AN UNCOMFORTABLE NIGHT.

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could not sleep. Bryant says in his Thanatopsis, that it should be a great comfort to a man in death, to know that he "lies down with kings and the powerful of the earth." I don't know how it may affect one "in death," but I do know that in vigorous health, it requires more than the mere reflection that the "kings and the great ones of the earth" are snoozing on their couches of down, to make one sleep sweetly in the solemn woods without a friend near him. If I felt inclined to doze, the snapping of the fire, or the stealthy tread of a fox or hedgehog, would startle me from my disturbed slumbers-and there stood the tall trees in the fire light, their huge trunks fading away in the gloom like the columns of some old cathedral at twilight. Once, I could have sworn I saw a bear, and was on the point of shooting, but finally concluded to take a fire-brand in one hand and my rifle in the other, and go towards it, when lo! it turned out to be a black stump. I let it sleep on, and went back to my fire, determined to have a nap. It was all in vain, and yet I had slept soundly in places where I felt at the time there was infinitely more danger than here. I had slept lashed to a bench when the storm was springing our masts, and the sea falling in thunder on the

deck of our staggering ship-I had slept amid the

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Alps and Appenines," nay, worse, in the cabriolet of a French diligence, beside the yelling conducteur. I had slept on the hard floor, and beside living and dead men, but I could not sleep here. There was something so awfully solemn and mysterious in that mighty forest in the rustle of the night breeze through the tops of the hemlocks, and the flutter now and then of a bird disturbed on its perch, that my heart beat audibly in my bosom. Just as my nervousness began to be particularly annoying, there came a flash of lightning, followed by the low growl of distant thunder. This was something I had not calculated upon, and I said to myself, "Well, there is a prospect of my trying Preissnitz's system now, for there will be cold bathing in plenty before morning, and my diet is spare enough, heaven knows, for I haven't even a red-squirrel to roast for my supper. I shall be thankful if one of these rotten hemlocks does not have the rubbing of me down after my bath." Just then the blast swept through the forest like the roar of the sea, and all was still again. Another flash, and as I live, there stood a man amid the trees; I waited in breathless suspense for a second flash but the tread of feet prevented the

A WELCOME VISITOR.

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necessity, and the next instant the Indian (a civilized one) whom I had engaged to go deer hunting with me, approached. The amount of affection I at that moment entertained for the red-skinned gentleman, would, I think, satisfy my wife, if I am ever fortunate enough to have one. He had seen the light of my fire above the trees, and supposing I was lost came after me; and I assure you it was the most profitable short journey he ever made. It turned out that I was not two miles from the settler's house from which I had started. We reached it about 2 o'clock, and I slept

on my straw bed that night without thinking of "the great ones of the earth ”

Yours truly

IV.

A RIVER IN THE FOREST-LIFE-" DRIVING THE RIVER."

BACKWOODS, June 6.

DEAR H:

DID you ever witness a log driving? It is one of the curiosities of the backwoods, where streams are made to subserve the purpose of teams. On the steep mountain side, and along the shores of the brook which in spring time becomes a fiery torrent, tearing madly through the forest, the tall pines and hemlocks are felled in winter and dragged or rolled to the brink. Here every man marks his own, as he would his sheep, and then rolls them in, when the current is swollen by the rains. The melted snow along the acclivities comes in an unbroken sheet of water down, and the streams rise as if by magic to the tops of their banks, and a broad, resistless current goes sweeping like a live and gloomy thing through the deep forest.

The foam bubbles sparkle on the dark bosom that floats them on, and past the boughs that bend with the stream, and by the precipices that frown sternly down upon the tumult; while the rapid waters shoot onward like an arrow, or rather a visible spirit on some mysterious errand, seeking the loneliest and most fearful passages the untrodden wild can furnish. I have seen the waves running like mad creatures in mid ocean, and watched with strange feelings the moonlit deep as it gently rose and fell like a human bosom in the still night; but there is something more mysterious and fearful than these in the calm yet lightninglike speed of a deep, dark river, rushing all alone in its might and majesty through the heart of a vast forest. You cannot see it till you stand on the brink, and then it seems utterly regardless of you or the whole world without, hasting sternly forward to the accomplishment of some dread purpose.

But such romance as this never enters the heart of your backwoodsman. The first question he puts himself, as he thrusts his head through the branches and looks up and down the channel, is "Is the stream high enough to run logs?" If so, then fall to work : away go the logs, one after another, down the moun