son's stomach like a trivial bun: we might record on them, in
cuneiform characters, our incipient civilization; and future generations
would doubtless turn them up as Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals
are what the primitive man wants.

Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light from our
conflagration the woods are black. There is a tremendous impression of
isolation and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the prisoners of
the night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysterious. The trees are
gigantic. There are noises that we do not understand,--mysterious winds
passing overhead, and rambling in the great galleries, tree-trunks
grinding against each other, undefinable stirs and uneasinesses. The
shapes of those who pass into the dimness are outlined in monstrous
proportions. The spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, talk
about appearances and presentiments and religion. The guides cheer the
night with bear-fights, and catamount encounters, and frozen-to-death
experiences, and simple tales of great prolixity and no point, and jokes
of primitive lucidity. We hear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of
things in the leaves, and the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises,
the laughter of the loon. Everything is strange, spectral, fascinating.

By and by we get our positions in the shanty for the night, and arrange
the row of sleepers. The shanty has become a smoke-house by this time:
waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only by lying down, and
getting the head well under the eaves, that one can breathe. No one can
find her "things"; nobody has a pillow. At length the row is laid out,
with the solemn protestation of intention to sleep. The wind, shifting,
drives away the smoke.

Good-night is said a hundred times; positions are readjusted, more last
words, new shifting about, final remarks; it is all so comfortable and
romantic; and then silence. Silence continues for a minute. The fire
flashes up; all the row of heads is lifted up simultaneously to watch
it; showers of sparks sail aloft into the blue night; the vast vault
of greenery is a fairy spectacle. How the sparks mount and twinkle and
disappear like tropical fireflies, and all the leaves murmur, and clap
their hands! Some of the sparks do not go out: we see them flaming in
the sky when the flame of the fire has died down. Well, good-night,
goodnight. More folding of the arms to sleep; more grumbling about the
hardness of a ha