The Sundays That I Spent At Mr. Forrest's Were Very Enjoyable, Though The Heat Of The First Was Nearly Insupportable, And The Cold Of The Last Like That Of An English Christmas In Bygone Years.

There are multitudes of Presbyterians in Western Canada, who worship in their pure and simple faith with as much

Fervency and sincerity as did their covenanting forefathers in the days of the persecuting Dundee; and the quaint old Psalms, to which they are so much attached, sung to the strange old tunes, sound to them as sweet among the backwoods of Canada as in the peaceful villages of the Lowlands, or in the remote Highland glens, where I have often listened to their slow and plaintive strains borne upon the mountain breezes. "Are ye frae the braes of Gleneffar?" said an old Scotchwoman to me; "were ye at our kirk o' Sabbath last, ye would na' ken the difference."

The Irishman declaims against the land he has forsaken - the Englishman too often suffers the remembrance of his poverty to sever the tie which binds him to the land of his birth - but where shall we find the Scotchman in whose breast love of his country is not a prominent feeling? Whether it be the light-haired Saxon from the South, or the dark-haired, sallow-visaged Celt from the Highlands, driven forth by the gaunt hand of famine, all look back to Scotland as to "their country" - the mention of its name kindles animation in the dim eye of age, and causes the bounding heart of youth to leap with enthusiasm. It may be that the Scotch emigrant's only remembrance is of the cold hut on the lone hill-side, where years wore away in poverty and hunger, but to him it is the dearest spot of earth. It may be that he has attained a competence in Canada, and that its fertile soil produces crops which the heathery braes of Scotland would never yield - no matter, it is yet his home! - it is the land where his fathers sleep - it is the land of his birth; his dreams are of the "mountain and the flood" - of lonely lochs and mountain-girded firths; and when the purple light on a summer evening streams over the forest, he fancies that the same beams are falling on Morven and the Cuchullins, and that the soft sound pervading the air is the echo of the shepherd's pipe. To the latest hour of his life he cherishes the idea of returning to some homestead by a tumbling burnie. He never can bring himself to utter to his mountain land, from the depths of his heart, the melancholy words, "Che til na tuille." [Footnote: "We return no more."]

The Episcopal church was only two miles from us, but we were most mercilessly jolted over a plank-road, where many of the planks had made a descent into a sea of mud, on the depth of which I did not attempt to speculate.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 115 of 249
Words from 59620 to 60121 of 129941