above Kingston a week or two sooner than below. Haymaking and harvest commence about the same time in all the colonies. On old cleared farms, ploughing, harrowing, forming inclosures, gathering the hay and harvest, preparing for winter, thatching corn, feeding cattle, during that season, form the principal occupations of the farmers. Cutting down and burning the forests, preparing the ground for seed, and gathering the crops afterwards, with various local pursuits, claim the incessant attention of new settlers.

The quality of the land may always be ascertained by the timber it produces; deciduous trees of the maple, beech, oak, ash, elm, walnut, plane, tulip, and hickory tribes intermixed, grow in rich soils. Terebinthine trees, unmixed with others, always indicate a cold or sandy soil. The best lands seldom require manure; and the lighter soils, by applying gypsum, which is abundant, yield fine crops of clover, Indian corn, wheat, and potatoes.

Domestic manufactures are few. Coarse woollen and linen clothes are made by the farmers' wives and daughters. Distilling of whisky, the iron-works at Marmora and Charlotteville, a few breweries, and some founderies at York and some other places; a paper manufactory, tobacco manufactories, manufacturing flour and meal, making potashes and pearlashes; manufacturing square timber, deals, and staves; navigating steam boats, sloops, and river craft; public works, &c. afford sources of abundant occupation. It will be long before Upper Canada can become a manufacturing country; nor is it the interest of the inhabitants to establish factories, while the soil and the forest afford them more certain sources of independence.

The imports and exports of Upper Canada, although of great value, are included, with the exception of the interchange of commodities with the United States, in the customs' returns for Lower Canada. The details will therefore, to avoid recapitulation, be given hereafter, under the general account of the trade of both provinces.

The returns for 1831 state the number of rateable property to be:

Shops

Merchants' stores

Grist-mills

Saw-mills

Horses, three years old and upwards

Stone horses

Working oxen

Milch cows

Horned cattle, two years and upwards

Pleasure (wheeled) carriages of different kinds

The above is the description of property assessed; the rate is one penny in the pound. These returns were considered much below the actual numbers, as there was at least 1,000,000 acres of land under cultivation. The following calculation for 1832, carefully computed, is considered as near the truth

These numbers must increase with great rapidity, in a country where mankind multiply so fast by natural fecundity and immigration.

Prices of live stock, agricultural produce, and other commodities, vary according to the demand; the following may, however, be considered the average rates in Upper Canada: ー

A yoke of oxen from 14l. to 20l.; milch cows, 21. 10s. to 51.; horses, fit for farmers' work, 8l. to 121.; good saddle or carriage horses, 20l. to 30l.; sheep, 8s. to 12s.; wheat, per bushel, 3s. 6d. to 5s.; barley, 2s. 6d. to 3s.; oats, 1s. 3d. to 2s.; Indian corn, 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d.; potatoes, 1s. 6d. to 2s.; pease, 2s. 6d. to 3s.; hay, from 21. to 31. per ton; beef, 2d. to 5d. per pound; veal and lamb, about the same price; butter, 8d. to 1s. per pound; sugar, Muscovado, 5d. to 8d.; tea, good, 4s. to 6s.; whisky, 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. per gallon; rum, 3s. to 4s.; brandy, 8s. to 11s.; gin, 5s. to 7s.; other articles in proportion. These prices are in Halifax currency, which is one ninth less in value than British money; and the rate of exchange generally further reduces the price of articles one fifteenth. Implements of husbandry are now well made, and the prices moderate; furniture is also reasonable, and handsomely finished. British manufactures cost from 25 to 75 per cent. more than in England. Day labourers may get from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per day, or 21. 10s. per month, with board and lodging; female house servants from 11. to 11. 10s. per month; tradesmen from 5s. to 7s. 6d. per day.

CHAP. XVI.

CUSTOMS, MANNERS, PURSUITS AND AMUSEMENTS OF THE INHABITANTS OF UPPER CANADA. - GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INHABITANTS OF BRITISH AMERICA.

The inhabitants of Upper Canada, consisting of loyalists, who came after the war from the United States; of English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Americans; of others who have emigrated to the colony; and of all those born in the province, must naturally retain for some time the habits, manners, and peculiarities of the countries of their respective ancestors. The first settlers were English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, or Dutch, and their offspring, born in the old colonies.

The pursuits of all have been, and still continue to be, regulated by necessity and by local circumstances. Their manners and habits, by mingling together in the settlements, and by intermarriages, gradually amalgamate, and undergo changes, which will give a fixed, or an apparent, standard to the domestic manners of a population, among which prevail the varied habits of many countries.

We meet with a great many negroes, most of whom have run away from those who owned them in the United States. Generally speaking, they are in much the same condition as those at Hammond Plains, described in the first volume; and they appear to be more frequently guilty of theft and robbery than any other class of people.* This certainly arises from their previous life and habits, rendering them improvident, and little adapted to act for themselves; for we occasionally find families of negroes who are as industrious and moral as the generality of white inhabitants; but they have been trained to think and act for themselves nearly from infancy.

Much has been written by travellers against the general character of the settlers in Upper Canada; and perhaps at one period the charges were not far from the truth.

A great number of persons, it is admitted, have resorted to the province, who left the United States either to evade the laws of their own country, or to cheat the unwary. Whatever want of principle and moral character has been laid to the charge of the inhabitants of Upper Canada, may be attributed partly to the pollution carried into the province from the United States; and, partly, by the contamination disseminated by the equally unprincipled, but not so expert, rogues, who are mingled with those who emigrate from the United Kingdom to Canada. No doubt the United States receive, and are equally cursed with a great proportion of the latter, as well as with a great portion of those, whose crimes and vices drive them direct to the United States from Great Britain and Ireland.

It is, however, unjust to stamp the general character of the inhabitants, either of the British colonies