140 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



our baggage, we left to the tune of a peal of merry bells 

 which the pony carried attached to different parts of the 

 harness. 



Our road lay through a valley, skirted by the lofty 

 wooded slopes of the Cobequids. These hills are the 

 great stronghold of the cariboo, and his last resort in 

 Nova Scotia ; they extend through the isthmus which 

 connects the province with that of New Brunswick, and 

 are covered with large hard-wood forests of sugar and 

 white maple, birch, and beech. On their broad tops and 

 sides the cariboo has an unbroken range of more than a 

 hundred miles, and their eastern spurs, descending into 

 a flat district of dense fir forests, with numerous chains 

 of lakes, offer secure retreats in the breeding season. 



The country was new to us, and its features novel : 

 the evergreen forest, so characteristic of the greater por- 

 tion of the province, here almost entirely gave way to 

 hard-woods, narrow lines of hemlock or spruce springing 

 up from some deep gorge on the mountain side, here and 

 there showing their dark summits, and coursing like 

 veins through the great rolling sea of maples. The latter 

 part of the storm had been unaccompanied by wind, and 

 the snow lay in heavy masses on the trees, giving the 

 forest a most beautiful aspect ; it covered every branch 

 and every twig, and was thickly spattered against the 

 stems, and all the complicated tracery of the denuded 

 branches was brought to notice, even in the deepest 

 recesses, by the white pencil of the snow-storm. In the 

 fir forest the effect of newly- fallen snow is very fine also, 

 but the very masses which cover the broad and retentive 

 branches of the evergreens and clog the younger trees 

 until they seem like solid cones of snow, hinder and 



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