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Where is the man, woman, or child who has not sympathized with the poor
seaman before the mast, Alexander Selkirk, typified by the genius of Defoe
as his inimitable Crusoe, whose name (although one by no means uncommon
in middle life in the east of England,) has become synonymous for all who
build and plant in a wilderness, "cut off from humanity's reach?" Our
insular situation has chiefly drawn the attention of the inhabitants of
Great Britain to casualties by sea, and the deprivations of individuals
wrecked on some desert coast; but it is by no means generally known that
scarcely a summer passes over the colonists in Canada, without losses of
children from the families of settlers occurring in the vast forests of the
backwoods, similar to that on which the narrative of the Canadian Crusoes
is founded. Many persons thus lost have perished in the wilderness; and it
is to impress on the memory the natural resources of this country, by the
aid of interesting the imagination, that the author of the well-known and
popular work, "The Backwoods of Canada," has written the following pages.
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