essels mentioned in these pages may never have existed on that
water or anywhere else, others so nearly resembling them are known to
have navigated that inland sea, even at a period much earlier than
the one just mentioned, as to form a sufficient authority for their
introduction into a work of fiction. It is a fact not generally
remembered, however well known it may be, that there are isolated spots
along the line of the great lakes that date as settlements as far back
as many of the older American towns, and which were the seats of a
species of civilization long before the greater portion of even the
older States was rescued from the wilderness.

Ontario in our own times has been the scene of important naval
evolutions. Fleets have manoeuvered on those waters, which, half a
century ago, were as deserted as waters well can be; and the day is not
distant when the whole of that vast range of lakes will become the
seat of empire, and fraught with all the interests of human society. A
passing glimpse, even though it be in a work of fiction, of what that
vast region so lately was, may help to make up the sum of knowledge by
which alone a just appreciation can be formed of the wonderful means by
which Providence is clearing the way for the advancement of civilization
across the whole American continent.

THE PATHFINDER.

CHAPTER I.

The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;
My temple, Lord! that arch of thine;
My censer's breath the mountain airs,
And silent thoughts my only prayers.
MOORE

The sublimity connected with vastness is familiar to every eye. The
most abstruse, the most far-reaching, perhaps the most chastened of the
poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination as he gazes into the depths
of the illimitable void. The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the
novice with indifference; and the mind, even in the obscurity of night,
finds a parallel to that grandeur, which seems inseparable from images
that the senses cannot compass. With feelings akin to this admiration
and awe--the offspring of sublimity--were the different characters with
which the action of this tale must open, gazing on the scene before
them. Four persons in all,--two of each sex,--they had managed to ascend
a pile of trees, that had been uptorn by a tempest, to catch a view
of the objects that surrounded them. It is still the practice of the
country to call these spots wind-rows. By letting in the light of h