Smith, who, as Springer coolly informs us, "had exerted his voice to the utmost," whilst the catamount was devouring him in detail, (we can perfectly imagine a man bellowing like twenty bulls under such circumstances,) was found by his friends in a state of dreadful exhaustion and suffering, and was carried to camp on a litter. He ultimately recovered, but had sustained irreparable injuries. "Such desperate encounters are of rare occurrence," Springer quietly adds. We should think they were. Really these loggers are cool hands. Encounters with black bears are much more common, we are informed. These are strong fellows, clever at parrying blows, and at wrenching the weapon from their assailant's hand--very tenacious of life, and confirmed robbers. Springer and his comrades were once, whilst ascending a river, followed by one of them for several days. He was bent upon plunder, and one night he walked off with a bundle containing clothing, boots, shaving implements, and other things, for which it might be thought a bear could have little occasion. He examined his prize in the neighbourhood of the camp, tore the clothes to shreds, and chewed up the cow-hide boots and the handle of a razor. From the roof of a log-house, which the woodmen erected a few miles farther on, he carried off a ten-gallon keg of molasses, set it on one end, knocked the head in or out, and was about to enjoy the feast, when he was discovered, pursued, and at last killed. At page 140 we find a capital account of a fight between a family of bears (father, mother, and cubs) and two foresters; and at page 100 the stirring-up of a bear's den is graphically described. The pine tree is subject to disease of more than one kind, the most frequent being a sort of cancer, known amongst lumber-men as "Conk" or "Konkus," whose sole external manifestation is a small brown spot, usually at several feet from the ground, and sometimes no larger than a shilling. The trees thus afflicted are noway inferior to the soundest in size and apparent beauty; but on cutting into them the rot is at once evident, the wood being reddish in colour, and of spungy texture. "Sometimes it shoots upwards, in imitation of the streaming light of the aurora borealis; in others downwards, and even both ways, preserving the same appearance." Unscrupulous loggers cheat the unwary by driving a knot or piece of a limb of the same tree into the plague-spot, and hewing it off smoothly, so as to give it the appearance of a natural knot. A great many pines are hollow at the base or butt, and these hollows are the favourite winter-retreats of Bruin the bear.