Our host, who appeared to make himself quite at home in his own house, joined in the conversation, and being very communicative about his own affairs, wanted us to be equally so about ours.  His eccentricity greatly amused us.  He informed me that he was by birth a Yorkshireman, and that he had been in business in London, where he had built some fine “place” or “terrace,” which still bore his name.  He spouted Latin occasionally, and showed me a Greek lexicon, which he told me was his constant companion.  His real stock of Latin and Greek consisted only of a few words and sentences he had picked up, and which he quoted ostentatiously before the ignorant, who of course thought him a prodigy of learning.

As it continued to rain all the evening, I was obliged to give orders to have my horse put up for the night, and also to see what accommodation could be had for ourselves.  I found on examination that this was bad enough at least I thought so then, though many a time since I should have been happy to obtain any half as good.

We started early next morning, and reached Cobourg, without any farther adventure, about noon on the same day.  We halted there three days.  I left my wife with our friends, and took charge of Miss W----- to escort her to her brother’s house.

We left Cobourg for Rice Lake which was distant about twelve or thirteen miles from thence.  It was a delightful morning in October; and our road, though very bad, and in some places positively dangerous, where it descended into the deep ravines, was at the same time so picturesque that we were quite delighted with our drive, and particularly so when, emerging from the woods, we entered Hamilton-plains, and beheld in the distance the glittering waters of Rice Lake, and the gem-like islands which adorn its unruffled surface.

Rice Lake, or the Lake of the Burning Plains, as it is called in the Indian language, is a fine sheet of water, twenty-seven miles in length from east to west, varying from two to three and a half miles in width.  About six miles from its head on the northern shore it receives the waters of the Otonabee river, which, rising near the head-waters of the Madawaska, flows in nearly a westerly direction, into Balsam Lake, where it takes a more southerly direction, forming in its course a succession of beautiful lakes for upwards of sixty miles.  Ten miles above Peterborough, and directly opposite my own farm in the township of Douro, it suddenly contracts its channel and becomes a rapid and impetuous stream.  According to a survey ordered by the-government, it was ascertained that from a point on my farm, at the foot of Kawchewahnoonk Lake, and distant from Peterborough nearly ten miles, there is a fall of one hundred and forty-seven feet, affording an unlimited water-power, which has already been extensively applied not only in the town of Peterborough, where several fine flour and saw-mills have been erected, but also in the townships through which it flows.