nkards, who, if they can get at strong drink at all, seldom
keep their pledge of sobriety. The British and Foreign Temperance
Society, in fact, advises the habitually intemperate to abstain
altogether, while, at the same time, it aims at bringing the man to
repentance and reformation, by the renovating influence of the gospel.
If I differ in some respects from that society, in its prohibition
against the use of spirits altogether, in such a climate as Canada, I
still must consider its views far more liberal, and more consistent
with scripture rules, than that of any other for the promotion of
temperance, as, indeed, possessing more of that charity, without which
even the most fervent zeal is worse than useless.

CHAPTER XII.

WANT OF HOME-PASTURAGE IN CANADA. -- DANGER OF BEING LOST IN THE WOODS.
-- PLAIN DIRECTIONS TO THE TRAVELLER IN THE BUSH. -- STORY OF A SETTLER
FROM EMILY. -- AN OLD WOMAN'S RAMBLE IN THE WOODS. -- ADVENTURE OF A
TRAPPER. -- FORTUNATE MEETING WITH HIS PARTNER.

ONE of the greatest inconveniences belonging to a new settlement, for
the first four or five years, is the want of pasturage for your working
cattle and cows. Consequently, the farmer has to depend entirely on the
Bush for their support, for at least seven months out of the twelve.
The inconvenience does not arise from any want of food; for the woods,
beaver meadows, and the margins of lakes and streams yield an
abundance, and the cattle, towards the fall of the year, are sure to
grow fat. But it is the trouble of seeking for your cattle.

Sometimes, indeed, in the midst of your greatest hurry, your oxen are
nowhere to be found. I have myself often spent two or three days in
succession, searching the woods in vain; and it not unfrequently
happens that, while looking for the strayed beasts, you lose yourself
in the woods.

As we generally carry a gun with us in these excursions, we often fall
in with deer or partridges, which makes the way not only seem less
fatiguing, but even pleasant, unless during the season of musquitoes
and black flies, when rambling through the Bush is no pleasure to any
one.

New-comers are very apt to lose themselves at first, until they get
acquainted with the creeks and ridges; and even then, on a dark day or
during a snow-storm, they are very likely to go astray. If you have no
compass with you, and the sun is obscured, the best way of extricating
yourself is, to observe the moss on the trees, which--no