hen floor of the chips and
rubbish with a broom of cedar boughs, bound together with a leathern
thong. She had swept it all clean, carefully removing all unsightly
objects, and strewing it over with fresh cedar sprigs, which gave out
a pleasant odour, and formed a smooth and not unseemly carpet for their
little dwelling. How cheerful was the first fire blazing up on their own
hearth! It was so pleasant to sit by its gladdening light, and chat away
of all they had done and all that they meant to do. Here was to be a set
of split cedar shelves, to hold their provisions and baskets; there a
set of stout pegs were to be inserted between the logs for hanging up
strings of dried meat, bags of birch-bark, or the skins of the animals
they were to shoot or trap. A table was to be fixed on posts in the
centre of the floor. Louis was to carve wooden platters and dishes, and
some stools were to be made with hewn blocks of wood, till something
better could be devised. Their bedsteads were rough poles of iron-wood,
supported by posts driven into the ground, and partly upheld by the
projection of the logs at the angles of the wall. Nothing could be more
simple. The framework was of split cedar; and a safe bed was made by
pine boughs being first laid upon the frame, and then thickly covered
with dried grass, moss, and withered leaves. Such were the lowly but
healthy couches on which these children of the forest slept.

A dwelling so rudely framed and scantily furnished would be regarded
with disdain by the poorest English peasant. Yet many a settler's family
have I seen as roughly lodged, while a better house was being prepared
for their reception; and many a gentleman's son has voluntarily
submitted to privations as great as these, from the love of novelty and
adventure, or to embark in the tempting expectation of realizing money
in the lumbering trade, working hard, and sharing the rude log shanty
and ruder society of those reckless and hardy men, the Canadian
lumberers. During the spring and summer months, these men spread
themselves through the trackless forests, and along the shores of
nameless lakes and unknown streams, to cut the pine or oak lumber, such
being the name they give to the felled stems of trees, which are then
hewn, and in the winter dragged out upon the ice, where they are formed
into rafts, and floated down the waters till they reach the great
St. Lawrence, and are, after innumerable difficulties and casualties,
f