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4. The men employ themselves in hunting, fishing, and in making articles of hollow-ware out of wood, such as troughs, butter-dishes, bowls, and barn shovels. Their canoes are made of birch-bark; they are light, strong, and are most ingeniously constructed. The pieces of bark are sewn together, the inside is lined with strips of cedar an eighth of an inch thick, and a preparation of pine gum mixed with pitch is rubbed over the seams.

5. A man or squaw can carry such a canoe for miles over the roughest portages. The dug-out, or log-canoe, in general use by the settlers, is derived from the Indians, who still continue to construct them. Pine, black walnut, butter-nut, and bass-wood are used for these canoes.

6. The Indians are very fond of the water, the men, women, and children are excellent swimmers and divers. Indeed, during the hot months the children are continually in the water, splashing and swimming about like a flock of wild ducks.

7. Till the authority of the English came to be known and respected, wars were frequent among the various tribes. At present their greatest vice is due to contact with white men-it is the sin of drunkenness. The missionaries have done much to check this passion for "fire-water" as they call it.

s. Compared with uneducated peasants of other lands they are quick and clever. They learn to read and write well, and quickly, and they have talents for music and drawing. I have seen an Indian construct a very correct map, with the rivers and lakes delineated with great

exactness.

9. Though naturally taciturn, they excel in public speak

1 Portages are places where goods have to be carried from one navigable point to another. Many of the American rivers are connected by short portages. Portages are also necessary to avoid falls and dangerous rapids.

ing. Their language is simple, beautiful, and fitting. Their deportment is grave, dignified, and reserved. But when once you win their confidence, they open themselves out to you, and the coldness of their manner disappears.-Major Strickland.

LESSON 52.-EMPLOYMENTS.

1. Agriculture is the principal occupation. The climate in all parts except Labrador and the Polar Region admits of the cultivation of corn, potatoes, pulse, roots, and grasses.

2. The winters are long, for the snows which usually fall in November and December cover the ground with a hard coating till April. This is a hindrance, but not altogether a disadvantage, to farming, for the land obtains perfect rest during several months of the year. In winter the air is bright, clear, and dry, making out-door life both pleasant and agreeable. At this season also the frost and snow, by providing everywhere a hard smooth surface, render travelling and the conveyance of goods by sleigh or sledge an easy matter.

3. The summers are as hot as in the south of Italy. The most temperate districts are about the St. Lawrence lakes, where tobacco, grapes, and peaches ripen in the open air. During the warm weather vegetation is rapid and luxuriant.

4. The farmers pay most attention to the raising of Indian corn, oats, and wheat, and to dairy work. Factories have been established in many places for the manufacture of butter and cheese. The neighbouring farmers send their milk to the factory, and it is made for them at a fixed charge.

5. Next to farming comes the timber trade, or lumbering, of which an account will be found in another lesson.

6. The northern part of the Dominion is a vast hunting-ground. A company of British merchants, the Hudson's Bay Company, has hunters, trappers, and traders, who obtain, barter from the Indians, and collect valuable furs, feathers, walrus tusks, fish, and oil.

7. The Esquimaux (Es'-ki-mo), who inhabit the extreme north, belong to the yellow or Mongolian race. They are a quiet inoffensive people, who subsist by hunting and fishing; they live entirely on flesh, and clothe themselves in skins.

8. Fishing gives employment to fifty thousand men. The Newfoundland Bank is the finest fishing-ground in the world. Baffin's Bay is the resort of the whaling and sealing vessels. The Columbian rivers are so abundantly supplied with salmon that till recently it was the practice to give the garden of the Hudson's Bay Company's station at Fort Rupert an annual dressing of 3000 salmon as manure. The salmon fishing is now carefully managed; the fish are boiled, packed in air-tight tins and exported.

9. Mining occupies a fair share of attention, though the extent of the mineral wealth of the Dominion is not yet fully known.

10. A large portion of the settlers are obliged to rely greatly on their own resources, and this has given rise to domestic manufactures. The farmers kill their own beef, pork, and mutton; the tallow is run into moulds for candles, or mixed with pot-ashes, obtained from the burned timber, and made into soap.

11. The making of maple sugar begins towards the end. of March, when the sap of the trees begins to rise. The maple trees are "tapped," or bored, and troughs are set

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Collecting the Sap of the Sugar Maple.

to collect the juice. This is boiled and skimmed, the sugar and molasses being obtained as with cane-juice. The French Canadians still prefer home-spun cloth to imported goods.

12. With a large export trade in timber, fish, oils, furs, and provisions, the Canadians possess a good mercantile fleet; the number of their vessels is said to exceed that of any other country except England, France, and the United States.

LESSON 53.-LUMBERING.

1. The great trade of Canada is lumbering; and lumbering consists in cutting down pine trees up in the far distant forests, in hewing and sawing them into shape for the market, and getting them down the rivers to Quebec, from whence they are exported to Europe, and chiefly to England. Timber in Canada is called lumber; those engaged in the trade are called lumberers, and the business itself is called lumbering.

2. After a lapse of time it must no doubt become monotonous to those engaged in it, and the name is not engaging, but there is much about it that is very picturesque. A saw-mill worked by water power is almost always a pretty object, and stacks of new cut timber are pleasant to the smell, and group themselves not amiss on the water's edge. If I had the time and were a year or two younger, I should love well to go up lumbering into the woods.

3. The men for this purpose are hired in the fall of the year, and are sent up hundreds of miles away to the pine forests in strong gangs. Everything is there found for them. They make log huts for their shelter, and

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