I Had A Great Desire To Visit Our New Location, But When I Looked
Out Upon The Cheerless Waste, I
Gave up the idea, and contented
myself with hoping for a better day on the morrow; but many morrows
came
And went before a frost again hardened the road sufficiently
for me to make the attempt.
The prospect from the windows of my sister's log hut was not very
prepossessing. The small lake in front, which formed such a pretty
object in summer, now looked like an extensive field covered with
snow, hemmed in from the rest of the world by a dark belt of sombre
pine-woods. The clearing round the house was very small, and only
just reclaimed from the wilderness, and the greater part of it
covered with piles of brushwood, to be burnt the first dry days of
spring. The charred and blackened stumps on the few acres that had
been cleared during the preceding year were everything but
picturesque; and I concluded, as I turned, disgusted, from the
prospect before me, that there was very little beauty to be found in
the backwoods. But I came to this decision during a Canadian thaw,
be it remembered, when one is wont to view every object with
jaundiced eyes.
Moodie had only been able to secure sixty-six acres of his
government grant upon the Upper Katchawanook Lake, which, being
interpreted, means in English, the "Lake of the Waterfalls," a very
poetical meaning, which most Indian names have.
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