288 FOEEST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



suspended on a ridge pole bound to two uprights, and tlie 

 sloping sides stretched and fastened to pegs ; it had a 

 valence all round about two feet high. The area of the 

 surface it covered was some eight feet by ten. Not being 

 oiled, it weighed only a dozen pouDds or so, and when 

 well stretched was quite rain-proof, unless the sides were 

 touched by a gun or anything leaning against them, w^hen 

 it would drip. 



Never encamp in a low site at the foot of a hill ; for 

 it is not pleasant, however well you may be protected 

 from the falling waters, to find yourself becoming sud- 

 denly soaked by the rising flood, in the nice comfortable 

 hollow which your form has made in your bed of boughs. 

 We never expect, and rarely find, any unpleasant results 

 in the way of a severe cold from these little disagreeables 

 of camping out ; living constantly in the open air steels 

 the sensibility of the system to catarrhal affections, and 

 the Indians aver that they are more apt to take cold by 

 going into a house than we are by going into the open 

 air. And so we take things very philosophically ; so 

 much so, sometimes, that a friend of mine, on being 

 roused from his slumbers, on the plea that he was lying 

 in three inches of water, immediately lay down again in 

 the old spot, averring that " the water there was warmer 

 than anywhere else in the camp." In this country, 

 storms of this description never last very long, twelve to 

 twenty-four hours from the commencement being the 

 general duration, when the wind veering round to the 

 west (our fine-weather quarter), soon clears ofi" the rolling 

 cloud masses from the sky, and a glorious sun and cool 

 zephyr quickly dry the dripping forest. 



I like to have the sound of a bubbling brook for a 



