ched of metal seemed to freeze
our fingers. This excessive degree of cold only lasted three days, and
then a gradual amelioration of temperature was felt.

During this very cold weather I was surprised by the frequent recurrence
of a phenomenon that I suppose was of an electrical nature. When the
frosts were most intense I noticed that when I undressed, my clothes,
which are at this cold season chiefly of woollen cloth, or lined with
flannel, gave out when moved a succession of sounds, like the crackling
and snapping of fire, and in the absence of a candle emitted sparks of a
pale whitish blue light, similar to the flashes produced by cutting
loaf-sugar in the dark, or stroking the back of a black cat: the same
effect was also produced when I combed and brushed my hair*.

[* This phenomenon is common enough everywhere when the air is very
dry.--Ed.]

The snow lay very deep on the ground during February, and until the l9th
of March, when a rapid thaw commenced, which continued without
intermission till the ground was thoroughly freed from its hoary livery,
which was effected in less than a fortnight's time. The air during the
progress of the thaw was much warmer and more balmy than it usually is
in England, when a disagreeable damp cold is felt during that process.

Though the Canadian winter has its disadvantages, it also has its
charms. After a day or two of heavy snow the sky brightens, and the air
becomes exquisitely clear and free from vapour; the smoke ascends in
tall spiral columns till it is lost: seen against the saffron-tinted sky
of an evening, or early of a clear morning, when the hoar-frost sparkles
on the trees, the effect is singularly beautiful.

I enjoy a walk in the woods of a bright winter-day, when not a cloud, or
the faint shadow of a cloud, obscures the soft azure of the heavens
above; when but for the silver covering of the earth I might look
upwards to the cloudless sky and say, "It is June, sweet June." The
evergreens, as the pines, cedars, hemlock, and balsam firs, are bending
their pendent branches, loaded with snow, which the least motion
scatters in a mimic shower around, but so light and dry is it that it is
shaken off without the slightest inconvenience.

The tops of the stumps look quite pretty, with their turbans of snow; a
blackened pine-stump, with its white cap and mantle, will often startle
you into the belief that some one is approaching you thus fancifully
attired. As to gho