some little compensation for the fright he had
sustained. The Doctor and I took possession of the barn, where we found
plenty of fresh hay, which we infinitely preferred to the spare bed and
its familiars. There we slept delightfully, till a chorus of cocks (or
_roosters_, as the more delicate Americans would call them) awakened us
from our repose, to the wrathful indignation of Dunlop, who
anathematized them for "an unmusical ornithological set of fiends."

We made an early breakfast off fried sausages, and the never-failing
ham and eggs, and were soon again in the saddle. We took the nearest
road to Plum Creek, where we left our horses, and proceeded for the
remaining four miles on foot, through a magnificent forest.

We were now in that part of the township of Wilmot belonging to the
Canada Company, which did not then contain a single farm, but has been
since completely settled. At length, we came to a narrow valley, some
fifty or sixty feet below the level of the country through which we had
been travelling, in the centre of which flowed the Nith, sparkling in
the sun: the wild grapes hanging in rich festoons from tree to tree,
gave an air of rural beauty to the scene. For the convenience of foot-
passengers, some good Samaritan had felled a tree directly across the
stream, which at that place was not more than fifty feet wide. The
current was swift, though not more than four or five feet deep.

Here a small misfortune happened to the Doctor, who was an inveterate
snuff-taker, and carried a large box he called a coffin--I presume from
its resemblance to that dreary receptacle.

While in the act of crossing the temporary bridge, and at the same time
regaling his olfactory nerves with a pinch of the best Irish, his
famous coffin slipped from his grasp and floated away majestically down
the swift-flowing waters of the sylvan Nith.

The Doctor was a man of decision: he hesitated not even for a moment,
but pitched himself headlong into the stream, from which he quickly
emerged with his recovered treasure. It is but justice to my friend
Dunlop, to remind the reader that his extravagant affection for his
snuff-box is not without a parallel in history, since Louis XVIII has
recorded with his own royal hand an attachment to his _tabatiere_,
equally eccentric and misplaced.

Scarcely had this Prince escaped three miles from Paris and its
democrats, when, on putting his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, in
order to take a