CHAP. X.

LAKE ERIE. - CHIPPAWA. - FORT ERIE. - BUFFALO. - SUGAR LOAVES. - RIVER OUSE. - PORT TALBOT. - LONG WOODS. RIVER DETROIT. - LAKE ST. CLAIR.- LAKE HURON. - CANADA COMPANY. - GUELPH. GUELPH. - GODERICH. - "THE FAR WEST."

LAKE ERIE is 270 miles long, and from thirty to fifty miles broad. It is shallow when compared to the other great lakes, being only from sixty to seventy feet average depth; and its waters, from this circumstance, are frequently rough and dangerous. Schooners, sloops, a few steamers, bateaux, and Durham boats, navigate this lake. The Americans have the finest vessels; some of their schooners resemble the Baltimore clippers. Chippawa, on the British side, at the mouth of the Welland, is the entrepôt for goods sent to, or received from, the upper country. The goods discharged or laded at this place will be much diminished in quantity in consequence of the Welland Canal now obviating the necessity of land carriage, as formerly, between Queenston and Chippawa.*

Lake Erie is said to be filling up with deposits, carried down by the rivers, at the mouths of which,

* At Chippawa, where there are the ruins of the large mills burnt by the Americans, there is a spring surcharged with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, within a few feet of the river, the vapour of which being collected by means of an inverted funnel, will ignite, on applying a candle to where it escapes through the tube.

deltas are evidently increasing. Through the River Detroit, it receives apparently the surplus waters of Lake St. Clare, Huron, Michigan, and Superior.

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The American shores are thickly inhabited, and the townships along the British coast, from Niagara to Detroit, are rapidly filling up with settlers. posite to Fort Erie, where the Niagara issues from the lake, stands the thriving American town of Buffalo. Here the Grand Canal commences which connects Lake Erie with the Hudson, and consequently with the Atlantic.

At Fort Erie, seventeen miles by a good road from Niagara, the lake opens, and we soon come to the Dutch settlement, called "Sugar Loaves," which takes its name from six conical hills, rising from the low grounds near the lake. The counties of Haldiımand, Norfolk, Middlesex, and Essex, divided into townships, follow in succession along Lake Erie. The lands are flat, but in some places the banks, formed chiefly of clay and sand, are 100 feet perpendicular.

At the mouth of the Ouse, or Grand River, in a low, marshy, unhealthy situation, there is a naval and military post, named Sherbrooke, where we have two armed schooners and several gun-boats. A branch of the Welland Canal is to join the Ouse, three or four miles from its mouth. This river is, following its windings, about 150 miles long, 1000 feet wide, and navigable for thirty miles. Lands for the Indians, who have small hamlets on its banks, have, in several places, been reserved. An act of the colonial legislature has passed, to incorporate a company for the purpose of cutting a canal at Brandtford. This is an Indian village named after the chief of the Mo

hawks, Captain Brandt, whose father appears, not in true colours however, in "Gertrude de Wyoming."

On one of its branches called the Speed, about 100 miles from its mouth, lies the young thriving town of Guelph, founded by the Canada Company on one of their blocks of land. Between the Ouse and Port Talbot lies the well-settled tract of country called Long Point.

Port Talbot, is nearly equidistant between Niagara and Detroit. Here, in 1802, the settlement of the country to the westward, then an uninhabited wilderness, commenced under the superintendence of Colonel Talbot. He encountered great difficulties before he succeeded in laying out and opening roads, extending about eighty miles parallel to the lake. Along these, farms of 200 acres were granted to emigrants, subject to certain stipulations, such as clearing ten acres of land, building a house, and opening a road in front of the farm. Settlers, principally poor people, soon flocked to it, and the whole is now densely filled with inhabitants. At the upper end there are a great number of Highlanders; the rest are chiefly Irish.

Settlements were soon after extended along the roads, opened through the wilderness of the Long Woods; and the town of Amherstburg, 785 miles above Quebec, and 1100 from the mouth of the St. Lawrence, arose on the banks of the Detroit. Amherstburg is delightfully situated. It is fast increasing in buildings and in population. It has a court-house, gaol, churches, chapels, numerous shops, and from 1400 to 1600 inhabitants. It was a naval depôt during war, and is still a military post.

Fourteen miles farther up stands Sandwich, a very

flourishing place, with a church, called the "Huron Church," chapels, several good houses, stores and wharfs. Opposite to it, in the Michigan territory, lies the old village of Detroit. The river is here frozen over in winter, and then the ice forms an immense smooth bridge connecting the United States with Canada.

The River Detroit runs from Lake St. Clair into Lake Erie. Its navigation is not interrupted, and its fertile banks are thickly peopled. But different characteristics present themselves to those we meet elsewhere in Upper Canada.

The inhabitants are French Canadians, and on the banks of the Detroit they tenaciously retain all the habits and observances common to their countrymen, the habitans of Lower Canada. Here for twenty or thirty miles we again observe the village form of settlements, the decent church, the pious priest, and the kind civil habitant. This is a rich beautiful country; and, if once the ague and lake-fever were banished, the climate would be truly delightful. All kinds of grain, and the finest apples, pears, nectarines, peaches, and grapes, grow in perfection.

Near Detroit there is a settlement of simple harmless Moravians.

Lake St. Clair is about thirty miles long, and nearly the same in breadth, and its shores as yet not well settled. It receives several rivers; the principal of which, named the Thames, winds for more than a hundred miles from the north-east; and on its banks settlements and embryo towns are growing. It has its Chatham, London, and Oxford. General Simcoe, the first governor of Upper Canada, was exceedingly anxious that the seat of government should be established somewhere nearly equidistant to Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron, and considered the spot named London the most appropriate.

There is a large delta at the upper end of Lake St. Clair, which appears to be increasing; and through which, by several channels, the river issues. Near this Lord Selkirk began his settlement named Baldoon. The situation is low and marshy, and great numbers of the first settlers were carried off. On the east or American bank stands old Fort St. Clair; and a few miles farther up where Lake Huron opens, Fort Gratiat was erected to command the river.

On the eastern shores of Lake Huron the Canada Company's principal tract of land lies nearly in a triangular form, commencing in latitude 43°, and extending about sixty miles along the coast.

The Canada Company have opened roads in various directions through their lands; and at the mouth of the Maitland, where it joins Lake Huron, the town of Goderich has been founded. In the space of eight years has this territory, previously untrodden, except by Indians, furriers, and wild beasts, been rapidly opened and settled by the energies and means of a company removing those disheartening obstacles, which, in the wilderness, and particularly in a remote region, require the best part of a man's life to surmount by individual exertion alone.

Beyond Goderich, if we except one or two military stations, the posts of the Hudson Bay Company, and the small settlements which have arisen from Lord Selkirk's foundation at Red River, the vast regions from Lake Huron to the Pacific are all still in primeval wilderness, and still to be inhabited and cultivated by Europeans. That emigration from the east