September is the most beautiful month in the Canadian year.  The weather is neither too hot nor too cold.  Nothing can be more delightfully pleasant; for, in this month, the foliage of the trees begins to put on that gorgeous livery for which the North American continent is so justly celebrated.  Every variety of tint, from the brightest scarlet and deepest orange, yellow and green, with all the intermediate shades blended together, form one of the most beautiful natural pictures you can possibly conceive.

I received a very pressing invitation from my wife’s brother-in-law, who resided near the foot of Rice Lake, in the township of Otonabee, to come and spend a few days with him.  As an additional inducement, he promised to show me some capital duck-shooting.  I was too fond of fowling to decline such an invitation as this.  Besides, I wished to see that new settlement.  The township lies north of Rice Lake, which forms its southern boundary:  it is the largest in the county of Peterborough, with the exception of Harvey.  Otonabee contains above eighty thousand acres, and is now the most populous as well as one of the most fertile townships in the county, which, at the time of which I am writing, had been just opened by the Government for location.

The only practicable road then to this settlement was from Cobourg, distant twelve miles from the southern shore of Rice Lake, leading over a chain of hills, the highest of which is, I believe, about seven hundred feet above the level of Lake Ontario, and from whence, on a very clear day, the opposite shore may be seen, though the distance is nearly sixty-five miles.  I have heard this statement disputed, but I am perfectly convinced of the truth from having myself seen, on several occasions, the United States’ shore of the lake from White’s Hill, which is several hundred feet lower.

It was arranged that I should drive my wife as far as Cobourg, and leave her with some friends till my return.  I was to take out with me from Cobourg the gentleman’s sister, Miss Jane W-----, who was to return with me.

We left Darlington in a one-horse pleasure-waggon so called, or rather mis-called, by the natives.  For my part, I never could find in what the pleasure consisted, unless in being jerked every minute two or three feet from your seat by the unevenness of the road and want of springs in your vehicle, or the next moment being soused to the axletree in a mud-hole, from which, perhaps, you were obliged to extricate your carriage by the help of a lever in the shape of a rail taken from some farmer’s fence by the roadside.  You are no sooner freed from this Charybdis, than you fall into Scylla, formed by half a mile of corduroy-bridge, made of round logs, varying from nine to fifteen inches in diameter, which, as you may suppose, does not make the most even surface imaginable, and over which you are jolted in the roughest style possible, at the expense of your breath and injury of your person.  I am happy to say that better roads and a better description of pleasure-carriages have superseded these inconvenient conveyances.