SKETCHES OF CANADA. 
307 
SKETCHES OF CANADA. 
On the 13th of August, I left Buffalo for a fly- 
ing visit into that terra incognita to many of 
your readers, now known as " Canada West," a 
designation that, like many other improvements, 
does not improve greatly upon the ancient and 
well-known name of Upper Canada. But we 
won't quarrel about names until after "annexa- 
tion," and then we will call it " the State of On- 
tario." 
In leaving Buffalo, we take the cars for Niag- 
ara Falls, twenty-two miles over a cold, flat, 
clay soil, originally, and still, in part, covered 
mostly with oak, beech, and maple, and other 
kindred timber, and little of it cultivated in a 
manner to begin to show its capability of pro- 
ducing small grains and grass. I noticed farm- 
ers along the road busy cutting oats ; and occa- 
sional spots were white and fragrant with the 
bloom of buckwheat. Corn, to one from a 
southern corn region, looked very diminutive, 
though of a rank-green hue, and now just in 
blossom. Orchards few, trees scrubby, fruit 
small, as a general thing. The railroad and 
cars upon this route are good ; fare, 75 cents, 
time, li hours. 
The Falls Village is a place capable of afford- 
ing a great and cheap water power ; and if half 
the energy were displayed in turning it to some 
account, that is devoted to plucking the gulls 
that annually flock there, it would soon become 
a great manufacturing town, furnishing employ- 
ment to thousands of laborers, and adding value 
to all the farming land in the vicinity. 
From the Buffalo road, passengers for Lewis- 
ton and Canada step into the cars of the Lock- 
port road, which stand ready in the open street, 
where all are disembarked, instead of a commo- 
dious depot under shelter, as is the fashion in 
some Christian countries. The road now runs 
just along the very edge of the frightful precip- 
itous bank, and the boiling flood that rolls be- 
tween the perpendicular walls of that immense 
chasm below the Falls. We begin to bear off 
from the stream at the Suspension Bridge, a 
structure that looks like a frail ribbon stretched 
from bank to bank, but yet is capable of carry- 
ing over heavy teams, elevated more than two 
hundred feet above the river, which seems here 
to be struggling to force its way through a gorge 
too narrow to admit the mass of water .that pours 
down the great fall, three miles above. At the 
Junction, three and a half miles from Lewiston, 
we exchange from the wretched cars of the 
Lockport road, to others not much worse, drawn 
by horses down the long hill, to the steamboat 
landing on the Niagara. A most charming 
agricultural scene opens to view, while descend- 
ing this hill. The farms upon the great Lewis- 
ton plain of alluvial lands, are spread out as it 
were, like a picture at our feet. Good farm 
houses, barns, orchards, stubble, and oat fields 
of golden hue, contrasting with the dark green 
of maize and grass, and all interspersed with 
groves of forest trees, and flanked by the vil- 
lage and river, and opposite shore, and town, 
and heights of Queenston, form a whole that is 
delightful, and never fails to gratify the eye of 
every traveller who has a taste for rural scenes. 
The time required to make this trip upon 
these railroads from Buffalo, is upwards of three 
hours — a little over ten miles an hour — which is 
rather slow railroad travelling, but decidedly 
better than staging over the same route thirty 
years ago. 
The steamboat for Hamilton, left the Lewis- 
ton wharf at one, crossed over and touched at 
Queenston, and then down the river, stopping 
at Youngstown, on the Yankee side, and Niag- 
ara opposite, where the decaying wharves and 
warehouses bear witness that the spirit of en- 
terprise and improvement, which animates the 
people of one side of this river, does not, for 
some unknown cause, affect the other side in 
the same way. 
Directly after leaving these towns, we pass 
between the British and American monuments 
of wickedness and folly that disfigure the mouth 
of this beautiful river, bearing bristling cannon 
pointed at each other, where nothing but em- 
blems of peace and productiveness of a rich soil 
and healthy clime should, of right, ever be seen 
to divide brethren from the same hearth stone, 
into two belligerent nations. A few miles after 
entering Lake Ontario, and turning north along 
the west shore, we run along side of the piers of 
the mouth of the Welland Canal, a work of 
monumental form to the mind that can con- 
ceive the project of lifting fleets out of Lake 
Ontario and sending them over the mountains, 
into the upper lakes, and in return loading them 
with the produce of western farms, and sending 
them direct to Europe. 
The farmer, while tilling his crops in Wis- 
consin or Illinois, thinks but little that this canal 
exerts a direct influence in his favor, and tends 
to enhance the value of every bushel of grain 
he produces for sale. Yet, such is the fact, and 
such will ever be the fact with every canal, and 
railroad, plank road, or improved facility of 
getting produce from the place of growth, 
toward the place of consumption. Yet farmers, 
almost everywhere, are reluctant or dilatory to 
lend assistance towards any such improvement, 
or even to keep neighborhood or market town 
roads in decent repair. 
We were about five hours making this forty- 
mile trip from Lewiston to Hamilton, against a 
head wind and a very sickish sea. The town 
lies a mile back from the shore at the head of 
Burlington Bay, which is entered by a short 
canal through the neck of land that divides it 
from the lake. It is said to contain 10,000 in- 
habitants, has some broad, handsome streets, 
and substantial stone and brick buildings, and 
like all new towns, shows some marks of its 
early Jonah-gourd-like growth. It is located 
upon a handsome inclined plane, which extends 
from the water to the base of the mountain 
range that skirts the lake a mile or two from 
the shore, which renders many of the farms, 
though picturesque in appearance, very much 
broken. I understand a narrow strip of these 
farms produce peaches, while others totally 
fail. The land between the mountain and shore 
appears to be a sandy loam — that upon the 
