was estimated at 600,000, of whom hardly one-quarter were of British origin, living chiefly in Montreal, the Townships, and Quebec.  Nova Scotia had nearly 200,000 inhabitants, of whom probably 16,000 were French Acadians, resident in Cape Breton and in Western Nova Scotia.  In New Brunswick there were at least 150,000 people, of whom some 15,000 were descendants of the original inhabitants of Acadie.  The Island of Prince Edward had 30,000 people, of whom the French Acadians made up nearly one-sixth.  The total trade of the country amounted, in round figures, to about L5,000,000 sterling in imports, and somewhat less in exports The imports were chiefly manufactures from Great Britain, and the exports were lumber, wheat and fish.  Those were days when colonial trade was stimulated by differential duties in favour of colonial products, and the building of vessels was encouraged by the old navigation laws which shut out foreign commerce from the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic ports, and kept the carrying trade between Great Britain and the colonies in the hands of British and colonial merchants, by means of British registered ships.  While colonists could not trade directly with foreign ports, they were given a monopoly for their timber, fish, and provisions in the profitable markets of the British West Indies.

The character of the immigration varied considerably, but on the whole the thrifty and industrious formed the larger proportion.  In 1833 the immigrants deposited 300,000 sovereigns, or nearly a million and a half of dollars, in the Upper Canadian banks.  An important influence in the settlement of Upper Canada was exercised by one Colonel Talbot, the founder of the county of Elgin.  Mrs. Anna Jameson, the wife of a vice-chancellor of Upper Canada, describes in her Winter Studies and Summer Rambles, written in 1838, the home of this great proprietor, a Talbot of Malahide, one of the oldest families in the parent state.  The chateau—­as she calls it, perhaps sarcastically—­was a “long wooden building, chiefly of rough logs, with a covered porch running along the south side.”  Such homes as Colonel Talbot’s were common enough in the country.  Some of the higher class of immigrants, however, made efforts to surround themselves with some of the luxuries of the old world.  Mrs. Jameson tells us of an old Admiral, who had settled in the London district—­now the most prosperous agricultural part of Ontario—­and had the best of society in his neighbourhood; “several gentlemen of family, superior education, and large capital (among them the brother of an English and the son of an Irish peer, a colonel and a major in the army) whose estates were in a flourishing state.”  The common characteristic of the Canadian settlements was the humble log hut of the poor immigrant, struggling with axe and hoe amid the stumps to make a home for his family.  Year by year the sunlight was let into the dense forests, and fertile meadows soon stretched far and wide in the once untrodden wilderness.  Despite all the difficulties of a pioneer’s life, industry reaped its adequate rewards in the fruitful lands of the west, bread was easily raised in abundance, and animals of all kinds thrived.