sticks to mark the channel.  We landed on this forest in the sea by Quash’s house, the only human residence on the island.  It was larger and better, and more substantial than the negro huts in general, and he seemed proud and pleased to do the honours to us.  Thence we set off, by my desire, in the wagon through the woods to the beach; road there was none, save the rough clearing that the men cut with their axes before us as we went slowly on.  Presently, we came to a deep dry ditch, over which there was no visible means of proceeding.  Israel told me if we would sit still he would undertake to drive the wagon into and out of it; and so, indeed, he did, but how he did it is more than I can explain to you now, or could explain to myself then.  A less powerful creature than Montreal could never have dragged us through; and when we presently came to a second rather worse edition of the same, I insisted upon getting out and crossing it on foot.  I walked half a mile while the wagon was dragged up and down the deep gulley, and lifted bodily over some huge trunks of fallen trees.  The wood through which we now drove was all on fire, smoking, flaming, crackling, and burning round us.  The sun glared upon us from the cloudless sky, and the air was one cloud of sand-flies and mosquitoes.  I covered both my children’s faces with veils and handkerchiefs, and repented not a little in my own breast of the rashness of my undertaking.  The back of Israel’s coat was covered so thick with mosquitoes that one could hardly see the cloth; and I felt as if we should be stifled, if our way lay much longer through this terrible wood.  Presently we came to another impassable place, and again got out of the wagon, leaving Israel to manage it as best he could.  I walked with the baby in my arms a quarter of a mile, and then was so overcome with the heat that I sat down in the burning wood, on the floor of ashes, till the wagon came up again.  I put the children and M——­ into it, and continued to walk till we came to a ditch in a tract of salt marsh, over which Israel drove triumphantly, and I partly jumped and was partly hauled over, having declined the entreaties of several of the men to let them lie down and make a bridge with their bodies for me to walk over.  At length we reached the skirt of that tremendous wood, to my unspeakable relief, and came upon the white sand hillocks of the beach.  The trees were all strained crooked, from the constant influence of the sea-blast.  The coast was a fearful-looking stretch of dismal, trackless sand, and the ocean lay boundless and awful beyond the wild and desolate beach, from which we were now only divided by a patch of low coarse-looking bush, growing as thick and tangled as heather, and so stiff and compact that it was hardly possible to drive through it.  Yet in spite of this several lads who had joined our train rushed off into it in search of rabbits, though Israel called repeatedly to them, warning them of the danger of rattlesnakes.  We drove at last