It was with conversations like this that our poor wanderers wiled away their weariness. The love of life, and the exertions necessary for self-preservation, occupied so large a portion of their thoughts and time, that they had hardly leisure for repining. They mutually cheered and animated each other to bear up against the sad fate that had thus severed them from every kindred tie, and shut them out from that home to which their young hearts were bound by every endearing remembrance from infancy upwards.
One bright September morning, our young people set off on an exploring expedition, leaving the faithful Wolfe to watch the wigwam, for they well knew he was too honest to touch their store of dried fish and venison himself, and too trusty and fierce to suffer wolf or wild cat near it.
They crossed several narrow deep ravines, and the low wooded flat _[FN: Now the fertile firm of Joe Harris, a Yankee settler whose pleasant meadows and fields of grain form a pretty feature from the lake. It is one of the oldest clearings on the shore, and speaks well for the persevering industry of the settler and his family.]_ along the lake shore, to the eastward of Pine-tree Point. Finding it difficult to force their way through the thick underwood that always impedes the progress of the traveller on the low shores of the lake, they followed the course of an ascending narrow ridge, which formed a sort of natural causeway between two parallel hollows, the top of this ridge being in many places, not wider than a cart or waggon could pass along. The sides were most gracefully adorned with flowering shrubs, wild vines, creepers of various species, wild cherries of several kinds, hawthorns, bilberry bushes, high-bush cranberries, silver birch, poplars, oaks and pines; while in the deep ravines on either side grew trees of the largest growth, the heads of which lay on a level with their path. Wild cliffy banks, beset with huge boulders of red and grey granite and water-worn limestone, showed that it had once formed the boundary of the lake, though now it was almost a quarter of a mile in its rear. Springs of pure water were in abundance, trickling down the steep rugged sides of this wooded glen. The children wandered onwards, delighted with the wild picturesque path they had chosen, sometimes resting on a huge block of moss-covered stone, or on the twisted roots of some ancient grey old oak or pine, while they gazed with curiosity and interest on the lonely but lovely landscape before them. Across the lake, the dark forest shut all else from their view, rising in gradual far-off slopes, till it reached the utmost boundary of sight. Much the children marvelled what country it might be that lay in the dim, blue, hazy distance,--to them, indeed, a _terra incognita_--a land of mystery; but neither of her companions laughed when Catharine gravely suggested the probability of this unknown shore to the northward being her father’s beloved Highlands. Let not youthful and more learned reader smile at the ignorance of the Canadian girl; she knew nothing of maps, and globes, and hemispheres,--her only book of study had been the Holy Scriptures, her only teacher a poor Highland soldier.