"My friends," continued the trapper, "we are now at home. This valley which we shall soon cultivate and bring to prosperity and civilisation, is the Valley of the Deer." "Long live the Valley of the Deer!" cried all. The squatter then headed the caravan, and led it to the spot he had selected for a settlement. It was twelve o'clock. At a little after two the ancient trees were falling beneath the axes of the Americans. CHAPTER VIII. DIANA DICKSON AND HER FOE. The activity of the North Americans is prodigious; they have a peculiar way of handling the axe which is marvellous. Their mode of procedure is almost incomprehensible, and goes beyond anything the imagination can conceive. Fifty American woodmen will in a month clear the whole of a vast forest tract. They always begin with the idea, a very logical one, though a proud one, that the modest plantation they commence may in time become an important town, and they act accordingly. The land is divided into lots, paths traced by the axe stand for streets, large open spaces represent squares, while notched trees indicate where the houses, shops, workshops, and other buildings are to be. As soon as this is all settled they go to work with feverish haste, and trees of vast dimensions fall with a rapidity which is simply amazing. Then they build the stables and sheds, then the blacksmith's forge, the carpenter's shop, and the water sawmill, of which the workmen at once take possession. The earth, still encumbered by the roots of trees, is dug up and sown at once. Everything goes on at the same time with the utmost regularity and industry. In a few days the landscape is completely changed, and there, where had existed a virgin forest, with all its deep and impenetrable mysteries, suddenly arises, as if by means of the enchanted wand, the embryo of a town, which ten years later will be a rich flourishing emporium of commerce, and of which the population, coming from all parts of the world, will perhaps be fifty or sixty thousand. But the squatter, the founder of the new city, will have disappeared, without leaving a trace behind. Nobody knows anything about him, not even his name. His work done, he will have taken his melancholy departure, frightened to see the desert so populated, and that civilisation from which he had fled so near; he probably has fled out West in search of a new virgin land, which he will transform like the first, without deriving any more advantage from it, finally to end his days, shot in some miserable Indian ambuscade, or killed by the claws of a grizzly, or perhaps dies of misery and hunger in some unknown corner of the prairie. Joshua Dickson did not act differently from his fellows; after dividing the valley into two, and handing over half to his brother, he fixed his residence near the fork of the two rivers. Samuel Dickson fixed his residence at the other end of the valley, near the river called the Deer River.