“I guess you will find the woods pretty lonesome,” said our driver, whose thoughts had been evidently employed on the same subject as our own. “We were once in the woods, but emigration has stepped ahead of us, and made our'n a cleared part of the country. When I was a boy, all this country, for thirty miles on every side of us, was bush land. As to Peterborough, the place was unknown; not a settler had ever passed through the great swamp, and some of them believed that it was the end of the world.” “What swamp is that?” asked I. “Oh, the great Cavan swamp. We are just two miles from it; and I tell you 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 the 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.