warm welcome after a long day of intense fatigue, than I did that night of
my first sojourn in the backwoods.



CHAPTER II.

THE WILDERNESS, AND OUR INDIAN FRIENDS.


The clouds of the preceding night, instead of dissolving into snow,
brought on a rapid thaw. A thaw in the middle of winter is the most
disagreeable change that can be imagined. After several weeks of clear,
bright, bracing, frosty weather, with a serene atmosphere and cloudless
sky, you awake one morning surprised at the change in the temperature;
and, upon looking out of the window, behold the woods obscured by a
murky haze--not so dense as an English November fog, but more black
and lowering--and the heavens shrouded in a uniform covering of
leaden-coloured clouds, deepening into a vivid indigo at the edge of the
horizon. The snow, no longer hard and glittering, has become soft and
spongy, and the foot slips into a wet and insidiously-yielding mass at
every step. From the roof pours down a continuous stream of water, and the
branches of the trees collecting the moisture of the reeking atmosphere,
shower it upon the earth from every dripping twig. The cheerless and
uncomfortable aspect of things without never fails to produce a
corresponding effect upon the minds of those within, and casts such a damp
upon the spirits that it appears to destroy for a time all sense of
enjoyment. Many persons (and myself among the number) are made aware of
the approach of a thunder-storm by an intense pain and weight about the
head; and I have heard numbers of Canadians complain that a thaw always