To the mere passing traveller, who cares little for the minute beauties of scenery, there is certainly a monotony in the long and unbroken line of woods, which insensibly inspires a feeling of gloom almost touching on sadness.  Still there are objects to charm and delight the close observer of nature.  His eye will be attracted by fantastic bowers, which are formed by the scarlet creeper (or Canadian ivy) and the wild vine, flinging their closely-entwined wreaths of richly tinted foliage from bough to bough of the forest trees, mingling their hues with the splendid rose-tipped branches of the soft maple, the autumnal tints of which are unrivalled in beauty by any of our forest trees at home.

The purple clusters of the grape, by no means so contemptible in size as I had been led to imagine, looked tempting to my longing eyes, as they appeared just ripening among these forest bowers.  I am told the juice forms a delicious and highly-flavoured jelly, boiled with sufficient quantity of sugar; the seeds are too large to make any other preparation of them practicable.  I shall endeavour, at some time or other, to try the improvement that can be effected by cultivation.  One is apt to imagine where Nature has so abundantly bestowed fruits, that is the most favourable climate for their attaining perfection with the assistance of culture and soil.

[Illustration:  Silver Pine]

The waters of the Otanabee are so clear and free from impurity that you distinctly see every stone-pebble or shell at the bottom.  Here and there an opening in the forest reveals some tributary stream, working its way beneath the gigantic trees that meet above it.  The silence of the scene is unbroken but by the sudden rush of the wild duck, disturbed from its retreat among the shrubby willows, that in some parts fringe the left bank, or the shrill cry of the kingfisher, as it darts across the water.  The steam-boat put in for a supply of fire-wood at a clearing about half-way from Peterborough, and I gladly availed myself of the opportunity of indulging my inclination for gathering some of the splendid cardinal flowers that grew among the stones by the river’s brink.  Here, too, I plucked as sweet a rose as ever graced an English garden.  I also found, among the grass of the meadow-land, spearmint, and, nearer to the bank, peppermint.  There was a bush resembling our hawthorn, which, on examination, proved to be the cockspur hawthorn, with fruit as large as cherries, pulpy, and of a pleasant tartness not much unlike to tamarinds.  The thorns of this tree were of formidable length and strength.  I should think it might be introduced with great advantage to form live fences; the fruit, too, would prove by no means contemptible as a preserve.