n. It was a long, cold travel, but it promised the novelty of
tracing to its delta in the vast marshes of Cumberland and the Pasquia,
the great river whose foaming torrent I had forded at the Rocky Mountains,
and whose middle course I had followed for more than a month of wintry
travel.

Great as Were the hardships and privations of this Winter journey, it had
nevertheless many moments of keen pleasure, moments filled with those
instincts of that long-ago time before our civilization and its servitude
had commenced--that time when, like the Arab and the Indian, we were all
rovers over the earth; as a dog on a drawing-room carpet twists himself
round and round before he lies down to sleep--the instinct bred in him in
that time when bhis ancestors thus trampled smooth their beds in the
long grasses of the primeval prairies--so man, in the midst of his
civilization, instinctively goes back to some half-hidden reminiscence of
the forest and the wilderness in which his savage forefathers dwelt. My
lord seeks his highland moor, Norvegian salmon river, or more homely
coverside; the retired grocer, in his snug retreat at Tooting, builds
himself an arbour of rocks and mosses, and, by dint of strong imagination
and stronger tobacco, becomes a very Kalmuck in his back-garden; and it
is by no means improbable that the grocer in his rockery and the grandee
at his rocketers draw their instincts of pleasure from the same long-ago
time "When wild in woods the noble savage ran." But be this as it may,
-this long journey of mine, despite its excessive cold, its nights under
the wintry heavens, its days of ceaseless travel, had not as yet grown
monotonous or devoid of pleasure, and although there were moments long
before daylight when the shivering scene around the camp-fire froze one
to the marrow, and I half feared to ask myself how many more mornings
like this will I have to endure? how many more miles have been taken from
that long total of travel? still, as the day wore on and the hour of
the midday meal came round, and, warmed and hungry by exercise, I would
relish with keen appetite the plate of moose steaks and the hot delicious
tea, as camped amidst the snow, with buffalo robe spread out before the
fire, and the dogs watching the feast with perspective ideas of bones and
pan-licking, then the balance would veer back again to the side of
enjoyment; and I could look forward to twice 600 miles of ice and snow
without one feeling of