no longer glitters on fields of white; the wood-man's axe is no
longer heard hacking the oaken billets, to keep alive the roaring fires.
That inexpressibly cheerful sound the merry chime of sleigh-bells, that
tells more of winter than all other sounds together, is no longer heard
on the bosom of Red River; for the sleighs are thrown aside as useless--
lumber-carts and gigs have supplanted them. The old Canadian, who used
to drive the ox with its water-barrel to the ice-hole for his daily
supply, has substituted a small cart with wheels for the old sleigh that
used to glide so smoothly over the snow, and grit so sharply on it in
the more than usually frosty mornings in the days gone by. The trees
have lost their white patches, and the clump of willows, that used to
look like islands in the prairie, have disappeared, as the carpeting
that gave them prominence has dissolved. The aspect of everything in
the isolated settlement has changed. The winter is gone, and spring--
bright, beautiful, hilarious spring--has come again.

By those who have never known an arctic winter, the delights of an
arctic spring can never, we fear, be fully appreciated or understood.
Contrast is one of its strongest elements; indeed, we might say, _the_
element which gives to all the others peculiar zest. Life in the arctic
regions is like one of Turner's pictures, in which the lights are
strong, the shadows deep, and the _tout ensemble_ hazy and romantic. So
cold and prolonged is the winter, that the first mild breath of spring
breaks on the senses like a zephyr from the plains of paradise.
Everything bursts suddenly into vigorous life, after the long death-like
sleep of Nature, as little children burst into the romping gaieties of a
new day after the deep repose of a long and tranquil night. The snow
melts, the ice breaks up, and rushes in broken masses, heaving and
tossing in the rising flood, that grind and whirl them into the ocean,
or into those great fresh-water lakes that vie with ocean itself in
magnitude and grandeur. The buds come out and the leaves appear,
clothing all nature with a bright, refreshing green, which derives
additional brilliancy from sundry patches of snow that fill the deep
creeks and hollows everywhere, and form ephemeral fountains whose waters
continue to supply a thousand rills for many a long day, until the
fierce glare of the summer sun prevails at last and melts them all away.

Red River flows on now to mi