IN CAMP AND CANOE 145 



steed prancing to be off, and longs to be again un- 

 der the trees by the shore of some inland lake or 

 stream. 



It is next to impossible to overestimate the value 

 of the splendid facilities for out-door life and for an 

 indulgence in the health -giving sports of woods and 

 waters afforded by the primeval forests, magnificent 

 streams, and numberless lakes of northern Canada. 

 My late lamented friend and angling companion, Dr. 

 Lundy, of Philadelphia, asks : 



"Is this fondness for fishing and hunting or camping in the 

 woods, on the part of men and women of the highest culture and 

 refinement, an inherited taste and propensity derived through a 

 long line of ancient kings, princes, and nobles, so fond of the chase, 

 from our unknown prehistoric ancestors ? . . . Civilization, over- 

 done by the refinements of mere intelligence and the excessive ac- 

 cumulation of mere material wealth, begets a luxurious ease and 

 corruption of which the body politic and social at last dies, or else 

 barbarism comes to make an end of it, and to organize a new state 

 of things. Human nature, weakened and depraved by the exces- 

 sive indulgences of civilized life, needs the new blood and stronger 

 muscle which barbarism gives. Or, rather, the nervous and worn- 

 out denizens of our cities and large towns must return to the sim- 

 plicity and invigorating influences of nature to recuperate their 

 wasted energies and restore the equilibrium of mind and body. 

 They must go to the woods, the first native life -element of the 

 human race ; and our homesickness, an instinctive yearning after 

 the garden home of our forefathers, haunts the nomad of the desert 

 as well as the inhabitants of luxurious cities. . . . Moses and Dar- 

 win are agreed on the point that man was not first placed in a 

 desert, or a cultivated field, or a city, but in the forest, in a garden 

 or park ; and if this park be utterly destroyed, then we should lose 

 all health - giving influences and means of subsistence, the sweet 

 music of song-birds, the purest enjoyments of our early years in 

 fishing and hunting, and 'nature's remedies for the mental discords 

 of manhood.' We should starve and die." 

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