PREFACE.

ALTHOUGH I am free to confess that my object, in appending a Statistical account of Upper Canada, to my notes of the West Indies and United States, is to induce that portion of the British population, whose prospects at home are gloomy and indifferent, to examine into the actual resources of a Province, that would prove a blessing to emigrants, and be improved by emigration; yet I have most carefully endeavored to give only such statements as I can fully and entirely substantiate. The inhabitants of Great Britain have been too apt to consider Canada as merely a region of ice and snow, of pine forests and lakes, of trappers and Indians, with a few forts and villages intermixt, and producing only moccasins, furs and ship timber.

But this is a very imperfect view of that interesting country, which is growing in population and improving in cultivation, more rapidly perhaps than any part of the United States, if we except the territory of Michigan, and which must become, at no very distant period, a wealthy, powerful, and populous Province, especially since the efforts of a few worthless incendiaries striving to kindle civil war, have proved unsuccessful, by the almost unanimous decision of its inhabitants, conveyed in numberless addresses to the present enlightened Lieutenant Governor, expressive of their determination to prevent the dismemberment of the empire, and by the return of a large majority of Constitutional members to represent their feelings in the House of Assembly. The government of Great Britain, and the soundness of the great bulk of the people, will prevent such a calamity from ever taking place.

"That the Canadian Provinces will become a rich, powerful, and populous country, is certain. No minister, no policy, can prevent that. But whether that wealth, and population, and power, shall be British, is for the wisdom of Government and Parliament to determine. May it not be hoped, that the new constituents, and their representatives, who have now succeeded to power, will make it a point of honor and of pride, not to suffer the empire of their country to receive any detriment under their authority, not a single island to be lost, not one Colony to be severed, not an inch of frontier or fishery usurped, nor any source of wealth or industry to decay; lest it should be written to posterity, that a Reformed Parliament knew not even to sustain and preserve that greatness, which the Boroughmongers had been able to acquire."

If we look at the map, the truth is apparent to the eye, which is seldom adverted to, when we speak of Canada, that a large portion of the Province lying immediately northward of lake Erie, is situated in a lower latitude than the greater part of Michigan, lower than all that fine and fertile region along the great Canal in the State of New York, very little further north than the Pennsylvania line, and in the same parallel with Massachusetts. But it is well known that the climate is much less severe between the same parallels, as we approach the west, thus Pittsburgh has a softer winter and a shorter one than Philadelphia, and Buffalo than Albany, so Upper Canada is much milder than Massachusetts.

"The most populous portion of Russia is twenty degrees to the north of the American border of Upper Canada; Montreal lies nearly in the same parallel which cuts through the south of France, the Adriatic, and the Black Sea! and above all, the Colonists crowding to that country are Britons-a race proverbially successful in all the tasks to be achieved by patient vigor and fearless adventure. Those men require only room; their native energies will do the rest. The forest will be cleared, the morass drained, the prairie will be a corn-field, the sandy hill will bear the vine, the huge lakes, those mediterraneans of the new world, will be covered with the products of the mineral and agricultural wealth of the country; coal has been already discovered in great abundance; iron and the various metals are already worked;

the hills abound in every kind of limestone, up to the purest marble. The climate is singularly healthy. The higher latitude repels all the summer epidemics that ravage the United States. Even in the severity of its winters, all that is injurious will yield to the thinning of the forests, the drainings of the swamps, and the other labors of the accumulating population. The temperature of the European climates has gradually given way to the same means. The north of France, at the time of the Roman conquest, was incapable of rearing the vine. The north of Germany was the habitual seat of winter. Its frosts and damps, more than the sword of Arminius, repelled the Roman soldier, seasoned as he was, beyond all other men, to all vicissitudes of climate. But whatever may be the dreams of England's supremacy in this quarter of the globe, in one thing she cannot be a dreamer-in the lofty and cheering consciousness that she has laid the foundation of a great society, where all before was a wilderness. Whether the Canadas shall retain their allegiance, or shake it off, there will, at least, be human beings where once was solitude; law-where once was the license of savage life; religion, where the Indian once worshipped in brutish ignorance; and England's will be the wand that struck the waters from the rock, and filled the desert with fertility and rejoicing.

The King of Great Britain, at this hour, commands a more numerous people than that of any other sceptre on the globe. He is monarch over one hundred millions of men! With him the old Spanish boast is true: "On his dominions the sun never sets." But the most illustrious attribute of this unexampled empire is, that its princi ple is benevolence! that knowledge goes forth with it, that tyranny sinks before it, that in its magnificent progress it abates the calamities of nature, that it plants the desert, that it civilizes the savage, that it strikes off the fetters of the slave, that its spirit is at once, God, and good will to man."

66

Glory to

A great part of Upper Canada is delightfully situated for an agricultural country, free from mountains, it is nevertheless abundantly watered, and almost surrounded and intersected by navigable rivers and lakes, on which its produce is easily transported to various and extensive markets. It possesses a soil as well as climate peculiarly favorable to the growth of wheat, and immense quantities are grown in it. The Welland Canal connects the navigation of lakes Erie and Ontario; the Rideau Canal,