Harold Edward Bindloss

“ Still, it was as comrades that they lived together in the wilderness, and, what was more, had they come across one another afterwards in the cities, they would have resumed their intercourse on exactly the same footing. After all, they were, in essentials, very much the same, and, when that is the case, the barriers men raise between themselves do not count for much in the West, at least. ”

“ Yet, they do not often marry, since the wilderness, in most cases, would crush the wives they would 111 choose. The men toil on alone, facing flood, and drought, and frost, and some hate the silence of the winter nights during which they sit beside the stove.
"Then," inquired Wheeler, "who runs the ranch?"
"The wife and the boy. That is, when the boy's not chopping or ploughing for somebody."
There were reasons why Nasmyth was stirred by what he had heard, and with his pipe he pointed to Mattawa, as the flickering firelight fell upon the old axeman's face. ”

“ It's slow and deep until you reach the fall, where it's merely held up by the ridge of rock the rapid runs across. Well, we'll call the change of level twelve to sixteen feet, and, as Gordon has suggested, a big strip of natural prairie is apt to make a particularly desirable property, once you run the water out of it. You can get rid of a lot of water when you have a fall of sixteen feet. ”

“ They knew that one or two Indians were supposed to have made the hazardous trip, but that appeared sufficient, for they were all accustomed to handling a canoe, and an extra hazard or two is not often a great deterrent to men who have toiled in the Bush. ”