Akin to buried sloth, in fault and shame, Talent or energy which dormant lies. Let us-O we have higher, holier mark !— Beware the light within us be not dark. See Matt. vi. 23. XV. Mosquitoes. AMONG the plagues on earth which God has sent Yet such, sometimes, as feeble patience tries. We do not read, however, that in this plague, which, like the others, (see Bryant's Egyptian Plagues,) had its pointed meaning, independently of its simple effect as a judgment, the sting of the insects formed an addition to it. The three kinds of stinging insects which we encountered are called by the French Canadians marangouins, mosquites, and brulots; the first, and not the mosquites, being our mosquitoes. The two latter are extremely small black flies, one of them almost imperceptible, which draw the blood. We frequently had our tent prepared for us by the agitation, in all parts of it, of a smoking brand, before going to bed. It is but a few years since a fief or other property was advertized for sale in the Canadian papers, under the very uninviting title of La Marangouinière. My moral is, I hope, less equivocal than that which concludes Where wild America in vastness lies, Three diverse hordes the swamps and woods infest. Banded or singly these make man their prize: Travellers in forest rude, with veil are fain To arm the face: men there whose dwellings rest Crouch in thick smoke; like help their cattle gain. O wise in trials great, in troubles small, Who know to find mementos of the fall! Gay's fable of the man and the flea; the insect being there made to declare, in repression of human arrogance and self-elation, "that men were made for fleas to eat." 9 I have been assured, that the cattle, in situations where this protection is provided for them, come lowing to the house to have the fire renewed, if it happens to fail. It is necessary, sometimes, that they should stand in a thick smoke to be milked. XVI. The Lumberers. On finding the traces of the lumber-men at the portage of Le Paresseux, above the little cave called La Porte d'Enfer, in the Petite Rivière falling into the main branch of the Mattawan. AND have you penetrated up to this, Ye enterprising souls, for lucre's sake! These wilds not wild enough your feet to miss! These solitudes your echoing axe must wake! Lo! now the leap your plunder cannot take Of these white falls; and, choking all the place, The square-hewn masts a heap'd confusion make. So severed, so disorder'd, oft the race Following the lumberer's task; and we may trace, Alas! their picture in this tumbled wood, |