about Canada, or who are or have been agents for the sake only of the
remuneration which it brings, caring but little for the misery they have
entailed, I have undertaken to continue an account of this fine
province, where nothing is provided by Nature except fertile soil and a
healthy climate; the rest she leaves to unremitting labour and to the
exercise of judgment by the settler.

As I have already inferred, this work will contain nothing vituperative
of the United States, of that people who are the grandchildren of
Britannia, and whose well-being is so essential to the peace and
security of Christendom.

I shall endeavour to render it as plain and unpretending as possible,
and shall not confine myself to studied rules or endeavours to make a
book, taking up my subject as suits my own leisure, which is not very
ample, and resuming or interrupting it at pleasure or convenience.

It will be necessary to enter more at large than in my preceding volumes
into the resources of Canada, and, for this end, Geology and other
scientific subjects must be introduced; but, as I dislike exceedingly
that heavy and gaudy veil of learning, that embroidered science, with
which modern taste conceals those secrets of Nature which have been so
partially unfolded, I shall not have frequent recourse to absurd Greek
derivations, which are very commonly borrowed for the occasion from
technical dictionaries, or lent by a classical friend; but, whenever
they must occur, the dictionary shall explain them, for I really think
it beneath the dignity of the lights of modern Geology to talk as they
do about the Placoids and the Ganoids, as the first created fishlike
beings, and of the Ctenoids and the Cycloids as the more recent finners.
It always puts me in mind of Shakespeare's magniloquence concerning "the
Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, of
antres vast and deserts idle," when he exhibited his learning in
language which no one, however, can imitate, and which he makes the lady
seriously incline and listen to, simply because she did not understand a
word that was said. So it is with the overdone and continual changing of
terms that now constantly occurs; insomuch that the terms of plain
science, instead of being simplified and brought within the reach of
ordinary capacities, is made as uncouth and as unintelligible as
possible, and totally beyond the reach of those who have no collegiate
education to boast of, an