"Of these trades, the blacksmith, tailor, shoemaker, and tanner, are the best. If there were in nature (which is doubtful) such a being as a sober blacksmith, he might make a fortune. One exception there is, however, in the case of mechanics. First-rate London workmen will not receive such high wages either positively or relatively, as they would at home,—for this reason, that there are few on this continent who either require or can afford work of the very first order, and those that do, send to London for it."
The services of a family in managing a business are thus illustrated:
"If a man has not sons capable of looking after the different branches, he must entrust the care of them to clerks and servants. But these are not to be had ready-made:—he must, therefore, take a set of unlicked cubs and teach them their business; and when that is fairly done, it is ten to one but, having become acquainted with his business and his customers, they find means to set up an opposition, and take effectually the wind out of their former patrons sails. Where, however, a man has a large family of sons, he can wield a large capital in business, and to very good purpose too."
A man of fortune ought not to come to Canada. It is emphatically "the poor man's country;" but it would be difficult to make it the country of the rich. It is a good country for the poor man to acquire a living in, or for a man of small fortune to economize and provide for his family.
Infant emigration, or the sending out of parish children, of from 6 to 12 years of age with a qualified superintendant, is a favourite idea of the writer. He objects to bringing out adult parish paupers from the chance of getting only the drunken, the vicious, and the idle as emigrants, though "there is one security, however, that we must always have against such a contingency, namely, that the rapscallionly part of the community, knowing that, if they remain in England, the parish must maintain them, and that if they go to Canada they must work for their living, may not be easily induced to quit their present advantageous position."
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 23s. or 24s. currency, that is 5s. to the dollar;—1s. sterling, passes for 1s. 2d. 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 in Quebec, or in any other town, longer than you can possibly avoid, "but get your luggage on board the Montreal steam-boat, and be off if possible in ten minutes after anchor has been let go;—for by daudling about Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, and York, you will spend more money and lose more time, than, if properly employed, might have lodged and fed yourself and family during the first and worst year of your residence in the new world." In the choice of land, the writer recommends the Huron tract:—"It has been objected by some, that this tract of country is out of the world; but no place can be considered in that light, to which a steam-boat can come; and on this continent, if you find a tract of good land, and open it for sale, the world will very soon come to you. Sixteen years ago, the town of Rochester consisted of a tavern and a blacksmith's shop—it is now a town containing upwards of 16,000 inhabitants. The first time the Huron tract was ever trod by the foot of a white man was in the summer of 1827; next summer a road was commenced, and that winter and in the ensuing spring of 1829, a few individuals made a lodgment: now it contains upwards of 600 inhabitants, with taverns, shops, stores, grist and saw-mills, and every kind of convenience that a new settler can require; and if the tide of emigration continues to set in as strongly as it has done, in ten years from this date it may be as thickly settled as any part of America."
Chapter IV.—Climate of Upper Canada is clever, and of popular interest.
Chapter V. is devoted to Field Sports in Canada, and explains the choice of dogs and guns, and the varieties of game. It notices the remarkable fact—that, notwithstanding 15,000 English agricultural labourers have arrived in Canada within the last three years, they no more think of shooting than if they were cockneys, and York, on the banks of a lake, and surrounded by a forest, is positively without anything like a regular supply of fish or game; yet it may be supposed that every twentieth of these men, when at home, was a poacher, or had in his days infringed on the game laws: "would a total repeal of the game laws produce anything of a similar effect at home?"
Chapter V. relates to Travelling and Communications, with a few cookery receipts of a London tavern, as frying beef-steak in butter; boiling green peas till they burst, and serving them in a wash-hand basin; pickling cucumbers, the size of a man's foot, with whiskey, and giving them a "bilious, Calcutta-looking complexion, and slobbery, slimy consistence: but," says the writer, "how poultry is dressed, so as to deprive it of all taste and flavour, and give it much the appearance of an Egyptian mummy, I am not sufficiently skilled in Transatlantic cookery to determine; unless it be, by first boiling it to rags and then baking it to a chip in an oven."