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
a 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 307 of 670
Words from 83393 to 83658
of 181664