Travelers Original Accounts: 1801-1840 



and over the Queenston heights; and beautiful must this land 1836 

 be in summer, since even now it is beautiful. The flower garden, J ameson 

 the trim shrubbery, the lawn, the meadow with its hedgerows, 

 when frozen up and wrapt in snow, always give me the idea of 

 something not only desolate but dead; Nature is the ghost of 

 herself, and trails a spectral pall; I always feel a kind of pity 

 — a touch of melancholy — when at this season I have wan- 

 dered among withered shrubs and buried flower-beds; but here, 

 in the wilderness, where Nature is wholly independent of art, 

 she does not die, nor yet mourn; she lies down to rest on the 

 bosom of Winter, and the aged one folds her in his robe of 

 ermine and jewels, and rocks her with his hurricanes, and hushes 

 her to sleep. How still it was! how calm, how vast the glitter- 

 ing white waste and the dark purple forests! The sun shone 

 out, and the sky was without a cloud ; yet we saw few people, and 

 for many miles the hissing of our sleigh, as we flew along upon 

 our dazzling path, and the tinkling of the sleigh-bells, were the 

 only sounds we heard. When we were within four or five miles 

 of the Falls, I stopped the sleigh from time to time to listen for 

 the roar of the cataracts, but the state of the atmosphere was 

 not favorable for the transmission of sound, and the silence was 

 unbroken. 



Such was the deep, monotonous tranquility which prevailed on 

 every side — so exquisitely pure and vestal-like the robe in 

 which all nature lay slumbering around us, I could scarce believe 

 that this whole frontier district is not only remarkable for the 

 prevalence of vice, but of dark and desperate crime. 



Mr. A., who is a magistrate, pointed out to me a lonely house 

 by the way-side, where, on a dark stormy night in the preceding 

 winter, he had surprised and arrested a gang of forgers and 

 coiners; it was a fearful description. For some time my impa- 

 tience had been thus beguiled — impatience and suspense much 

 like those of a child at a theatre before the curtain rises. My 

 imagination had been so impressed by the vast height of the 

 Falls, that I was constantly looking in an upward direction, when, 



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