ing boy at
cookery, the axe, and the dog.

My conductor at once saw the extent of the mischief going on, and,
finding that the gang, although distant from the camp-fire, was
numerous, advised that we should retrace our steps. We however
interrogated the boy, who would scarcely answer, and pretended to know
nothing. The dog began to be inquisitive too, and one of the dogs we had
with us venturing a little too near a savoury piece of pork, the nature
of the young half-bred ruffian suddenly blazed out, and the axe was
uplifted to kill poor Dash. I happened to have a good stick, and
interfered to prevent dog-murder, upon which the wood-demon ejaculated
that he would as soon let out my guts as the dog's, and therefore my
companion had to show his gun; for showing his teeth would have been of
little avail with the young savage.

The settlers are afraid of the lumberers; and thus all the finest land,
near rivers, creeks, or transport of any kind, is swept of the timber to
such an extent that you must go now far, far back from the Lakes, the
St. Lawrence, or the Ottawa, before you can see the forest in its
primeval grandeur.

This robbery has been carried on in so barefaced and extensive a manner,
that the chief adventurer, usually a merchant or trader, who supplies
the axe and canoemen with pay in his shop goods, cent. per cent. above
their value, becomes enriched.

The lumberer's life is truly an unhappy one, for, when he reaches the
end of the raft's voyage, whatever money he may have made goes to the
fiddle, the female, or the fire-water; and he starts again as poor as at
first, living perhaps by a rare chance to the advanced age, for a
lumberer, of forty years.

And a curious sight is a raft, joined together not with ropes but with
the limbs and thews of the swamp or blue beech, which is the natural
cordage of Canada and is used for scaffolding and packing.

A raft a quarter of a mile long--I hope I do not exaggerate, for it may
be half a mile, never having measured one but by the eye--with its
little huts of boards, its apologies for flags and streamers, its
numerous little masts and sails, its cooking caboose, and its
contrivances for anchoring and catching the wind by slanting boards,
with the men who appear on its surface as if they were walking on the
lake, is curious enough; but to see it in _drams_, or detached portions,
sent down foaming and darting along the timber slides of the Ottawa or
the restless and