made them feel bilious and heavy, and greatly depressed their animal
spirits.

I had a great desire to visit our new location, but when I looked out upon
the cheerless waste, I gave up the idea, and contented myself with hoping
for a better day on the morrow; but many morrows came and went before a
frost again hardened the road sufficiently for me to make the attempt.

The prospect from the windows of my sister's log hut was not very
prepossessing. The small lake in front, which formed such a pretty object
in summer, now looked like an extensive field covered with snow, hemmed in
from the rest of the world by a dark belt of sombre pine-woods. The
clearing round the house was very small, and only just reclaimed from the
wilderness, and the greater part of it covered with piles of brushwood, to
be burned the first dry days of spring. The charred and blackened stumps
on the few acres that had been cleared during the preceding year were
every thing but picturesque; and I concluded, as I turned, disgusted, from
the prospect before me, that there was very little beauty to be found in
the backwoods. But I came to this decision during a Canadian thaw, be it
remembered, when one is wont to view every object with jaundiced eyes.

Moodie had only been able to secure sixty-six acres of his government
grant upon the Upper Kutchawanook Lake, which, being interpreted, means in
English, the "Lake of the Waterfalls," a very poetical meaning, which most
Indian names have. He had, however, secured a clergy reserve of two
hundred acres adjoining; and he afterwards purchased a fine lot which
likewise formed a part of the same block, one hundred acres, for L150.
[Footnote: After a lapse of fifteen years, we have been glad to sell
these lots of land, after considerable clearings had been made upon them,
for less than they originally cost us.] This was an enormously high price