what they could judge of it outwardly ; they suttled, without a thought 

 of the hardships and dilficulties of the future, ou the spot they selected 

 far away from all means of communication, from all assistance and, 

 frequently also, without any definite prospect before them. 



This is how it happens that, even in our day, the explorer who pene- 

 trates to some distance into the forest, sometimes tinds himself unexpected- 

 ly in presence of a rudimentary settlement, commonly called a desert, in 

 the vernacular of the settlers. 



He asks himself how those who live there manage to exist, to com- 

 municate with other men and to derive some benefit from their labours. 

 Almost, if not all, travelling is done in winter. The settlers drive their 

 scanty produce to the nearest parish on the ice of the rivers ; in winter 

 they go and work in the lumber shanties and this proves the truth of the 

 assertion, which has only of late been made, that far from being natural 

 adversaries, the settler and tht^ lumber merchant work, on the contrary, 

 for their mutual advantage. The settler, being on th.' spot, makes the 

 lumberman's work easier, while reducing his expenses, and the lumber- 

 merchant buys th(> produce which the settler has to sell, pays him for his 

 work and provides for the subsistence of a man whom hardship and 

 discouragement would soon drive away from the soil which he has so 

 arduously cultivated. 



It is in these clearings lost in the midst of these forests and which 

 would long remain unknown, if the feverish desire which man feels to 

 disperse and acquire, without delay, the whole of his earthly domain, did 

 not lead him to unceasingly piish forward the inhabited or known limits 

 of that domain ; it is in these clearings, I say, that we find the true image 

 of what our country was in its earliest days. AVe find men contending 

 with everything sixrrounding them and we thereby learn, by seeing the 

 details, how nations have originated which later have become highly 

 civilized. 



Those who, like me, have been able to enter the huts which give 

 shelter to so tnuch patient courage, so much heroic resignation ; those 

 who, like me, have seen what can be done by these unequalled pioneers 

 whom nothing can n^bnlf, whose daily fatigues overpower without discour- 

 aging them, who come into the woods frequently without the most 

 necessary tools, without indispensable articles and who, nevertheless, hew 

 down the forest and find, or rather inv<Mit, resources which otherwise 

 they wotild never have thought of ; those finally who, like me, have been 

 able to contemplate this touching spectacle, know all that is meant by 

 the word " settler " which is so common and so humble that it brings up 

 only an indistinct idea of a cabin in the depth of the woods and a pile of 

 smoking trees around it until some blades of wheat sprout in the midst 

 of the scorched stumps. 



Such is the story of each successive clearing or settlement, even in 

 our days when so much solicitude is given to colonization and when so 



