The nights are cooler in proportion to the heat of the day, than in England.
This climate is subject to violent thunder-storms, accompanied by vivid forked lightning and heavy rain, which greatly tend to cool the air and make the country more healthy. Fatal accidents, however, sometimes occur, and houses and barns are burnt down by the electric fluid, and I have no doubt that, were it not for the proximity of the woods, a great deal more damage would be done.
The lofty trees serve as conductors, particularly the pine and hemlock, the former, from its great height above all the other trees of the forest, being much more likely to be struck by the lightning than any other. It is a curious fact that the electric fluid invariably follows the grain the wood. I have often noticed in pines which had been struck, that the fluid had followed the grain in a spiral form, encircling the tree three or four times in its descent to the earth. I have myself witnessed some extraordinary effects produced by lightning. I remember that, not more than two years since, I had occasion to go out into the township of Douro to attend the sitting of the Council of which I was then a member, and I had, on my way, to pass through a small clearing occupied by an Irish settler, one James Lynch.
This man, to save trouble, had left several large hemlock trees near his house. These trees had been dead for some years, consequently the wood was tolerably dry.[[2]] The day before, there had been a terrific thunder-storm which struck the largest, which was fully four feet in diameter, shivering it from top to bottom, and throwing the pieces around for upwards of sixty yards in every direction. If a barrel of gunpowder had been placed under the tree, greater devastation could not have been made. Lynch told me that the storm had been very severe in that neighbourhood.
[2] It is well knows that dry timber offers a greater resistance to the electric fluid than the green.
“We were at dinner,” he said, “when the dreadful flash came which shattered that tree. We were all knocked down by the shock, and narrowly escaped being killed, not only by the lightning, but by the pieces of timber which were, as you may observe, scattered in all directions.”
After a thunder-storm, attended by heavy rain, a substance very much resembling sulphur is left floating on all the pools, which many people believe to be sulphur. This, however, is quite a mistake, for it is, in reality, nothing more than the farina from the cone of the pine trees. I have observed this substance equally abundant on the Huron tract, many miles from any pine grove. It must, therefore, from its lightness, have been carried up into the air, from whence it has been beaten down by the rain.
CHAPTER V.
CANADIAN HARVEST.—PREPARING TIMBER FOR FRAME-BUILDINGS.—RAISING “BEE.”—BEAUTY OF THE CANADIAN AUTUMN.—VISIT TO OTONABEE.—ROUGH CONVEYANCE.—DISACCOMMODATION.—LEARNED LANDLORD.—COBOURG.—OTONABEE RIVER.—CHURCH OF GORE’S LANDING.—EFFECTS OF PERSERVING INDUSTRY.
Our harvest, with the exception of some late oats, was all carefully housed by the 18th of August. Very little grain is stacked out in this country: even the hay is put up in barns. As timber can be had for the cutting, log or frame-barns can be built very cheaply. I would certainly recommend frame in preference to log-buildings.