THE DIVIDING LINE. 7 j 



baggage and bedding perfectly dry. This rain was enlivened with very loud 

 thunder, which was echoed back by the hills in the neighbourhood in a fright- 

 ful manner. There is something in the woods that makes the sound of this 

 meteor more awful, and the violence of the lightning more visible. The 

 trees are fiequently shivered quite down to the root, and sometimes perfectly 

 twisted. But of all the effects of lightning that ever I heard of, the most 

 amazing happened in this country, in the year 1736. In the summer of that 

 year a surgeon of a ship, whose name was Davis, came ashore at York to 

 visit a patient. He was no sooner got into the house, but it began to rain 

 with many terrible claps of thunder. When it was almost dark there came 

 a dreadful flash of lightning, which struck the surgeon dead as he was walk- 

 ing about tlie room, but hurt no other person, though several were near him. 

 At the same time it made a large hole in the trunk of a pine tree, which grew 

 about ten feet from the window. But what was most surprising in this dis- 

 aster was, that on the breast of the unfortunate man that was killed w^as 

 the figiire of a pine tree, as exactly delineated -as any limner in the world 

 could draw it, nay, the resemblance went so far as to represent the colour 

 of the pine, as well as the figure. The lightning must probably have passed 

 through the tree first before it struck the man, and by that means have printed 

 the icon of it on his breast. But whatever may have been the cause, the effect 

 was certain, and can be attested by a cloud of witnesses who had the curi- 

 osity to go and see this wonderful phenomenon. The worst of it was, we 

 were forced to encamp in a barren place, where there was hardly a blade 

 of grass to be seen, even the wild i-osemary failed us here, which gave us 

 but too just apprehensions that we should not only be obliged to trudge all 

 the way home on foot,, but also to lug our baggage at our backs into the bar- 

 gain. Thus we learned by our own experience, that horses are very impro- 

 per animals to use in a long ramble into the woods, and the better they have 

 been used to be fed, they are still the worse. Such will fall away a great 

 deal faster, and fail much sooner, than those which are wont to be at their 

 own keeping. Besides, horses that have been accustomed to a plain and 

 champaign country will founder presently, when they come to clamber up 

 hills, and batter their hoofs against continual rocks. We need Welsh runts, 

 and Highland Galloways to climb our mountains withal ; they are used to 

 precipices, and will bite as close as Banstead Down sheep. But I should much 

 rather recommend mules, if we had them, for these long and painful expe- 

 ditions ; though, till they can be bred, certainly asses are the fittest beasts of 

 burthen for the mountains. They are sure-footed, patient under the heaviest 

 fatigue, and will subsist upon moss, or browsing on shrubs all the winter. 

 One of them will carry the necessary luggage of four men, without any dif- 

 ficulty, and upon a pinch will take a quarter of bear or venison upon their 

 backs into the bargain. Thus, when the men are light and disengaged from 

 every thing but their guns, they may go the whole journey on foot with 

 pleasure. And though my dear countrymen have so great a passion for 

 riding, that they will of^en walk two miles to catch a horse, in order to ride 

 one, yet, if they will please to take my word for it, when they go into the 

 woods upon discovery, 1 would advise them by all means to march a-foot, 

 for they will then be delivered from the great care and concern for their 

 horses, which takes up too large a portion of their time. Over night we are 

 now at the trouble of hobbling them out, and often of leading them a mile or 

 two to a convenient place for forage, and then in the rrjorning we are some 

 hours in finding them again, because they are apt to stray a great way fi'om 

 the place where they were turned out. Now and then, too, they are lost fop 

 a whole day together, and are frequently so weak and jaded, that the com- 

 pany must lie still several da3's, near some meadov?", or highland pond, to 



