LETTER XVIII. 



dozen times a day. Still, hard exercise keeps the 

 men l fit ' and well, and sixteen years of the work 

 had not bent Jocko's shoulders or dimmed his 

 brown dog-like eyes. A dollar a day is about 

 the wage paid now to lumbermen in the limits 

 in Ontario and Quebec. But I am wandering 

 away from the track along which our horses are 

 taking us at about five miles an hour to such a 

 shanty as I have described, situated in a limit 

 which has been deserted for some three or four 

 years. 



The pace at which we travel is a bad one, but 

 the country is a very Arabia Petrea outside the 

 town, and it really requires steering to get safely 

 through the boulders. Besides, the roads are 

 made worse by snow which fell nine days ago, 

 not deep enough for sleighing, but quite deep 

 enough to make driving on wheels peculiarly slow 

 work. 



Here and there by the river's bank a small 

 farm has been hewn out of the forest. These 

 farms are fine instances of what Mr. Pell, in an 

 able article in this year's Journal of the Chamber 

 of Agriculture, calls the making of the land. 

 Perhaps the happy settler only gave in the first 

 instance a pound an acre for his land ; but by the 

 time he has felled the trees upon it, cleared the 

 stumps and rocks out of it, built the fences upon 



