selves to some older settler, in the hope of saving a trifle in order to be able, in the course of time, to pay for clearing an acre or two of their forest farm, or to buy provisions while they attempt a task for which they are little qualified. Sometimes a few will join, and one half hire themselves out to obtain provisions for the other half while felling the trees. If they surmount the difficulties of the first year, they may expect at its termination to be in possession of an adequate supply of food for their families; and with the prospect, if they are industrious, of being independent and progressively prosperous during the remainder of their lives.

Those, however, who have money enough to provide for their immediate wants, and to pay the expense of clearing a moderate proportion of their land, (possessing 100l. to 2007. or 500l. for instance,) may, in a single year, be very comfortably settled in a decent log-house with out-buildings, and with every prospect of a liberal supply of all the substantial comforts of a farm. Every year would add largely to their abundance, and to their facilities for improving and extending their estate; but they would accumulate money but slowly, unless they had, as they probably would have, an occasional foreign market for their grain besides the West Indies. They may also derive some little profit from pot and pearl ashes, which Mr. G—— of Montreal told me he received on consignment from Ohio; a distance of 800 miles, by way of Lake Erie and Ontario. The situation of the Upper Canadas is further said to be favourable to

the culture of hemp, notwithstanding the failure hitherto of the most promising experiments.

Grain, however, will be their staple commodity; and although the large body of settlers who arrive annually may afford a temporary market, they will soon produce far more than they consume, and under ordinary circumstances will depress the prices very nearly to a level with the cost of production. Indeed I heard the farmers of Lower Canada complaining that their markets were glutted with the produce of the Upper Province.

For several years the average price of wheat in Upper Canada has been about five shillings for sixty pounds; but on the American shores of the Lake we found it at twenty-five to thirty-three cents; and although its introduction into Upper Canada is either prohibited or shackled with heavy duties, it of course will find its way into the province whenever the price there is materially higher than at home. In the Lower Province, when our ports are open, they consume American grain, and export their own; as it is necessary their shipments should be accompanied with certificates of Canadian origin.

Any interruption to the timber trade would diminish the market for grain; since a very large body of consumers are found in the raftsmen, who collect and convey the timber from the lakes and rivers to Quebec, and in the crews of five or six hundred vessels who replenish some part at least of their stores at that port. The raftsmen are in a great measure the link of communication between the Montreal and Quebec merchants on the

one hand, and the emigrants and back-woodsmen on the other-the channels through which British manufactures flow into the interior, and country produce to the coast.

Although, therefore, I have a list before me of fourteen heads of families, with eighty-six children, who, beginning the world with nothing but their industry, have, in the course of fifteen or twenty years in Canada, accumulated an aggregate amount of property of 35,500l., about 2500l. each, I conceive that a farmer removing thither from Europe, for the purpose of making money rapidly, would certainly be disappointed. On the other hand, if his object were to prevent the diminution of what little property he actually possessed, and to secure independence for himself and a career of prosperous industry for his children-to purchase, by the sacrifice of the many comforts of an old settled country, the advantages of a less crowded population and a cheaper soil-to withdraw from the burdens, without retiring from the protection, of his native land, and without assuming those obligations to another government which might make him the enemy of his own-to settle, though in a distant colony, among his countrymen and fellow-subjects, within means of instruction for his children and opportunies of public worship for his family;--if these were his objects, and he could bring with him health, temperance, and industry, and one or two hundred pounds, I am persuaded that in the ordinary course of things, he would be remunerated a thousand fold for his privations.

And, notwithstanding all I have said of the difficulties of the early settler without money, a young man of industry, enterprise, and agricultural habits, without family, or with the means of leaving them for a year or two with his own or his wife's friends, who should come out to Canada, and hire his services till he could have a log-house built, and two or three acres cleared, would probably find himself in the prime of life an independent farmer on his own estate, with abundance of the necessaries of existence, and with prospects brightening as he advanced towards the evening of his days. But the sickly, the shiftless, the idle, the timid, and the destitute, with large families, will, I have no doubt, suffer far less in living from hand to mouth in England, than in encountering the difficulties of emigration to Canada.

The soil of Upper Canada is generally extremely good, and the climate, with the exception of a long and severe winter, unobjectionable. To persons on the spot, possessed of accurate local information, opportunies, I have no doubt, occur of making advantageous investments of capital in land on speculation; but the inducements to such projects will probably be limited, and to a certain degree accidental, while Government continues to grant lands either gratuitously or as a reward for military services.

3

LETTER II.

Philadelphia, Nov. 21, 1820.

My last letter conveyed to you pretty fully the ideas which occurred to me, in my visit to Canada, on the subject of emigration thither. I think I did not overstate the privations which emigrants must undergo; but I am persuaded that, in spite of them all, while it continues under the British Crown, it will be a happy asylum for thousands, who will gradually arrive, through various degrees of suffering and disappointment, at comfort and independence.

The facilities and intrinsic value of Canadathe fertility of its soil-the beauty of its scenery, and the salubrity of its climate, greatly surpassed my previous ideas, and, as far as I had an opportunity of judging, the ideas generally entertained in England. Americans also appear to me universally to return to Canada with far higher ideas of its importance than they had before conceived; though I am strongly of opinion, that, as an acquisition to the United States, neither the American government nor people regard it as particularly desirable. How far Great Britain is interested in retaining it, has often been doubted; but, without expressing any opinion on this subject-rendered more difficult and complicated by its connexion with considerations of much importance to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the West Indies, and its relation to the just claims and expectations of the inhabitants-my feelings, I confess, would now