OR,

LIFE IN A NEW COUNTRY.


CHAPTER 1.

COLONISTS.

The Spirit of Adventure is the most animating impulse in the human
breast. Man naturally detests inaction; he thirsts after change and
novelty, and the prospect of excitement makes him prefer even danger
to continued repose.

The love of adventure! how strongly it urges forward the Young! The
Young, who are ever discontented with the Present, and sigh for
opportunities of action which they know not where to seek. Old men
mourn over the folly and recklessness of the Young, who, in the fresh
and balmy spring-time of life, recoil from the confinement of the
desk or the study, and long for active occupation, in which all their
beating energies may find employment. Subjection is the consequence
of civilized life; and self-sacrifice is necessary in those who are
born to toil, before they may partake of its enjoyments. But though
the Young are conscious that this is so, they repine not the less;
they feel that the freshness and verdure of life must first die away;
that the promised recompense will probably come too late to the
exhausted frame; that the blessings which would now be received with
prostrate gratitude will cease to be felt as boons; and that although
the wishes and wants of the heart will take new directions in the