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1Backwoods of Canada

By Catharine Parr Traill

The writer is as earnest in recommending ladies who belong to the higher class of settlers to cultivate all the mental resources of a superior education, as she is to induce them to discard all irrational and artificial wants and mere useless pursuits. She would willingly direct their attention to the natural history and botany of this new country, in which they will find a never-failing source of amusement and instruction, at once enlightening and elevating the mind, and serving to fill up the void left by the absence of those lighter feminine accomplishments, the practice of which are necessarily superseded by imperative domestic duties. To the person who is capable of looking abroad into the beauties of nature, and adoring the Creator through his glorious works, are opened stores of unmixed pleasure, which will not permit her to be dull or unhappy in the loneliest part of our Western Wilderness. The writer of these pages speaks from experience, and would be pleased to find that the simple sources from which she has herself drawn pleasure, have cheered the solitude of future female sojourners in the backwoods of Canada. (Summary from book introduction)

William Henry, Prince of Orange and Nassau, Dutch William to the English, was born in a state threatened by the military ambitions of Louis XIV. “Reared from his very cradle amid the animosities of contending factions,” Traill writes, “the young Prince learned early those four lessons of statecraft,—to conceal his designs, to watch his opportunities, to choose his instruments, and to bide his time.” The Dutch Republic, distrustful of monarchs, reluctantly chose him as stadtholder to lead their armies, and then, after the overthrow of James II in 1688, he became with his consort, Mary, England’s king. (Summary by Pamela Nagami, M.D.)