"Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope. He has no other possession but hope. This world of his is emphatically the place of hope:"[12] and more emphatically than of any other spot on the face of the globe, it is true of this new world of ours, in which I am now a traveller and a sojourner. This is the land of hope, of faith, aye, and of charity, for a man who hath not all three had better not come here:--with them he may, by strength of his own right hand and trusting heart, achieve miracles: witness Colonel Talbot. Of the four days in which I have gone wandering and wondering up and down, let me now tell you something--_all_ I cannot tell you; for the information I have gained, and the reflections and feelings which have passed through my mind would fill a volume--and I have little time for scribbling. And first of Colonel Talbot himself. This remarkable man is now about sixty-five, perhaps more, but he does not look so much. In spite of his rustic dress, his good-humoured, jovial, weather-beaten face, and the primitive simplicity, not to say rudeness, of his dwelling, he has in his features, air, and deportment, that _something_ which stamps him gentleman. And that _something_ which thirty-four years of solitude has not effaced, he derives, I suppose, from blood and birth, things of more consequence, when philosophically and philanthropically considered, than we are apt to allow. He came out to Upper Canada as aide-de-camp to Governor Simcoe in 1793, and accompanied the governor on the first expedition he made to survey the western district, in search (as it was said) of an eligible site for the new capital he was then projecting. At this time the whole of the beautiful and fertile region situated between the lakes was a vast wilderness. It contained not one white settler, except along the borders, and on the coast opposite to Detroit: a few wandering tribes of Hurons and Chippewas, and the Six Nations settled on Grand River, were its only inhabitants. It was then that the idea of founding a colony took possession of Colonel Talbot's mind, and became the ruling passion and sole interest of his future life. I had always heard and read of him, as the "eccentric" Colonel Talbot. Of his eccentricity I heard much more than of his benevolence, his invincible courage, his enthusiasm, his perseverance; but, perhaps, according to the wordly nomenclature, these qualities come under the general head of "eccentricity," when devotion to a favourite object cannot possibly be referred to self-interest.