The forests, especially in the hard wood districts, are beautiful in their fresh unbroken solitude—­not the solitude of desolation, but the young wild loveliness of the untamed earth.  The trees stand close and thick, with straight pillar-like stems, unbroken by leaf or bough, which all expand to the summit, as if for breathing space.  There is little brush wood, but myriads of plants and creepers, springing with the summer’s breath.  The beautiful dog-wood’s sweeping sprays and broad leaves, the maiden-hairs glossy wreathes and pearly buds, and the soft emerald moss, clothing the old fallen trees with its velvet tapestry, and hiding their decay with its cool rich beauty, while the sun light falls in golden tracery down the birch trees silver trunk, and the sparkling water flashes in the rays, or sings on its sweet melody unseen amid the luxuriant vegetation that conceals it.

Through this sweet path we held on our way, talking of every bard who has said or sung the green wood’s glories, whose fancied beauties were here all realized.  As we neared the clearings, we met frequent groups of blue nose children gathering, with botanical skill, herbs for dyeing, or carrying sheets of birch bark, which, to be fit for its many uses, must be peeled from the trees in the full moon of June.  On these children, beautiful as young Greeks, with lustrous eyes and faultless features, Grace said she could hardly yet look without an instinctive feeling of awe and pity, cherishing as she did the partiality of her creed and nation for infant baptism.  To her there was something awful, in sight of those unhallowed creatures, whose brows bore not the first symbol of christianity.  We having passed through the woods, were soon in a large assemblage of native and adopted colonists.

The greater number of the native population, I think, are baptists, and their ministers are either raised among themselves, or come from the United States; or Nova Scotia.  Once in every year a general association is convened of the members of the society throughout the province, the attendance on which gives ample proof of the greatness of their numbers, as well as their fervency of feeling.  This association is held in a different part of the province each season—­and generally lasts a week.  Reports are here made of the progress of their religion, the state of funds, and of all other matters connected with the society.  There is, generally, at these conventions a revival of religious feeling, and during the last days numerous converts are made and received by baptism into the church.  This meeting is looked forward too by the colonists with many mingled feelings.  By the grave and good it is hailed as an event of sacred importance, and by the gay and thoughtless as a season of sight-seeing and dress-displaying.  Those in whose neighbourhood it was last year are glad it is not be so this time; and those near the place it is to be held, are calculating the sheep and poultry,