I met him with a fixed and vacant stare, without uttering a word. He returned my gaze with an expression of inquisitive astonishment. "'You don't seem to know me,' I observed. The tones of my _voice_ increased his astonishment, for they seemed familiar, but the strangeness of my _appearance_ confounded him, and I could not refrain from laughing outright. Finally, half suspecting whom I _might_ be, he exclaimed, with much energy, '_Nick! in the name of G--d, is it you?_' I soon satisfied them on this point, while I briefly related my night's adventure. Their astonishment was great at seeing me in such an extraordinary plight, but not greater than was my satisfaction to meet them and to obtain the succor which I needed. After breakfast, some of the men went in pursuit of my horse, saddle, and boots. The last two they found on a little island in the stream, where, for fear of losing them by the flood, I had lashed them to a stump the night before." Having thus finished his story and replenished his pipe, the old man leaned back against the camp walls and enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke, while he listened, in turn, to the various incidents in the experience of others, of which his own had been suggestive. Finally, after some little discussion as to the precise location which each should occupy on the new bed, all hands "turned in," to live over again the fortunes of the day in the fantastic dreams of night. Having completed our own cabin, we proceed next to construct a hovel for the oxen, which are yet behind. In erecting this, the same order in architecture is observed as in that of the camp, the timber of which it is composed, however, being much larger than that with which our own habitation is constructed. With the trunks of trees the walls are carried up nearly equal in height, leaving one side, however, enough lower than the other to give a moderate pitch to the roof, which is covered with the same kind of material as that of the camp. In the camp for the workmen there is no floor but the earth; the ox hovel, however, has a flooring made of small poles laid closely together, and hewed down with some degree of smoothness with the adz, and in the final finish the crevices in the walls are plastered with clay or ox manure. A temporary shed is thrown up in front, which serves as a depôt for hay and provender.