chiefly drawn the attention of the
inhabitants of Great Britain to casualties by sea, and the deprivations
of individuals wrecked on some desert coast; but it is by no means
generally known that scarcely a summer passes over the colonists
in Canada, without losses of children from the families of settlers
occurring in the vast forests of the backwoods, similar to that on which
the narrative of the Canadian Crusoes is founded. Many persons thus lost
have perished in the wilderness; and it is to impress on the memory
the natural resources of this country, by the aid of interesting the
imagination, that the author of the well-known and popular work, "The
Backwoods of Canada," has written the following pages.

She has drawn attention, in the course of this volume, to the practical
solution _[FN: See Appendix A; likewise p. 310.]_ of that provoking
enigma, which seems to perplex all anxious wanderers in an unknown land,
namely, that finding themselves, at the end of a day's toilsome march,
close to the spot from which they set out in the morning, and that this
cruel accident will occur for days in succession. The escape of Captain
O'Brien from his French prison at Verdun, detailed with such spirit in
his lively autobiography, offers remarkable instances of this propensity
of the forlorn wanderer in a strange land. A corresponding incident is
recorded in the narrative of the "Escape of a young French Officer from
the depot near Peterborough during the Napoleon European war." He found
himself thrice at night within sight of the walls of the prison from
which he had fled in the morning, after taking fruitless circular walks
of twenty miles. I do not recollect the cause of such lost labour being
explained in either narrative; perhaps the more frequent occurrence of
the disaster in the boundless backwoods of the Canadian colonies, forced
knowledge, dearly bought, on the perceptions of the settlers. Persons
who wander without knowing the features and landmarks of a country,
instinctively turn their faces to the sun, and for that reason always
travel in a circle, infallibly finding themselves at night in the very
spot from which they started in the morning. The resources and natural
productions of the noble colony of Canada are but superficially known.
An intimate acquaintance with its rich vegetable and animal productions
is most effectually made under the high pressure of difficulty and
necessity. Our writer has striven to interes