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There they stood in a row along the edge, twelve little brown and golden balls on twenty-four little pink-toed, in-turned feet, with twelve sweet little golden heads gravely bowing, drinking and giving thanks like their mother. Then she led them by short stages, keeping the cover, to the far side of the beaver-meadow, where was a great grassy dome.
The old dragoon had fixed his abode on the verge of an extensive beaver-meadow, which was considered a sort of natural curiosity in the neighbourhood; and where he managed, by cutting the rank grass in the summer time, to support several cows, which afforded the chief subsistence of his family.
Dug down in several places and found the marsh to be a deposit of black soil on top of clay. July 17 The Simmins family spent the afternoon with us. He knew about the swamp, and called it a, beaver-meadow. The grass that grew at the head of the creek would make hay good enough for cattle.
He said, it was very lucky I had not fallen in with the pack; for only the night before he had gone to a beaver-meadow, about two miles distant, to look for his working oxen which had strayed, when he was surrounded by the whole pack of wolves, and was obliged "to tree," to save his bacon.
"Och, my dear heart, you will be lost in the woods!" said old Jenny. "It is nine long miles to the first clearing, and that through a lonely, blazed path. After you are through the beaver-meadow, there is not a single hut for you to rest or warm yourselves. It is too much for the both of yees; you will be frozen to death on the road."
I thought of Rosalind, as our march up and down the fallen logs recommenced, and often exclaimed with her, "Oh, Jupiter! how weary are my legs!" Night closed in just as we reached the beaver-meadow. Here our ears were greeted with the sound of well-known voices. James and Henry C had brought the ox-sleigh to meet us at the edge of the bush. Never was splendid equipage greeted with such delight.
A contemporary authority describes it as better fitted for a frog-pond or a beaver-meadow than for the residence of human beings. It was on the road to nowhere, and its selection by Governor Simcoe as the provincial capital was disapproved of by many persons, and more especially by those who had settled on the Niagara peninsula.
This was the prelude to a still more amazing transformation, for the day soon came, though not in our hero's time, when the drumming of the partridge was silenced by the choo-choo of the locomotive as it shrieked through forest and beaver-meadow on its way to vaster tracks, further and further west, disclosing and leaving in its trail an empire of undreamed-of fertility.
His feelings, like our own, were deeply interested; and he proposed that we should each provide something from our own small stores to satisfy the pressing wants of the distressed family; while he promised to bring his cutter the next morning, and take us through the beaver-meadow, and to the edge of the great swamp, which would shorten four miles, at least, of our long and hazardous journey.
I thought of Rosalind, as our march up and down the fallen logs recommenced, and often exclaimed with her, "Oh, Jupiter! how weary are my legs!" Night closed in just as we reached the beaver-meadow. Here our ears were greeted with the sound of well-known voices. James and Henry C had brought the ox-sleigh to meet us at the edge of the bush. Never was splendid equipage greeted with such delight.
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