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,
the fan-palm, 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. 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," the food of millions of
winged creatures, and thousands of human beings as well. Here, for
three-fourths of the year, the sun is feeble, and the aspect that of
winter. For months the cold waters are bound up in an icy embrace. The
earth is covered with thick snow, over which rise the needle-leafed
_coniferae_--the pines, the cedars, the spruce, and the hemlock. Very
unlike each other are the countries watered by the two streams, the Red
River of the South and its namesake of the North.

But whither go our Boy Hunters in their birch-bark canoe? The river upon
which they are _voyaging_ runs due northward into the great lake
Winnipeg. They are floating with its current, and consequently
increasing the distance from their home. Whither go they?

The answer leads us to some sad reflections. Our joy