55 2 The Halcyon in Canada. 



crests of the mountains, of cannon-swabs. Endless, interminable 

 successions of these cannon-swabs, each just like its fellow, came and 

 went, came and went, all day. Sometimes we could see the road a 

 mile or two ahead, and it was as lonely and solitary as a path in the 

 desert. Periods of talk and song and jollity were succeeded by long 

 stretches of silence. A buckboard upon such a road does not con- 

 duce to a continuous flow of animal spirits. A good brace for 

 the foot and a good hold for the hand is one's main lookout much 

 of the time. We walked up the steeper hills, one of them nearly 

 a mile long, then clung grimly to the board during the rapid 

 descent of the other side. 



We occasionally saw a solitary pigeon — in every instance a cock 

 — leading a forlorn life in the wood, a hermit of his kind, or, more 

 probably, a rejected and superfluous male. We came upon two or 

 three broods of spruce-grouse in the road, so tame that one could 

 have knocked them over with poles. We passed many beautiful 

 lakes ; among others, the Two Sisters, one on each side of the road. 

 At noon, we paused at a lake in a deep valley, and fed the horse and 

 had lunch. I was not long in getting ready my fishing-tackle, and 

 upon a raft made of two logs pinned together floated out upon the 

 lake and quickly took all the trout we wanted. 



Early in the afternoon, we entered upon what is called La Grand 

 Brulure, or Great Burning, and to the desolation of living woods 

 succeeded the greater desolation of a blighted forest. All the 

 mountains and valleys, as far as the eye could see, had been swept 

 by the fire, and the bleached and ghostly skeletons of the trees 

 alone met the gaze. The fire had come over from the Saguenay, 

 a hundred or more miles to the east, seven or eight years before, 

 and had consumed or blasted everything in its way. We saw the 

 skull of a moose said to have perished in the fire. For three 

 hours we rode through this valley and shadow of death. In the 

 midst of it, where the trees had nearly all disappeared, and where 

 the ground was covered with coarse, wild grass, we came upon the 

 Morancy River, a placid yellow stream, twenty or twenty-five yards 

 wide, abounding with trout. We walked a short distance along its 

 banks and peered curiously into its waters. The mountains on 

 either hand had been burned by the fire until in places their great 

 granite bones were bare and white. 



