It was one of those still, calm, warm,
and genial days, which in those regions come under the
vulgar designation of the Indian summer; a season that
is ever hailed by the Canadian with a satisfaction
proportioned to the extreme sultriness of the summer,
and the equally oppressive rigour of the winter, by which
it is immediately preceded and followed. It is then that
Nature, who seems from the creation to have bestowed all
of grandeur and sublimity on the stupendous Americas,
looks gladly and complacently on her work; and, staying
the course of parching suns and desolating frosts, loves
to luxuriate for a period in the broad and teeming bosom
of her gigantic offspring. It is then that the
forest-leaves, alike free from the influence of the
howling hurricane of summer, and the paralysing and
unfathomable snows of winter, cleave, tame and stirless
in their varying tints, to the parent branch; while the
broad rivers and majestic lakes exhibit a surface resembling
rather the incrustation of the polished mirror than the
resistless, viewless particles of which the golden element
is composed. It is then that, casting its satisfied
glance across those magnificent rivers, the eye beholds,
as if reflected from a mirror (so similar in production
and appearance are the contiguous shores), both the
fertility of cultivated and the rudeness of uncultivated
nature, that every where surround and diversify the view.
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