even if I could have commanded the means to commence a new career, I could discover no path into which, with any chance of success, I could strike; and a disappointed heart, beneath the load of three score years, hath but ineffectual energies.

"In this state of hopelessness, being then at the sea-side, I went out one day with two fishermen in their boat; we had not been long on the fishing-ground, when the wind began to blow strongly from the land, and the appearance of the heavens indicated an approaching tempest. The fishermen became alarmed, and made for the shore: for me, I felt no fear, I saw no danger, but in living too long. An abrupt heave of the sea upset the boat; the two fishermen were drowned: I was, however, saved as by a miracle, being somehow enabled to mount upon the bottom of the boat, where I remained upwards of three hours at the mercy of the waves, and drifting from the shore before the wind. Indebted to instinct rather than resolution for the preservation of my life: what was there to me in life to make it worth preserving?

"At last, a vessel from the French coast came in sight; and the squall having by that time abated, she discovered me, and bore down to my assistance in time to save me before the dashing waves and the cold had quite extinguished the embers of life.

"The captain, with the urbanity of his nation, contributed every thing on board which could minister to my restoration; but more than two days elapsed before I was in a condition to express my gratitude, and they had no cordial for a broken heart.

"My reflections in the mean time were inexpressibly painful. It could not but be thought by my friends that I had perished with the fishermen. What friends?

"The ship being bound to New York, I was carried thither, where, soon after my arrival, by the good offices of the captain, I found employment as a clerk; and with the little earnings of that station, I have been enabled to come here, where I hope to spend the cheerless evening of my days in unmolested tranquillity."

His tale was told with simplicity, and

produced a sorrowful sympathy for him: no observation was made on it; we looked only at one another; and the rain having then passed off, we rose singly, and went

away.

CHAPTER V.

"Go to, proud fool, count not on Fortune's favour, Her gifts are gleams on water."

IN the meantime, Amidab Peters, who was our guide from Olympus, with the two boys, was busy chopping down the trees on my farm, and preparing logs for a house, while I, as a Boss on the roads, was receiving what would have been thought great wages in a town even in America. But the hard fare to which my duty subjected me, and the frequent instances in which I saw men pulled down with the hatchet in their hands by the ague, made the employment so unsatisfactory, that I resolved to retire from it, and give my whole attention to

my own land, notwithstanding the infirm construction of my frame for the toil of clearing.

Moreover, by this time I had learnt something of the expedients of settlers, and was convinced that girdling the trees is a quicker and better way for the first operations of new beginners, especially such as have had no experience of the woods, nor have been practised with the axe, than the laborious undertaking of hewing down each particular huge tree by itself. To girdle is to cut a ring round the bark of the trunk into the timber, which causes the tree to die; in the course of two or three years it falls, and being then well dried, is easily burnt off; as this work does not require a powerful arm, it suited me exactly.

As soon as a sufficient number of proper logs for my house had been prepared, and brought to the place by a team of oxen hired for the purpose, I made a bee; that is, I collected as many of the most expert and able-bodied of the settlers to assist at the raising, by which I got the walls of a most excellent house up in the course of a single day, without peril of life or limb among the workmen; a rare blessing, and

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