Nobody reads prefaces on a Railway journey. The leaves are turned overfor something to arrest attention, or to dissipate weariness, or to"fleet the time," which even at railway speed moves slowly compared tothe "march of ideas." It is, however, necessary to state in few wordsthat these pages are a reprint of the most amusing and interestingchapters of the "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada,"—firstpublished in 1838, in three octavo volumes, favourably received at thetime and now out of print. The Authoress in the original preface to thework represents herself as "thrown into scenes and regions hithertoundescribed by any traveller (for the northern shores of Lake Huron arealmost new ground), and into relations with the Indian tribes such asfew European women of refined and civilised habits have ever risked, andnone have recorded;" and the adventures and sketches of character andscenery among the Red-skins, still retain that freshness which belongsonly to what is genuine. All that was of a merely transient or merelypersonal nature, or obsolete in politics or criticism, has been omitted.
The rest, the book must say for itself.
December 20.
Toronto—such is now the sonorous name of this our sublime capital—was,thirty years ago, a wilderness, the haunt of the bear and deer, with alittle, ugly, inefficient fort, which, however, could not be more uglyor inefficient than the present one. Ten years ago Toronto was avillage, with one brick house and four or five hundred inhabitants; fiveyears ago it became a city, containing about five thousand inhabitants,and then bore the name of Little York: now it is Toronto, with anincreasing trade, and a population of ten thousand people. So far Iwrite as per book.
What Toronto may be in summer, I cannot tell; they say it is a prettyplace. At present its appearance to me, a stranger, is most strangelymean and melancholy. A little ill-built town, on low land, at the bottomof a frozen bay, with one very ugly church, without tower or steeple;some government offices, built of staring red brick, in the mosttasteless, vulgar style imaginable; three feet of snow all around; andthe grey, sullen, wintry lake, and the dark gloom of the pine forestbounding the prospect: such seems Toronto to me now. I did not expectmuch; but for this I was not prepared.
I know no better way of coming at the truth than by observing andrecording faithfully the impressions made by objects and characters onmy own mind—or, rather, the impress they receive from my ownmind—shadowed by the clouds which pass over its horizon, taking eachtincture of its varying mood—until they emerge into light, to becorrected, or at least modified, by observation and comparison. Neitherdo I know any better way than this of conveying to the mind of anotherthe truth, and nothing but the truth, if not the whole truth. So I shallwrite on.
There is much in first impressions, and as yet I have not recovered fromthe pain and annoyance of my outset here. My