294: A WOODLAND BEEAKFABT. 



hooted solemnly from his perch, and we retired to our tents 

 to talk over the romance of our serenade, and to dream 

 of Ole Bull and the Swedish Nightingale. 



The morning broke bright and balmy. A pleasant breeze 

 swept lazily over the lake, lifting the thin mist that hung 

 like a veil of gauze above the water. We left our tents 

 standing, and crossed over to the shanty of our friends 

 of the previous evening to breakfast. We found them 

 living like princes. Their two boatmen had built them 

 a log shanty ; open in front, and covered with bark so 

 as to be impervious to the ram, while within was a lux- 

 urious bed of boughs. Around the campfire were benches 

 of hewn slabs, and a table of the same material. A few 

 rods from the door a beautiful spring came bubbling up into 

 a little basin of pure white sand, the water of which was 

 limpid and cold almost as ice-water. They had been here 

 for a week, hunting and fishing. They had employed their 

 leisure in jerking the venison they had taken, of which 

 they had some four or five bushels, and which they intended 

 to take home with them, to serve, together with the skins 

 of the deer they had slain, as trophies of their success. 



They received us cordially, and we sat down to a break- 

 fast, which, for variety, at least, rivalled the elaborate 

 preparations of the Astor or the St. Nicholas ; albeit, the 

 cookery, as an abstract fact, might have been of the 

 simplest. We had venison-steak, pork, ham, jerked venison 

 stew, fresh trout, broiled partridge, cold roast duck, a 

 fricassee of wood rabbits, and broiled pigeon upon oar table, 



