A ‘'RAKE CIIAXCE FOR AX ENTERPRISING MAN.” 487 
than one score of degrees below zero, and drives animal 
life into its burrowed home for shelter against its bound- 
less intensity. 
Wherever we landed, or while sailing along their silent 
shores, the whole countiy presented the appearance of a 
dense canebrakc-like growth of spruce pine, extending 
from the sea to the summit of the highest ranges, and 
showing us at a single glance forest upon forest of the 
most beautiful spars for shipping. Seldom was it tliat 
we saw* a crooked tree there : they were all us straight 
and branchless as the most fastidious spar-maker could 
desire, and will doubtless be duly appreciated Avhen their 
owner, the Czar, sees fit to call into requisition their vast 
resources. 
Wlien we were on the coast of China, at IIong-Kong 
and Shanghae, we had seen such spars as these selling at 
the unheard-of price of from fifty to two and three hun- 
,drcd dollars; and, as we now walked between their lofty 
and shaft-like trunks, we could not help thinking how 
easy a fortune might be made by some enterprising 
Yankee, with an old timber-drover and a dozen or more 
good wood-cutters at his command. All he would have 
to do would be to cut and square some tliousand or more 
of them, fill up his ship at the cost of time and labour 
only, and then run quietly to a ready market at either 
Ilong-lvong, Shanghae, Manilla, or one of a dozen other 
ports. In the language of modern advertisements, 
“liei'C is a rare chance for an enterprising man to make 
a fortune.” 
It took us four days to end our combined work of 
wooding, watering, and surveying; when we again got 
