Lost in the Backwoods

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, according to their forest laws. I speak of the time when the neat and flourishing town of Cobourg, now an important port on Lake Ontario, was but a village in embryo, if it contained even a log house or a block house, it was all that it did, and the wild and picturesque ground upon which the fast increasing village of Port Hope is situated had not yielded one forest tree to the axe of the settler. No gallant vessel spread her sails to waft the abundant produce of grain and Canadian stores along the waters of that noble sheet of water; no steamer had then furrowed its bosom with her iron paddles, bearing the stream of emigration towards the wilds of our northern and western forests, there to render a lonely trackless desert a fruitful garden. What will not time and the industry of man, assisted by the blessing of a merciful God, effect?.