It was a matter of some ceremony to set forth: a fur cap with flaps secured over the ears and under the chin, a large fur cloak, and a pair of moccasins for the feet, had to be put on; and then we climb the sides of the boat-like sleigh, and started off at a rapid pace, which produced a sea-sick sensation--at least what I am told is like it--in very rough places where the runners of the sleighs have cut into the snow. On our way we were rejoiced by the sight of the “Driving Club” going out for an excursion, Sir Fenwick Williams leading. All one could see, however, was a certain looming up of dark forms through the drift gliding along to the music of the bells, which followed one after the other, and were lost in the hazy yet glittering clouds tossed up by the horses’ hoofs from the snow. In the afternoon the rime passed off, and the day became clearer, but no warmer. At about three o’clock, we sleighed over by rough roads to the terminus of the railway, close to the Victoria Bridge, where a party of the directors and some officers--Colonel Mackensie, Colonel Wetherall, Colonels Ellison and Earle of the Guards, and others recently arrived--were assembled to view the great work which would stamp the impress of English greatness on Canada, if her power were to be rooted out to-morrow. The royal carriage--a prettily decorated long open waggon, with the Prince of Wales’s coat of arms, plume, and initials still shining brightly--was in readiness; and as cold makes one active, or very lazy, as the case may be, we lost no time in starting to explore the bridge, which threw its massive weight in easy stretches across the vast frozen highway of the St. Lawrence--so light, so strong, so graceful, for all its rigid lines, that I can compare the impression of the thing to nothing so much as to that of the bounds of a tiger. The entrance, in the limestone rock, is grandly simple; but ere we could well admire its proportions the car ran into the darkness of the great tube. The light admitted by the neatly designed windows in the iron sides of the aërial tunnel was not enough to enable us to pierce through the smoke and the fog which clung to the interior. The car proceeded to the end, the thermometer marking 6°. Statistics, though I have them all by me, I am not about to give, as the history of the bridge is well known; but Mr. Blackwell showed me a table which indicated that the monster suffers or rejoices like a living thing, and contracts and expands and swells out his lines wondrously, just in proportion as the temperature alters.