“What swamp is that?” asked I.

“Oh, the great Cavan swamp.  We are just two miles from it; and I tell you that the horses will need a good rest, and ourselves a good dinner, by the time we are through it.  Ah, Mrs. Moodie, if ever you travel that way in summer, you will know something about corduroy roads.  I was ’most jolted to death last fall; I thought it would have been no bad notion to have insured my teeth before I left C—–.  I really expected that they would have been shook out of my head before we had done manoeuvring over the big logs.”

“How will my crockery stand it in the next sleigh?” quoth I.  “If the road is such as you describe, I am afraid that I shall not bring a whole plate to Douro.”

“Oh, the snow is a great leveller—­it makes all rough places smooth.  But with regard to this swamp, I have something to tell you.  About ten years ago, no one had ever seen the other side of it; and if pigs or cattle strayed away into it, they fell a prey to the wolves and bears, and were seldom recovered.

“An old Scotch emigrant, who had located himself on this side of it, so often lost his beasts that he determined during the summer season to try and explore the place, and see if there were any end to it.  So he takes an axe on his shoulder, and a bag of provisions for a week, not forgetting a flask of whiskey, and off he starts all alone, and tells his wife that if he never returned, she and little Jock must try and carry on the farm without him; but he was determined to see the end of the swamp, even if it led to the other world.  He fell upon a fresh cattle-track, which he followed all that day; and towards night he found himself in the heart of a tangled wilderness of bushes, and himself half eaten up with mosquitoes and black-flies.  He was more than tempted to give in, and return home by the first glimpse of light.

“The Scotch are a tough people; they are not easily daunted—­a few difficulties only seem to make them more eager to get on; and he felt ashamed the next moment, as he told me, of giving up.  So he finds out a large thick cedar-tree for his bed, climbs up, and coiling himself among the branches like a bear, he was soon fast asleep.

“The next morning, by daylight, he continued his journey, not forgetting to blaze with his axe the trees to the right and left as he went along.  The ground was so spongy and wet that at every step he plunged up to his knees in water, but he seemed no nearer the end of the swamp than he had been the day before.  He saw several deer, a raccoon, and a ground-hog, during his walk, but was unmolested by bears or wolves.  Having passed through several creeks, and killed a great many snakes, he felt so weary towards the close of the second day that he determined to go home the next morning.  But just as he began to think his search was fruitless he observed that the cedars and tamaracks which had obstructed his path became less numerous, and were succeeded