we felt bound to
make such amends as lay in our power, by deviating from our way to
the lake above named. In order to do this we were obliged to choose
the railway, and to go back beyond Richmond to the station at
Sherbrooke. Sherbrooke is a large village on the confines of Canada,
and as it is on the railway will no doubt become a large town. It is
very prettily situated on the meeting of two rivers; it has three
or four different churches, and intends to thrive. It possesses two
newspapers, of the prosperity of which I should be inclined to feel
less assured. The annual subscription to such a newspaper published
twice a week is ten shillings per annum. A sale of a thousand copies
is not considered bad. Such a sale would producehonesty to stand in
their way. From General Jason down to General Fremont there have
been men of great aspirations but of slight scruples. They have been
ambitious of power and desirous of progress, but somewhat regardless
how power and progress shall be attained. Clive and Warren Hastings
were great frontier men, but we cannot imagine that they had ever
realized the doctrine that honesty is the best policy. Cortez, and
even Columbus, the prince of frontier men, are in the same category.
The names of such heroes is legion. But with none of them has
absolute honesty been a favourite virtue. "It behoves a frontier man
to be smart, sir." Such, in that or other language, has been the
prevailing idea. Such is the prevailing idea. And one feels driven to
ask oneself whether such must not be the