nothing worse than the other crafts and wiles of our complicated machinery, in which the stronger tyrannize over the weaker, and every deed and word is shackled by the hollow mockery-the giant hypocrisy-of conventionalism. It is in England that humanity is most shackled, and curbed, and oppressed by the offspring codes of a narrow civilization, rather than to endure which it would be a happier lot to sniff the woodland perfume of the primeval wilderness, and make nature alone tributary to our individual wants, far away from the pale of civilization, where the white man as yet hath never trodden. Fain would I echo the words of the last of Wauwaurrong, and exclaim

Give me the fierce wild wassailry of yore,
Now but remember'd in my country's lore;
Give me a gunya, I should spurn a throne,
And cherish more a boomerang my own,
Than all the pomp conventionalism I see
Gather'd around from which I long to flee,
(Een as the eagle doth in search of prey),
And plough the distance lone and far away,
Far as the desert by gay Kordofan,

Or farther still, where never yet trod man.
Give me a free, wild, boundless solitude,
With panthers for companions and food,

Where lions and hyenas prowl awide,

And stealthy tigers spring and leopards hide,
For I would rule them with an eye of fire,
And tame them with the music of my lyre.
Give me the quick Red Indian's thrilling whoop,
The hungry vulture's swift unerring swoop.
These are the things I love to hear and see,
But better still to be alone and free

On some wild cragland where the ocean's roar
Blends up with wind-mouth'd caverns and the shore
Is desolate of man, there would I dwell,
And build my gunya in some covert dell.

That, however, which next approaches such a state is the enterprise which impels a man into a strange and distant country, there to combat with the rude hand of nature, and build up to himself a habitation, become a founder of a new nation, the basis of whose social structure may rest on more independent ground than does the tinsel fabric of his mother country, and whose children may deck his memory with laurels. Such a career, gilded with wealth and attended by all the excitement and pleasures of dazzling promise, is open to any and every son of enterprise, who, discontented with his present lot and endowed with physical energy, may go forth to the New El Dorado of the

North Pacific, where the banner of England flaunts in the breeze, and Hope ever smiling, "leads on to fortune;" where millions may revel away in luxurious delight, and the sun of liberty will ever shine..

CHAPTER X.

ABORIGINAL AND DESCRIPTIVE.

FORT ST. JAMES, the depôt of British Columbia, erected by the Hudson's Bay Company, stands near the outlet of Stuart's Lake, and commands a magnificent view of the surrounding country. The lake is about fifty miles in length, and from three to four miles in breadth, stretching away to the north and north-east for about twenty miles; the view from the Fort embraces nearly the whole of this section of it, which is studded with beautiful islets, that repose like bouquets of flowers upon the bright and smiling face of the living waters. The western shore is low, and indented by a number of small bays formed by

wooded points projecting into the lake, the background rising abruptly into a ridge of hills of varied height and magnitude.

On the east the view is limited to a range of two or three miles by the intervention of a high promontory, from which the eye glances to the snow-clad summits of the Rocky Mountains, that loom far in the distance, an imposing panorama of the bold and beautiful, hewn out in rugged grandeur, stern and picturesque. There is an Indian village, situated in a lovely spot, at the outlet of this lake. The houses, however, are few, and of very slight and simple construction; they are formed of stakes driven into the ground, a squareslab of wood being placed horizontally along the top of the wall made by the stakes, to which the latter are fastened by strips of willow bark. This enclosure, which is of a square form, is roofed in by placing two. strong posts at each gable, which support the ridge-pole on which the roof-sticks are placed, one end resting on the ridge-pole and the other on the wall, the whole being covered with pinetree bark. There is, in general, a door at each end, which is cut in the wall after the structure