In those days, the emigrant’s trials were indeed hard, compared with what they are now.  The country was quite unsettled, excepting that here and there the nucleus of a small village appeared to vary its loneliness, for the clearings were mostly confined to the vicinity of the Great Lake.  There were no plank, gravel, or macadamized roads then; saw and grist-mills were few-and-far-between.  It was no uncommon thing then for a farmer to go thirty or forty miles to mill, which cause indeed sometimes detained him a whole week from his family; and, even more, if any accident had happened to the machinery.  Besides this inconvenience, he had to encounter risks for himself and his cattle,—­ from bad bridges, deep mud-holes, and many other annoyances—­I might say, with truth, “too numerous to mention.”  The few farms in that neighbourhood were then chiefly occupied by Americans, some of whom had found it highly desirable to expatriate themselves; and might have exclaimed with the celebrated pick-pocket, Barrington, in a prologue spoken to a convict-audience in New South Wales,—­

 “Friends, be it understood,
  We left our country for our country’s good.”

I have no intention of reflecting here on the national honour of the American nation; but it is a well-known fact, that many of the early frontier settlers were persons who had evaded the payment of their just debts or, perhaps, legal penalties for worse offences, by crossing the lines, and forming settlements in Canada.  Such persons are not a fair specimen of American character.  Individually, I have nothing to say against the Americans, but rather the contrary, for I have found them good and obliging neighbours.

I have heard it generally asserted, that the Yankees are the greatest rogues under the sun.  If smartness in trading, or barter, be roguery, they richly deserve the epithet; but I deny that their intentions are one whit more dishonest than those of the persons with whom they trade.  That their natural shrewdness and general knowledge give them an advantage, I am quite ready to admit; and perhaps they are not over-scrupulous in exercising it to the discomfiture of their less-gifted neighbours.

Unfortunately, Mr. G. purchased his land of a squatter, who had no title himself, and consequently could give none to the purchaser, who, after three or four years of hard labour upon it—­when he had fondly hoped he had surmounted the greatest difficulties—­found that the Government had issued a deed for the benefit of another person before he came into possession, who could not be induced to give up his legal rights to the unfortunate cultivator.  He was so disheartened by this occurrence, that he determined to sell all he had and leave the country, which resolution he put into immediate execution.