Title:  Young Lion of the Woods A Story of Early Colonial Days

Author:  Thomas Barlow Smith

Release Date:  July 2, 2005 [EBook #16181]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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YOUNG LION OF THE WOODS;

OR

A Story of Early Colonial Days.

BY

Thomas B. Smith.

    Here in Canadian hearth, and home, and name;—­
        This name which yet shall grow
        Till all the nations know
    Us for a patriot people, heart and hand
    Loyal to our native earth, our own Canadian land! 
                         —­Chas. G.D.  Roberts.

Halifax, N.S.: 
Nova Scotia printing company.
1889.

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year 1889, by Thomas B. Smith, at the Department of Agriculture.

Dedication.

To my wife
I dedicate this, my first work,
with my love.

PREFACE.

The only merit that the writer claims for the following pages is, that they contain a record of facts, setting forth the sacred sentiments of duty, religious trust, and the spirit of liberty, amid sufferings-and hardships of persons, whose loyalty was put to the severest test.

It has been beautifully said, “that he who sets a colony on foot designs a great work.”  “He designs all the good, and all the glory, of which, in the series of ages, it might be the means; and he shall be judged more by the lofty, ultimate aim and result, than by the actual instant motive.  You may well admire, therefore, the solemn and adorned plausibilities of the colonizing of Rome from Troy, in the Eneid!  Though the leader had been burned out of house and home, and could not choose but go.  You may find in the flight of the female founder of the gloomy greatness of Carthage a certain epic interest; yet was she running from the madness of her husband to save her life.  Emigration from our stocked communities of undeified men and women, emigration for conquest, for gold, for very restlessness of spirit, if they grow toward an imperial issue, have all thus a prescriptive and recognized ingredient of heroism.  But when the immediate motive is as grand as the ultimate hope was lofty, and the ultimate success splendid, then, to use an expression of Bacon’s,” “the music is fuller.”