It was not without regret that I left Melsetter, for so my husband had called the place, after his father’s estate in Orkney.  It was a beautiful, picturesque spot; and, in spite of the evil neighbourhood, I had learned to love it; indeed, it was much against my wish that it was sold.  I had a great dislike to removing, which involves a necessary loss, and is apt to give to the emigrant roving and unsettled habits.  But all regrets were now useless; and happily unconscious of the life of toil and anxiety that awaited us in those dreadful woods, I tried my best to be cheerful, and to regard the future with a hopeful eye.

Our driver was a shrewd, clever man, for his opportunities.  He took charge of the living cargo, which consisted of my husband, our maid-servant, the two little children, and myself—­besides a large hamper, full of poultry, a dog, and a cat.  The lordly sultan of the imprisoned seraglio thought fit to conduct himself in a very eccentric manner, for at every barn-yard we happened to pass, he clapped his wings, and crowed so long and loud that it afforded great amusement to the whole party, and doubtless was very edifying to the poor hens, who lay huddled together as mute as mice.

“That ’ere rooster thinks he’s on the top of the heap,” said our driver, laughing.  “I guess he’s not used to travelling in a close conveyance.  Listen!  How all the crowers in the neighbourhood give him back a note of defiance!  But he knows that he’s safe enough at the bottom of the basket.”

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.”