Chapter II. details preparations for emigration. Carrying heavy lumbering
wooden furniture to the woods of Upper Canada is as "coals to Newcastle."
The black walnut makes handsomer furniture than mahogany, and does not so
easily stain, a property which saves much scrubbing and not a little
scolding in families. In clothes, boots and shoes are most useful, for
Canadian leather resembles _hide_, and one pair of English shoes will
easily last out three American. In Canada, a sovereign generally fetches
23_s_. or 24_s_. currency, that is 5_s_. to the dollar;--1_s_. sterling,
passes for 1_s_. 2_d_. currency, so that either description of bullion
gives a good remittance: "one great objection, however, to bringing out
money, is the liability there is of losing, or being robbed of it." Live
stock is much wanted: "dogs would be very valuable if trained to bring
home the cattle, which often stray into the woods; with careless settlers,
indeed, one half of the day is often spent in hunting up, and driving home
the oxen." The water of the St. Lawrence is, it appears, more deleterious
than our Thames: "when you arrive in the St. Lawrence, having been on
shortish allowance of water, you will be for swallowing the river water by
the bucket full. Now, if you have any bowels of compassion for your
intestinal canal, you will abstain from so doing;--for to people not
accustomed to it, the lime that forms a considerable constituent part of
the water of this country, acts pretty much in the same manner as would a
solution of Glauber's salts, and often generates dysentery and diarrhoea;
and though I have an unbounded veneration for the principles of the
Temperance societies, I would, with all deference, recommend, that the
pure fluid be drank in very small quantities at first, and even these
tempered with the most impalpable infusion possible of Jamaica or Cognac."

Chapter III.--_What is to be done on landing at Quebec?_ If you are a rich
man, see sights; if you have not money to throw away, do not stay one hour