t children, or rather young
people approaching the age of adolescence, in the natural history of
this country, simply by showing them how it is possible for children to
make the best of it when thrown into a state of destitution as forlorn
as the wanderers on the Rice Lake Plains. Perhaps those who would
not care for the berry, the root, and the grain, as delineated and
classified technically in books of science, might remember their uses
and properties when thus brought practically before their notice as the
aliments of the famishing fellow-creature, with whom their instinctive
feelings must perforce sympathies. When parents who have left home
comforts and all the ties of gentle kindred for the dear sakes of their
rising families, in order to place them in a more independent position,
it is well if those young minds are prepared with some knowledge of what
they are to find in the adopted country; the animals, the flowers, the
fruits, and even the minuter blessings which a bountiful Creator has
poured forth over that wide land.

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 _naive_, 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.

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

LOUIS CONFESSING HIS DECEPTION OF CATHARINE

FIRST BREAKFAST, THE

CATHARINE FOUND BY THE OLD DOG

WOLF FINDING THE WOUNDED DOE

HECTOR BRINGING THE INDIAN GIRL

KILLING WILD FOWL

INDIAN WOMAN AT THE DOOR OF THE HUT

CATHARINE CARRIED OFF

INDIANA BEFORE T