[Footnote: Singularly splendid exhibitions of Aurora Borealis were visible in the month, of August, 1839; in August, 1851; and again on the 21st February, 1852. The colours were rosy red, varied with other prismatic colours.
But the most singular feature was the ring-like circle from which the broad streams of light seemed to flow down in a curtain that appeared to reach from heaven to earth. In looking upwards, the sky had the appearance of a tent narrowed to a small circle at the top, which seemed to be the centre of illimitable space.
Though we listened with great attention, none of the crackling sounds that some Northern travellers have declared to accompany the Aurora Borealis could be heard; neither did any one experience any of the disagreeable bodily sensations that are often felt during thunder-storms. The atmosphere was unusually calm, and in two of the three instances warm and agreeable.]
CHAPTER XI.
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 burnt, 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?"