, for a minute, to seize the axe and cut off a lump, which he may
devour as he best can; but there is no going ashore--no resting for
dinner. Two great meals are recognised, and the time allotted to their
preparation and consumption held inviolable--breakfast and supper: the
first varying between the hours of seven and nine in the morning; the
second about sunset, at which time travellers usually encamp for the
night. Of the two meals it would be difficult to say which is more
agreeable. For our own part, we prefer the former. It is the meal to
which a man addresses himself with peculiar gusto, especially if he has
been astir three or four hours previously in the open air. It is the
time of day, too, when the spirits are freshest and highest, animated by
the prospect of the work, the difficulties, the pleasures, or the
adventures of the day that has begun; and cheered by that cool, clear
_buoyancy_ of Nature which belongs exclusively to the happy morning
hours, and has led poets in all ages to compare these hours to the first
sweet months of spring or the early years of childhood.

Voyageurs, not less than poets, have felt the exhilarating influence of
the young day, although they have lacked the power to tell it in
sounding numbers; but where words were wanting, the sparkling eye, the
beaming countenance, the light step, and hearty laugh, were more
powerful exponents of the feelings within. Poet, and painter too, might
have spent a profitable hour on the shores of that great sequestered
lake, and as they watched the picturesque groups clustering round the
blazing fires, preparing their morning meal, smoking their pipes,
examining and repairing the boats, or sunning their stalwart limbs in
wild, careless attitudes upon the greensward--might have found a subject
worthy the most brilliant effusions of the pen or the most graphic
touches of the pencil.

An hour sufficed for breakfast. While it was preparing, the two friends
sauntered into the forest in search of game, in which they were
unsuccessful; in fact, with the exception of the gulls before mentioned,
there was not a feather to be seen--save, always, one or two
whisky-johns.

Whisky-johns are the most impudent, puffy, conceited little birds that
exist. Not much larger in reality than sparrows, they nevertheless
manage to swell out their feathers to such an extent that they appear to
be as large as magpies, which they further resemble in their plumage.
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