28 ONTARIO. 



CHAPTER II. 



ONTARIO. 



THE province of Ontario is in many respects the most 

 highly favoured region in all the continent of America. 

 Though situated far enough to the west to be within 

 the wheat-growing and fruit-growing region, it has an 

 extended coast-line and direct communication with the 

 ocean. The lakes, besides the economic advantages they 

 confer, have a most favourable effect on the climate, 

 modifying alike the excessive cold of winter and the heat 

 and drought which parch up some of the Western States. 

 Farming is carried on in other provinces of the Dominion 

 with more or less success, but in most of them it is asso- 

 ciated with other industries, such as lumbering, but 

 Ontario is essentially an agricultural country. Its area is 

 80,000,000 square miles, about the same as that of Great 

 Britain and Ireland ; three-fourths of this are suitable to 

 agriculture, while at present only one-fourth is under 

 cultivation. 



Land is so abundant in Canada that as yet only those 

 places most favoured by nature as to situation, soil, &c., 

 have been chosen for settlement. When manufactories 

 spring up they will hold out other inducements to the 

 settler in the shape of good markets, which will bring into 

 cultivtition land that is at present neglected. 



Ontario is in my opinion the most suitable place in the 



