The previous work of my sister, Mrs. Traill, “The Backwoods of Canada, by the Wife of an Emigrant Officer,” published some years since by Mr. C. Knight, in his Library of Useful Knowledge, has passed through many editions, and enjoyed, (anonymous though it was,) too wide a popularity as a standard work for me to need to dwell on it, further than to say that the present is written in the same _naïve_, charming style, with the same modesty and uncomplaining spirit, although much has the sweet and gentle--author endured, as every English lady must expect to do who ventures to encounter the lot of a colonist. She has now devoted her further years of experience as a settler to the information of the younger class of colonists, to open their minds and interest them in the productions of that rising country, which will one day prove the mightiest adjunct of the island empire; our nearest, our soundest colony, unstained with the corruption of convict population; where families of gentle blood need fear no real disgrace in their alliance; where no one need beg, and where any one may dig without being ashamed.
LOUIS CONFESSING HIS DECEPTION OF CATHARINE
“The morning had shot her bright streamers on high, O’er Canada, opening all pale to the sky;
Still dazzling and white was the robe that she wore, Except where the ocean wave lash’d on the shore.” _Jacobite Song._
THERE lies between the Rice Lake and the Ontario, a deep and fertile valley, surrounded by lofty wood-crowned hills, the heights of which were clothed chiefly with groves of oak and pine, though the sides of the hills and the alluvial bottoms gave a variety of noble timber trees of various kinds, as the maple, beech, hemlock, and others. This beautiful and highly picturesque valley is watered by many clear streams of pure refreshing water, from whence the spot has derived its appropriate appellation of “Cold Springs.” At the time my little history commences, this now highly cultivated spot was an unbroken wilderness,--all tut two small farms, where dwelt the only occupiers of the soil,--which owned no other possessors than the wandering hunting tribes of wild Indians, to whom the right of the hunting grounds north of Rice Lake appertained, according to their forest laws.