The Project Gutenberg EBook of Canadian Crusoes, by Catherine Parr Traill

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Title: Canadian Crusoes
A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains

Author: Catherine Parr Traill

Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8382]
Posting Date: August 4, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANADIAN CRUSOES ***

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CANADIAN CRUSOES.

A TALE OF THE RICE LAKE PLAINS

By Catharine Parr Traill

Authoress Of "The Backwoods Of Canada, Etc."

Edited By Agnes Strickland

Illustrated By Harvey

London:

Arthur Hall, Virtue, & Co.

25, Paternoster Row.

1852.

Dedicated

To The Children Of The Settlers

On

The Rice Lake Plains,

By Their

Faithful Friend And Well-Wisher

THE AUTHORESS.

OAKLANDS, RICE LAKE,

15th Oct 1850

PREFACE

IT will be acknowledged that human sympathy irresistibly responds to any
narrative, founded on truth, which graphically describes the
struggles of isolated human beings to obtain the aliments of life.
The distinctions of pride and rank sink into nought, when the mind
is engaged in the contemplation of the inevitable consequences of the
assaults of the gaunt enemies, cold and hunger. Accidental circumstances
have usually given sufficient experience of their pangs, even to the
most fortunate, to make them own a fellow-feeling with those whom the
chances of shipwreck, war, wandering, or revolutions have cut off from
home and hearth, and the requisite supplies; not only from the
thousand artificial comforts which civilized society classes among the
necessaries of life, but actually from a sufficiency of "daily bread."

Where is the man, woman, or child who has not sympathized with the poor
seaman before the mast, Alexander Selkirk, typified by the genius of
Defoe as his inimitable Crusoe, whose name (although one by no means
uncommon in middle life in the east of England,) has become synonymous
for all who build and plant in a wilderness, "cut off from humanity's
reach?" Our insular situation has