Canadian Crusoes
Traill, Catharine Parr, 1802-1899
English
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CANADIAN CRUSOES.
A Tale
of
THE RICE LAKE PLAINS.
CATHARINE PARR TRAIL,
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,
15_th 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 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 [Footnote: 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 interest
children, or rather young people approaching the age of adolescence, in the
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