122 CANADIAN NIGHTS 



winter, when the snow is on the ground and the 

 lakes are frozen, along which the trunks of trees 

 or logs are hauled by horses or oxen to the water. 

 A logging road is a most pernicious thing. Never 

 follow one if you are lost in the woods, for one 

 end is sure to lead to a lake or a river, which is 

 decidedly inconvenient until the ice has formed ; 

 and in the other direction it will seduce you deep 

 into the inner recesses of the forest, and then 

 come to a sudden termination at some moss- 

 covered decayed pine-stump, which is discourag- 

 ing. A " barren," as the term indicates, is a 

 piece of waste land ; but, as all hunting grounds 

 are waste, that definition would scarcely be 

 sufficient to describe what a " barren " is. It 

 means in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick an 

 open marshy space in the forest, sometimes so 

 soft as to be almost impassible, at other times 

 composed of good solid hard peat. The surface 

 is occasionally rough and tussocky, like a great 

 deal of country in Scotland. 



In Newfoundland there are barrens of many 

 miles in extent, high, and, comparatively speaking, 

 dry plateaux ; but the barrens in the provinces I 

 am speaking of vary from a little open space of a 

 few acres to a plain of five or six miles in length 



