50 EMIGRATION, OR 



are more pleasant, and the inhabitants do not suffer so 

 much from their severity ; their dryness has less effect on 

 the human constitution, and even cattle, than a raw damp 

 air several degrees warmer. Cattle require less fodder, 

 and are much fed upon wheat and oat straw, which they 

 eat up clean, and do well, if they get enough of it. The 

 winter is the most lively part of the year ; when there is 

 about four inches snow with a frost, sleighing is universal, 

 for business or pleasure, from one end of the province 

 to the other. A span of good horses conveys two or 

 three persons in a sleigh forty or fifty miles a day with 

 ease, and they often go sixty or seventy. With warm 

 clothing, a fur cap, and a bear or buffalo skin over the back 

 and feet, it is a pleasant and very easy way of travelling, 

 enlivened by the numerous sleighs and the jingling of bells, 

 which the horses are required to wear ; in this season many 

 of the Canadians have quite a military appearance. During 

 the winter I took a journey to the Mill, at St. Thomas s, 

 and to have the horses shod, which will last the year, 

 as the roads do not wear them out quick. The days in 

 length are more equal at all seasons, and the sun has more 

 power. Some wolves made their appearance about the pre 

 mises, during the foggy nights, after a dead hog ; the dogs 

 retreated to the house much frightened, but they very 

 rarely attack the human species. 



Feb. 12. It has been a steady frost the last three or four 

 weeks, so that the farmers have got their hauling pretty 

 well done. Last winter there was no sleighing, no snow, 

 and hardly any frost in the western part of the province. 



Feb. 26. It has been quite moderate weather of late, 

 and yesterday and to-day mild and thawing. 



March 5. Foggy open weather, thermometer 48 ; snow 

 nearly all gone, and ice breaking up along the lake shore. 

 The noise caused by its breaking, when driven by a south 

 wind on the shore, is like the various noises arising from 

 the rattling of carriages, and the bustle of a large town on 

 approaching it. In the depth of winter, in the sharpest 

 weather, the trees, on the sun rising on them, snap and 

 crack like the report of pistols in all directions, though 

 there are no cracks to be seen. Grass and wheat begin to 

 shoot, hens lay, &c. Been sowing some Timothy grass 

 seed, and the ground very tender, it being flat and not 

 properly drained ; the water stands as long as there is any 



