98 FORCE OF THE WATERS. 



have been highly gratified, and in particular at one, of which I still have 

 a strong recollection, and which took place a few miles from the fair and 

 hospitable city of Boston. There I saw fifty or more ploughs drawn by 

 as many pairs of oxen, which performed their work with so much accu- 

 racy and regularity, without the infliction of whip or rod, but merely 

 guided by the verbal mandates of the ploughmen, that I was perfectly as- 

 tonished. 



After surmounting all obstacles, the lumberers with their stock arrive 

 at the spot which they have had in view, and immediately commence 

 building a camp. The trees around soon fall under the blows of their 

 axes, and before many days have elapsed, a low habitation is reared and 

 fitted within for the accommodation of their cattle, while their provender 

 is secured on a kind of loft covered with broad shingles or boards. Then 

 their own cabin is put up ; rough bedsteads, manufactured on the spot, 

 are fixed in the corners ; a chimney, composed of a frame of sticks plastered 

 with mud, leads away the smoke ; the skins of bears or deer, with some 

 blankets, form their bedding, and around the walls are hung their changes 

 of home-spun clothing, guns, and various necessaries of life. Many pre- 

 fer spending the night on the sweet-scented hay and corn-blades of their 

 cattle, which are laid on the ground. All arranged within, the lumberers 

 set their " dead-falls," large " steel-traps," and " spring-guns,"" in suitable 

 places around their camp, to procure some of the bears that ever prowl 

 around such establishments. 



Now the heavy clouds of November, driven by the northern blasts, 

 pour down the snow in feathery flakes. The winter has fairly set in, and 

 seldom do the sun's gladdening rays fall on the wood-cutter's hut. In 

 warm flannels his body is enveloped, the skin of a racoon covers his head 

 and brow, his moose-skin leggins reach the girdle that secures them around 

 his waist, while on broad moccasins, or snow-shoes, he stands from the 

 earliest dawn until night, hacking away at the majestic pines that for a 

 century past have embellished the forest. The fall of these valuable trees 

 no longer resounds on the ground ; and, as they tumble here and there, 

 nothing is heard but the rustling and crackling of their branches, their 

 heavy trunks sinking into the deep snows. Thousands of large pines thus 

 cut down every winter afford room for the younger trees, which spring up 

 profusely to supply the wants of man. 



Weeks and weeks have elapsed ; the earth's pure white covering has 

 become thickly and firmly crusted by the increasing intensity of the 



