since 1837, as well as to employ
the mind actively, to prevent the reaction which threatened to assail
it from the occurrence of a severe dispensation.

I heard a very curious fact in natural history, whilst at Niagara, in
company with a medical friend, who took much interest in such matters.

I had often remarked, when in the habit of shooting, the very great
length of time that the loon, or northern diver, (_colymbus
glacialis_,) remained under water after being fired at, and fancied he
must be a living diving-bell, endued with some peculiar functions
which enabled him to obtain a supply of air at great depth; but I was
not prepared for the circumstance that the fishermen actually catch
them on the hooks of their deepest lines in the Niagara river, when
fishing at the bottom for salmon-trout, &c. Such is, however, the
fact.

An affecting incident at Queenston, whilst we were waiting for the
Transit to take us to Toronto, must be related. I have mentioned that,
in the spring of 1845, an ice-jam, as it is called here, occurred,
which suddenly raised the level of the Niagara between thirty and
forty feet above its ordinary floods, and overset or beat down, by
the grinding of mountain masses of ice, all the wharfs and buildings
on the adjacent banks.

The barrack of the Royal Canadian Rifles at Queenston was thus
assailed in the darkest hours of the night, and the soldiers had
barely time to escape, before the strong stone building they inhabited
was crushed. The next to it, but on higher ground, more than thirty
feet above the natural level of the river, was a neat wooden cottage,
inhabited by a very aged man and his helpless imbecile wife, equally
aged with himself. This man, formerly a soldier, was a cabinet-maker,
and amused his declining years by forming very ingenious articles in
his line of business; his house was a model of curious nick-nackeries,
and thus he picked up just barely enough in the retrograding village
to keep the wolf from the door; whilst the soldiers helped him out, by
sparing from their messes occasionally a little nourishing food.

That night, the dreadful darkness, the elemental warnings, the
soul-sickening rush of the river, the groaning and grinding of the
ice, piling itself, layer after layer, upon the banks of the river,
assailed the old man with horrors, to which all his ancient campaigns
had afforded no parallel.

He heard the irresistible enemy, slowly, deliberately, and
determin