STRAWBERRIES—CANADIAN WILD FRUITS—WILD RASPBERRIES—THE HUNTER AND THE LOST CHILD—CRANBERRIES—CRANBERRY MARSHES—NUTS.
One day Lady Mary's nurse brought her a small Indian basket, filled with ripe red strawberries.
"Nurse, where did you get these nice strawberries?" said the little girl, peeping beneath the fresh leaves with which they were covered.
"I bought them from a little Indian squaw in the street; she had brought them from a wooded meadow some miles off, my lady. They are very fine; see, they are as large as those that the gardener sent in yesterday from the forcing-house; and these wild ones have grown without any pains having been bestowed upon them."
"I did not think, nurse, that wild strawberries could have been so fine as these; may I taste them?"
Mrs. Frazer said she might. "These are not so large, so red, or so sweet as some that I have gathered when I lived at home with my father," said the nurse. "I have seen acres and acres of strawberries, as large as the early scarlet that are sold so high in the market, on the Rice Lake plains. When the farmers have ploughed a fallow on the Rice Lake plains, the following summer it will be covered with a crop of the finest strawberries. I have gathered pailsful day after day, these, however, have been partly cultivated by the plough breaking up the sod, but they seem as if sown by the hand of Nature. These fruits and many sorts of flowers appear on the new soil that were never seen there before. After a fallow has been chopped, logged, and burned, if it be left for a few years, trees, shrubs, and plants, will cover it, unlike those that grew there before."
"That is curious," said the child, "Does God sow the seeds in the new ground?"
"My lady, no doubt they come from Him, for He openeth His hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness. My father, who thought a great deal on these subjects, said that the seeds of many plants may fall upon the earth, and yet none of them take root till the soil be favourable for their growth. It may be that these seeds had lain for years, preserved in the earth till the forest was cleared away, and the sun, air, and rain caused them to spring up, or the earth may still bring forth the herb of the field, after its kind, as in the day of the creation, but whether it be so or not, we must bless the Lord for His goodness and for the blessings that He giveth us at all times."
"Are there many sorts of wild fruits fit to eat, nurse, in this country?
Please, will you tell me all that you know about them?"
"There are so many, Lady Mary, that I am afraid I shall weary you before I have told you half of them."