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
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."