been formed in each of these places, to afford them information and relief; but the inhabitants are beginning to complain that the requisitions for this purpose are becoming more burdensome than even the English poor-rates. The steamboat companies are also liberal (indeed almost every man of property feels a personal interest in the encouragement of emigration); but an emigrant must be unusually fortunate who reaches the Land Office in Upper Canada, without expending at least 51. after landing at Quebec. The emigrants who accompanied us in the steam-boat in which I ascended the St. Lawrence, were some of those lately sent out free of expense by ourGovernment; but there was one, a smart shoemaker, not of that number, who had been detained some weeks at Quebec earning money to carry him up the river.

When the emigrant arrives at the Land Office of the district where he proposes to settle, determined perhaps in his choice by the hope that his lot will place him in the vicinity of an old acquaintance, he may probably have to wait some weeks before the next distribution takes place; during which he must be supporting himself at an expense increased by his ignorance of the manners of the country. He then learns, perhaps for the first time, that there are certain fees to be paid at the different offices through which his papers must pass. I have a list of these before me, in which they are stated to be,

veral of the principal merchants at Montreal, who did not dispute it; one of them observing only that he believed there had been cases in which grants of 50 acres were made without fees. It is much to be regretted that where land is said to be gratuitously bestowed, any fees should be deemed necessary; as the bron, when accompanied with this demand, is calculated to produce discontent rather than gratitude, especially where the emigrant finds that his fees amount to one half the sum at which he could select and buy the same quantity of land, without the delay attending the grant, and unshackled with any conditions or clearing dues. The surveyors receive their compensation in land, and generally secure the most valuable portions. When I was in Canada, they would sell their best lots at one dollar per acre; while 137. 10s., the fees on a hundred acres, amount to more than half a dollar per acre.

I

never met with any one person among all those with whom I conversed on the subject, who did not agree that, if a settler had but a very little money it would be much more to his advantage to buy land, than to receive it from government.

Supposing the emigrant to be able to pay his fees, he may still have the misfortune to find that his allotment (for he can only choose his township, not his estate,) is not worth cultivating. In this case he has to pay two respectable persons for surveying and certifying it to be irreclaimable; and he is then permitted to take his chance in the next distribution. Generally speaking, I believe he may expect to find himself in his own forest from three to six weeks after his arrival at the Land Office in Upper Canada.

Even then his situation is most dreary, especially if he has no neighbour within a reasonable distance, and has to purchase and

I believe grants of 50 acres are ge nerally, or always, to be obtained without fees.

carry his provisions from a remote settlement. But if he has no money to procure food; if he has a wife and family to provide for, without the forlorn hope of parish assistance; if he is a weaver or a spinner, accustomed to warm rooms, and to employments little calculated to impart either the mental or physical qualifications essential to his very support; if he is, in fact, of a class to which a large proportion of the poor emigrants from Great Britain belong, I can hardly conceive any thing more distressing than his sensations, when, arriving on his new estate, with an axe in his hand and all his worldly goods in his wallet, he finds himself in the midst of a thick forest, whose lofty trees are to be displaced by a labour almost Herculean, before he can erect the most humble shelter, or cultivate the smallest patch. And if at such a time he has further to anticipate the rigours of a long Canadian winter, his situation must be deplorable in the extreme.

Under such circumstances, which I should imagine are the ordinary circumstances of the poorest emigrants to Canada, I can conceive of no resource, nor could I hear of any, except that of hiring them 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 2001. 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 Canadians 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 ship

ments 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 2,500l. 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 childrento 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 ownto settle, though in a distant colony, among his countrymen and fellow-subjects, within means of instruction for his children and opportunities 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, enterprize, 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, andwith 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, opportunities, 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.

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 conti

past sacrifices, or present difficulties, and their prospective compensation; and as I made it a rule, from which I deviated only in one instance, to get rid before night of any companions whom I might happen to have picked up in the course of the day, I was usually enabled to make myself one of the family, and by sitting down with them at their meals, or over their fire, to draw them out, and render them very communicative. By this plan I not only escaped the effects of the possible ill-temper, or want of suavity, of a travelling companion, under the little trials of our novel accommodations, but, bycreating less bustle in the family, I saw things more in their ordinary state. In our course through the abovementioned States, we met with only three or four cases in which the emigrants regretted the change; although the price which some of those in Alabama had been obliged to pay for their Indian corn the first year, (and which amounted in the case of one family to six dollars per bushel, and for one purchase eight,) had thrown them back three or four years in their calculations. All these, however, were Slave-States; and I was glad to find that my servant considered that a decided objection to settling in them. Indeed, as no title could be obtained but by purchase, there were no decided inducements to those, who, like him, have only from 80l. to 1007.

We found many families living very comfortably on land which they had taken possession of, and had cleared, on the presumption that some peculiarities in the situation would prevent its being brought to sale for many years, and that they should obtain something for their improvements, even if they should not have realized sufficient in the mean time to purchase a title to their occupation. It is very unpopular to bid against these " Squat ters;" and for the improvements of a single year, and the produce of

a single crop, it was common for them, till the late depression of prices, to obtain a fair remuneration for the labour employed.

The first night we lay out in the woods, in Alabama, one of the points discussed by some Carolinian Emigrants, who came to our fire to have a little chat before bedtime, was the eligibility of stopping on the road a year, to make and sell a crop from the public lands in their way, or of proceeding without delay to their ulterior destination in the State of Mississipi. They appeared pretty nearly decided on the former plan.

The Southern States presenting, as it appeared to me, no adequate inducement to indigent English Emigrants, I turned my especial attention to the advantages offered in the Western part of the State of New York, where it has been understood that many of those destined for Canada finally settle. I found it impossible to learn with any precision to what extent the tide of Canadian Emigration is still diverted to the State of New York; but I am disposed to believe, that fewer in proportion pass over into the American limits than formerly. Neither could I entirely satisfy myself as to the inducements to do so, especially as the soil is not superior in the state of New York; and it is not very uncommon for Americans to go over into Canada to settle. I believe, however, that the principal reasons are to be found in the extreme activity of the agents of the Holland Company and Sir William Pulteney's estate (who are very solicitous to promote the rapid settlement of their respective tracts), and in the aid which they afford the emigrant at his outset, in letting him settle on their lands free of rent for the first two or three years; assisting him, perhaps, in raising a little cabin, or lending him a little Indian corn.

These trifling services, especially to an emigrant who has no money