112 PIERRE'S LOVE OF NATURE. 



competition for gain and bread, reflected, amid these 

 scenes of silvan peace, how fortunate was his own 

 lot, which led him from the heartless, artificial atmos- 

 phere of civilized regions, to pass his life in the presence 

 of that nature which he loved, and which carried aloft 

 his mind to its great Creator, as often as his eye rested 

 on the myriad works of his hand: the vast forests 

 which, as seen from some vantage-ground, stretched 

 away into infinite distance ; here dense and green, level 

 on top as some richly-hued carpet ; there broken into 

 glades where single trees stood forth hoary with the 

 moss of centuries, and whose contorted branches were 

 relieved against the dark background of pines : the 

 splintered peaks, the gray rock -built hills, girdled with 

 forests and capped with changing mists and never- 

 melting snows: the level prairie ocean stretching far 

 and wide, into whose boundless depths the summer sun 

 descends, leaving behind a sky of flame, changing into 

 shades which never have been classified; while upon 

 the far-off verge the tall grass waves against the bur- 

 nished horizon like the surging of billows on a shoreless 

 sea. These were the scenes which the young trapper 

 yearned for, and it was amid their desert solitudes that 

 his heart could alone find rest. 



Gaultier also was influenced by similar feelings. He 

 had been born in the woods of Canada, and from his 

 earliest days had manifested a disgust for civilization, 

 if that can be so designated which consists in outward 

 forms, a modish life, and the substitution of the arti- 



