The Former Were Suitable For Hyde
Park; The Latter Was Mere Bush-Riding - Climbing Down Precipices, Fording
Rapid Rivers, Scrambling
Through fences and over timber, floundering in
mud, going through the bush with hands before us to push the branches
From
our faces, and, finally, watering our horses in the blue, deep waters of
Lake Ontario - yet I never enjoyed a ride along the green lanes of England
so much as this one in the wild scenery of Canada.
The Sundays that I spent at Mr. Forrest's were very enjoyable, though the
heat of the first was nearly insupportable, and the cold of the last like
that of an English Christmas in bygone years. There are multitudes of
Presbyterians in Western Canada, who worship in their pure and simple
faith with as much fervency and sincerity as did their covenanting
forefathers in the days of the persecuting Dundee; and the quaint old
Psalms, to which they are so much attached, sung to the strange old tunes,
sound to them as sweet among the backwoods of Canada as in the peaceful
villages of the Lowlands, or in the remote Highland glens, where I have
often listened to their slow and plaintive strains borne upon the mountain
breezes. "Are ye frae the braes of Gleneffar?" said an old Scotchwoman to
me; "were ye at our kirk o' Sabbath last, ye would na' ken the
difference."
The Irishman declaims against the land he has forsaken - the Englishman too
often suffers the remembrance of his poverty to sever the tie which binds
him to the land of his birth - but where shall we find the Scotchman in
whose breast love of his country is not a prominent feeling?
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