f the geologist, the palaeontologist, and
botanist--to be emptied for study and examination by the night
camp-fire. Instead of the 'coon-skin cap he wore a white felt hat with
broad leaf; and for leggings and mocassins he had trousers of blue
cottonade and laced buskins of tanned leather.

The youngest of the three was dressed and accoutred much like the
eldest, except that his cap was of blue cloth--somewhat after the
fashion of the military forage cap. All three wore shirts of coloured
cotton, the best for journeying in these uninhabited regions, where soap
is scarce, and a laundress not to be had at any price.

Though very unlike one another, these three youths were brothers. I
knew them well. I had seen them before--about two years before--and
though each had grown several inches taller since that time, I had no
difficulty in recognising them. Even though they were now two thousand
miles from where I had formerly encountered them, I could not be
mistaken as to their identity. Beyond a doubt they were the same brave
young adventurers whom I had met in the swamps of Louisiana, and whose
exploits I had witnessed upon the prairies of Texas. They were the "Boy
Hunters,"--Basil, Lucien, Francois! I was right glad to renew
acquaintance with them. Boy reader, do you share my joy?

But whither go they now? They are full two thousand miles from their
home in Louisiana. The Red River upon which their canoe floats is not
that Red River, whose blood-like waters sweep through the swamps of the
hot South--the home of the alligator and the gar. No, it is a stream of
a far different character, though also one of great magnitude. Upon the
banks of the former ripens the rice-plant, and the sugar-cane waves its
golden tassels high in the air. There, too, flourishes the giant reed
(_Arundo gigantea_), the fan-palm (_Chamaerops_), and the broad-leafed
magnolia, with its huge snow-white flowers. There the aspect is
Southern, and the heat tropical for most part of the year.

All this is reversed on the Red River of the North. It is true that on
its banks sugar is also produced; but it is no longer from a plant but a
lordly tree--the great sugar-maple (_Acer saccharinum_). There is rice
too,--vast fields of rice upon its marshy borders; but it is not the
pearly grain of the South. It is the wild rice, "the water oats"
(_Zizania aquatica_), the food of millions of winged creatures, and
thousands of human beings as well.