Life in the Clearings versus the BushMoodie, Susanna
History
Life in the Clearings versus the Bush
Moodie, Susanna
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Moodie, Susannah, 1803-1885; Ontario -- Description and travel
Trees that grow in open spaces after the forest has been cleared away,
are as graceful and umbrageous as those planted in parks at home. The
forest trees seldom possess any great beauty of outline; they run all
to top, and throw out few lateral branches. There is not a tree in the
woods that could afford the least shelter during a smart shower of rain.
They are so closely packed together in these dense forests, that a very
small amount of foliage, for the size and length of the trunk, is to be
found on any individual tree. One wood is the exact picture of another;
the uniformity dreary in the extreme. There are no green vistas to be
seen; no grassy glades beneath the bosky oaks, on which the deer browse,
and the gigantic shadows sleep in the sunbeams. A stern array of rugged
trunks, a tangled maze of scrubby underbrush, carpetted winter and
summer with a thick layer of withered buff leaves, form the general
features of a Canadian forest.
A few flowers force their heads through this thick covering of leaves,
and make glad with their beauty the desolate wilderness; but those who
look for an Arcadia of fruits and flowers in the Backwoods of Canada
cannot fail of disappointment. Some localities, it is true, are more
favoured than others, especially those sandy tracts of table-land that
are called plains in this country; the trees are more scattered, and the
ground receives the benefit of light and sunshine.
Flowers--those precious gifts of God--do not delight in darkness and
shade, and this is one great reason why they are so scarce in the woods.
I saw more beautiful blossoms waving above the Niagara river, from every
crevice in its rocky banks, than I over beheld during my long residence
in the bush. These lovely children of light seem peculiarly to rejoice
in their near vicinity to water, the open space allowed to the wide
rivers affording them the air and sunshine denied to them in the close
atmosphere of the dense woods.
The first sight we caught of the Falls of Niagara was from the top of
the hill that leads directly into the village. I had been intently
examining the rare shrubs and beautiful flowers that grew in an
exquisite garden surrounding a very fine mansion on my right hand,
perfectly astonished at their luxuriance, and the emerald greenness of
the turf at that season, which had been one of unprecedented drought,
when, on raising my head, the great cataract burst on my sight without
any intervening screen, producing an overwhelming sensation in my mind
which amounted to pain in its intensity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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