ike bulwarks of the wilderness, some covered with
luxuriant vegetation, others bald and grotesque in outline, and covered
with gulls and other waterfowl,--this was the scene that broke upon the
view of the travellers as they rounded the point, and, ceasing to
paddle, gazed upon it long and in deep silence, their hands raised to
shade their eyes from the sun's rays, which sparkled in the water, and
fell, here in bright spots and broken patches, and there in yellow
floods, upon the rocks, the trees, the forest glades and plains around
them.

"What a glorious scene!" murmured Hamilton, almost unconsciously.

"A perfect paradise!" said Harry, with a long-drawn sigh of
satisfaction.--"Why, Jacques, my friend, it's a matter of wonder to me
that you, a free man, without relations or friends to curb you, or
attract you to other parts of the world, should go boating and canoeing
all over the country at the beck of the fur-traders, when you might come
and pitch your tent here for ever!"

"For ever!" echoed Jacques.

"Well, I mean as long as you live in this world."

"Ah, master," rejoined the guide, in a sad tone of voice, "it's just
because I have neither kith nor kin nor friends to draw me to any
partic'lar spot on arth, that I don't care to settle down in this one,
beautiful though it be."

"True, true," muttered Harry; "man's a gregarious animal, there's no
doubt of that."

"Anon?" exclaimed Jacques.

"I meant to say that man naturally loves company," replied Harry,
smiling.

"An' yit I've seen some as didn't, master; though, to be sure, that was
onnat'ral, and there's not many o' them, by good luck. Yes, man's fond
o' seein' the face o' man."

"And woman too," interrupted Harry.--"Eh, Hamilton, what say you?

"`O woman, in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.'

"Alas, Hammy! pain and anguish and everything else may wring our
unfortunate brows here long enough before woman, `lovely woman,' will
come to our aid. What a rare sight it would be, now, to see even an
ordinary housemaid or cook out here! It would be good for sore eyes.
It seems to me a sort of horrible untruth to say that I've not seen a
woman since I left Red River; and yet it's a frightful fact, for I don't
count the copper-coloured nondescripts one meets with hereabouts to be
women at all. I suppose they are, but they don't look like it."

"Don't be a g