The extremes of civilized and savage life meet at St. Mary's; for here live the educated European or American, and the pure heathen Red Man; here steamboats and the birch canoe float side by side; and here all-powerful Commerce is already recommencing a deadly rivalry between the Briton and the American, not for furs and peltry, as in days gone by, but for copper and for metals; and here a new world is about to be opened, and that too very speedily.
Here are Indian agents and missionaries, with schools, both the English and the United States' government considering the entrance to the Red Man's country, whose gates are so narrow and still closed up, to be of very great importance, both in a commercial and a political point of view; but it is notorious that, after the French Canadians, the Red Man prefers his Great Mother beyond the Great Lake and her subjects to the President and the people, who are rather too near neighbours to be pleasant, and who have somewhat unceremoniously considered the natives of the soil as so many obstacles to their aggrandizement.
I shall end this sketch of the lakes, by a few observations upon the magnetic phenomena regarding them, and respecting the variation of the compass.
Fort Erie, near the eastern termination of Lake Erie, and close to the Niagara river, presents the line of no variation; whilst at the town of Niagara, on the south-west end of Lake Ontario, not more than thirty-six miles from Fort Erie, the variation in 1832 was 1° 20' east.
The line of no variation is marked distinctly on the best maps of Canada, by the division line between the townships of Stamford and Niagara, seven miles north of Niagara.
At Toronto in 43° 39' north latitude, and 78° 4' west longitude, twenty-four miles north-east of Niagara, the variation in 1832 was more than 2° easterly.
The shore of Lake Huron at Nottawassaga Bay, forty miles north-west of Toronto, is again the line of no variation.
Thus a magnetic meridian lies between Fort Erie and Nottawassaga.
A magnetic observatory is established by the Board of Ordnance at Toronto, near the University, and placed in charge of two young officers of artillery, which says a good deal for the scientific acquirements of that corps. I shall perhaps hereafter advert to this subject more at large, as the volcanic rocks have much to do with the needle in Canada West.
[1] Brevis et admiranda descriptio REGNI GVIANÆ, AVRI abundantissimi, in AMERICA, sev novo orbe, sub linea Æquinoctilia siti: quod nuper admodum, Annis nimirum 1594, 1595, et 1596 per generosum Dominum Dr. GVALTHERVM RALEGH Equitem Anglum detectum est: paulo post jussa ejus duobus libellis comprehensa. Ex quibus JODOCVS HONDIVS TABVLAM Geographicam adornavit, addita explicatione Belgico sermone scripta: Nunc vero in Latinum sermonem translata, et ex variis authoribus hinc inde declarata. Noribergæ. Impensis LEVINI HULSII. M.D.XCIX.