HINTS TO INTENDED EMIGRANTS. 
459 
taking, or I am persuaded they would hesitate before they 
renounce the protection of the British flag, and their connec¬ 
tion with the land of their forefathers. Is this no little sacrifice ? 
Let those who talk of emigration, weigh well the extent of 
it. But there is another question also to be put to such : Have 
you thought of the difference in manners, customs, and views 
between you and the Americans ? Will you like to hear the 
honored institutions of your country ridiculed, and that a 
“Britisher” is a constant butt for them to pass their jokes 
on, and that until you can he considered fairly naturalized, 
there will be little peace for you ; and to become so, your 
feelings must be so changed as to be able to view everything 
in the same light they do? If you be ever so free and 
independent, and opposed to aristocracy, still, let me inquire, 
are you any more attached to democratic rule ? But, without 
speaking of slavery in that boasted land of freedom, let us ask 
what are the advantages to be gained by settling there. If 
you wish to live in the older inhabited states, the price of land 
will there be found to be increased in proportion to the popu¬ 
lation ; if you go back, you are shut out from the world, your 
lot will be cast amongst the advocates of Lynch law. Then, 
again, there is something more than the mere acquirement of 
land to be considered. The labour of clearing the primaeval 
forest, and all the early difficulties of a settler’s life in the 
back woods, are also to be taken into account. 
But, who would emigrate if he knew the risk he ran of 
losing his health. How seldom do we hear of those who 
fall victims to the fearful agues, and still more fearful fevers, 
which rage in those forest lands, when first exposed to the 
sun’s rays, after ages of seclusion ;—its fierce beams draw 
forth the earth’s vapours, so long locked up in its breast, and 
carry off numbers of newly-arrived settlers, who, in fact, only go 
to make a clearing for others to inhabit.* But the summer s 
* My dear husband, my servant, the poor babe, and myself were all at one 
time confined to our beds with ague. You know how severe my sufferings 
always were at home with intermittents, and need not marvel if they were no 
less great in a country where lake-fevers and all kinds of intermittent fevers 
abound.—See Letters from, the Wife of an Emigrant Officer, page 222. 
