I took his advice, closed the bargain, and became a landed proprietor in Canada West.  On the 16th of May, 1826, I moved up with all my goods and chattels, which were then easily packed into a single horse waggon, and consisted of a plough iron, six pails, a sugar kettle, two iron pots, a frying pan with a long handle, a tea kettle, a chest of carpenters’ tools, a Canadian axe, and a cross-cut saw.  My stock of provisions comprised a parcel of groceries, half a barrel of pork and a barrel of flour.

The roads were so bad that it took me three days to perform a journey of little more than fifty miles.  We (that is to say myself and my two labourers) had numerous upsets; but at last reached the promised land without any further trouble.  My friend in Douro turned out the next day and assisted me to put up the walls of my shanty and roof it with bass-wood troughs, which was completed before dark.

I was kept busy for more than a week chinking between the logs and plastering up all the crevices, cutting out a doorway and place for a window, casing them; making a door and hanging it on wooden hinges, &c.  I also made a rough table and some stools, which answered better than they looked.  Four thick slabs of lime-stone, placed upright in one corner of the shanty with clay well packed behind them to keep the fire off the logs, answered very well for a chimney with a hole cut through the roof directly above, to vent the smoke.

I made a tolerably good bedstead out of some iron-wood poles, by stretching strips of elm-bark across, which I plaited strongly together to support my bed, which was a very good one, and the only article of luxury I possessed.

I had very foolishly hired two Irish emigrants, who had not been longer in Canada than myself, and of course knew nothing either of chopping, logging, fencing, or, indeed, any work belonging to the country.  The consequence of this imprudence was, that the first ten acres I cleared cost me nearly 5 pounds an acre*—­at least 2 pounds more than it should have done.  Experience is often dearly bought, and in this instance the proverb was fully verified.

[* The usual price for clearing land, and fencing it fit for sowing, is, for hard wood, from eleven to twelve dollars per acre; for evergreen, such as pine, hemlock, cedar, or where that kind of timber predominates, from twelve to fourteen dollars per acre.  There is no fixed price for swamp.]

I found chopping, in the summer months, very laborious.  I should have underbrushed my fallow in the fall, before the leaves fell, and chopped the large timber during the winter months, when I should have had the warm weather for logging and burning, which should be completed by the first day of September.  So, for want of experience, it was all up-hill work with me.