mourning, and appeared once more habited in green), they reached the fine district they had so recently traversed. It presented many natural advantages for the formation of a future home. A river of good water flowed through it, and the hills near were covered with the choicest timber, whilst in one direction grass-covered plains spread as far as the eye could reach. The rising ground near the river, which first attracted Dodge's attention on the occasion of the breaking up of the bark canoe, was eventually fixed upon as the best site on which to erect the huts.
After months of toil the buildings assumed something like a habitable appearance, and could our readers have visited the spot at this time, they might have envied the evident satisfaction and honest pride with which the labourers regarded their achievements. How delightful was the sleep which visited them beneath the roof raised by their own right arms!
The weekly day of rest did not pass unheeded, though no aspiring pinnacles directed the eye heavenward, and no sonorous bells echoed through the misty woods proclaiming one spot more sacred than the rest of earth. They were happy days too, those Sundays in the far bush, spent in the solitudes of the primeval forest. Under their peaceful influence labors and past privations were forgotten, and those to come unthought of; thus the mind was left free to wander where it would. On such a day, when everything below was bright and lovely, and each leaf and flower seemed rejoicing in the glorious sunshine, when the eye instinctively looking upwards pierced through the rich tracery of boughs and leaves, and resting on
"the blue sky
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in Heaven,"
Slinger reclined in front of the hut on some logs arranged so
