lerably dry.* The day before, there had been a terrific
thunder-storm which struck the largest, which was fully four feet in
diameter, shivering it from top to bottom, and throwing the pieces
around for upwards of sixty yards in every direction. If a barrel of
gunpowder had been placed under the tree, greater devastation could not
have been made. Lynch told me that the storm had been very severe in
that neighbourhood.

[* It is well knows that dry timber offers a greater resistance to the
electric fluid than the green.]

"We were at dinner," he said, "when the dreadful flash came which
shattered that tree. We were all knocked down by the shock, and
narrowly escaped being killed, not only by the lightning, but by the
pieces of timber which were, as you may observe, scattered in all
directions."

After a thunder-storm, attended by heavy rain, a substance very much
resembling sulphur is left floating on all the pools, which many people
believe to be sulphur. This, however, is quite a mistake, for it is, in
reality, nothing more than the farina from the cone of the pine trees.
I have observed this substance equally abundant on the Huron tract,
many miles from any pine grove. It must, therefore, from its lightness,
have been carried up into the air, from whence it has been beaten down
by the rain.

CHAPTER V.

CANADIAN HARVEST. -- PREPARING TIMBER FOR FRAME-BUILDINGS. -- RAISING
"BEE." -- BEAUTY OF THE CANADIAN AUTUMN. -- VISIT TO OTONABEE. -- ROUGH
CONVEYANCE. -- DISACCOMMODATION. -- LEARNED LANDLORD. -- COBOURG. --
OTONABEE RIVER. -- CHURCH OF GORE'S LANDING. -- EFFECTS OF PERSERVING
INDUSTRY.

OUR harvest, with the exception of some late oats, was all carefully
housed by the 18th of August. Very little grain is stacked out in this
country: even the hay is put up in barns. As timber can be had for the
cutting, log or frame-barns can be built very cheaply. I would
certainly recommend frame in preference to log-buildings.

Square timber, fit for framing, can be purchased from four to five
dollars per hundred feet, running measure. Twelve hundred feet are
sufficient, varying in size from four inches to a foot square. This
quantity will frame a barn fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, and
sixteen in height, from the sill to the plate which supports the roof.
Twelve thousand feet of boards and plank, at five dollars per thousand,
superficial measure, will be enough to enclose the frame, and lay the
threshing-floo