The inconvenience does not arise from any want of food; for the woods,
beaver meadows, and the margins of lakes and streams yield an
abundance, and the cattle, towards the fall of the year, are sure to
grow fat. But it is the trouble of seeking for your cattle.

Sometimes, indeed, in the midst of your greatest hurry, your oxen are
nowhere to be found. I have myself often spent two or three days in
succession, searching the woods in vain; and it not unfrequently
happens that, while looking for the strayed beasts, you lose yourself
in the woods.

As we generally carry a gun with us in these excursions, we often fall
in with deer or partridges, which makes the way not only seem less
fatiguing, but even pleasant, unless during the season of musquitoes
and black flies, when rambling through the Bush is no pleasure to any
one.

New-comers are very apt to lose themselves at first, until they get
acquainted with the creeks and ridges; and even then, on a dark day or
during a snow-storm, they are very likely to go astray. If you have no
compass with you, and the sun is obscured, the best way of extricating
yourself is, to observe the moss on the trees, which--not every one
knows--grows more luxuriantly and in greater quantities on the north
side of the tree. It is of little use to look at any tree separately:
this will perhaps only mislead you; but if you observe the general
aspect of the woods around, the indications may be of great service to
you. Towards the north, the trunks of the trees will appear light and
cheerful, while the south side will look dark and spotted. This plan,
however, will only answer amongst hard woods.* [* Deciduous trees are
called hard-wood.] The ridges mostly run north-east and south-west, and