cattle and flocks of sheep, the change would be a striking one. I speak of
the time when the neat and flourishing town of Cobourg, now an important
port on the 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 waters of that noble sheet of water; no steamer
had then furrowed its bosom with her iron wheels, bearing the stream of
emigration towards the wilds of our Northern and Western forests, there to
render a lonely trackless desert a fruitful garden. What will not time and
the industry of man, assisted by the blessing of a merciful God, effect?
To him be the glory and honour; for we are taught, that "without the Lord
build the city, their labour is but lost that build it; without the Lord
keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

But to my tale. And first it will be necessary to introduce to the
acquaintance of my young readers the founders of our little settlement at
Cold Springs.

Duncan Maxwell was a young Highland soldier, a youth of eighteen, at the
famous battle of Quebec, where, though only a private, he received the
praise of his colonel for his brave conduct. At the close of the battle
Duncan was wounded, and as the hospital was full at the time with sick and
disabled men, he was lodged in the house of a poor French Canadian widow in
the Quebec suburb; here, though a foreigner and an enemy, he received much
kind attention from his excellent hostess and her family, which consisted
of a young man about his own age, and a pretty black-eyed lass not more
than sixteen. The widow Perron was so much occupied with other-lodgers--for
she kept a sort of boarding-house--that she had not much time to give to