INFLUENCE OF EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 21 



have been introduced in their stead. This is nearly the 

 case of Lower Canada over again and every farmer 

 will understand how much new thought and anxiety 

 must have attended a total abandonment of an old- 

 established and generally adopted course of husbandry. 

 Out of evil, however, springs up good, and the habit of 

 thinking forced upon this people must everywhere intro 

 duce new and better practices than were formerly in use. 



Here, as in Lower Canada, the habitants are multi 

 plying rapidly, and the settling and clearing of new 

 land towards the interior goes on apace. 



Mr Blackball, who is an Aberdonian, received us 

 kindly, and entertained us hospitably. His warmth was 

 doubly grateful to us after the coolness of our previous 

 quarters at Mr Ritchie s. He was stationed here as 

 collector of the customs, had been long in the country, 

 and pronounced it to be one of the most healthy in the 

 world. He had a large family, he said, and, except 

 chincough and measles, they had never had a day s 

 sickness. How many other evils can be patiently borne 

 where bodily health gives the free spirit a fair opportu 

 nity of exercising its self-sustaining powers ? 



It is interesting to observe how a man, when, as in a 

 new country like this, he has u all the world before him 

 where to choose,&quot; is biassed and determined in his selec 

 tion of a new home not so much by the absence of 

 difficulties, as by the presence of certain qualities or 

 circumstances which connect themselves in his mind with 

 early habits and modes of procedure. Thus at Sullivan s 

 Corner at the commencement of Waterloo Settlement, 

 of which I have already spoken I found Sullivan an 

 Irishman, an old Waterloo veteran, located on the edge 

 of a black bog, such as he had been familiar with in his 

 own country, in his early boyish days. How would that, 

 to others chilling and unsightly, swamp be to him rich in 

 cheerful recollections of a far-off home, and of times 



