THE HALCYON IN CANADA 201 



Nearly all of them terminated in a dense tuft at the 

 top, beneath which the stem would be bare for sev- 

 eral feet, giving them the appearance, my friend 

 said, as they stood sharply defined along the crests 

 of the mountains, of cannon swabs. Endless, inter- 

 minable 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 conduce 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 

 flshing tackle, and, upon a raft made of two logs 

 pinned together, floated out upon the lake and quickly 

 took all the trout we wanted. 



