We cut young firs, up to a foot thick, cherry poles from fifteen to thirty feet high, vine-maple as thick as the cherry but only half as tall, and here and there a tough piece of crab-apple. The brush was so thick that what was cut could only fall one way, so that the patch each man had cut by dinner-time was ridiculously small. Of course, the whole valley was not brush-covered--very far from it; there were great open spaces of clear grass, with here and there a tuft of blue lupin and rose-bushes. The firs once cut off were done with, and the stump would rot out of the ground in a year or two. The cherry-brush was no bad enemy, either; the young shoots would sprout from the root next year, but sheep would bite them off and kill the cherry out in a couple of seasons. But by all accounts the vine-maple was as tough in life as in texture, and that it was tough in texture our poor arms testified when night came. For a few days we tried to be our own cooks, one of the party in turn being detailed for the purpose; but much good victuals was spoiled. So I sent into town for a Chinaman cook. That too much Chinaman is bad, I am prepared to support my neighbors in believing; but enough Chinaman to have one at call whenever you think fit to send for him is a comfort indeed. So Jem, as he called himself, came out to us. He wore a smile all day long on his broad face; and he was caught reading earnestly in a poetry-book he must have found left out of one of our bags; so I conclude he was a learned Chinaman. But he had strange fancies for his own eating. He cooked a wild-cat that was shot, and we laughed; but he proceeded next to skin and eat a skunk that had fallen a victim to its curiosity to see how white men lived, and had trespassed inside the hut; and that was too much. We tasted, or thought we tasted, skunk in the bread for a day or two, so we sent Jem back. Turn out at five, breakfast over by soon after six, work till noon; then from one till six; then supper, and camp-fire, and pipes and talk till nine, and then to bed. Such was our regular life, certainly a healthy and not an unpleasant one. [Sidenote: _DEER AND HUNTING._]