22 JOCK'S LAKE. 



twelve hours after breakfast. Here we stopped for the 

 night and to begin our serious work. The little low. frame- 

 house, a sort of exai^e rated bird's nesl. browned by agv 

 and weather, looked picturesque at. that hour. It was 

 situated on a gentle bluff in the midst of a small clearing 

 hewn out of the forest right on the banks of West Canada 

 ('reek, which there assumes quite the proportions of a river. 

 The tawny brown water courses down through the ^orire 

 of Hie mountains on either side, plunging, roaring and 

 foaming among the larire boulders which line it- hank- and 

 are scattered thickly along the bed of the stream, and passes 

 otf to the -outh rasl MII \\< way to the Mohawk. I nbn.ken 

 forests crown the rocky hearted mountains and press down 

 to the water's edge. The darkening, evening --lined <kv 

 mi nuled with the forest green, and the rushing water< 

 sounded their e\eninn- anthem amid the -tillnc of tin- 

 secluded place. 



But, what, in the midst of this grandeur and beauty, at 

 this poetical hour, meant that smoke on the Brassy plot in 

 front of the house, where the eight or ten Wilkin-ou-. great 

 and small, from the aged grandfather down to the dirty, 

 toddling baliy. were assembled? 1 ventured to a<k Benson 

 as much. "That? why. that's a xnnnlyr the create-! 

 institution of the woods!" And he iruvc me a pityinu 

 look for my ignorance, and laughed much more heartily 

 than I thought the subject demanded. 



We gladly leaped to the ground from the scats which we 

 had faithfully held down for thirty six miles, over the la>t 

 nine of which the road was hilly and rocky. The warm. 



