The Canadas contain millions of acres of good soil, covered with immense forests. Upper Canada is the most fertile, and in many respects is one of the most valuable of the British colonies in the west: every European grain, and every plant that requires a hot summer and can endure a cold winter, thrives there. The forests consist chiefly of black and white spruce, the Weymouth and other pines—trees which do not admit of undergrowth: they grow to great height, like bare spars, with a tufted crown, casting a deep gloom below. The fall of large trees from age is a common occurrence, and not without danger, as it often causes the destruction of those adjacent; and an ice-storm is awful. After a heavy fall of snow, succeeded by rain and a partial thaw, a strong frost coats the trees and all their branches with transparent ice often an inch thick; the noblest trees bend under the load, icicles hang from every bough, which come down in showers with the least breath of wind. The hemlock-spruce especially, with its long drooping branches, is then like a solid mass. If the wind freshens, the smaller trees become like corn beaten down by the tempest, while the large ones swing heavily in the breeze. The forest at last gives way under its load, tree comes down after tree with sudden and terrific violence, crushing all before them, till the whole is one wide uproar, heard from afar like successive discharges of artillery. Nothing, however, can be imagined more brilliant and beautiful than the effect of sunshine in a calm day on the frozen boughs, where every particle of the icy crystals sparkles, and nature seems decked in diamonds.[62] Although the subsoil is perpetually frozen at the depth of a few feet below the surface beyond the 56th degree of north latitude, yet trees grow in some places up to the 64th parallel. Farther north the gloomy and majestic forests cease, and are succeeded by a bleak, barren waste, which becomes progressively more dreary as it approaches the Arctic Ocean. Four-fifths of it are like the wilds of Siberia in surface and climate, covered many months in the year with deep snow. During the summer it is the resort of herds of rein-deer and bisons, which come from the south to browse on the tender short grass which then springs up along the streams and lakes.