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Cameron of Lochiel

by Philippe Aubert de Gaspé · 1862

Historical Fiction · Classics

Set in Quebec in the turbulent years following the British conquest of New France, this classic of French-Canadian literature weaves together romance, adventure, and vivid remembrances of old Canadian life and custom. Told with the warmth of an elder looking back on a vanished world, it follows the fortunes of a young Scottish officer and the Canadian family whose fate becomes entwined with his own.

Content note: Reflects 19th-century attitudes toward conquest, nationality, and colonial society common to its era.

19 chapters

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Give me, oh! give me back the days When I—I too—was young, And felt, as they now feel, each coming hour, New consciousness of power....

The fields, the grove, the air was haunted, And all that age has disenchanted....

Give me, oh! give youth's passions unconfined, The rush of joy that felt almost like pain.

Goethe.

Archibald Cameron of Lochiel, son of a Highland chief who had wedded a daughter of France, was but four years old when he lost his mother. Brought up by his father, who was, in the language of the Scriptures, a valiant hunter in the sight of God, ever since ten years old he had followed him in the chase of the roebuck and other wild beasts, scaling the highest mountains, swimming the icy torrents, making his couch on the wet sod with no covering but his plaid, no roof but the vault of heaven. Under such a Spartan training the boy came to find his chief delight in this wild and wandering life.

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