Pearls and PebblesHow fitting to close out the 20th century with a brand new edition of Pearls & Pebbles by the noted chronicler of pioneer life, Catharine Parr Traill. Published in 1894, Pearls & Pebbles is an unusual book with a lasting charm, in which the author's broad focus ranges from the Canadian natural environment to early settlement of Upper Canada. Through Traill's eyes, we see the life of the pioneer woman, the disappearance of the forest, and the corresponding changes in the life of the Native Canadians who have inhabited that forest. Editor Elizabeth Thompson reminds us of the significance of the writings by Traill, the aged author/naturalist, who felt that the hours spent gathering the pebbles and pearls from her notebooks and journals written in the backwoods of Canada was not time wasted. |
From inside the book
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... summer when Mrs. Traill was so ill that few thought she would recover , Jessie's grief was great . She recalled over and over again the kindness to her in the bush in those early days . A portrait of pioneer life emerges in these pages ...
... summer visitors from the other side of the lakes . Sadly , neither at the time of her writing nor today is there any indication that the gradual process of loss has ended . “ Notes from My Old Diary ” allows for similar speculation , as ...
... Summer has ceased to be a predictable phenomenon : There is a change in the climate since the time when we used to look for the Indian Summer . The destruction of the forest trees has told upon it in many ways . We feel it in the sweep ...
... summer wind among the rustling green flags beside the river ; we scent the flowers of the hawthorn , and the violets hidden among the grass , and fill our hands with bluebells and cowslips . But we have in Canada few such May days as ...
... summer holiday in our more genial climate . In mild winters they were wont to come as early as the middle of March , but that was in the early days of the colony , when the thick forests gave warm shelter to the wild " Westove ...
Contents
3 | |
5 | |
9 | |
14 | |
21 | |
MORE ABOUT MY FEATHERED FRIENDS | 32 |
A DEFENSE | 45 |
NOTES FROM MY OLD DIARY | 49 |
THOUGHTS ON VEGETABLE INSTINCT | 109 |
SOME CURIOUS PLANTS | 115 |
SOME VARIETIES OF POLLEN | 120 |
THE CRANBERRY MARSH | 123 |
OUR NATIVE GRASSES | 126 |
INDIAN GRASS | 132 |
MOSSES AND LICHENS | 136 |
THE INDIAN MOSS BAG | 141 |
THE SPIDER | 58 |
PROSPECTING AND WHAT I FOUND IN MY DIGGING | 62 |
THE ROBIN AND THE MIRROR | 65 |
IN THE CANADIAN WOODS | 67 |
THE FIRST DEATH IN THE CLEARING | 82 |
ALONE IN THE FOREST | 90 |
ON THE ISLAND OF MINNEWAWA | 99 |
THE CHILDREN OF THE FOREST | 103 |
SOMETHING GATHERS UP THE FRAGMENTS | 144 |
APPENDIX A | 151 |
APPENDIX B | 181 |
APPENDIX C | 183 |
ENDNOTES | 187 |
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS | 199 |
INDEX | 203 |