no Field and Forest Rambles. 



individual may happen to possess with reference to the stars, 

 that the Indian is enabled to find his way in the primitive 

 forests, where few white men could shape their course except 

 by the compass. A few natives are still apt in these respects, 

 and no doubt with their forefathers the faculty amounted to an 

 instinct ; but now, excepting experienced hunters, it is rare to 

 find them displaying remarkable excellences in this branch of 

 forest craft, which, like many other traits of their primordial 

 lives, has been obliterated by civilization. But even in the, 

 immediate vicinity of settlements there is no difficulty in losing 

 one's way ; indeed, I have known many experienced forest 

 rangers get beyond their reckonings, and wander about for 

 hours. 



I started on a beautiful October morning for the purpose 

 of beating the forest in quest of partridges, with the chance 

 of a stray shot at a hare, woodcock, or snipe. Selecting a 

 part of the country only sparsely settled, I drove some ten 

 miles along a forest road to a burned tract, now covered 

 with a second growth of soft and hard wood trees, inter- 

 spersed with charred and blackened trunks of many noble 

 pines that had passed through the great conflagration of 1825 

 (just referred to), and the wasting influence of the frosts and 

 thaws of subsequent years. The autumn tints had already 

 appeared on the leaves, and in their exceeding beauty and 

 variety of colouring dappled the forest with brilliant patches 

 of red, yellow, and purple. I was soon beating along alder 

 swamps or scrambling over the fallen trunks, now pushing 

 through thickets, then sinking knee-deep in bog or the soft 

 moss or the rotting lumber around the roots of the noble 

 old hemlock spruces, which spread their gnarled branches and 

 feathery foliage on every side, and nodding towards their mother 

 earth with the weight of centuries, seemed doomed before 

 long to totter and fall prostrate by the side of their fore- 

 fathers. The natural decay and death of these patriarchs 

 of the forest seem to be brought about by a disposition to 



