Before day-break breakfast was ready, and proved to be a more tempting meal than the supper of the night before. There were fine dry potatoes, roast wild pigeon, fried pork, cakes, butter, eggs, milk, "China tea," and chocolate--which last was a brown-coloured extract of cherry-tree bark, sassafras root, and wild sarsaparilla, warmly recommended by our host as "first-rate bitters." Declining this latter beverage, we made a hearty meal.

It was now day-break. As we were new comers, Root offered to convoy us "a piece of the way," a very serviceable act of kindness, for, in the dim twilight we experienced at first no little difficulty in discerning it. Pointing out some faint glimmerings of morning, which were showing themselves more and more brightly over the tall tree-tops, our friend remarked, "I guess that's where the sun's calc'lating to rise."

The day had advanced sufficiently to enable us to distinguish the road with ease. Our tavern-keeper returned to his work, and in a few minutes the forest echoed to the quick strokes of his lustily-wielded axe. We found ourselves advancing along a wide avenue, unmarked as yet by the track of wheels, and unimpeded by growing brush-wood. To the width of sixty-six feet, all the trees had been cut down to a height of between two and three feet, in a precisely straight course for miles, and burnt or drawn into the woods; while along the centre, or winding from side to side like the course of a drunken man, a waggon-track had been made by grubbing up smaller and evading the larger stumps, or by throwing a collection of small limbs and decayed wood into the deeper inequalities. Here and there, a ravine would be rendered passable by placing across it two long trunks of trees, often at a sharp angle, and crossing these transversely with shorter logs; the whole covered with brush-wood and earth, and dignified with the name of a "corduroy bridge."

At the Nottawasaga River, we found a log house recently erected, the temporary residence of Wellesley Richey, Esq., an Irish gentleman, then in charge of the new settlements thereabouts. Mr. Richey received us very courteously, and handed us over to the charge of an experienced guide, whose business it was to show lands to intending settlers--a very necessary precaution indeed, as after a mile or two the road ceased altogether.

For some miles further, the forest consisted of Norway and white pine, almost unmixed with any other timber. There is something majestic in these vast and thickly-set labyrinths of brown columnar stems averaging a hundred and fifty feet in height, perhaps, and from one to five in thickness, making a traveller feel somewhat like a Lilliputian Gulliver in a field of Brobdignagian wheat. It is singular to observe the effect of an occasional gust of wind in such situations. It may not even fan your cheek; but you hear a low surging sound, like the moaning of breakers in a calm sea, which gradually increases to a loud boisterous roar, still seemingly at a great distance; the branches remain in perfect repose, you can discover no evidence of a stirring breeze, till, looking perpendicularly upwards, you are astonished to see some patriarchal giant close at hand--six yards round and sixty high--which alone has caught the breeze, waving its huge fantastic arms wildly at a dizzy height above your head.

There are times when the hardiest woodman dares not enter the pine woods; when some unusually severe gale sweeping over them bends their strong but slender stems like willow wands, or catches the wide-spreading branches of the loftier trees with a force that fairly wrenches them out by the roots, which creeping along on the surface of the soil, present no very powerful resistance. Nothing but the close contiguity of the trees saves them from general prostration. Interlocked branches are every moment broken off and flung to a distance, and even the trunks clash, and as it were, whet themselves against each other, with a shock and uproar that startles the firmest nerves.

It were tedious to detail all the events of our morning's march: How armed with English fowling pieces and laden with ammunition, we momentarily expected to encounter some grisly she-bear, with a numerous family of cubs; or at the least a herd of deer or a flock of wild turkeys: how we saw nothing more dangerous than woodpeckers with crimson heads, hammering away at decayed trees like transmigrated carpenters; how we at last shot two partridges sitting on branches, very unlike English ones, of which we were fain to make a meal, which was utterly detestable for want of salt; how the government guide led us, helter-skelter, into the untracked woods, walking as for a wager, through thickets of ground hemlock,[2] which entangled our feet and often tripped us up; how we were obliged to follow him over and under wind-falls, to pass which it was necessary to climb sometimes twenty feet along some half-recumbent tree; how when we enquired whether clay or sand were considered the best soil, he said some preferred one, and some the other; how he showed us the front of a lot that was bad, and guessed that the rear ought to be better; how we turned back at last, thoroughly jaded, but no wiser than when we set out--all this and much more, must be left to the reader's imagination.

It was drawing towards evening. The guide strode in advance, tired and taciturn, like some evil fate. We followed in pairs, each of us provided with a small bunch of leafy twigs to flap away the mosquitoes, which rose in myriads from the thick, damp underbrush.

"It will be getting dark," said the guide, "you must look out for the blaze."

We glanced anxiously around. "What does he mean?" asked one of the party, "I see no blaze."

The man explained that the blaze (query, blazon?) was a white mark which we had noticed on some of the trees in our route, made by slicing off a portion of the bark with an axe, and invariably used by surveyors to indicate the road, as well as divisions and sub-divisions of townships. After a time this mark loses its whiteness and becomes undistinguishable in the dusk of evening, even to an experienced eye.

Not a little rejoiced were we, when we presently saw a genuine blaze in the form of a log fire, that brilliantly lighted up the forest in front of a wigwam, which, like everything else on that eventful day, was to us delightfully new and interesting. We found, seated on logs near the fire, two persons in blanket coats and red sashes, evidently gentlemen; and occupying a second wigwam at a little distance, half-a-dozen axemen. The gentlemen proved to be the Messrs. Walker, afterwards of Barrie, sons of the wealthy owner of the great shot-works at Waterloo Bridge, London, England. They had purchased a tract of a thousand acres, and commenced operations by hiring men to cut a road through the forest eight or ten miles to their new estate, which pioneering exploit they were now superintending in person. Nothing could exceed the vigour of their plans. Their property was to be enclosed in a ring fence like a park, to exclude trespassers on their game. They would have herds of deer and wild horses. The river which intersected their land was to be cleared of the drift logs, and made navigable. In short, they meant to convert it into another England. In the meanwhile, the elder brother had cut his foot with an axe, and was disabled for the present; and the younger was busily engaged in the unromantic occupation of frying pancakes, which the axemen, who were unskilled in cookery, were to have for their supper.

Nowhere does good-fellowship spring up so readily as in the bush. We were soon engaged in discussing the aforesaid pancakes, with some fried pork, as well as in sharing the sanguine hopes and bright visions which accorded so well with our own ideas and feelings.

We quitted the wigwam and its cheerful tenants with mutual good wishes for success, and shortly afterwards reached the river whence we had started, where Mr. Richey kindly invited us to stay for the night. Exhausted by our rough progress, we slept soundly till the morning sun shone high over the forest.

[Footnote 2: Taxus Canadensis, or Canadian Yew, is a trailing evergreen shrub which covers the ground in places. Its stems are as strong as cart-ropes, and often reach the length of twenty feet.]