"How will my crockery stand it in the next sleigh?" quoth I. "If the road
is such as you describe, I am afraid that I shall not bring a whole plate
to Douro."

"Oh! the snow is a great leveller--it makes all rough places smooth. But
with regard to this swamp, I have something to tell you. About ten years
ago, no one had ever seen the other side of it; and if pigs or cattle
strayed away into it, they fell a prey to the wolves and bears, and were
seldom recovered.

"An old Scotch emigrant, who had located himself on this side of it, so
often lost his beasts that he determined during the summer season to try
and explore the place, and see if there were any end to it. So he takes an
axe on his shoulder, and a bag of provisions for the week, not forgetting
a flask of whiskey, and off he starts all alone, and tells his wife that
if he never returned, she and little Jock must try and carry on the farm
without him; but he was determined to see the end of the swamp, even if it
led to the other world. He fell upon a fresh cattle-track, which he
followed all that day; and towards night he found himself in the heart of
a tangled wilderness of bushes, and himself half eaten up with mosquitoes
and black-flies. He was more than tempted to give in, and return home by
the first glimpse of light.

"The Scotch are a tough people; they are not easily daunted--a few
difficulties only seem to make them more eager to get on; and he felt
ashamed the next moment, as he told me, of giving up. So he finds out a
large, thick cedar-tree for his bed, climbs up, and coiling himself among
the branches like a bear, he was soon fast asleep.