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 fishing tackle, and, upon a raft made
of two logs pinned together, floated out upon the lake and quickly took
all the trout we wanted.

Early in the afternoon we entered upon what is called _La Grande
Brûlure,_ or Great Burning, and to the desolation of living woods
succeeded the greater desolation of a blighted forest. All the
mountains and valleys, as far as the eye could see, had been swept by
the fire, and the bleached and ghostly skeletons of the trees alone met
the gaze. The fire had come over from the Saguenay, a hundred or more
miles to the east, seven or eight years before, and had consumed or
blasted everything in its way. We saw the skull of a moose said to have
perished in the fire. For three hours we rode through this valley and