FEBRUARY 
31 
extreme mildness of the greater portion of it. Here are some 
notes I thought worth taking at the time. December had 
been rather cold with a little snow, sufficient to facilitate 
travelling. At the commencement of the year 1838, we 
had mild weather, with little snow on the ground, but the 
roads were still in excellent condition. From the third to 
the eighth of January we had a thaw with heavy rains, which 
took away all the snow: the state of nature exactly resembled 
spring : sheep and cattle feeding in the fields, streams and 
brooks flooded, roads filled with deep mud, travelling per- 
formed wholly on wheels or on horseback, instead of sleighs ; 
and I read that in Upper Canada even some trees had burst 
their leaf-buds. The roads continued bare, with some slight 
frosts, until the nineteenth, when about four inches of snow 
falling, a new life was put into every kind of business ; the 
roads were thronged with sleds loaded with hay, grain, car- 
casses of meat, and all other necessaries, which had been so 
long prevented from travelling by the state of the roads, as 
to cause great inconvenience, and in some cases even distress. 
To the end of January, the weather continued mild, but the 
whole of February was very severe, and this month, with 
the latter part of December, was in fact all that we could 
really call winter ; for as early as the first of March, the 
snow began rapidly to disappear from the roads and fields ; 
by the tenth, the sap of the sugar maple was flowing freely ; 
the catkins of the poplars and willows opened about the 
middle of the month ; the spring birds and insects appeared, 
and all things promised a very early season, which was, 
however, much retarded by continued cold weather in April. 
It was followed by an unusually wet and warm summer. 
