ery day and
all day, and sleep on top of a flat rock o' nights, under the blue sky,
all my life through."

With this decided expression of his sentiments, the stout hunter steered
the canoe up alongside of a huge, flat rock, as if he were bent on
giving a practical illustration of the latter part of his speech then
and there.

"We'd better camp now, Mister Charles; there's a portage o' two miles
here, and it'll take us till sundown to get the canoe and things over."

"Be it so," said Charley, landing. "Is there a good place at the other
end to camp on?"

"First-rate. It's smooth as a blanket on the turf, and a clear spring
bubbling at the root of a wide tree that would keep off the rain if it
was to come down like waterspouts."

The spot on which the travellers encamped that evening overlooked one of
those scenes in which vast extent, and rich, soft variety of natural
objects, were united with much that was grand and savage. It filled the
mind with the calm satisfaction that is experienced when one gazes on
the wide lawns studded with noble trees; the spreading fields of waving
grain that mingle with stream and copse, rock and dell, vineyard and
garden, of the cultivated lands of civilised men: while it produced that
exulting throb of freedom which stirs man's heart to its centre, when he
casts a first glance over miles and miles of broad lands that are yet
unowned, unclaimed; that yet lie in the unmutilated beauty with which
the beneficent Creator originally clothed them--far away from the
well-known scenes of man's chequered history; entirely devoid of those
ancient monuments of man's power and skill that carry the mind back with
feelings of awe to bygone ages, yet stamped with evidences of an
antiquity more ancient still, in the wild primeval forests, and the
noble trees that have sprouted, and spread, and towered in their
strength for centuries--trees that have fallen at their posts, while
others took their place, and rose and fell as they did, like long-lived
sentinels whose duty it was to keep perpetual guard over the vast
solitudes of the great American Wilderness.

The fire was lighted, and the canoe turned bottom up in front of it,
under the branches of a spreading tree that stood on an eminence, whence
was obtained a bird's-eye view of the noble scene. It was a flat
valley, on either side of which rose two ranges of hills, which were
clothed to the top with trees of various kinds, the plain of the v