462 ILLINOIS AND UPPER CANADA. 



years. In Illinois every farmer, soon after establishing 1 him 

 self, sells produce of all descriptions. The whole population 

 of Upper Canada, with exception of those on the rivers De 

 troit and Thames, may be said to be fed with fresh or salted 

 animal food from the United States. The difficulties of first 

 settlement in a densely wooded country are so great that the 

 inhabitants of Upper Canada could not have existed without 

 the money of Britain, and the provisions of the western 

 United States. 



Viewing soil as a work-shop, the prairie farm of Illi 

 nois is superior to the forest one in Upper Canada, not only 

 from containing a better supply of the materials forming cli 

 mate, as described at pages 327, 328, but from being fitted by 

 nature for immediate operations. Place a prepared workshop, 

 and materials for forming another, before any manufacturer 

 whatever, and ask him whether he would commence his pro 

 fession in the erected shop, or prepare one with his own hands. 

 Such is the situation of the industrious emigrant farmer with 

 regard to the Illinois prairie and Upper Canada forest. If 

 choice is made of the latter, the farmer is like a manufacturer 

 who would erect a workshop with his own hands. The fo 

 rest settler, after suffering privations, undergoing much toil, 

 and patiently waiting till the stumps decay, will at length find 

 himself in something like the situation of the prairie farmer on 

 his first settlement. Nay, the first ploughing of forest land 

 after the stumps have decayed, is more expensive than break 

 ing up prairie land, and the succeeding crops greatly inferior. 

 I had no opportunity of forming an opinion of the crops 

 immediately after the stumps decay, but a friend, capable 

 of judging, told me a field which I saw preparing under such 

 circumstances, on the banks of the Otanabee, in the New 

 castle district, produced a poor wheat crop in 1834, and 

 that such crops will not average more than fifteen bushels 

 per acre. A person in the township of Hinchinbrook, Lower 

 Canada, prepared and sowed a field of stump land with wheat 

 in 1834, the crop of which did not cover the expense of raising 

 and carrying it to market. The capitalist who clears Cana 

 dian forest in preference to farming the prairie of Illinois, 

 makes a sacrifice of property, and the industrious farmer who 



