the qualities of industry and perseverance so essential to success
in all countries, those who possess the smallest share of original
talent and imagination, and the least of a speculative turn of mind,
are usually the most successful. They follow the beaten track and
prosper. However humbling this reflection may be to human vanity,
it should operate as a salutary check on presumption and hasty
conclusions. After a residence of sixteen years in Canada, during
which my young and helpless family have been exposed to many
privations, while we toiled incessantly and continued to hope even
against hope, these reflections naturally occur to our minds, not
only as the common-sense view of the subject, but as the fruit of
long and daily-bought experience.

After all this long probation in the backwoods of Canada, I find
myself brought back in circumstances nearly to the point from
whence I started, and am compelled to admit that had I only
followed my own unassisted judgment, when I arrived with my wife
and child in Canada, and quietly settled down on the cleared farm
I had purchased, in a well-settled neighbourhood, and with the
aid of the means I then possessed, I should now in all probability
have been in easy if not in affluent circumstances.

Native Canadians, like Yankees, will make money where people from
the old country would almost starve. Their intimate knowledge of
the country, and of the circumstances of the inhabitants, enables
them to turn their money to great advantage; and I must add, that
few people from the old country, however avaricious, can bring
themselves to stoop to the unscrupulous means of acquiring property
which are too commonly resorted to in this country. These
reflections are a rather serious commencement of a sketch which was