Tired and disappointed, we walked to another loghouse, a mile farther on, leading our weary horses, and then to others, but with no better success. Though not among Indians, we were as foreigners in a strange land. At last we stumbled, by good luck, upon our inn, and the next day were told that the poor settlers with whom we had fallen in the night before had all come from the British Isles in the course of the five preceding years. Some of them could speak Gaelic, others Welsh, and others Irish; and the farmers were most eloquent in descanting on their misfortune in having no alternative but that of employing labourers with whom they were unable to communicate, or remaining in want of hands while so many were out of work, and in great distress. For the first time I became fully aware how much the success and progress of a new colony depends on the state of schools in the mother country.

CHAPTER XXI.

Kingston.- Montreal. - French population and language.Quebec. - Soldiers. — Deserters. — Three Rivers. — Scotch Emigrants. · Distinctness of French and British Canadians. Large military force. - American sympathisers. Geological Survey. Analogy in Structure of Canada and Scandinavia. -Section at Falls of Montmorency.- Unconformable position of lowest fossiliferous Sandstone to Gneiss. Supposed monument of the commencement of the Organic World. — To what extent the Granitic Rocks are primary. Difficulty of establishing the Date of Metamorphic Action. Two sources of popular error respecting the more abundant production of Hypogene Rocks at remote periods.

June 18th.-AN excellent mail steam-packet carried us along the northern coast of Lake Ontario, from Toronto to Kingston, from whence I made a geological excursion to Gannanoqui. From Kingston we then descended the St. Lawrence to Montreal. The scenery of the Thousand Islands and of the rapids of the St. Lawrence owe much of their beauty to the clearness of the waters, which are almost as green, and their foam as white, as at the Falls of Niagara.

On approaching Montreal we seemed to be entering a French province. The language and costume of the peasants and of the old beggars, the

priests with their breviaries, the large crosses on the public roads, with the symbols of the Crucifixion, the architecture of the houses, with their steep roofs, large casement windows, and, lastly, the great Catholic cathedral rising in state, with its two lofty towers, carried back our thoughts to Normandy and Brittany, where we spent the corresponding season of last year. The French spoken in those provinces of the mother country is often far less correct, and less easy to follow, than that of the Canadians, whose manners are very prepossessing, much softer and more polite than those of their Anglo-Saxon fellowcountrymen, however superior the latter may be in energy and capability of advancement.

I was informed by a physician at Montreal that the English language has made great progress there within his recollection; and all agree that it would soon become still more general if the seat of government were transferred to that city,—a measure since realized, but which was then only beginning to be discussed (1842), and was exciting no small effervescence of party feeling. I was assured by many that it was the only step towards anglicizing Lower Canada that would be popular with the French party. The country round Kingston must always be comparatively barren, as much of the soil consists of granite and granitic detritus; and it could never become a

large metropolis, such as Toronto might be made, or such as Montreal is even now.

Quebec, with its citadel and fortifications crowning the precipitous heights which overhang the St. Lawrence, and where the deep and broad river is enlivened with a variety of shipping, struck us as the most picturesque city we had seen since we landed in America. We were glad to meet with some old friends among the officers of the garrison, who accompanied us to the Falls of Montmorency, and other places in the neighbourhood. Their task in main taining strict discipline in their corps, in preventing the desertion of soldiers, and keeping the peace along the frontier, has been more irksome than in quelling the rebellion. Those soldiers who have deserted to the States are said rarely to make good and thriving settlers; for they have been turned into such mere machines, into such creatures of routine, so exclusively trained for excellence in one art, that they want resources, and are singularly deficient in a virtue termed by the Americans "shiftiness," or the power of turning one's hand to any thing and every thing, for which the well-educated New England coloniser is celebrated.

On our way back from Quebec to Montreal I stopped at Three Rivers to make a geological excursion to the Falls of Maskinongé, about ten miles

northward of the St. Lawrence. In the woods, near the beautiful waterfall, where the river forces its way through a narrow cleft in the gneissose rocks, I lost my way, and was attacked by myriads of musquitosthe only occasion, owing to the unusual coolness of the season, on which I was annoyed by these enemies, so much dreaded here by the lovers of angling.

When standing on the wharf at Three Rivers, I conversed with the proprietor of a large estate in the Eastern townships, who complained to me that while crowds were passing up the river every week to remote districts, and sometimes returning disappointed, and even occasionally re-crossing the Atlantic, he and other farmers were unable to get hands. While he was speaking, a large steamer, with several hundred Scotch emigrants from Ayrshire, came alongside the wharf. They were only to tarry there one hour to take in wood for the engines. My companion went on board, eagerly endeavouring to bribe some of the new comers to settle on his farm, but all in vain. They said they had cousins and friends in "Upper Canada," and were all resolved to go there. I could not help sympathising with him in his disappointment, and the more so, as I had seen at Toronto large bands of Irish and Welsh peasants in a state of destitution for want of work; and in spite of the liberality of the citizens, several gangs of them, while we were