HE BALD EAGLE

INDIANA AT THE STAKE

ATTACK ON THE DEER

RETURN HOME THE

CANADIAN CRUSOES.

CHAPTER I.

"The morning had shot her bright streamers on high,
O'er Canada, opening all pale to the sky;

Still dazzling and white was the robe that she wore,
Except where the ocean wave lash'd on the shore."
_Jacobite Song._

THERE lies between the Rice Lake and the Ontario, a deep and fertile
valley, surrounded by lofty wood-crowned hills, the heights of which
were clothed chiefly with groves of oak and pine, though the sides of
the hills and the alluvial bottoms gave a variety of noble timber
trees of various kinds, as the maple, beech, hemlock, and others. This
beautiful and highly picturesque valley is watered by many clear
streams of pure refreshing water, from whence the spot has derived its
appropriate appellation of "Cold Springs." At the time my little
history commences, this now highly cultivated spot was an unbroken
wilderness,--all tut two small farms, where dwelt the only occupiers of
the soil,--which owned no other possessors than the wandering hunting
tribes of wild Indians, to whom the right of the hunting grounds north
of Rice Lake appertained, according to their forest laws.

To those who travel over beaten roads, now partially planted, among
cultivated fields and flowery orchards, and see cleared farms and herds
of cattle and flocks of sheep, the change would be a striking one. I
speak of the time when the neat and flourishing town of Cobourg, now
an important port on the Ontario, was but a village in embryo--if it
contained even a log-house or a block-house it was all that it did, and
the wild and picturesque ground upon which the fast increasing village
of Port Hope is situated, had not yielded one forest tree to the axe
of the settler. No gallant vessel spread her sails to waft the abundant
produce of grain and Canadian stores along the waters of that noble
sheet of water; no steamer had then furrowed its bosom with her iron
wheels, bearing the stream of emigration towards the wilds of our
Northern and Western forests, there to render a lonely trackless desert
a fruitful garden. What will not time and the industry of man, assisted
by the blessing of a merciful God, effect? To him be the glory and
honour; for we are taught, that "without the Lord build the city, their
labour is but lost that build it; without the Lord keep the city, the
watchman waketh but in vain."

But to m