s that stand over
it. They stand, but grow not: the girdling ring around their stems has
deprived them of their sap; the ivory bill of the _log-cock_ has
stripped them of their bark; their leaves and twigs have long since
disappeared; and only the trunks and greater branches remain, like
blanched skeletons, with arms upstretched to heaven, as if mutely
appealing for vengeance against their destroyer.

The squatter's clearing, still thus encumbered, is a mere vistal opening
in the woods, from which only the underwood has been removed. The more
slender saplings have been cut down or rooted up; the tangle of
parasitical plants have been torn from the trees; the cane-brake has
been fired; and the brush, collected in heaps, has melted away upon the
blazing pile. Only a few stumps of inferior thickness give evidence,
that some little labour has been performed by the axe.

Even thus the clearing is a mere patch--scarcely two acres in extent--
and the rude rail-fence, that zig-zags around it, attests that the owner
is satisfied with the dimensions of his agricultural domain. There are
no recent marks of the axe--not even the "girdling" of a tree--nothing
to show that another rood is required. The squatter is essentially a
hunter; and hates the sight of an extensive clearing--as he would the
labour of making one. The virgin forest is his domain, and he is not
the man to rob it of its primeval charms. The sound of the lumberer's
axe, cheerful to the lonely traveller, has no music for his ear: it is
to him a note of evil augury--a knell of dread import. It is not often
that he hears it: he dwells beyond the circle of its echoes. His
nearest neighbour--a squatter like himself--lives at least a mile off;
and the most proximate "settlement" is six times that distance from the
spot he has chosen for his cabin. The smoke of his chimney mingles with
that of no other: its tall column ascends to heaven solitary as the
squatter himself.

The clearing is of an irregular semi-circular shape--a deep narrow
stream forming the chord, and afterwards cleaving its way through the
otherwise unbroken forest. In the convexity of the arc, at that point
most remote from the water, stands the cabin--a log "shanty" with
"clapboard" roof--on one side flanked by a rude horse-shed, on the other
by a corn-crib of split rails.

Such a picture is almost peculiar to the backwoods of America. Some may
deem it commonplace. For my part, I cannot r