neatness, cleanliness, and comfort of the cottages and farms. The log-
house and shanty rarely occur, having been supplanted by pretty frame
houses, built in a superior style, and often painted white-lead colour
or a pale pea-green. Around these habitations were orchards, bending
down with a rich harvest of apples, plums, and the American crab, those
beautiful little scarlet apples so often met with as a wet preserve
among our sweetmeats at home.

You see none of the signs of poverty or its attendant miseries. No
ragged, dirty, squalid children, dabbling in mud or dust; but many a
tidy, smart-looking lass was spinning at the cottage-doors, with bright
eyes and braided locks, while the younger girls were seated on the green
turf or on the threshold, knitting and singing as blithe as birds.

There is something very picturesque in the great spinning-wheels that
are used in this country for spinning the wool, and if attitude were to
be studied among our Canadian lasses, there cannot be one more becoming,
or calculated to show off the natural advantages of a fine figure, than
spinning at the big wheel. The spinster does not sit, but walks to and
fro, guiding the yarn with one hand while with the other she turns the
wheel.

I often noticed, as we passed by the cottage farms, hanks of yarn of
different colours hanging on the garden or orchard fence to dry; there
were all manner of colours, green, blue, purple, brown, red, and white.
A civil landlady, at whose tavern we stopped to change horses, told me
these hanks of yarn were first spun and then dyed by the good wives,
preparatory to being sent to the loom. She showed me some of this home-
spun cloth, which really looked very well. It was a dullish dark brown,
the wool being the produce of a breed of black sheep. This cloth is made