Clearin(^ up a New Country. 167 



woodman's axe is still, — ^the crash of tlie fallin' trees is 

 no longer heard, — the blazing fallows, sendin' their 

 dense smoke curlin' and wreathin' to the clouds, are 

 things that have ceased to be ; for the old woods have 

 been swept away. The ding-dong of the cowbells has 

 died away, for the wearers of them no longer wander 

 in the forest. Stage coaches are rushin' along the 

 highways, and may be an ingine thunders along a 

 railroad through the valleys. All these things I've 

 seen in the Lower Shatagee country. I went out 

 there last spring, and as I stood on the brow of a high 

 hill, lookin' away off over what, when I was a boy, 

 was one great forest, from old Champlain clear away 

 to the St. Lawrence, — I saw nothin' but great farms, 

 and fine houses, and abundance of cattle and sheep. I 

 counted ten carriages on the highways in sight at 

 once, and I saw the long line of a railroad, stretchin', 

 hke a great snake, across the country, and an ingine, 

 dashin' like a maddened war-horse, with its long train 

 of cars, off towards Eouse's Point. 



"It's only the rocky, and barren nater of the 



country around us, that saves this wild region from 



what I call the desolation of civilization, and the 



, mighty changes it works on the face of a country ; 



