Iron Wood and Birch-Basswood-Black and White Walnut Sarsaparilla and Bitter sweet-Alum root and Crow's foot-Wild Horehound, White Coatli, and Gentian-root-the Seneca Snake- The various Tenures by which Lands are held in Canada Manner in which the Country was first settled, and Conditions of the INTRODUCTION. IF I may form any opinion respecting the feelings of other men, by the general inclination of my own, on subjects which may be supposed to have nearly a similar effect upon all, I think every reader must evince a wish to know something of the author whose works he may have an opportunity of reading. It is, however, difficult to tender this information, without either incurring the imputation of egotism, or appearing solicitous to conceal something with which curiosity might wish to become acquainted. I make no pretensions to more of that "charity which thinketh no evil," than is inherent in the intellectual part of our species; and yet I always feel disposed to put the most favourable construction on the confessions of an author, who endeavours to introduce himself to his reader, with a becoming diffidence. I enter on the perusal of his work with additional zest. His frankness, in speaking of himself and his connections, inclines me to think favourably of his character; and, from the previous knowledge which I thus obtain of his private concerns, I feel far more interested in his fate, and in the varying sensations of pleasure and pain with which he is affected,—even if his style be not altogether unexceptionable,-than if I were reading the most elegant composition of an utter stranger. I have been accustomed from my boyhood to regard those unassuming, yet manly, explanations as a friendly shake of the hands between the writer and his reader; and, after such an introduction, I pass as pleasantly over his pages, as if in the -company of an old acquaintance. This preliminary information is still more necessary from any writer who assumes the character of a "Tourist,”—how slight soever may be his claims to that appellation. Every man betrays a desire to become acquainted with the real motives that have induced the wanderer to roam, and to give the world a history of his adventures,-of the ideas which have arisen in his mind on viewing particular objects,—or of the vivid images which have been impressed on his memory by contemplating man under the influence of "other laws and other climes." Reasoning thus, with all humility, from myself to others, I have resolved to prefix to these volumes a brief statement of the reasons which first induced me and my connections to emigrate. Poverty, I conceive, is no crime. The greatest sages of antiquity have not been ashamed of alluding to res angustas domi; and it would be a curious instance of sentimental fastidiousness, or modish affectation, in one so far beneath the least of them, were I to hesitate in the acknowledgment, that I became an exile, not as a matter of choice, but of necessity, not with the view of realising a fortune in the trans-atlantic wildernesses,-but of escaping from penury and its consequent miseries, in the land of my nativity. My father, once possessed of a handsome competency in the South of Ireland, found himself, about the conclusion of the late war, in such circumstances)as to preclude the possibility of his continuing in the country, without descending from that sphere of life in which he had been accustomed to move, to one, for the endurance of whose toils and difficulties he was, by his former habits, completely incapacitated. Being attached to a military life from his infancy, and having early entered into the Militia of his native county, -in which, however, he did not long remain,-his sons very naturally manifested a strong predilection for the army. Believing that he had interest sufficient to obtain commissions for us, as soon as we should attain to a proper age, he endeavoured, limited as his resources were, to give us such an education as would qualify us for a station in that school of honour, the British army, without disgracing our profession, or in any other manner placing insuperable barriers against our future pro motion. This hope alone served, for many years, |