well forested and watered, are invariably the seat of, and which is increased in power and frequency in proportion to the neighbourhood of fresh water in large bodies, and the use of whiskey as a preventive.
From a statement of the number of emigrants to this colony for the last sixteen years, compiled by A.C. Buchanan, Esq., chief emigrant agent, it appears that, in the five years subsequently to 1829, the emigration from the British Isles was 165,793. From other sources, in the three years, from 1829 to 1832, the emigration exceeded that of the previous ten years—the numbers being respectively, 125,063 and 121,170. In 1832, the emigrants arrived reached the high number of 51,746; but the cholera of that year was of so fatal a character on the St. Lawrence, that the numbers in 1833 fell 22,062. This epidemic, coupled with the rebellions of '37 and '38, materially checked the increased emigration commenced in 1836. In 1838, the number was only 3,266, and in 1839, 7,500. But, since 1840, emigration has again recovered, and, during the period of navigation of 1845, it amounted to 27,354, of whom 2,612 arrived via the United States.
The United States, however, received by far the largest proportion of the emigration from Britain. At the port of New York alone, from 1st November, 1844, to 31st October, 1845, there arrived—
| From England and Scotland | 10,653 |
| From Ireland | 38,300 |
| Total at New York | 48,953 |
The number of emigrants landed at the port of Quebec, in 1845, was 25,375.
NUMBER OF EMIGRANTS SINCE 1829.
| '29 to '33 | '34 to '38 | '39 to '43 | '44 to '45 | Total. | |
| ——— | ——— | ——— | ——— | ——— | |
| England. | 43,386 | 28,624 | 30,318 | 16,531 | 119,354 |
| Ireland. | 102,264 | 54,898 | 74,981 | 24,201 | 256,344 |
| Scotland. | 20,143 | 10,998 | 16,289 | 4,408 | 51,838 |
| British American Prov. &c. | 1,904 | 1,831 | 1,777 | 377 | 5,589 |
| ——— | ——— | ——— | ——— | ——— | |
| 167,697 | 96,351 | 123,860 | 45,517 | 433,425 | |
| ——— | ——— | ——— | ——— | ——— |
Upper Canada would seem to have received the largest share of the influx of population. The increase in the number of its inhabitants, between 1827 and 1843, is stated at 230,000.
The local government has for some few years past encouraged, although rather scantily, as Mr. Logan can, I dare say, testify, an exploration of the natural resources of the Canadas, as far as geology and mineralogy are concerned. Its medical statistics, its botany and zoology, will follow; and agriculture, that primary and most noble of all applications of the mind to matter, is making rapid strides, by the formation of district and local societies, which will do infinitely more good than any system of government patronage for the advancement of the welfare of the people could devise.
The public works have also, for the first time, been placed under the control of the executive and legislative bodies by the formation of a board, which is itself also subject to the supervision of the government.
But much remains to be done on this important head. A melancholy error was committed in making the President, and consequently all the officers and employés, of the Board of Works, partizans of the ministry of the day; thus paralyzing the efforts of a zealous man, on the one hand, by the fear of dismissal upon any change of the popular will, and neutralizing his efforts whilst in office, by rendering his measures mere jobs.
This has been amended under Lord Metcalfe's administration; and it is to be hoped that the office of President of the Board of Works will hereafter be one subjected to severe but not to vexatious scrutiny, and at the same time carefully guarded against political influence, and only rendered tenable with honour by the capacity of the person selected to fill it and of his subordinates. Canada is, as I have written two former volumes to prove, a magnificent country. I doubt very much if Nature has created a finer country on the whole earth.
The soil is generally good, as that made by the decay of forests for thousands of years upon substrata, chiefly formed of alluvion or diluvion, the deposit from waters, must be. It is, moreover, from Quebec to the Falls of St. Mary, almost a flat surface, intersected and interlaced by numberless streams, and studded with small lakes, whilst its littorale is a river unparalleled in the world, expanding into enormous fresh water seas, abounding with fish.
If the tropical luxuries are absent, if its winters are long and excessively severe, yet it yields all the European fruits abundantly, and even some of the tropical ones, owing to the richness of its soil and the great heat of the summer. Maize, or Indian corn, flourishes, and is more wholesome and better than that produced in the warm South. The crops of potato, that apple of the earth, as the French so justly term it, are equal, if not superior, to those of any other climate; whilst all the vegetables of the temperate regions of the old world grow with greater luxuriance than in their original fields. I have successively and successfully cultivated the tomato, the melon, and the capsicum, in the open air, for several seasons, at Kingston and Toronto, which are not the richest or the best parts of Western Canada, as far as vegetation is concerned. Tobacco grows well in the western district, and where is finer wheat harvested than in Western Canada?—whilst hay, and that beauty of a landscape, the rich green sod, the velvet carpet of the earth, are abundant and luxuriant.
If the majesty of vegetation is called in question, and intertropical plants brought forward in contrast, even the woods and trackless forests of Guiana, where the rankest of luxuriance prevails, will not do more than compete with the glory of the primeval woods of Canada. I know of nothing in this world capable of exciting emotions of wonder and adoration more directly, than to travel alone through its forests. Pines, lifting their hoary tops beyond man's vision, unless he inclines his head so far backwards as to be painful to his organization, with trunks which require fathoms of line to span them; oaks, of the most gigantic form; the immense and graceful