[23] 



ON THE 



EARLY GAZETTEER AND MAP LITERATURE 

 OF WESTERN CANADA. 



BY HENRY SCADDING, D D. 



All books consisting of descriptions and statistics of new countries 

 become, as a matter of coarse, speedily obsolete, and are superseded 

 by others wliich in tlieir turn liave to give place to fresh essays of 

 the saine class. Even in old countries, in these days, the changes 

 constantly going on are so many, as to require the issue periodically 

 of new accounts. Thus we have a Murray, a Black, a Bradshaw, a 

 Baedeker, putting forth year after year, not merely, new editions of 

 their " guides," but those " guides" reconstructed throughout, cur- 

 tailed here, expanded there, so as to be in accordance with the real 

 situation of aifairs. But volumes having reference to the growing 

 colonies of Great Britain, become superannuated in a particularly 

 short space of time, so very rapid is the progress made therein ; and 

 in such quick succession come the changes. After all, however, 

 although a person who is seeking for the latest information in regard 

 to a new country, desires, and must have, the latest book on the 

 subject, yet, let only a sufficient number of years pass away, and the 

 books which from time to time had become obsolete, again recover a 

 value, and are gladly resorted to for purposes of comparison or for 

 the verification of partially forgotten facts. To each generation the- 

 actual state of things must be that which chiefly absorbs the atten- 

 tion. But society amongst us has been all along in a state of flux ; 

 and each person, though still of necessity kept busy by the calls of 

 the moment, cannot help looking back to particular stages of the 

 past with a peculiar interest : to the era, for example, when he himself 

 was first called to take part in the serious battle of life, and to his 

 surroundings then ; or it may be, his regards are turned to one 

 remove further — to the time when a father, perhaps, or grandfather 



