INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 



Kind Re a dee, — Should you derive from the perusal 

 of the following pages, which I have written with no other wish 

 than that of procuring one favourable thought from you, a por- 

 tion of the pleasure which I have felt in collecting the materials 

 for their composition, my gratification will be ample, and the 

 compensation for all my laboius will be more than, perhaps, I 

 have a right to expect from an individual to whom I am as yet 

 unknown, and to whom I must therefore, in the very outset, 

 present some account of my life, and of the motives which have 

 influenced me in thus bringing you into contact with an Ame- 

 rican AVoodsman. 



I received life and light in the New World. When I had 

 hardly yet learned to walk, and to articulate those first words 

 always so endearing to parents, the productions of Nature that 

 lay spread all around, were constantly pointed out to me. 

 They soon became my playmates ; and before my ideas were 

 sufficiently formed to enable me to estimate the difference be- 

 tween the azure tints of the sky, and the emerald hue of the 



