Nobody reads prefaces on a Railway journey. The leaves are turned over
for something to arrest attention, or to dissipate weariness, or to
"fleet the time," which even at railway speed moves slowly compared to
the "march of ideas." It is, however, necessary to state in few words
that these pages are a reprint of the most amusing and interesting
chapters of the "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada,"--first
published in 1838, in three octavo volumes, favourably received at the
time and now out of print. The Authoress in the original preface to the
work represents herself as "thrown into scenes and regions hitherto
undescribed by any traveller (for the northern shores of Lake Huron are
almost new ground), and into relations with the Indian tribes such as
few European women of refined and civilised habits have ever risked, and
none have recorded;" and the adventures and sketches of character and
scenery among the Red-skins, still retain that freshness which belongs
only to what is genuine. All that was of a merely transient or merely
personal nature, or obsolete in politics or criticism, has been omitted.
The rest, the book must say for itself.