no calculation, and indeed no satisfactory estimate of its superficial contents can be formed.

We will merely take a topographical view of its situation and natural divisions.

At the north eastern limit, the distance from the lake St. Francis, which is only an expansion of the river St. Lawrence to the Ottawa, is about twenty miles, being the depth of two townships, Lancaster* and Hawksbury, one fronting on each river.

The general course of the shore of the St. Lawrence, and lake Ontario, is south westerly. That of the Ottawa is westerly, as far as the township of Nepean, a few miles above the mouth of the river: Rideau, and fifty miles north of Elizabeth town. The Ottawa then bends to the north west.

Seventy miles further westward, at Earnest town, on the Ontario, the width of the province, that is, the meridional distance from the lake Ontario to the river Ottawa, is a hundred miles by computation, although it has never been accurately measured.

The forks formed by the junction of the Ottawa with the Petite Riviere, coming into it from the south west, are in lat. 46° 45′ north, and long. 78° 45' west, and about 350 miles from the eastern extremity of the province, as the river runs. The distance from the forks up to the lake Tomescanning, and the length of that lake, are not precisely ascer

* Lancaster was a township of double the usual size; it has lately been divided into two. Of itself it extended nearly twenty miles.-R. G.

tained. The course of the Petite Riviere to its head waters, and over to those which flow into lake Nipissing, and thence into lake Huron, on its north eastern side, has been more frequently traversed, being the usual canoe route, by which goods are sent to the North West, for the fur trade, and peltries and furs received in return.

The vast wilderness between that route and the settlements along lake Ontario is little known. It is part of the hunting ground of the Chippawa Indians, and not supposed to be very favourable for cultivation.

But to the southward there is an extensive and valuable tract, almost surrounded by a chain of connected lakes.

By a gradual and scarcely perceptible ascent from the shore of Ontario, at York, towards the north, about 20 miles, you reach the height of ground, from whence the waters run northerly into lake Simcoe, thence into lake Huron, and round through Sinclair, Detroit, and Erie, into Ontario, a circuit of 1000 miles.

The peninsula thus formed is an irregular ellipsis, 250 miles long, from Amherstburgh to the head of Huron; and more than 150 miles broad, from Niagara to the outlet of Huron.

A few miles west of York, the highlands collect into a ridge, turning round the head of lake Ontario, at the variable distance of a mile or two, until it approaches the Niagara, where it diverges from the lake shore and crosses the river at Queenston, seven miles above the lake. Here there is some reason to believe the falls of Niagara once were,

coinciding with this ridge of land and formed by it, although they are now seven miles further up, south, with intervening rapids, and a deep chasm in the bed of the river below the cataract.

It is ascertained that the surface of lake Erie is 300 feet higher than that of lake Ontario; and from the ridge or elevation of land running round the head of Ontario, as above mentioned, the country back appears to be a vast plain on a level with the shores of Erie. In respect to climate or soil, hardly any country in the habitable world is more favourable for settlement and cultivation.

The land on the other side of lakes Huron and Superior, appears to be designed for other purposes than agriculture. Indian tribes, some of them wandering and others stationary, occupy it in a

* The word ridge is not, I think, correctly applied here. Ridge means a prolonged height with a declivity on both sides. The height spoken of declines only towards lake Ontario, having a plain called by Volney the table of lake Erie, on the west side. It is called the mountain, I presume, from a wrong adoption of French idiom. The slope towards lake Ontario is every where steep, and in some places craggy. It may run from 200 to 300 feet of perpendicular height above the plain below. At Queenston, the highest point is 345 feet above the surface level of lake Ontario. The rise from lake Ontario to lake Erie stands thus, by admeasurement; from fort George to Queenston, 8 inches; from Queenston to the Falls, 116 feet; the great Fall, 149 feet 6 inches; thence to Chippawa, 55 feet; and from Chippawa to fort Erie (computed), 8 feet: making in all 329 feet 2 inches.-R. G.

+ The tract of country south of the lakes and north of the river Ohio, embracing the state of Ohio, and the Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri territories, in the parallels of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, lies more exactly in the medium between the extremes of heat and cold; and is perhaps superior.

manner adapted to their habits of life.

Before

the conquest of Canada, the French, and since that period, British traders have penetrated this uncultivated interior, in prosecution of a commerce with the natives for furs.

It is not within the scope of these Sketches to discuss the right of the British crown, founded according to the law of nations, upon conquest, cession, or discovery, to the dominion of this country, northward, as far as the Frozen Ocean, and westward to the Pacific, to which limits Mr. M'Kenzie and other British subjects have travelled and taken possession in the name of their sovereign; nor upon the supposition of such a western extent of the empire, will we examine the question whether the province of Upper Canada is co-extensive, or where its precise limits are. A geographical glance at the north west, as the region of the fur trade, is all that is proposed.

The grand portage, where the goods sent from Montreal up the Ottawa in canoes, and those transported in vessels over the lakes, used to meet in their progress to the Indian markets, is situated on the westerly side of lake Superior, in lat. 48° north, and long. 90° west. The trading establishment there belonged to the North West Company. But that place being claimed by the United States, as within their north western territory, the British Company have established a post further north. This company is not a corporation, but a respectable firm of merchants, principally of Montreal, who have assumed that name; and who by a combination of capital, and a systematic atten

tion to the business, have engrossed the commerce of the north west. They have agents residing in London to send out their goods, and make sale of their peltries and furs. Their stock in the concern is between one and two hundred thousand pounds sterling. Previous to the late war they kept vessels on the lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Superior. They employ seventy clerks and interpreters, between thirty and forty guides, and more than a thousand canoe men. Most of these, with others, are sometimes assembled at the company's depot. From thence the collected peltries and furs are remitted to Montreal, and the goods forwarded in different routes, principally to Fort Chepewyan, another establishment of the company, in lat. 58° 38′ north, and long. 110° 26' west, being the head quarters of the commercial intercourse with various Indian nations.

The goods are sent and the skins returned in canoes made of birch bark; for the country is so broken into lakes and rivers, that people may find their way in such canoes in almost any direction they please, with a few intervening portages, over which these light vehicles are easily carried. Indeed, Mr. M'Kenzie who went, in 1789, from Chippewyan northward, beyond the sixty-ninth degree of latitude, and ascertained the long controverted point that there is no particular north west passage, by water, from Europe to Asia; and in 1793 penetrated westward to the Pacific, performed these tours of discovery in a canoe, and published his Journal of them, not as Travels, but "Voyages through the Continent of America."