The Halcyon in Canada. 551 



of the men advanced to the door and began to rap and call the name 

 of our host Then I knew their errand was not hostile ; but the 

 weird effect of that regular alternate rapping and calling ran through 

 my dream all the rest of the night, Rat-tat, tat, tat, — La Chance. Rat- 

 tat, tat, — La Chance, five or six times repeated, before La Chance 

 heard and responded. Then the door opened and they came in, 

 when it was jabber, jabber, jabber in the next room till I fell asleep. 



In the morning, to my inquiry as to who the travelers were and 

 what they wanted, La Chance said they were old acquaintances 

 going a-fishing and had stopped to have a little talk. 



Breakfast was served early and we were upon the road before 

 the sun. Then began a forty-mile ride through a dense Canadian 

 spruce forest over the drift and bowlders of the paleozoic age. Up 

 to this point, the scenery had been quite familiar, — not much unlike 

 that of the Catskills, — but now there was a change ; the birches dis- 

 appeared, except now and then a slender white or paper birch, and 

 spruce everywhere prevailed. A narrow belt on each side of the 

 road had been blasted by fire, and the dry, white stems of the 

 trees stood stark and stiff. The road ran pretty straight, skirting 

 the mountains and treading the valleys, and hour after hour the 

 dark, silent woods wheeled past us. Swarms of black flies — those 

 insect wolves — waylaid us, and hung to us till a smart spurt of the 

 horse, where the road favored, left them behind. But a species of 

 large horse-fly, black and vicious, it was not so easy to get rid 

 of When they alighted upon the horse, we would demolish them 

 with the whip or with our felt hats, a proceeding the horse soon 

 came to understand and appreciate. The white and gray Laurentian 

 bowlders lay along the road-side. The soil seemed as if made up 

 of decayed and pulverized rock, and doubtless contained very little 

 vegetable matter. It is so barren that it will never repay clearing 

 and cultivating 



Our course was an up-grade toward the highlands that separate 

 the water-shed of St. John Lake from that of the St. Lawrence ; 

 and as we proceeded, the spruce became smaller and smaller till 

 tin- trees were seldom more than eight or ten inches in diameter. 

 Nearly all of them terminated in a dense tuft at the top, beneath 

 which the stem would be bare for several feet, giving them the 

 appearance, my friend said, as they stood sharply defined along the 



