"Well, look after your feet, at all events," said the other, as the shoemaker tripped again. "You do nothing but stumble. No; shares are beginning to fall, so far I am of your opinion; but what matters; _I_ shall eat my way through; I've no fear of that; and if M. Von Schwanthal only shoots as much game as he has promised, and we get meat, and such meat, too, three times a day, I don't mind about this little mud excursion. Moreover, I've been on the look-out for some time past after a deer; it's strange that, in such a forest as this, the game should not be running about more plentifully. But, shoemaker, did you imagine the river on which our town was to be built, like what it really is?" "How? what is it really? it does not exist at all. Call _that_ a river!" "Well, what I mean is, did you imagine it like what it is?" "I don't exactly know," said the shoemaker, with a sly laugh at the tailor, "I have not examined it so narrowly as you have, you know; you have a _well-grounded_ acquaintance with it." "A fine subject for joking, to be sure," said the little one, indignantly; "suppose I had been drowned?" "If we creep along in this style," said Schmidt, who now joined in the conversation, "we shall certainly not come to our journey's end to-day; we don't advance a hundred yards straight forward, before some tree or other has to be cut down to make room for the wagon. Are there no foresters[16] here, I wonder?" "Yes, a nice place this for foresters," said the brewer; "foresters in _this_ wood! But if we don't soon reach some place where one may get something to drink, I shall get thirsty. What do you call all the towns, then, that are said to be in this neighbourhood? Deuce take it; where there are so many towns, there must surely be some village or other to be met with." The worthy brewer was not aware, that in the United States of North America everything, even a group of two or three houses only, is called a town. A grand name, some ancient Greek or Roman one if possible, throws sand into the eyes of foreigners, and the land speculators in the large towns often sell "lots," as they call them, to emigrants, who expect to find a lively, animated place, and instead, have to be thankful if they can meet with anybody at all there to supply them with bread to begin with.