And mighty men they were.

Their life bred in them hardiness of frame, alertness of sense, readiness of resource, endurance, superb self-reliance, a courage that grew with peril, and withal a certain wildness which at times deepened into ferocity.

By their fathers the forest was dreaded and hated, but the sons, with rifles in hand, trod its pathless stretches without fear, and with their broad-axes they took toll of their ancient foe.

For while in spring and summer they farmed their narrow fields, and rescued new lands from the brule; in winter they sought the forest, and back on their own farms or in "the shanties" they cut sawlogs, or made square timber, their only source of wealth.

The shanty life of the early fifties of last century was not the luxurious thing of to-day.