Grim and rocky and black-water'd as the demesne hereabout is, however, you must not think genial humanity, and comfort, and good-living are not to be met. Before I began this memorandum I made a first-rate breakfast of sea-trout, finishing off with wild raspberries. I find smiles and courtesy everywhere--physiognomies in general curiously like those in the United States--(I was astonish'd to find the same resemblance all through the province of Quebec.) In general the inhabitants of this rugged country (Charlevoix, Chicoutimi and Tadousac counties, and lake St. John region) a simple, hardy population, lumbering, trapping furs, boating, fishing, berry-picking and a little farming. I was watching a group of young boatmen eating their early dinner--nothing but an immense loaf of bread, had apparently been the size of a bushel measure, from which they cut chunks with a jack-knife. Must be a tremendous winter country this, when the solid frost and ice fully set in. CEDAR-PLUMS LIKE-NAMES (_Back again in Camden and down in Jersey_) One time I thought of naming this collection "Cedar-Plums Like" (which I still fancy wouldn't have been a bad name nor inappropriate.) A melange of loafing, looking, hobbling, sitting, traveling--a little thinking thrown in for salt, but very little--not only summer but all seasons--not only days but nights--some literary meditations--books, authors examined, Carlyle, Poe, Emerson tried, (always under my cedar-tree, in the open air, and never in the library)--mostly the scenes everybody sees, but some of my own caprices, meditations, egotism--truly an open air and mainly summer formation--singly, or in clusters--wild and free and somewhat acrid--indeed more like cedar-plums than you might guess at first glance.