16 LAKE CHAMPLAIIir — ^VERMOISTT. 



broken into rounded hills, with patches of woodland and com, 

 but chiefly in grass, green for this country, and giving to the 

 State its character and name of Vermont. Suddenly we feel a 

 whiff in our faces. The wind has changed, a dense blackness 

 is covering the sky northwards, and in half an hour we have 

 sailed into a thunderstorm. It was accompanied and followed 

 by a gale, and in another half hour the lately placid summer 

 lake was surging like the Atlantic. Our white gala-day 

 steamer was quite unfit to cope with this, and the shakes she 

 gave when struck by a heavy sea shook the nerves of most of 

 the passengers on board. By the evening we reached Burling- 

 ton, on the Vermont shore, where, with other Englishmen, we 

 landed for the night, at a large hotel, with the hope of a good 

 supper after our storm-tossing. But we had reckoned without 

 our host ; — ^we found ourselves in a temperance State, actually 

 under the Maine Liquor Law, — ^plenty to eat, but not a drop 

 of anything stronger than water to drink, without a medical 

 certificate. The men looked no better than those in the other 

 States, the bar room being filled with idlers chewing and spit- 

 ting. The women certainly seemed more fresh and ruddy, yet 

 it is odd that they alone should show the good effects of a law 

 which could not have been intended for the gentler sex. 



Next morning we proceeded by railway towards Montreal, 

 crossing Lake Champlain at a narrow point by a long wooden 

 bridge, and shortly afterwards entered Canada. The line be- 

 tween the two countries is an ideal one, not more definite than 

 the march of two Highland farms. The land is cold and poor, 

 held in strips by French Canadians, whose listless gait and lean 

 cattle betoken a poor business. The notices at the railway 

 crossings are in French, and the country people at the stations, 

 and those travelling by the railway, converse in French. The 

 weather was cold, the thermometer having fallen siace the pre- 

 vious morning from 74 to 44, 



