SOLON ROBINSON, 1850 405 



the direction of Lake Simcoe, which is about 37 miles dis- 

 tant. It has been graded and Macadamised upon a 

 straight line, without regard to any obstacles, as creeks 

 or ravines that might intervene, and like a great many 

 similar foolish efforts to make a road straight, going 

 through and over hills, instead of going around them, it 

 has caused a great outlay of money in places where a 

 slight bend would have saved the largest portion. It is a 

 government work, and is kept in repair by tolls. The 

 farms are laid out one fourth of a mile wide and one and 

 a fourth deep ; then comes another road, and so on. These 

 strips are called "concessions," and are numbered ac- 

 cording to situation. Cross roads, also, run a mile and a 

 fourth apart ; so the whole country is divided into squares 

 of a mile and a quarter. This is an old French fashion, 

 adopted, at first, along the streams for the purpose of giv- 

 ing a greater number of frontings upon the water. In 

 the interior, it certainly is not so perfect a system as the 

 United States have, of mile-square sections and square 

 subdivisions, all numbered by a systematic rule. 



Leaving Toronto, we ascend very gradually from the 

 lake, a couple of miles, and then up a low ridge corre- 

 sponding with the curve of the shore, composed of sand, 

 gravel, and clay, like the present beach. All the soil below 

 the ridge is more spongy than above, though much more 

 sandy. The upper level is a rich clay loam, without hills, 

 though broken by ravines. Portions of it were covered 

 with white pine, and other parts, with hard wood. This 

 was made up of maple, beech, elm, ash, hickory, bass- 

 wood, butternut, and some other sorts; oaks not being 

 plenty. Farms of 200 acres, with a good comfortable 

 brick house and out buildings, and good barn, and well 

 fenced, and under fair cultivation, averaging 25 bushels 

 of wheat, and 35 or 40 bushels of oats, and 200 of pota- 

 toes, will sell for about $50 an acre, along this road, 

 within ten to twenty miles of the city. Corn is only grown 

 for home consumption, and does not probably average 

 much more to the acre, than wheat. The soil here is ex- 



