A family sleigh is made to carry from six to ten persons; the more stylish ones from four to six; a cutter, or single sleigh, two.  These are all for pleasure, but every farmer is obliged to have a lumber-sleigh for general use.  A much larger load can be drawn on runners in winter than on wheels in summer.  Sleighing is, without doubt, the most delightful mode of travelling you can possibly conceive, but it takes several falls of snow to make the sleighing good.  All the inequalities must be filled up and levelled, but the snow soon packs solid by the constant friction of the sleigh-runner.  The horses are each provided with a ring of bells, the sound of which is not unmusical; and I am assured is delightful indeed to the ears of the anxious wife, watching for the return of her husband from a winter journey.  Some years ago, when the country was unsettled, the females of the family had some cause for fear, since the absence of the father, son, or husband, was not always followed by his safe return; and the snow-storm, or the wolves, were thought of with alarm, till the music of the sleigh-bells announced the safety of the beloved absentee.

In no country on the face of the earth does the torch of wedded love beam brighter than in Canada, where the husband always finds “the wife dearer than the bride.”  I have seen many an accomplished and beautiful English girl, “forgetting with her father’s house,” the amusements of a fashionable life, to realize with a half-pay officer or “younger brother,” the purer, holier pleasures of domestic love in this country, where a numerous issue, the fruits of their union, are considered a blessing and a source of wealth, instead of bringing with them, as in the old country, an increase of care.

CHAPTER VII.

EMPLOYMENTS OF A MAN OF EDUCATION IN THE COLONY. —­ YANKEE WEDDING. —­ MY COMMISSION. —­ WINTER IN CANADA. —­ HEALTHINESS OF THE CANADIAN CLIMATE. —­ SERACH FOR LAND. —­ PURCHASE WILD LAND AT DOURO. —­ MY FLITTING. —­ PUT UP A SHANTY. —­ INEXPERIENCE IN CLEARING. —­ PLAN-HEAPS.

The employments of a respectable Canadian settler are certainly of a very multifarious character, and he may be said to combine, in his own person, several professions, if not trades.  A man of education will always possess an influence, even in bush society:  he may be poor, but his value will not be tested by the low standard of money, and notwithstanding his want of the current coin of the realm, he will be appealed to for his judgment in many matters, and will be inducted into several offices, infinitely more honourable than lucrative.  My friend and father-in-law, being mild in manners, good-natured, and very sensible, was speedily promoted to the bench, and was given the colonelcy of the second battalion of the Durham Militia.