age invaders.

And verily no beings can look more wild of aspect or attire than the
crews working the huge rafts which navigate these waters. Europeans,
Indians, and _Bois-brules_, as the half-breed is denominated, are all
found in this employ, but so much alike in equipment and complexion,
that, only for the round Saxon face, light hair, and blue eyes, here and
there distinguishable, it would be difficult to conceive them of
different lineage.

A pair of loose trousers of coloured serge or flannel, a sash of scarlet
worsted or wampum girt about the loins over a shirt of indescribable
hue, moccassins on the feet, and a red cap or bonnet of fox-skin, or not
unfrequently a shock of hair that despises any covering, and alike
defies the force of sun and storm, forms the common costume of these
sons of toil, whose lives, commonly of short duration, are wasted in
quick alternations of perilous labour and wild debauch.

Their rough mates, the boatmen of old Mississippi and the lakes, have
nearly disappeared; and how much longer steam and railway will yet leave
this calling open to the Tartar-spirits of the North, it is impossible
to say. At present they are evidently in full employ, for there is
hardly a reach of the rivers flowing about the isles of Montreal but is,
at some time or other throughout the day, laden by these cumbrous rafts,
often measuring one hundred feet in length by ten in width.

These masses are rafted from vast distances; and, during their course of
perhaps fifty days, their crews look for no covering: the rain descends
upon them, and the waves of the rapids rise over them, but they abide
both without shade or shelter; subsisting principally upon pork, dressed
or raw, as may be, and having for their beverage the stream whereon
they may chance to float, except during an occasional halt at some
stated point where whisky invites them to hold a deep but brief carouse.

At ten A.M. crossed to the city according to appointment, to meet three
friends in whose good company I was to visit

THE SAULT AU RECOLLECT.

I procured the stout charger whose quality of endurance I had well
tested on a former occasion. True to our time, we took the road, such as
it was, and, after an hour's hard riding, reached the river at the point
where several fine mills and a fishery bring constant grist to the
worthy monks of St. Sulpice, who are here the lords paramount of soil
and stream.

The fishermen appeared divid