The day was so bright for the time of year (the first week in
February), that we suffered no inconvenience from the cold. Little
Katie was enchanted with the jingling of the sleigh-bells, and,
nestled among the packages, kept singing or talking to the horses
in her baby lingo. Trifling as these little incidents were, before
we had proceeded ten miles on our long journey, they revived my
drooping spirits, and I began to feel a lively interest in the
scenes through which we were passing.
The first twenty miles of the way was over a hilly and well-cleared
country; and as in winter the deep snow fills up the inequalities,
and makes all roads alike, we glided as swiftly and steadily along
as if they had been the best highways in the world. Anon, the
clearings began to diminish, and tall woods arose on either side
of the path; their solemn aspect, and the deep silence that brooded
over their vast solitudes, inspiring the mind with a strange awe.
Not a breath of wind stirred the leafless branches, whose huge
shadows reflected upon the dazzling white covering of snow, lay
so perfectly still, that it seemed as if Nature had suspended
her operations, that life and motion had ceased, and that she
was sleeping in her winding-sheet, upon the bier of death.
"I guess you will find the woods pretty lonesome," said our driver,
whose thoughts had been evidently employed on the same subject as
our own. "We were once in the woods, but emigration has stepped
ahead of us, and made our'n a cleared part of the country. When I
was a boy, all this country, for thirty miles on every side of us,
was bush land. As to Peterborough, the place was unknown; not a
settler had ever passed through the great swamp, and some of them
believed that it was the end of the world."
"What swamp is that?" asked I.
"Oh, the great Cavan swamp. We are just two miles from it; and I
tell you that the horses will need a good rest, and ourselves a good
dinner, by the time we are through it. Ah, Mrs. Moodie, if ever you
travel that way in summer, you will know something about corduroy
roads. I was 'most jolted to death last fall; I thought it would
have been no bad notion to have insured my teeth before I left C - -.
I really expected that they would have been shook out of my head
before we had done manoeuvring over the big logs."
"How will my crockery stand it in the next sleigh?" quoth I. "If the
road is such as you describe, I am afraid that I shall not bring a
whole plate to Douro."
"Oh, the snow is a great leveller - it makes all rough places smooth.
But with regard to this swamp, I have something to tell you.
