Mrs Moodie was not likely to emulate such feats as this. She had a horror of wild beasts, and was afraid even of cattle. Her dread of lions, tigers, and other unamiable carnivora, was the reason of her finding herself in Canada. Her husband had a property in South Africa, where he had passed many years, and whither the fine climate and scenery made him desirous to return. But his wife would not hear of it, and, when he tried to remove her exaggerated terrors, referred him triumphantly to the dangerous encounters and hairbreadth escapes recorded in a book of his own, called _Ten Years in South Africa_. A European woman's fear of tigers and rattle-snakes is natural enough, and let none impute want of courage to Mrs Moodie. The hero of a hundred fights might feel nervous, if perched on the top-gallant-yards of a frigate, whose captain might prefer boarding a French three-decker to riding at a bull-fence. Mrs Moodie's courage was not of the bear-fighting sort, but of a higher kind--moral, rather than physical. We read with admiration and deep sympathy of her presence of mind and intrepidity upon many trying occasions--when her house, for instance, was blazing over her head, and she alone was there to rescue her four children and such portions of her worldly possessions as her strength enabled her to carry out of the cedar-log dwelling, whose roof "was burning like a brush heap, and, unconsciously, she and her eldest daughter were working under a shelf upon which was deposited several pounds of gunpowder, procured for blasting a well. The gunpowder was in a stone-jar, secured by a paper stopper; the shelf upon which it stood was on fire." As to her fortitude under severe suffering--from bitter cold and other causes--and the perseverance with which she toiled, even at farm-labour, they are beyond praise. "In the year 1835, my husband and I," she says, "had worked hard in the field; it was the first time I had ever tried my hand at field-labour, but our ready money was exhausted, and the steamboat stock had not paid us one farthing; we could not hire, and there was no help for it. I had a hard struggle with my pride before I would consent to render the least assistance on the farm, but reflection convinced me that I was wrong--that Providence had placed me in a situation where I was called upon to work--that it was not only my duty to obey that call, but to exert myself to the utmost to assist my husband, and help to maintain my family."