an axeman, to that of a respectable landed proprietor in a civilised
part of the country, has always been to me a matter of surprise; for a
farm under cultivation can always be purchased for less money than must
necessarily be expended upon clearing and raising buildings upon a wild
lot.

Many young men are attracted to the Backwoods by the facilities they
present for hunting and fishing. The wild, free life of the hunter,
has for an ardent and romantic temperament an inexpressible charm. But
hunting and fishing, however fascinating as a wholesome relaxation from
labour, will not win bread, or clothe a wife and shivering little ones;
and those who give themselves entirely up to such pursuits, soon add to
these profitless accomplishments the bush vices of smoking and drinking,
and quickly throw off those moral restraints upon which their
respectability and future welfare mainly depend.

The bush is the most demoralizing place to which an anxious and prudent
parent could send a young lad. Freed suddenly from all parental control,
and exposed to the contaminating influence of broken-down gentlemen
loafers, who hide their pride and poverty in the woods, he joins
in their low debauchery, and falsely imagines that, by becoming a
blackguard, he will be considered an excellent backwoodsman.

How many fine young men have I seen beggared and ruined in the bush!
It is too much the custom in the woods for the idle settler, who
will not work, to live upon the new comer as long as he can give him
good fare and his horn of whisky. When these fail, farewell to your
_good-hearted_, roystering friends; they will leave you like a
swarm of musquitoes, while you fret over your festering wounds, and fly
to suck the blood of some new settler, who is fool enough to believe