undertaking, it must be the "end" that will "crown the work."

The Indian character has so little variety, that it has been my
object to avoid dwelling on it too much on the present occasion;
its association with the sailor, too, it is feared, will be found
to have more novelty than interest.

It may strike the novice as an anachronism to place vessels on
the Ontario in the middle of the eighteenth century; but in this
particular facts will fully bear out all the license of the fiction.
Although the precise vessels mentioned in these pages may never
have existed on that water or anywhere else, others so nearly
resembling them are known to have navigated that inland sea, even
at a period much earlier than the one just mentioned, as to form a
sufficient authority for their introduction into a work of fiction.
It is a fact not generally remembered, however well known it may
be, that there are isolated spots along the line of the great lakes
that date as settlements as far back as many of the older American
towns, and which were the seats of a species of civilization long
before the greater portion of even the older States was rescued
from the wilderness.

Ontario in our own times has been the scene of important naval
evolutions. Fleets have manoeuvered on those waters, which, half
a century ago, were as deserted as waters well can be; and the
day is not distant when the whole of that vast range of lakes will
become the seat of empire, and fraught with all the interests of
human society. A passing glimpse, even though it be in a work of
fiction, of what that vast region so lately was, may help to make
up the sum of knowledge by which alone a just appreciation can be