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Here, the ice being clear, we put on our skates, and glided merrily along towards the spot where we understood the lumberers were at work.
"'The great ugly masses of floating timber move slowly along under the care of a pilot, and the lumberers ride upon the rafts, often without shelter or protection from the weather. They guide themselves by long and powerful poles fixed on pivots, and which act as rudders. As they journey down the stream they sing and shout and make the utmost noise and riot.
The smoke of the fire goes out through a hole in the roof, and the floor is strewn with branches of fir, the only couch the poor hardworking lumberers have to rest upon. When night comes, they turn into the cabin to sleep, and lie with their feet to the fire.
"I have often heard my father tell of the privations of the lumberers, when they have fallen short of provisions, and of the contrivances of himself and old Jacob Morelle, when they were lost for several days, nay, weeks I believe it was.
That autumn, when the harvest was over, the second son, Lewis, set off with some young men of the place to join a company of lumberers, who were, as is their custom, to pass the winter in the woods. It was a time of great prosperity with lumber-merchants then, and good wages could be earned in their service.
'Lumberers, explained Ina, pricking his ears. He would have immediately turned in a contrary direction; but the prospect of seeing a new phase of life was a strong temptation to Captain Argent, so they went forward towards a smoke that curled above a knot of pines.
He had been trained in an English school where he became one of the best boxers. The lumberers on the Ottawa were not practised in this science; they indulged in that kicking, tearing, pommelling sort of mode which is so repugnant to the feelings of an Englishman.
Yet many a settler's family have I seen as roughly lodged, while a better house was being prepared for their reception; and many a gentleman's son has voluntarily submitted to privations as great as these from the love of novelty and adventure, or to embark in the tempting expectation of realizing money in the lumbering trade, working hard, and sharing the rude log shanty and ruder society of those reckless and hardy men, the Canadian lumberers.
Listen to him now, carolling a "chanson" as he manages his smutty cookery. That's the way they sing at everything. 'So the lumberers have a foreman? 'Curious how the French can't invent words expressive of such things, but must adopt ours.
And this operation, repeated for the four sides, squared the pine into such a beam as we see piled in our English timber yards. What was Arthur's surprise to recognise, in the mass of lumberers gathered round a huge mast, the Milesian countenance of Murty Keefe, a discontented emigrant with whom he had picked up a casual acquaintance on the steamboat which took him to Montreal.
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