NEILL & CO. PRINTERS,
Old Fishmarket, Edinburgh.
I N T R O D U C T O R Y A D D R E S S.
KIND READER,—Should you derive from the perusal
of the following pages, which I have written with no otlier wish
than that of procuring one favourable thought from you, a portion
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 labours 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 American
Woodsman,
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 between
the azure tints of the sky, and the emerald hue of the