_From Sketches, by a Backwoodsman._
It never has been accountable to me, how the heat of the sun is
regulated. There is no part of Upper Canada that is not to the south of
Penzance, yet there is no part of England where the cold is so intense
as in Canada; nay, there is no cold in England equal to the cold of
Virginia, which, were it on the European side of the hemisphere, would
be looked upon as an almost tropical climate. To explain to an European
what the climate of Upper Canada is, we would say, that in summer it is
the climate of Italy, in winter that of Holland; but in either case we
should only be giving an illustration, for in both winter and summer it
possesses peculiarities which neither of these two climates possess. The
summer heat of Upper Canada generally ranges towards 80° Fahrenheit; but
should the wind blow twenty-four hours steadily from the north, it will
fall to 40° during the night. The reason of this seems to be the
enormous quantity of forest over which that wind blows, and the leaves
of the trees affording such an extensive surface of evaporation. One
remarkable peculiarity in the climate of Canada, when compared with
those to which we have likened it, is its dryness. Far from the ocean,
the salt particles that somehow or other exist in the atmosphere of
sea-bounded countries are not to be found here; roofs of tinned iron of
fifty years' standing are as bright as the day they came out of the
shop; and you may leave a charge of powder in your gun for a month, and
find, at the end of it, that it goes off without hanging fire. The
diseases of the body, too, that are produced by a damp atmosphere, are
uncommon here. It may be a matter of surprise to some to hear, that
pectoral and catarrhal complaints, which, from an association of ideas
they may connect with cold, are here hardly known. In the cathedral at
Montreal, where from three to five thousand people assemble every
Sunday, you will seldom find the service interrupted by a cough, even in
the dead of winter and in hard frost; whereas, in Britain, from the days
of Shakspeare, even in a small country church, "coughing drowns the
parson's saw." Pulmonary consumption, too, the scourge alike of England
and the sea-coast of America, is so rare in the northern parts of New
York and Pennsylvania, and the whole of Upper Canada, that in eight
years' residence I have not seen as many cases of the disease as I have
in a day's visit to a provincial infirmary at home. The only disease we
are annoyed with here, that we are not accustomed to at home, is the
intermittent fever,--and that, though most abominably annoying, is not
by any means dangerous: indeed, one of the most annoying circumstances
connected with it is, that, instead of being sympathized with, you are
only laughed at. Otherwise the climate is infinitely more healthy than
that of England. Indeed, it may be pronounced the most healthy country
under the sun, considering that whisky can be procured for about one
shilling sterling per gallon. Though the cold of a Canadian winter is
great, it is neither distressing nor disagreeable. There is no day
during winter, except a rainy one, in which a man need be kept from his
work. It is a fact, though as startling as some of the dogmas of the
Edinburgh school of political economy, that the thermometer is no judge
of warm or cold weather. Thus, with us in Canada, when it is low, (say
at zero,) there is not a breath of hair, and you can judge of the cold
of the morning by the smoke rising from the chimney of a cottage, and
shooting up straight like the steeple of a church, then gradually
melting away in the beautiful clear blue of the morning sky: yet in such
weather it is impossible to go through a day's march in your great coat;
whereas, at home, when the wind blows from the north-east, though the
thermometer stands at from 55° to 60° you find a fire far from
oppressive. The fact is, that a Canadian winter is by far the
pleasantest season of the year, for everybody is idle, and everybody is
determined to enjoy himself. Between the summer and winter of Canada, a
season exists, called the Indian summer. During this period, the
atmosphere has a smoky, hazy effect, which is ascribed by the people
generally to the simultaneous burning of the prairies of the western
part of the continent. This explanation I take to be absurd; since, if
it were so to be accounted for, the wind must necessarily blow from that
quarter, which is not in all instances the case. During this period,
which generally occupies two or three weeks of the month of November,
the days are pleasant, and with abundance of sunshine, and the nights
present a cold, clear, black frost. When this disappears, the rains
commence, which always precede winter; for it is a proverb in the Lower
Province, among the French Canadians, that the ditches never freeze till
they are full. Then comes the regular winter, which, if rains and thaws
do not interfere, is very pleasant; and that is broken up by rains
again, which last until the strong sun of the middle of May renders
everything dry and in good order. A satirical friend of mine gave a
caricature account of the climate of the province, when he said that,
for two months of the spring and two months of the autumn, you are up to
your middle in mud; for four months of summer you are broiled by the
heat, choked by the dust, and devoured by the mosquitoes; and for the
remaining four months, if you get your nose above the snow, it is to
have it bit off by the frost.
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