The only house I could get was new,--so new that we moved in while the floors were still wet. The lumber in it was green, and we could not open the sashes for months; but before winter came, the shrinkage caused the windows to rattle like castanets. To get our furniture there, we had to cross the railway tracks twice,--once the regular road, and then the branch which ran to the great furnace at the point. And yet so new was everything in this old town, that our street had not been graded, and our wagons had to cross land where they sunk up to the axles. A few miles up the road the deer, the wolves, and black bear lived; and no less than eleven deer were seen in the road at one time near Allenville. We moved in the month of June, and put up our base-burner, and started the fire. The climate is delicious from June to October; the air and waters are as clear as crystal. You can see fish forty feet below you, and the color of the pebbles at the bottom. There is an indescribable beauty about these northern shores; the tender green of the larch-fir, or tamarack, the different shades of blue-green among the cedars, the spruce, hemlock, and balsam, mixed with the lovely birch, and multi-colored rocks, make up some of the loveliest scenery on the continent. Little islands, so small that but one or two trees can find root, up to the islands that take hours to steam by, while the streams team with trout and grayling, the lakes with white-fish, muskalonge, and mackinaw trout and herring. Thousands of men are engaged in the fisheries, and millions of dollars are invested. You sit at your door, and can see the home and people of old France, with their primitive canoe, and at the same time see propellers of three thousand tons' burden glide stately by. XI. A BRAND NEW WOODS VILLAGE. It does not take long to build a new village on the prairie,--the hardest work, the clearing of the ground, is already done; but here in the dense forest it is a different thing, even when the railway runs through it. First the men go in, and begin to clear the ground. It is virgin soil, and not an inch of ground but has something growing. Giant maples--some of them bird's-eye, some curly--are cut down and made into log heaps; black walnuts are burned up, that, made into veneer, would bring thousands of dollars. Such was the state of things within twelve years. To-day it is different. The settler will take a quarter section, bark the trees to find the desired kind, cut them down, and leave for another section. Rich companies came in, and began to devastate the forests to make charcoal, until the State had to make a law that only a certain number of acres in the hundred may be cut.