Project Gutenberg's Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West, by Samuel Strickland

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West
The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I)

Author: Samuel Strickland

Release Date: March 3, 2005 [EBook #15245]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS IN CANADA WEST ***

Produced by E.D. (Tedd) Brien

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS

IN

CANADA WEST;

THE EXPERIENCE OF AN EARLY SETTLER.

BY MAJOR STRICKLAND, C.M.

EDITED BY AGNES STRICKLAND,
Author of "The Queens of England,", etc.

And when those toils rewarding,
Broad lands at length they'll claim,
They'll call the new possession,
By some familiar name.

Agnes Strickland. -- _Historic Scenes_.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1853.
=================
LONDON:
Printed by Samuel Bentley & Co.
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
=================

PREFACE.

No one can give an adequate view of the general life of a colonist,
unless he has been one himself. Unless he has experienced all the
various gradations of colonial existence, from that of the pioneer in
the backwoods and the inhabitant of a shanty, up to the epoch of his
career, when he becomes the owner, by his own exertions, of a
comfortable house and well-cleared farm, affording him the comforts and
many of the luxuries of civilization, he is hardly competent to write
on such a subject. I have myself passed through all these grades. I
have had the honour of filling many colonial appointments, such as
Commissioner of the Court of Requests, and Justice of the Peace. My
commission in her Majesty's Militia, and my connection with the Canada
Company, have also afforded me some opportunities of acquiring
additional information. I was in the Company's service during the early
settlement of Guelph and also of Goderich, in the Huron tract. I am,
therefore, as intimately acquainted with those flourishing settlements
as with the townships in my own county of Peterborough.

Upon my return to my native country in August, on a visit to my
venerable mother, I was advised