On reaching the summit of this hill, I found myself on the highest land
I had yet stood upon in Canada, with the exception of Queenston heights.
I stopped the horses and looked around, and on every side, far and near,
east, west, north, and south, it was all forest--a boundless sea of
forest, within whose leafy recesses lay hidden as infinite variety of
life and movement as within the depths of the ocean; and it reposed in
the noontide so still and so vast! _Here_ the bright sunshine rested on
it in floods of golden light; _there_ cloud-shadows sped over its
bosom, just like the effects I remember to have seen on the Atlantic;
and here and there rose wreaths of white smoke from the new clearings
which, collected into little silver clouds, and hung suspended in the
quiet air.
I gazed and meditated till, by a process like that of the Arabian
sorcerer of old, the present fell like a film from my eyes: the future
was before me, with its towns and cities, fields of waving grain, green
lawns and villas, and churches, and temples--turret-crowned: and meadows
tracked by the frequent foot-path; and railroads, with trains of rich
merchandise steaming along:--for all this _will_ be! Will be? _It is_
already in the sight of Him who hath ordained it, and for whom there is
no past nor future: though I cannot behold it with my bodily vision,
even _now_ it is.
But is _that_ NOW better than _this_ present NOW? When these forests,
with all their solemn depth of shade and multitudinous life have fallen
beneath the axe--when the wolf, and bear, and deer are driven from their
native coverts, and all this infinitude of animal and vegetable being
has made way for restless, erring, suffering humanity, will it then be
better? _Better_--I know not; but surely it will be _well_, and right in
His eyes who has ordained that thus the course of things shall run.
Those who see nothing in civilised life but its complicated cares,
mistakes, vanities, and miseries, may doubt this--or despair. For
myself, I am of those who believe and hope; who behold in progressive
civilisation, progressive happiness, progressive approximation to nature
and to nature's God; for are we not in His hands?--and all that He does
is good.
Contemplations such as these were in my mind as we descended the Hill of
Bears, and proceeded through a beautiful plain, sometimes richly wooded,
sometimes opening into clearings and cultivated farms, on which were
usually compact farm-houses, each flanked by a barn three times as large
as the house, till we came on to a place called Five Stakes, where I
found two or three tidy cottages, and procured some bread and milk. The
road here was no longer so good, and we travelled slowly and with
difficulty for some miles. About five o'clock we reached St. Thomas,
one of the prettiest places I had yet seen. Here I found two or three
inns, and at one of them, styled the "Mansion House Hotel," I ordered
tea for myself and good entertainment for my young driver and his
horses, and then walked out.