ther reason is, that when the snow has fallen
to some depth, the light timbers cannot be cut close to the ground, or
the dead branches and other incumbrances collected and thrown in heaps.

We shall have about three acres ready for spring-crops, provided we get
a good burning of that which is already chopped near the site of the
house,--this will be sown with oats, pumpkins, Indian corn, and
potatoes: the other ten acres will be ready for putting in a crop of
wheat. So you see it will be a long time before we reap a harvest. We
could not even get in spring-wheat early enough to come to perfection
this year.

We shall try to get two cows in the spring, as they are little expense
during the spring, summer, and autumn; and by the winter we shall have
pumpkins and oat-straw for them.

LETTER IX.

Loss of a yoke of Oxen.--Construction of a Log-house.--Glaziers' and
Carpenters' work.--Description of new Log-house.--Wild Fruits of the
Country.--Walks on the Ice.--Situation of the House.--Lake, and
surrounding Scenery.

Lake House
April 18, 1833

BUT it is time that I should give you some account of our log-house,
into which we moved a few days before Christmas. Many unlooked-for
delays having hindered its completion before that time, I began to think
it would never be habitable.

The first misfortune that happened was the loss of a fine yoke of oxen
that were purchased to draw in the house-logs, that is, the logs for
raising the walls of the house. Not regarding the bush as pleasant as
their former master's cleared pastures, or perhaps foreseeing some hard
work to come, early one morning they took into their heads to ford the
lake at the head of the rapids, and march off, leaving no trace of their
route excepting their footing at the water's edge. After many days spent
in vain search for them, the work was at a stand, and for one month they
were gone, and we began to give up all expectation of hearing any news
of them. At last we learned they were some twenty miles off, in a
distant township, having made their way through bush and swamp, creek
and lake, back to their former owner, with an instinct that supplied to
them the want of roads and compass.

Oxen have been known to traverse a tract of wild country to a distance
of thirty or forty miles going in a direct line for their former haunts
by unknown paths, where memory could not avail them. In the dog we
consider it is scent as well as memory that guides him