CLEARING THE FOEEST. 21 



ters are cold the weather is steady, and an active man may 

 work in his shirt sleeves in the shelter of the forest during most 

 of the clearing season. To cut down the trees on an acre of 

 land, and pile them with the branches ready for burning, is 

 reckoned a good month's work, and by steady perseverance, six 

 acres may thus be accomplished during the winter. When the 

 ground has become dry and warm, the piles are set on fire, the 

 ashes are afterwards scattered over the surface, and early in 

 autumn the ground is sown with wheat, which generally proves 

 a good crop. On fair land, in a good situation, a hard-work- 

 ing man, if he gets the land for little or nothing, may soon 

 earn a livelihood in this manner. But if he has to pay such 

 prices as I heard quoted, 51. to 61. an acre in any eligible lo- 

 cality, and reckons the value of his own labour in clearing, 

 and the loss of time during which he has to wait for his first 

 crop, one can feel no surprise that the tide of emigration has of 

 late years set steadily westward to the open prairies, where the 

 land costs less to purchase, and from which a crop may be 

 reaped in the first year of settlement. 



Toronto is a fine city, with an excellent harbour on Lake 

 Ontario : the harbour is protected by a low neck of land which 

 forms a natural breakwater. Wide streets, numerous churches, 

 and public buildings, with splendid stores and shops, betoken 

 a place of growing prosperity. Toronto is the outlet of a good 

 agricultural country, and, should a ship canal be made here to 

 connect with Lake Huron by the Georgian Bay, the business 

 of this flourishing city as a port of transit would be materially 

 augmented. By means of the Grand Trunk and Great Western 

 Kailways it already possesses every facility for communication 

 by land. 



The drive towards Hamilton along the shore of the lake, 

 which lay quite smooth and calm, was beautiful. The country 

 is about half cleared, a heavy wheat soil, on which the new- 



