The Back Woods of Canada. 389 



or even shawl, out of doors; and within, the fire was quite too much for 

 us. The weather remained pretty open till the latter part of the month, 

 when the cold set in severely enough, and continued so during February. 

 The 1 st of March was the coldest day and night I ever experienced in my 

 life : the mercury was down to 25° in the house ; abroad it was much lower. 

 The sensation of cold early in the morning was very painful ; producing an 

 involuntary shuddering, and an almost convulsive feeling in the chest and 

 stomach. Our breaths were congealed in hoarfrost on the sheets and 

 blankets. Every thing we touched, of metal, seemed to freeze our fingers. 

 This excessive degree of cold lasted only three days ; and then a gradual 

 amelioration of temperature was felt. During this very cold weather, I was 

 surprised by the frequent recurrence of a phenomenon that, I suppose, was 

 of an electrical nature. When the frosts were most intense, I noticed that, 

 when 1 undressed, my clothes, which are, at this cold season, chiefly of woollen 

 cloth, or lined with flannel, gave out, when moved, a succession of sounds 

 like the crackling and snapping of fire, and, in the absence of a candle, emit- 

 ted sparks of a pale whitish-blue light, similar to the flashes produced by 

 cutting loaf-sugar in the dark, or stroking the back of a black cat : the same 

 effect was also produced when I combed and brushed my hair." (p. 151.) 



We would fain continue our quotations ; but time and 

 space fail us. We can only, therefore, refer the reader to 

 the work itself; the perusal of which will, we are quite sure, 

 bear us out in all we have said in its favour. We have, as 

 we premised we should, confined our extracts to passages 

 bearing on natural history: but we should do great injustice 

 to the fair authoress did we thence infer that they form the 

 only, or even the chief, merit of her book. Her hints to 

 emigrants are always judicious, and, of course, valuable. In 

 short, such a spirit of content and fortitude, under all the 

 trials she had to struggle with (and they were neither few nor 

 small), is very rarely met with, even among those on whom 

 greater physical powers of endurance have been constitution- 

 ally bestowed. With one " case in point," we conclude our 

 remarks. When near the end of their pilgrimage through the 

 forest, the waggon which had conveyed them and their lug- 

 gage was suffered to depart, a little prematurely, we think, as 

 it was soon evident the travellers had lost their way, and night 

 was fast approaching. But our fair friend must tell the tale, 

 as she has told it to her mother. 



" It was dark, save that the stars came forth with more than usual 

 brilliancy, when we suddenly emerged from the depth of the gloomy forest 

 to the shores of a beautiful little lake, that gleamed the more brightly from 

 the contrast of the dark masses of foliage that hung over it, and the tower- 

 ing pine woods that girt its banks. Here, seated on a huge block of lime- 

 stone, which was covered with a soft cushion of moss, beneath the shade 

 of the cedars that skirt the lake, surrounded with trunks, boxes, and pack- 

 ages of various descriptions, which the driver had hastily thrown from the 

 waggon, sat your child, in anxious expectation of some answering voice to 

 my husband's long and repeated hallo. But when the echo of his voice 

 died away, we heard only the gurgling of the waters at the head of the 

 rapids, and the distant and hoarse murmur of a waterfall some half mile 



