IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



ternately to the hubs, follow invisible ruts; 

 holes and high places alike are garnished 

 with boulders; a little of this 'carriage 

 exercise', and one is fain to walk for a rest. 

 In or out the planche, the living cargo 

 manages well enough, but safer pro- 

 vision must be made for a more 

 precious freight — the canoe. A buck- 

 board is trimee to carry it on firm supports, 

 bottom up, lashed with extremest care, 

 projecting almost to the head of a horse 

 chosen for sobriety of demeanour. Your 

 flighty inexperienced beast, rushing at a 

 difficulty, would wreck everything; an old 

 horse, like an old dog, is to be trusted for 

 the hard road. The sagacious Coq has 

 learned in a lifetime of such pilgrimages 

 to test every foothold before throwing 

 weight upon it, to extricate himself with 

 slow deliberation from the worse chaos of 

 boulders and rotten wood — un cheval com- 

 mode, as the world concedes. And Pom- 

 mereau, the Coq's incomparable master, is 

 at hand to con him through with all that 

 store of wise and timely words for which 

 the restless white ears ever keep listening. 

 Even the Coq is halted by a deep gully, 

 with the decayed timbers of the bridge 

 that spanned it strewing the rocky bed. A 

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