ers of its savage inhabitants. The
climate of New Caledonia is exceedingly variable at all seasons of the
year. I have experienced at Stuart's Lake, in the month of July, every
possible change of weather within twelve hours; frost in the morning,
scorching heat at noon; then rain, hail, snow. The winter season is
subject to the same vicissitudes, though not in so extreme a degree:
some years it continues mild throughout. These vicissitudes may, I
think, be ascribed to local causes--proximity to, or distance from the
glaciers of the Rocky Mountains, the direction of the winds, the
aspect of the place, &c. Fort St. James is so situated as to be
completely exposed to the north-east wind, which wafts on its wings
the freezing vapours of the glaciers. The instant the wind shifts to
this quarter, a change of temperature is felt; and when it continues
to blow for a few hours, it becomes so cold that, even in midsummer,
small ponds are frozen over. The surrounding country is mountainous
and rocky.

Frazer's Lake is only about thirty miles distant from Fort St. James
(on Stuart's Lake), yet there they raise abundance of vegetables,
potatoes and turnips, and sometimes even wheat and barley. The post
stands in a valley open to the south-west,--a fine champaign country,
of a sandy soil; it is protected from the north-east winds by a high
ridge of hills. The winter seldom sets in before December, and the
navigation is generally open about the beginning of May.

Few countries present a more beautiful variety of scenery than New
Caledonia. Stuart's Lake and its environs I have already attempted to
describe, but many such landscapes present themselves in different
parts of the country, where towering mountains, hill and dale, forest
and lake, and verdant plains, blended together in the happiest manner,
are taken in by the eye at a glance. Some scenes there are that recall
forcibly to the remembrance of a son of Scotia, the hills and glens
and "bonnie braes" of his own poor, yet beloved native land. New
Caledonia, however, has the advantage over the Old, of being generally
well wooded, and possessed of lakes of far greater magnitude;
unfortunately, however, the woods are decaying rapidly, particularly
several varieties of fir, which are being destroyed by an insect that
preys on the bark: when the country is denuded of this ornament, and
its ridges have become bald, it will present a very desolate
appearance. In some parts of the coun