Lost in the Backwoods

CHAPTER I.
"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,