by the Canadian with a satisfaction proportioned to
the extreme sultriness of the summer, and the equally
oppressive rigour of the winter, by which it is immediately
preceded and followed. It is then that Nature,
who seems from the creation to have bestowed all of
grandeur and sublimity on the stupendous Americas,
looks gladly and complacently on her work; and, staying
the course of parching suns and desolating frosts,
loves to luxuriate for a period in the broad and teeming
bosom of her gigantic offspring. It is then that
the forest-leaves, alike free from the influence of
the howling hurricane of summer, and the paralysing
and unfathomable snows of winter, cleave, tame and
stirless in their varying tints, to the parent branch;
while the broad rivers and majestic lakes exhibit
a surface resembling rather the incrustation of the
polished mirror than the resistless, viewless particles
of which the golden element is composed. It is
then that, casting its satisfied glance across those
magnificent rivers, the eye beholds, as if reflected
from a mirror (so similar in production and appearance
are the contiguous shores), both the fertility of
cultivated and the rudeness of uncultivated nature,
that every where surround and diversify the view.
The tall and sloping banks, covered with verdure to
the very sands, that unite with the waters lying motionless
at their base; the continuous chain of neat farm-houses
(we speak principally of Detroit and its opposite shores);
the luxuriant and bending orchards, teeming with fruits
of every kind and of every colour; the ripe and yellow
corn vying in hue with the soft atmosphere, which reflects
and gives full effect to its abundance and its richness,—these,
with the intervening waters unruffled, save by the
lazy skiff, or the light bark canoe urged with the
rapidity of thought along its surface by the slight
and elegantly ornamented paddle of the Indian; or
by the sudden leaping of the large salmon, the unwieldly
sturgeon, the bearded cat-fish, or the delicately flavoured
maskinonge, and fifty other tenants of their bosom;—all
these contribute to form the foreground of a picture
bounded in perspective by no less interesting, though
perhaps ruder marks of the magnificence of that great
architect—Nature, on which the eye never
lingers without calm; while feelings, at once voluptuous
and tender, creep insensibly over the heart, and raise
the mind in adoration to the one great and sole Cause
by which the stupendous whole has been produced.
Such a day as that we have just described was the —— of September, 1763, when the chief portion of the English garrison of Detroit issued forth from the fortifications in which they had so long been cooped up, and in the presumed execution of a duty undeniably the most trying and painful that ever fell to the lot of soldier to perform. The heavy dull movement of the guns, as they traversed the drawbridge resembled in that confined atmosphere the rumbling of low and distant thunder; and as they