sheathed, and short tail. Its principal prey is the common or Northern hare, which abounds in these regions: but at times the loup-cervier will invade the poultry-yards; and he is even held to account, now and then, for the murder of innocent lambs, and the disappearance of tender piglings whose mothers were so negligent as to let them stray alone into the brushwood. These fierce cats have been killed, occasionally, quite close to Quebec. When thus driven to approach populous districts, it must be from scarcity of their accustomed food; for they are usually very savage and ravenous, when found in such places. I know an instance, myself, in which a gentleman of Quebec, riding a little way from the town, was suddenly pounced upon and attacked by a loup-cervier, near the Plains of Abraham. He struck the animal with his whip several times, but it persisted in following him, and he got rid of it only by putting spurs to his horse and beating it in speed. The animal was killed soon afterwards, near the same place.

I had heard of another variety of wildcat, seen at rare intervals in the same districts. The habitant is rather foggy on the subject of zoology in general, and my attempts to obtain a satisfactory description of this animal were futile. Some of the definitions of this rare chatsauvage, indeed, might have answered for specifications of a griffin, or of a vampire-bat. At last, one day, when walking about in the market-place at Quebec, I saw a crowd assembled round a grayclad countryman, who presided over a small box on which the words ChatSauvage were painted. Now was my time to set the question at rest. I invested sixpence in the show. When a good number of sixpences had been paid in, the proprietor opened his box, out from which crawled a fat, familiar raccoon, apparently as much at home in the market-place as he could have been in the middle of his native swamp. And this was the mysterious "wild-cat" about which I had asked so many questions and heard so many stories!

It is noticeable that thunder-storms, travelling from the westward toward Quebec, usually diverge across the valley of the St. Charles in the direction of Lorette, and coast along the ridge of ground on which that place is situated to Charlesbourg, a small village lying about four miles to the east of it, upon the ridge. There the storms appear to culminate, pouring out the full vials of their wrath upon the devoted habitans of white-cotted Charlesbourg. The wayfarer who wends through this rustical district will hardly fail to observe the prevailing taste for lightning-rods. The smallest cottage has at least two of these fire-irons, one upon each gable; houses of more pretensions are provided with an indefinite number; and the big white church has its purple roof so bristled with them, that the pause which a flash of lightning must necessarily make before deciding by which of them to come down must enable any tolerably active person to get out of the way in good time. And yet, with all these defenders of the faithful, I remember how the steeple was taken clean off the big white church, in splinters, one wild night after I had watched a long array of cloud-chariots rolling heavily away eastward along the ridge: also, how a farmer's handsome daughter, the belle of the village, sat upright and dead upon a sofa when people came again to their eyesight after a blinding flash. So much for lightningrods! so much for the mystic iron!

When the day of the Fête Dieu comes round, Quebec and its neighboring villages are all alive for the celebration of the fête, which takes place on the following Sunday. Then the great suburb of St. Roch is a sight to see. Every street of it is converted into a green alley, embowered with young pine-trees, and flaunting with banners temporarily constructed out of all available pieces of dry-goods, lent by the devoted shop-keepers of the olden Church. Most extraordinary lithographs of holy personages are hung out upon the door-posts and walls of every house. Bowers shading curious little shrines

meet the eye everywhere. The white tables of the little shrines are loaded with gilt and tinselled offerings in immense variety. Curious bosses, like lace-pillows got up for church, swing pendent from the verdant pine-branches. The vast parish-church, of sombre gray masonry, flashing carnival-fires from the tinplated pepper-boxes and slopes of its acre of roof, is receiving or disgorging a variegated multitude of good Catholics. Within, it is a mass of foliage, a wilderness of shrines, a cloud-land of incense. Long processions of maidens all in white, and others of maidens all in pale watchetblue, are threading the principal streets. They are not all very religious maidens, I am afraid; because, as sure as fate, one very young one of those robed in pure white "made eyes" at me as she passed. Now all this display in Quebec and its suburbs is set forth on a great scale and with bewildering turmoil; but if you want to see it in miniature presentment, you must pass down through St. Roch, and take the road to Lorette. Arrived among the sauvages, for so the Canadian habitant invariably calls his Indian brother, who is often as like him as one pea is like another, you will there see the little old Huron church decked out in humble imitation of its younger, but bigger brothers in the city. The lanes between the log-houses are embowered in a modest way, and the drapery is eked out by many a yellow flannel petticoat and pair of scarlet leggings that dally riotously with each other in the breeze. The shrines are certainly less magnificent than those fairy bowers of the elf-land St. Roch, but there is a good deal of beaded peltry and bark-work about them, giving them, in a small way, the character of aboriginal bazaars. The Hurons are bons Catholiques, and everything connected with the fête is conducted with a solemnity becoming the character of the Christian red man. So decorous, indeed, are the little sauvagesses forming the miniature processions, that I do not remember ever detecting the eyes of any of them wandering and wantoning around, like those

