THE PATHLESS PRIMEVAL FOREST. 287 



tion of timber, or the impenetrable character of such 

 a region. There were pines and thujas of every size, 

 the patriarch of 300 feet in height standing alone, or 

 thickly clustering groups of young ones struggling 

 for the vacant place of some prostrate giant. The 

 fallen trees lay piled around, forming barriers often 

 six or eight feet high on every side : trunks of huge 

 cedars, moss-grown and decayed, lay half-buried in the 

 groand on which others as mighty had recently fallen ; 

 trees still green and living, recently blown down, 

 blocking the view with the walls of earth held in their 

 matted roots; living trunks, dead trunks, rotten 

 trunks ; dry, barkless trunks, and trunks moist and 

 green with moss ; bare trunks and trunks with 

 branches — prostrate, reclining, horizontal, propped up 

 at different angles ; timber of every size, in every stage 

 of growth and decay, in every possible position, 

 entangled in every possible combination. The swampy 

 ground was densely covered with American dogwood, 

 and elsewhere with thickets of the aralea, a touo-h- 

 stemmed trailer, with leaves as large as those of the 

 rhubarb plant, and growing in many places as high 

 as our shoulders. Both stem and leaves are coA^ered 

 with sharp spines, which pierced our clothes as we 

 forced our way through the tangled growth, and made 

 the legs and hands of the pioneers scarlet from the 

 inflammation of myriads of punctures. 



The Assiniboine went first with the axe, his wife 

 went after him leading a horse, and the rest of the 

 party followed, driving two or three horses apiece in 

 single file. Mr. O'B. had by this time been trained 



