FOREST TREES. 275 



compass can keep a straight line through strange woods 

 on a dull, foggy day ; but Indians can walk straighter 

 than white men under these circumstances, and are, more- 

 over, wonderfully quick at seeing and deciphering old 

 marks on trees, and in finding and following old paths, 

 tracks, or blazed roads. A good Indian, too, will recognize 

 any place that he has ever seen before, whereas a muff 

 may circumnavigate the same hundred acres of wood all 

 day long, and be under the pleasing delusion that he is 

 getting many miles ahead. When all the woods seem 

 alike to the novice, the Indian will discriminate between 

 this hill and that hill, between this brook, swamp, or 

 thicket, and others almost exactly resembling them. 

 Lumberers are not so good in this respect as one might 

 suppose. Although they spend one-half of their life in 

 the woods, they seldom leave the neighbourhood of their 

 camps and roads ; and when they do so, they blaze lines on 

 the trees. In hunting strange ground, it is advisable to have 

 a straight road, river, lake, or barren as a starting point. 



There are between sixty and seventy different kinds of 

 wood in the Canadian forest. The following is a list of 

 some of the most common and most useful species. 



Coniferse. 



White or Prince's pine (Pinus Strdbus). This is the 

 pine of the lumber markets. It grows everywhere in 

 Canada, but owing to its value the best pine has been 

 long since cut away in the more accessible portions of the 

 Dominion. Most of the lumber that now finds its way to 

 other countries, comes from the heads of those great 

 rivers that flow into the St. Lawrence from the northward, 



