178 NEGRO SETTLEMENT STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 



ague, he told me several caught the complaint while residing 

 at Hamilton, on Lake Ontario, but it was quite unknown in 

 his present situation. I record these anecdotes as two of the 

 thousand instances which occurred, of settlers lessening the 

 evils, or rather magnifying the advantages, of their situation, 

 and how necessary it is to sift, by reflection, the grain from the 

 chaff of common conversation. 



On the boundary of the Huron tract, next to the London 

 district, we passed a negro settlement. The houses of the 

 coloured people appeared of a particular construction, having 

 the chimney-stack on the outside of the log-house, and which 

 stack is composed of thin sawn timber, placed horizontally, 

 and mixed with clay. Their chief crop was Indian corn, well 

 cultivated. Before my departure from Britain, I had heard 

 this settlement instanced as a complete failure, and used as an 

 argument against the emancipation of slaves, then a general 

 topic of conversation. The houses, barns, fences, and gene 

 ral appearances of this settlement are certainly mean enough, 

 but I considered it in most respects equal, and in some su 

 perior, to settlements of whites in the Huron tract of the 

 same standing of three years. But admitting, for argument s 

 sake, that this negro settlement had been a failure, the cir 

 cumstance could not form a good reason of expediency against 

 emancipation generally. When individuals attain maturity 

 in a state of slavery, they will become so demoralized as to 

 be incapable of acting with the feelings and aspirations of 

 freemen and moral agents, and it is the rising and not the 

 risen generation that much improvement is to be expected 

 from. Perhaps the neglected and depressed state in which 

 the poor Irish are reared in their native country is the chief 

 cause of their making improvident settlers in Canada, and 

 continuing hewers of wood and carriers of water over so great 

 a portion of the globe. 



The land in the Huron tract is truly excellent, with ex 

 ception of a few miles around Goderich, which is sandy or 

 gravelly, and some small cedar, ash, and larch swamps, being 

 fine clay with a covering of black vegetable mould. The soil 

 on the road leading from Van Egmont s tavern to London, is 

 particularly fine clay, especially near the Bayfield river, and 



