pronounced the most healthy country
under the sun, considering that whisky can be procured for about one
shilling sterling per gallon. Though the cold of a Canadian winter is
great, it is neither distressing nor disagreeable. There is no day
during winter, except a rainy one, in which a man need be kept from his
work. It is a fact, though as startling as some of the dogmas of the
Edinburgh school of political economy, that the thermometer is no judge
of warm or cold weather. Thus, with us in Canada, when it is low, (say
at zero,) there is not a breath of hair, and you can judge of the cold
of the morning by the smoke rising from the chimney of a cottage, and
shooting up straight like the steeple of a church, then gradually
melting away in the beautiful clear blue of the morning sky: yet in such
weather it is impossible to go through a day's march in your great coat;
whereas, at home, when the wind blows from the north-east, though the
thermometer stands at from 55 deg. to 60 deg. you find a fire far from
oppressive. The fact is, that a Canadian winter is by far the
pleasantest season of the year, for everybody is idle, and everybody is
determined to enjoy himself. Between the summer and winter of Canada, a
season exists, called the Indian summer. During this period, the
atmosphere has a smoky, hazy effect, which is ascribed by the people
generally to the simultaneous burning of the prairies of the western
part of the continent. This explanation I take to be absurd; since, if
it were so to be accounted for, the wind must necessarily blow from that
quarter, which is not in all instances the case. During this period,
which generally occupies two or three weeks of the month of November,
the days are pleasant, and with abundance of sunshine, and the nights
present a cold, clear, black frost. When this disappears, the rains
commence, which always precede winter; for it is a proverb in the Lower
Province, among the French Canadians, that the ditches never freeze till
they are full. Then comes the regular winter, which, if rains and thaws
do not interfere, is very pleasant; and that is broken up by rains
again, which last until the strong sun of the middle of May renders
everything dry and in good order. A satirical friend of mine gave a
caricature account of the climate of the province, when he said that,
for two months of the spring and two months of the autumn, you are up to
your middle in mud; for four months of summer you a