the wilderness to all the principal "clumps" and " groves of pine" embraced in the permit.

We have here no "turnpikes" nor railways, but what is often more interesting. No pencillings can excel the graceful curves found in a main road as it winds along through the forest,-uniform in width of track, hard-beaten and glassy in its surface, polished by the sled and logs which are so frequently drawn over it. Each fall of snow, when well trodden, not unlike repeated coats of paint on a rough surface, serves to cover up the unevenness of the bottom, which in time becomes very smooth and even. And, besides, no street in all our cities is so beautifully studded with trees, whose spreading branches affectionately interlace, forming graceful archways above. Along this roadside, on the way to the landing, runs a serpentine pathway for the "knight of the goad," whose deviations are marked now outside this tree, then behind that "windfall," now again intercepting the main road, skipping along like a dog at one's side. To pass along this road in mid-winter, one would hardly suspect the deformities which the dissolving snows reveal in the springthe stumps and knolls, skids and roots, with

a full share of mud-sloughs, impassable to all except man, or animals untrammeled with the harness.

In the process of making these roads, the first thing in order is to look out the best location for them. This is done by an experienced hand, who "spots" the trees where he wishes the road to be "swamped." We usually begin at the landing, and cut back toward the principal part of the timber to be hauled.

In constructing this road, first all the underbush is cut and thrown on one side; all trees standing in its range are cut close to the ground, and the trunks of prostrated trees cut off and thrown out, leaving a space from ten to twelve feet wide. The tops of the highest knolls are scraped off, and small poles, called skids, are laid across the road in the hollows between. Where a brook or slough occurs, a pole-bridge is thrown across it.

These prepartory arrangements are entered upon and executed, with a degree of interest and pleasure by lumbermen, scarcely credible to those unacquainted with such a mode of life and with such business.

XXII.

A NIGHT ADVENTURE ON THE MISSOURI.

AT the head of a ravine on the border of the river Platte, one bright night in June, was gathered a party of Missouri hunters, who were encamped after a day's chase for buffalo. The evening's repast was over, and as they stretched themselves in easy attitudes around their stack of rifles, each looked at the other with a kind of questioning expression, of whether it should be sleep or a yarn? The bright moon, with full round face, streamed down into their midst, and sprinkled her silvery sheen over shrub and flower, investing night in those vast solitudes with a strange charm which forbids sleep, and with common consent they raised themselves into a sitting posture and proposed a "talk," as the red skins say. Dan Elkhorn was the leader of the party, and all knew his store of

adventure inexhaustible, so a unanimous call was made upon Dan for a story. "Come, Dan," cried a crony, "give us something to laugh at, and let us break this silence, which seems to breed a spirit of melancholy-stir us up, old fellow, do!"

Dan pulled his long knife out of his belt, and laying it before him, smoothed back his long grey hair. He was a genuine specimen of the hardy American mountaineer,—like the Indian, he dressed in deer skins and wore the moccason, while every seam in his iron countenance told of 'scapes and peril. Seeing that all were attention he commenced

"Well, draw up closer, boys, so I shan't have to holler, 'cause breth is gittin' kind a short with me now, and I want to pacel it out to last pretty strong till the wind-up hunt. You, Mike, keep your eye skinned for Ingins, 'cause ef we git deep in a yarn here, without a top eye open, the cussed varmints 'll pop on us unawars, and be stickin' some of thur quills in us—nothin' like havin' your eye open and insterments ready. I've a big idea to gin you an account of some fun I had with an old bar, on the Missouri, when I was a younker, and considerably more spry than I am jest now. I want to tell you fust, boys, that bars are

knowin' animals, and they kin jest tell a younker of the human kind as easily as they kin a small pig from the old sow; they don't fool with me now, for they've got to know me!

"Well, old Alic Dennison, a neighbour of mine on the Missouri, had bin about two years up in the mountains, and when he came home he gin a treat to all the fellars within thirty miles of him-that was jest seven families-and among 'em, in course, I got an invite. Alic and I had sot our cabins on opposite sides of the drink, near enough to see each other, and a red skin, ef he'd come on a scalp visit, would a bin diskivered by either. When Alic's frolic was to cum off, I was on hand, sartain. About evenin' I got my small dug-out, and fixin' my rifle carefully in the fore eend, and stickin' my knife in the edge whar it would be handy, I jest paddled over the drink.

A little above our location thar wur a bend in the stream which a kind a turned the drift tother eend up, and planted them about the spot between our cabins-snags and sawyers, jest thar, wur dreadful plenty, and it took mity nice padlin' to git across without tiltin'; howsever, I slid atween 'em, sarpentine fashion, and got over clar as a pet coon. Thar