XII

An incident in ascending French River.

GLEAMING through clouds, the low and western sun
Of river-side lights up the rocky face;
See there, as by magician's lantern, run
Canoe, men, paddles, all, in mimic race;
Instant our men accept the challenged chace;
With shout, with bended back, with splashing

hand,

Urge their light vessel to redoubled pace,

And keep the equal strife, till where the land Recedes, their rival drops. The rugged band, Perchance, may picture in their harmless sport Full many a scene where loftier figures stand In scheming world, gay circle, princely court. Men, to a proverb, shadows vain pursue, For nothing strive, and false confound with true.

XIII.

On losing a Pencil in French River.

(Rivière des Français.)

АH! river named of France, let reason judge,
My silver-mounted implement to thee,

If I am greatly blameable to grudge,

Seized, swallow'd, as by ocean, plunderer free;

My only pencil left,-unhappy me!

Far off, like misadventure chanced before, And then I lost a gift of love; but see

What thou hast done by robbing me once more. Unfurnish'd—but my trifling now is o'er

I think of her whose hand the token gave, When last I left my native Albion's shore,

In happiest hope since yielded to the grave. Full many a hundred lines her gift has traced; Not all, I dare to hope, are wholly waste.

XIV,

To the Fire-fly.

Paulùm sepultæ distat inertiæ
Celata virtus.

FIRE-FLY, thou art a pretty, pleasing thing:

In evening's dusk, we catch, and thickening

night,

Now here, now there, by closed or opening wing,

In grass and bushes wild, thy skimmering light: It meets, it shuns, it meets again the sight;

And this we note, with emblematic aim,

In stillness thou art dark, in motion bright.

We, men and Christians, are not we the same? Ev'n pagan poet knew that virtue's name

But ill to hidden excellence applies;

H

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
Of lighter torment, is the plague of flies :
Not as of Egypt once the punishment 3,

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

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