You ask me if I like the climate of Upper Canada; to be candid I do not think it deserves all that travellers have said of it.  The summer heat of last year was very oppressive; the drought was extreme, and in some respects proved rather injurious, especially to the potatoe crop.  The frosts set in early, and so did the snows; as to the far-fa_med Indian summer it seems to have taken its farewell of the land, for little of it have we seen during three years’ residence.  Last year there was not a semblance of it, and this year one horrible dark gloomy day, that reminded me most forcibly of a London fog, and which was to the full as dismal and depressing, was declared by the old inhabitants to be the commencement of the Indian summer; the sun looked dim and red, and a yellow lurid mist darkened the atmosphere, so that it became almost necessary to light candles at noonday.  If this be Indian summer, then might a succession of London fogs be termed the “London summer,” thought I, as I groped about in a sort of bewildering dusky light all that day; and glad was I when, after a day or two’s heavy rain, the frost and snow set in.

Very variable, as far as our experience goes, this climate has been; no two seasons have been at all alike, and it is supposed it will be still more variable as the work of clearing the forest goes on from year to year.  Near the rivers and great lakes the climate is much milder and more equable; more inland, the snow seldom falls so as to allow of sleighing for weeks after it has become general; this, considering the state of our bush-roads, is rather a point in our favour, as travelling becomes less laborious, though still somewhat rough.

I have seen the aurora borealis several times; also a splendid meteoric phenomenon that surpassed every thing I had ever seen or even heard of before.  I was very much amused by overhearing a young lad giving a gentleman a description of the appearance made by a cluster of the shooting-stars as they followed each other in quick succession athwart the sky.  “Sir,” said the boy, “I never saw such a sight before, and I can only liken the chain of stars to a logging-chain.”  Certainly a most natural and unique simile, quite in character with the occupation of the lad, whose business was often with the oxen and logging-chain, and after all not more rustic than the familiar names given to many of our most superb constellations,—­Charle’s wain, the plough, the sickle, &c.

Coming home one night last Christmas from the house of a friend, I was struck by a splendid pillar of pale greenish light in the west:  it rose to some height above the dark line of pines that crowned the opposite shores of the Otanabee, and illumined the heavens on either side with a chaste pure light, such as the moon gives in her rise and setting; it was not quite pyramidical, though much broader at the base than at its highest point; it gradually faded, till a faint white glimmering light alone marked where