Has made strong, the nerves that have become iron by patient
endurance, and He chooses such to send forth into the forest to hew
out the rough paths for the advance of civilization.
These men became wealthy and prosperous, and are the bones and
sinews of a great and rising country. Their labour is wealth, not
exhaustion; it produces content, not home-sickness and despair.
What the backwoods of Canada are to the industrious and
ever-to-be-honoured sons of honest poverty, and what they are
to the refined and polished gentleman, these sketches have
endeavoured to show.
The poor man is in his native element; the poor gentleman totally
unfitted, by his previous habits and education, to be a hewer of the
forest and a tiller of the soil. What money he brought out with him
is lavishly expended during the first two years in paying for labour
to clear and fence lands which, from his ignorance of agricultural
pursuits, will never make him the least profitable return and barely
find coarse food for his family. Of clothing we say nothing. Bare
feet and rags are too common in the bush.
Now, had the same means and the same labour been employed in the
cultivation of a leased farm, or one purchased for a few hundred
dollars, near a village, how different would have been the results,
not only to the settler, but it would have added greatly to the
wealth and social improvement of the country.
I am well aware that a great and, I must think, a most unjust
prejudice has been felt against my book in Canada because I dared to
give my opinion freely on a subject which had engrossed a great deal
of my attention; nor do I believe that the account of our failure in
the bush ever deterred a single emigrant from coming to the country,
as the only circulation it ever had in the colony was chiefly through
the volumes that often formed a portion of their baggage. The many
who have condemned the work without reading it will be surprised to
find that not one word has been said to prejudice intending emigrants
from making Canada their home. Unless, indeed, they ascribe the
regret expressed at having to leave my native land, so natural in
the painful home-sickness which, for several months, preys upon the
health and spirits of the dejected exile, to a deep-rooted dislike
to the country.
So far from this being the case, my love for the country has steadily
increased from year to year, and my attachment to Canada is now
so strong that I cannot imagine any inducement, short of absolute
necessity, which could induce me to leave the colony where as a wife
and mother, some of the happiest years of my life have been spent.
