they say, it is used in tanning, and gives its subtle, sacerdotal fragrance to Russia leather.  But here, in the woods, it serves more primitive ends.  It can be peeled off in a huge roll from some giant tree and fashioned into a swift canoe to carry man over the waters.  It can be cut into square sheets to roof his shanty in the forest.  It is the paper on which he writes his woodland despatches, and the flexible material which he bends into drinking-cups of silver lined with gold.  A thin strip of it wrapped around the end of a candle and fastened in a cleft stick makes a practicable chandelier.  A basket for berries, a horn to call the lovelorn moose through the autumnal woods, a canvas on which to draw the outline of great and memorable fish—­all these and many other indispensable luxuries are stored up for the skilful woodsman in the birch bark.

Only do not rob or mar the tree, unless you really need what it has to give you.  Let it stand and grow in virgin majesty, ungirdled and unscarred, while the trunk becomes a firm pillar of the forest temple, and the branches spread abroad a refuge of bright green leaves for the birds of the air.  Nature never made a more excellent piece of handiwork.  “And if,” said my lady Greygown, “I should ever become a dryad, I would choose to be transformed into a white-birch.  And then, when the days of my life were numbered, and the sap had ceased to flow, and the last leaf had fallen, and the dry bark hung around me in ragged curls and streamers, some wandering hunter would come in the wintry night and touch a lighted coal to my body, and my spirit would flash up in a fiery chariot into the sky.”

The chief occupation of our idle days on the Grande Decharge was fishing.  Above the camp spread a noble pool, more than two miles in circumference, and diversified with smooth bays and whirling eddies, sand beaches and rocky islands.  The river poured into it at the head, foaming and raging down a long chute, and swept out of it just in front of our camp in a merry, musical rapid.  It was full of fish of various kinds—­long-nosed pickerel, wall-eyed pike, and stupid chub.  But the prince of the pool was the fighting ouananiche, the little salmon of St. John.

Here let me chant thy praise, thou noblest and most high-minded fish, the cleanest feeder, the merriest liver, the loftiest leaper, and the bravest warrior of all creatures that swim!  Thy cousin, the trout, in his purple and gold with crimson spots, wears a more splendid armour than thy russet and silver mottled with black, but thine is the kinglier nature.  His courage and skill compared with thine

     “Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.”