9^ jock's T-ATCK. 



twelve Hours after breakfast. Here we stopped for the 

 nicht and to be^u our serious work. The Utile Unv. frame- 

 ho'use, a sort of exaggerated bird's nest, browned by age 

 and weather, looked picturesque at that hour. It was 

 situated on a gentle bluil' in the midst of a small elcarmg 

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

 Creek which there assumes (piite the proportions of a river. 

 The tawnv-brown water courses dcwn through the gorge 

 of the m.nmtains on either side, phmging, roaring and 

 foamino- amon- the large boulders which line its banks and 

 are .caUered thickly along the bed of the stream, and passes 

 off to the south-east on its way to the Mohawk. Unbroken 

 forests crown the rocky hearted mountains and press down 

 to the water's edge. Tlie darkening, evening-hued sky 

 mincded with the forest green, and the rushing waters 

 sounded their evening anthem amid the stillness of the 

 secluded place. 



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

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

 front of the house, where the eight or ten Wilkinsons, great 

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

 toddling baby, were assembled^ I ventured to ask Benson 

 a. mucli. -'That? why, that's a smadg<^-\he greatest 

 mstitution of the woods!" And he gave me a pitying 

 look for my ignorance, and laughed much more heartily 

 than I thought the subject demanded. 



We gladly leaped to the ground from the seats which we 

 had f dthf uUy held down for thirty-six miles, over the last 

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



