EARTH.-PAUL PASTNOR.

I LOVE thine honest face, old Earth,
Where sorrow's lines and dimpled mirth
Flow ceaselessly together!

I love the locks of wintry grey
That from their snowy tresses stray
Across thy cheek of heather,
Hiding its furrows 'neath a sheen,
So soft and light, so pure and clear,
So silvery in its whiteness,
That I can trace the lines of care
Only along its surface fair,

Sinking in rounded lightness!

I love the peaceful joy that fills
Thy summer vales, and crowns thy hills
With wondrous golden glory.

I love the music in thy streams;
Thy morning songs and evening dreams
Unfold a twice-told story

Of hope and peace! The breezes woo
Thy brow with tender love and true,
And slowly-sweet caresses.

The sunbeams with the shadows vie,
In changeful flight and bright reply,
To linger in thy tresses.

We live in thee, oh Earth! in thee
The secrets of our living see,

The future's strange formation.
Thou art the record of our past;
In thee the nation's lives are cast,
In thee their one foundation!

BUILDING LOG HOUSES.-DR. GEIKIE.

1. THEY manage a difficult business like that of getting up the outside of a log house, more easily than one would think. First, the logs are cut into the proper lengths for the sides and ends; then they are notched at the end to make them keep together; then an equal number are put at the four sides to be ready, and the first stage is

over. The next step is to get four laid in the proper positions on the ground, and then to get up the rest, layer by layer, on the top of each other, till the whole are in their places. It is a terrible strain on the men, for there is nothing but sheer strength to help them, except that they put poles from the top of the last log raised, to the

ground, and then, with handspokes, force another up the slope to its destined position. I have known many men terribly wrenched, by the handspoke of some other one slipping, and letting the whole weight of one end come upon the person next him.

2. The logs at the front and back were all fully twenty feet long, and some of them eighteen inches thick, so that you may judge their weight. After the square frame had been thus piled up, windows and a door were cut with axes, a board, at the sides of each, keeping the ends of the logs in their places. You may wonder how this could be done, but backwoodsmen are so skilful with the axe, that it was done very neatly. The sashes for the windows, and the planking for different parts of the house, were got from a saw-mill some distance off, across the river, and my brother put in the glass.

3. Of course there were a great many chinks between the logs, but these were filled up, as well as possible, with billets and chips of wood, the whole being finally coated, and made air-tight, with mortar. Thus, the logs looked as if built up with lime, the great black trunks of the trees alternating with the grey belts between. The frame of the roof was made of round poles, flattened on the top, on which boards were put, and these again were covered with shingles-a kind of wooden slate made of split pine, which answers very well. The angles at the ends were filled up with logs fitted to the length, and fixed in their places by wooden pins, driven through the roof-pole at each corner. On the whole house there were no nails used at all, except on the roof. Wooden pins, and an auger to make holes, made everything fast.

4. Inside, it was an extraordinary place. The floor

was paved with pine slabs, the outer planks cut from logs, with the round side down, and fixed by wooden pins to sleepers made of thin young trees, cut the right lengths. Overhead, a number of similar round poles, about the thickness of a man's leg, supported the floor of the upper story, which was to be my sisters' bedroom. They had planks, however, instead of boards, in honour of their sex, perhaps. The girls had to climb to this paradise by an extraordinary ladder, made with the never-failing axe and auger, out of green, round wood. I used always to think of Robinson Crusoe getting into his fortification when I saw them going up.

5. The chimney was a wonderful affair. It was large enough to let you walk up most of the way, and could hold, I can't tell how many logs, four or five feet long, for a fire. It was built of mud, and when whitewashed looked very well-at least we came to like it; it was so clean and cheerful in the winter time. But we had to pull it down some years after, and get one built of brick, as it was always getting out of repair. A partition was put up across the middle and then divided again, and this made two bedrooms for my brothers, and left us our solitary room, which was to serve for kitchen, dining-room, and drawing-room, the outer door opening into it. As to paint, it was out of the question, but we had lime for whitewash, and what with it and some newspapers which my brothers pasted up in their bedrooms, and a few pictures we brought from home, we thought we were quite stylish. There was no house any better, at any rate, in the neighbourhood, and, I suppose, we judged by that.

6. To keep out the rain and the cold-for rats were not known on the river for some years after-the whole of the bottom log, outside, had to be banked

up after our arrival, the earth being dug up all round, and thrown against it. The miserable shanties in which some settlers manage to live for a time are half buried by this process, and the very wretched ones built by labourers alongside the public works they are making, look more like natural mounds than human habitations. I have often thought it was a curious thing to see how people, when in the same, or nearly the same, circumstances, fall upon similar plans. Some of the Indians in America, for instance, used to sink a pit for a house and build it round with stones, putting a roof on the walls, which reached only a little above the ground; and antiquarians tell us that the early British did the very same. Then Xenophon, long ago, and Curzon, in our day, tell us how they were often like to fall through the roofs of the houses in Armenia, into the middle of the family, huddled up with their oxen, beneath; the dwellings being burrowed into the side of a slope, and showing no signs of their presence from above.

7. But our house was not like this, I am happy to say; it was on the ground, not in it, and was very warm for Canada, when the wind did not come against the door, which was a very poor one, of inch-thick wood. The thickness of the logs kept out the cold wonderfully, though that is a very ambiguous word for a Canadian house, which would need to be made two logs thick to be warm without tremendous fires-at least, in the open unsheltered country. The houses made of what they call "clap-boards "—that is, of narrow boards threequarters of an inch thick, and lathed and plastered inside -are very much colder; indeed, they are, in my opinion, awful, in any part of them where a fire is not kept up all the winter.