JEBKING VENISON. 369 



On these, thin slices of meat are laid, which, while the 

 juices are exhausted by the heat, become saturated with 

 the smoke from the fire. (The meat is first thoroughly 

 filled with salt before it is placed over the fire.) Here it 

 is kept till it becomes dry as a pine shaving. I was glad 

 to find that they were saving their game instead of kill- 

 ing it, as they sometimes do, solely for the skins ; though 

 if I had known, as I afterwards did, that a deer thus 

 jerked was worth, when out of the woods, less than two 

 dollars, I should have been less gratified. 



These two hunters were rough specimens, and, as they 

 lounged there before their huge fire, I fell to musing on 

 the strange destinies of men. We are all immortal, all 

 bound to a higher state of existence, and yet how little 

 above the brute is a large majority of the race ! Week 

 after week these men stayed alone in the woods, with no 

 thought above the game they should kill. They were 

 never puzzled with the strange mysteries of life and 

 death. To them this great solitude was void of meaning 

 or expression — no spirit-voices filled the forest, and the 

 starry heaven that nightly bent over them, with its only 

 half-revealed wonders, was as meaningless as the roof ot 

 their bark shanty, except as its aspect told them of fair 



or foul weather. Their hearts never ached with strange 



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