"The morning had shot her bright streamers on high,
O'er Canada, opening all pale to the sky,
Still dazzling and white was the robe that she wore,
Except where the ocean wave lashed on the shore"

_Jacobite Song_

There lies, between the Rice Lake and the Ontario, a deep and fertile
valley, surrounded by lofty wood-crowned hills, clothed chiefly with
groves of oak and pine, the sides of the hills and the alluvial
bottoms display a variety of noble timber trees of various kinds, as
the useful and beautiful maple, beech, and hemlock. This beautiful and
highly picturesque valley is watered by many clear streams, whence it
derives its appropriate appellation of "Cold Springs."

At the period my little history commences, this now highly cultivated
spot was an unbroken wilderness,--all but two clearings, where dwelt
the only occupiers of the soil,--which previously owned no other
possessors than the wandering hunting tribes of wild Indians, to whom
the right of the hunting grounds north of Rice Lake appertained,
according to their forest laws.

I speak of the time when the neat and flourishing town of Cobourg, now
an important port on Lake Ontario, was but a village in embryo,--if it
contained even a log-house or a block-house, it was all that it
did,--and the wild and picturesque ground upon which the fast
increasing village of Port Hope is situated had not yielded one forest
tree to the axe of the settler. No gallant vessel spread her sails to
waft the abundant produce of grain and Canadian stores along the