of the naughty little processional in white about whose conduct I just now complained.

The instinct of the French-Canadian for Indian trading has led one of that race to establish a general store close by the Huron village, though on the habitant side of the stream. The gay printed cottons indispensable to the belle sauvagesse are here to be found, as well as the blue blankets and the white, of so much account in the wardrobe of the women as well as of the men. Here, too, are to be had the assorted beads and silks and worsteds used in the embroidery of moccasons, epaulettes, and such articles; nor is the quality of the Cognac kept on band by Joe for his customers to be characterized as despicable. Indeed, it would be hazardous to aver that anything is not to be had, for the proper compensation, in Joe's establishment,- that is, anything that could possibly be required by the most exacting sauvage or sauvagesse, from a strap of sleigh-bells to a redframed looking-glass. Out of that store, too, comes a deal of the vivid drapery displayed upon the Fête Dieu, and much of the art-union resource combined in the attractive cheap lithograph element so edifying to the connoisseur.

I think it was one of those fêtes — if not, another bright summer holidaythat I once saw darkly disturbed in this quiet little hamlet. Standing upon the table-rock that juts out at the foot of the fall so as to half-bridge over the lowermost eddy, I saw a small object topple over the summit of the cascade. It was nothing but a common pail or stablebucket, as I perceived, when it glided past, almost within arm's length of me, and disappeared down the winding gorge. When I went up again to the road, I saw a crowd of holiday people standing near the little inn. They were solemn and speechless, and, on approaching, I saw that they were gazing upon the body of a man, dead and sadly crushed and mutilated. He was a calèche-driver from Quebec, well known to the small community; and although it does not seem

any great height from the roadway near the inn to the tumbled rocks by the river's edge just above the fall, yet it was a drop to mash and kill the poor fellow dead enough, when his foot slipped, as he descended the unsafe path to get water for his horse. A dweller in great cities -say, for instance, one who lives within decent distance of such a charming locality as that called the Five Points in New York - could hardly realize the amount of awe, that an event so trifling as a sudden and violent death will spread over a primitive village community. This happened in the French division of the place, which, of course, was decorated to the utmost ability of the people in honor of the fête and so palpable was the gloom cast over all by the circumstance, that the bright flannels flaunting from the cordons stretched across the way seemed to darken into palls, and the gay red streamers must have appeared to the subdued carnival spirits as warning crapeknots on the door-handle of death.

I believe it is a maxim with the Italian connoisseur of art, that no landscape is perfect without one red spot to give value to its varieties of green. On this principle, let me break the monotony of this little rural sketch with the one touch of genuine American character that belonged to it at the time of which I speak. Let William Button be the one red spot that predominated vastly over the green influences by which he was surrounded. The little inn at Lorette was then kept by a worthy host bearing the abovementioned name, which was dingily lettered out upon a swinging sign, dingily representing a trotting horse, emblem as dear to the slow Canadian as to the fast American mind. William Buttonknown as Billy Button to hosts of familiar friends—was, I think, a Kentuckian by birth; a fact which might honestly account for his having come by the loss of an eye through some operation by which marks of violence had been left upon the surrounding tracts of his rugged countenance. He was a short, thickset man, with bow-legs like those of a

