start for the wilds on the first day of August. In the next chapter I
will take up that second period of my life and strive to describe our
trip and what we saw, learned and experienced during the following
three years.

My readers will have to excuse what may seem egotism on my part, in
speaking so much about myself and my husband. But as the subject
demands that I should detail, all that can be of any public interest,
in my short life, it would be difficult to write my story and not
appear, at times, somewhat egotistical.

This first chapter must necessarily be short, when one has nothing to
write about it is hard to fill up pages, and my life, and that of my
husband, so far as I know, were most uneventful up to the day of our
union, when

"We joined the hands of each other.
To move through the stillness and noise
_Dividing_ the _cares_ of existence,
But _doubling_ its _hopes_ and its _joys_."

My younger days seem to have passed away like a quiet dream, leaving
but a faint memory behind; but my last period of life resembles more
some frightful night-mare and I often wonder can it be true that I
have passed through such scenes or is the whole affair a fevered
vision of the night!

Now that I am safely home again with my good dear mother beside me, my
fond brothers and sisters around me, it would appear as if I had never
got married, never left them, never saw the north-west, never suffered