The London Quarterly Review Volume 42 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Art. IV.Forest Scenes and Incidents in the Wilds of JVorth America; being a Diary of a Winter's Bonte from Halifax to the Canadas, and during Four Month's Residence in the Woods on the borders of Lakes Huron and Simcoe. By George Head, Esq. London. 8vo. 1829. He ' Rough Notes' of Captain Head on his gallop across South America, are not more unlike ordinary travels than this Diary of a winter's journey in British America, and a summer residence in the woods there. The authors (if we mistake not) are brothers, and grandsons of Moses Mendez, well known among the men of letters of his day. Mr. Head, being ordered to a station in Upper Canada, landed at Halifax in the latter end of November; the passage of the river St. Lawrence was already closed, and he had therefore to make his way thither over land, a distance of more than twelve hundred miles. The time of year could hardly have been worse for the journey: though NovemberMs to the Nova Scotians their best month, so much so, indeed, as to be called, for its ' fresh frosty air and bright sun, ' the Indian summer. There is an old proverb in our own country which prays for deliverance from Hull, Halifax, and one other place that may as well be nameless: it is no longer applicable to either of these English towns, but Mr. Head's account of the climate of Halifax in Nova Scotia brought the deprecative aspiration to our lips. The sun is powerful and oppressive in July and August; cold evenings in September, with frosts increasing in severity. October variablewith rough gales from the north-west, sweeping the frozen continent, and answering to our easterly winds. Then the Indian summer, in which, however, some days are close and foggy, others clear and intensely cold, and the temperature sometimes varying as much as forty degree...