's pencil, for he knew them well, and was kind to them.

The Indian only visits the town, once the favourite site for his hunting
lodge, to receive his annual government presents, to trade his simple
wares of basket and birch-bark work, to bring in his furs, or maybe
to sell his fish or venison, and take back such store goods as his
intercourse with his white brethren has made him consider necessary
to his comforts, to supply wants which have now become indispensable,
before undreamed of. He traverses those populous, busy streets, he looks
round upon dwellings, and gay clothes, and equipages, and luxuries which
he can neither obtain nor imitate; and feels his spirit lowered--he is
no more a people--the tide of intellect has borne him down, and swept
his humble wigwam from the earth. He, too, is changing: he now dwells,
for the most part, in villages, in houses that cannot be moved away at
his will or necessity; he has become a tiller of the ground, his
hunting expeditions are prescribed within narrow bounds, the forest is
disappearing, the white man is everywhere. The Indian must also yield to
circumstances; he submits patiently. Perhaps he murmurs in secret;
but his voice is low, it is not heard; he has no representative in the
senate to take interest in his welfare, to plead in his behalf. He is
anxious, too, for the improvement of his race: he gladly listens to the
words of life, and sees with joy his children being brought up in the
fear and nurture of the Lord; he sees with pride some of his own blood
going forth on the mission of love to other distant tribes; he is proud
of being a Christian; and if there be some that still look back to the
freedom of former years, and talk of "the good old times," when they
wandered free as the winds and waters through those giant woods, they
are fast fading away. A new race is rising up, and the old hunter will
soon become a being unknown in Canada.

There is an old gnarled oak that stands, or lately stood, on the turfy
bank, just behind the old Government-house (as the settlers called it),
looking down the precipitous cliff on the river and the islands.
The Indians called it "the white girl's rest," for it was there that
Catharine delighted to sit, above the noise and bustle of the camp, to
sing her snatches of old Scottish songs, or pray the captive exile's
prayer, unheard and unseen.

The setting sun was casting long shadows of oak and weeping elm athwart
the waters of the