seen, for no
bird could secure a living with three feet of snow on the ground.
Nature is very dead, and I understood the glee with which the children
used to announce the return of the crows, for these wise birds are the
unfailing harbingers of Spring. With us Spring is undecided, fickle,
and coy. She is not sure of herself, and after making timid, tentative
advances, retreats again, uncertain as to her ability to cope with grim
Winter. In Canada, Spring comes with an all-conquering rush. In one
short fortnight she clothes the trees in green, and carpets the ground
with blue and white hepaticas. She is also, unfortunately, accompanied
by myriads of self-appointed official maids-of-honour in the shape of
mosquitoes, anxious to make up for their long winter fast. As the
fierce suns of April melt the surface snow, the water percolates
through to the ground, where it freezes again, forming a sheet of what
Canadians term "glare-ice." I have seen at Rideau Hall this ice split
in all directions over the flower-beds by the first tender shoots of
the crocuses. How these fragile little spears of green have the power
to penetrate an inch of ice is one of the mysteries of Nature.

Would space admit of it, and were paper not such an unreasonably
expensive commodity just now, I would like to speak of the glories of a
Canadian wood in May, with the ground flecked with red and white
trilliums; of the fields in British Columbia, gorgeous in spring-time
with blue lilies and drifts of rose-coloured cyclamens; of the autumn
woods in their sumptuous dress of scarlet, crimson, orange, and yellow,
the sugar-maples blazing like torches against the dark firs; of the
marvels of the three ranges of the Rockies, Selkirks, and Cascades, and
of the other wonders of the great Dominion.

As boys, I and my youngest brother knew "Hiawatha's Fishing" almost by
heart, so I had an intense desire to see "Gitche Gumee, the Big-Sea
Water," which we more prosaically call Lake Superior, the home of the
sturgeon "Nahma," of "Ugudwash" the sun-fish, of the pike the
"Maskenozha," and the actual scene of Hiawatha's fishing. To others,
without this sentimental interest, the Great Lakes might appear vast
but uninteresting expanses of water, chiefly remarkable for the hideous
form of vessel which has been evolved to navigate their clear depths.

One thing I can say with confidence. No one who makes a winter journey
to that land of sunshine and snow, with its energet