bushes, almost as high as your head, prevents
your progress without the pioneer axe; or a deep and black swamp for
miles together renders it necessary to crawl from one fallen monarch of
the wood onwards to the decaying and prostrate bole of another, with an
occasional plunge into the mud and water, which they bridge; eternal
silence reigning, disturbed only by your feeble efforts to advance; and
you may form some idea of a red pine land, rocky and uneven, or a cedar
swamp, black as night, dark, dismal, and dangerous.

Here, after you have hewed or crept your toiling way, you see, some
yards or some hundred yards, as the forest is close or open, before
you, a light blue curling smoke amongst the dank and lugubrious scene;
you hear a dull, distant, heavy, sudden blow, frequent and deadened,
followed at long intervals by a tremendous rending, crashing,
overwhelming rush; then all is silent, till the voice of the guardian of
man is heard growling, snarling, or barking outright, as you advance
towar