bull-terrier, and walked with a heavy lurch in his gait. William's head was of immense size in proportion to his stature. Indeed, that important joint of his person must have been a division by about two of what artists term heroic proportions, or eight heads to a height,—a standard by which Button was barred from being a hero, for his head could hardly have been much less than a fourth of his entire length. The expression of his face was remarkably typical of American humor and shrewdness, an effect much aided by the chronic wink afforded by his closed eye. How Button found his way to this remote spot would have been a puzzle to any person unfamiliar with American character. How he managed to live among and deal with and very considerably master a community speaking no language with which he was acquainted was more unaccountable still. The inn could not have been a very profitable speculation, in itself; but there was one room in it fitted out with a display of Indian manufactures, - some of the articles reposing in glass cases to protect them from hands and dust, others arranged with negligent regularity upon the walls. Out of these the landlord made a good penny, as he charged an extensive percentage upon the original cost,- that is, to strangers; but if you were in Button's confidence, then was there no better fellow to intrust with a negotiation for a pair of snowshoes, or moose-horns, or anything else in that line of business. In the winter season he was a great instigator of mooseand caribou-expeditions to the districts where these animals abound, assembling for this purpose the best Indian hunters to be found in the neighborhood, and accompanying the party himself. Out of the spoils of these expeditions he sometimes made a handsome profit: a good pair of moose-horns, for instance, used to fetch from six to ten dollars; and there is always a demand for the venison in the Quebec market. The skins were manufactured into moccason-leather by Indian adepts whom Button had in his

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any great height from the roadway near the inn to the tumbled rocks by the river's edge just above the fall, yet it was a drop to mash and kill the poor fellow dead enough, when his foot slipped, as he descended the unsafe path to get water for his horse. A dweller in great cities -say, for instance, one who lives within decent distance of such a charming locality as that called the Five Points in New York - could hardly realize the amount of awe that an event so trifling as a sudden and violent death will spread over a primitive village community. This happened in the French division of the place, which, of course, was decorated to the utmost ability of the people in honor of the fête and so palpable was the gloom cast over all by the circumstance, that the bright flannels flaunting from the cordons stretched across the way seemed to darken into palls, and the gay red streamers must have appeared to the subdued carnival spirits as warning crapeknots on the door-handle of death.

bull-terrier, and walked with a heavy lurch in his gait. William's head was of immense size in proportion to his stature. Indeed, that important joint of his person must have been a division by about two of what artists term heroic proportions, or eight heads to a height,—a standard by which Button was barred from being a hero, for his head could hardly have been much less than a fourth of his entire length. The expression of his face was remarkably typical of American humor and shrewdness, an effect much aided by the chronic wink afforded by his closed eye. How Button found his way to this remote spot would have been a puzzle to any person unfamiliar with American character. How he managed to live among and deal with and very considerably master a community speaking no language with which he was acquainted was more unaccountable still. The inn could not have been a very profitable speculation, in itself; but there was one room in it fitted out with a display of Indian manufactures, - some of the articles reposing in glass cases to protect them from hands and dust, others arranged with negligent regularity upon the walls. Out of these the landlord made a good penny, as he charged an extensive percentage upon the original cost,- that is, to strangers; but if you were in Button's confidence, then was there no better fellow to intrust with a negotiation for a pair of snowshoes, or moose-horns, or anything else in that line of business. In the winter season he was a great instigator of mooseand caribou-expeditions to the districts where these animals abound, assembling for this purpose the best Indian hunters to be found in the neighborhood, and accompanying the party himself. Out of the spoils of these expeditions he sometimes made a handsome profit: a good pair of moose-horns, for instance, used to fetch from six to ten dollars; and there is always a demand for the venison in the Quebec market. The skins were manufactured into moccason-leather by Indian adepts whom Button had in his

I believe it is a maxim with the Italian connoisseur of art, that no landscape is perfect without one red spot to give value to its varieties of green. On this principle, let me break the monotony of this little rural sketch with the one touch of genuine American character that belonged to it at the time of which I speak. Let William Button be the one red spot that predominated vastly over the green influences by which he was surrounded. The little inn at Lorette was then kept by a worthy host bearing the above mentioned name, which was dingily let tered out upon a swinging sign, dingily representing a trotting horse,-emblem as dear to the slow Canadian as to the fast American mind. William Buttonknown as Billy Button to hosts of familiar friends — was, I think, a Kentuckian by birth; a fact which might honestly account for his having come by the loss of an eye through some operation by which marks of violence had been left upon the surrounding tracts of his rugged countenance. He was a short, thickset man, with bow-legs like those of a