The northern and elder States of the great American Union have ceased to be associated in our minds with those ideas of wild and romantic adventure which are inseparably connected with some of their younger brethren far west and south. There is nothing suggestive of romance in such names as New York, Maine, and Pennsylvania: cotton bales, keen traders and repudiated debts, drab coats, wooden clocks, and counterfeit nutmegs, compose the equivocal and unpoetical visions they conjure up to European imaginations. But drop we our eyes down the map to lawless Arkansas, feverish Louisiana, and debateable Texas, or westwards to the still newer State of California, and a host of stirring and picturesque associations throng upon our memory. Strange scenes and a motley array pass before us. Bands of hunters and trappers, scarce more civilised than the Indians with whom they war, or gentler than the buffalo which yields them sport and food; predatory armies, for Mexico bound, keen for spoil and regardless of right; caravans of adventurous gold-seekers braving the perilous passage of the Rocky Mountains; hardy squatters, axe in hand, hewing themselves a home in the heart of the wilderness; innumerable traits of courage and endurance--incredible sufferings and countless crimes--make up a picture-gallery unrivalled of its kind. In those districts, not a league of prairie, not a mountain or stream, not a _bayou_ or _barranca_, but has derived recent and vivid interest from the animated sketches of Sealsfield, Ruxton, Wise, and a host of other graphic and vigorous delineators. As if to vindicate the claims to interest of the northern American provinces, a Down-easter, Springer by name, who hails from the State of Maine, has exhibited, in a curious little volume, the adventurous side of life in _his_ part of the Union. At a first glance, there would appear to be few created things whose history was likely to be less interesting than that of a Yankee pine-log. Get astride it with Springer, and paddle up the Penobscot, clearing rapids and other impediments as best you may on so unpromising a float--and, before reaching the place where it grew, you shall marvel at the skill and daring expended, and at the risks run to procure it. Springer, who was reared amongst the pine forests, which his axe afterwards helped to thin, is an enthusiastic woodsman, and feels "kinder jealous" that whilst the habits and adventures of many classes of his countrymen have occupied skilful writers and public attention, no chronicler should have been found for the deeds and perils of that numerous class to which he for some years belonged. To supply this deficiency, he himself, although more used to handle axe than goose-quill, has written a plain and unpretending account of scenes and incidents which he shared in and witnessed. The freshness of the subject, and the honest earnestness of the man, would atone for clumsier treatment than it has met with at his hands.