NO EMIGRATION* 47 



numerous, troublesome, and destructive, from the scarcity 

 of nuts and mast in the woods this season. 



Dec. 10. The summer and fall has been remarkably dry 

 and still continues. Many mills cannot grind for want of 

 water. November was mild and pleasant, sometimes too 

 warm, and the weather is yet mild. Been ploughing for 

 peas and spring wheat, on the furrows of which they are to 

 be sown next spring without more ploughing. The person 

 with whom I left my trunks at Fort Erie, through a misun 

 derstanding, neglected to forward them, which caused me a 

 journey on foot about 140 miles, and back in a schooner as 

 far as Long Point Bay, where I landed on the 18th of De 

 cember, on which day there came a heavy fall of snow and 

 sharp frost. Long Point Bay, like most other bays on these 

 Lakes, is formed by a sand bank, having a slight bend 

 thirty or more miles down the Lake. This peninsula varies 

 in width from a few rods to a mile or two ; much covered 

 with fine timber, scrub pines and cedar only. There is a 

 river (Big Creek) empties within the bay, running through 

 a considerable tract of sandy plains and pine woods. 

 The frosts generally close the navigation of the lakes earlier 

 than this time, and the vessels are laid up in harbour. 

 After leaving the schooner, passed through marshes half-leg 

 deep in water and snow, with a Yankee who came in the 

 schooner, with whom I left my trunks to be forwarded with 

 his own. He was just returning from the States, with his 

 mother and her family, to settle in Canada. Nearly one- 

 half of the inhabitants of this province are from the States, 

 or their descendants. All the Dutch came from there, and 

 numbers are coining in yearly, on account of the cheapness 

 and goodness of the land, and general healthiness of the 

 climate. Stopped at a Dutchman s for the night, who has 

 a large frame house not entirely finished (houses in new 

 settlements are often two or three years before completed). 

 This industrious man has 200 acres of good land, which he 

 says he paid 800 dollars for, by the skins of musk rats he 

 killed in the marshes, and sold for their fine furs, at 2s. 3d. 

 each ; they are getting much less numerous, through being 

 continually hunted ; they are killed by thrusting a spear in 

 their hills, which are like mole-hills. My host also keeps 

 a seine, with which he takes a considerable quantity of 

 white fish, and others, in the spring and all. White fish 

 are much larger and finer eating than herrings, and sell at 



