28 LEAVING HOME. 



the greater part of my supplies in Quebec, I put in my trunk only 

 such things as I needed, adding a few simple medicines, since I 

 was going to a place where there were no doctors, and, bidding 

 my home and friends the usual form of parting, was at the station 

 promptly for the train. 



TravelKng by night is at no time pleasant to the majority of peo- 

 ple whose occupation takes them from place to place, and it is often 

 especially unpleasant where the nine o'clock evening train is a slow 

 mixture of a very few passenger and a great many freight cars, whose 

 fastest gait is an amble, and its stops frequent and of long duration ; 

 while the interior of the most inhabitable of the cars upon the pas- 

 senger list is at best a dim, cloudy, close atmosphere of condensed 

 and accumulated dirt and soot and bad breath, — said interior look- 

 ing as if it had seen neither pure air nor water since the day of its 

 first appearance on the road up to the present. Such as it was we 

 were all soon seated, as comfortably as possible, having waved our 

 hands at our friends on the platform, feeling that the car was 

 really in motion and we were being surely drawn towards the north 

 and away from home. It was then that I had my first opportunity 

 for reflecting : first, that I was leaving home for a new and compara- 

 tively little-known region, second, that I might have left the very 

 things that I should most want and need and taken things that would 

 be of comparatively little or no use — though there was really Httle 

 to fear on that score ; — and third, as to the prospect of outliving 

 the fierce winter of such a region as that to which we were going. 



I did not long trouble myself with these reflections, however, as 

 the hurry, excitement, and constant bustle of the past two days had 

 left me considerably fatigued, and so turning over an empty seat 

 behind, and arranging myself in the most comfortable position 

 possible where the seats are hard at the best, I composed myself to 

 sleep. I say to sleep, but I should much better have said to try to 

 sleep ; no doubt the excitement of the previous days rendered it a 

 more difliciilt matter than it would have been had the journey been 

 longer contemplated. Thus I dozed away and caught an occasional 

 nap of short duration throughout the night, until we reached St. 



