called out, and a special train with fire-engines was sent up from Montreal. Scores of poor settlers were in the streets, having with difficulty escaped with their lives, and last of all several wretched bears trotted out of the burning woods into the town. The fire we passed through was not at all on this scale, and didn’t seem likely to get ahead. There were the marks of fires of former years on all sides in these forests. Tall stems by hundreds, standing up charred and gaunt out of the middle of the bright green maple underwood, which is fast growing up round them, and in a very short time makes the tangle as thick as ever. Before long we came to small clearings of from three to four acres, on each of which was a rough wooden shanty, with half a dozen wild, brown, healthy-looking children rolling and scrambling about it, and standing up in their single garments to cheer the train. On these plots the trees had all been felled about two feet from the ground, and the brushwood cleared away, and there were crops of Indian corn, oats, or buckwheat growing all round the stumps. Then we came to plots which had been occupied longer, where the shanty had grown into a nice-sized cottage, with a good-sized outhouse near. Here all the stumps had been cleared, and the plot divided by fences, and three or four cows would be poking about. Then we came to a fine river and ran along the bank, passing here and there sawmills of huge size, and stopping at one or two large primitive villages, gathered round a manufactory. In short, in the day’s run we saw Canadian life in all its phases, ending with a delicious twelve miles’ run up the lake in Mr. Allan’s steam yacht, with the whole sky flickering with Northern lights, which shot and played about for our special delight. Our railway party were Mr.