Immediately after breakfast they divide into three gangs, one of which cuts down the trees, another hews them, and the third is employed with the oxen in hauling the timber, either in one general road leading to the banks of the nearest stream, or at once to the stream itself. Fallen trees and other impediments in the way of the oxen are cut away with the axe.” Such is the toilsome life of a lumberer from October until the month of April; amidst forests covered with snow, and exposed to all the severity of the winter, without experiencing any of its comforts. But it is when the snow begins to dissolve in April, and the “freshets” come down the rivers, that the lumberer’s most trying labours commence. The timber which has been cut during the winter is now thrown into the stream, and floated down to some convenient place for constructing a raft. The water at this period, owing to the snow water in the freshets, is more intensely cold than in the depth of winter; the lumberers are obliged to be immersed in it from morning till night, and it is seldom less than six weeks from the time the floating the timber commences, till the rafts are delivered into the merchant’s hands. This course of life, it is evident, must undermine the constitution; and the sudden transition from the extreme cold of winter in the backwoods to the scorching heat of the summer sun, must tend still farther to weaken and reduce the system. In order to sustain the cold, and stimulate the organs, these men are in the habit of swallowing immoderate quantities of ardent spirits; we cannot, then, wonder that premature old age and shortness of days should form the almost inevitable fate of a lumberer. Should one of them, more prudent than his fellows, save a little money, and be enabled for the last few years of his life to exist without labour, he only drags out a miserable existence—the victim of rheumatism, and all the miseries of a broken down constitution. [Illustration: _Falls on the St. John River._]