partiality for this part of the colony should be supposed to incline me to overrate its comparative advantages to the settler; that my statements are principally intended to show the progress of the Upper Province generally; and that when I claim any superiority for this part of it, I shall give, what I trust the reader will consider, satisfactory reasons for my conclusion.

The settlement of a thickly-wooded country, when it is left to chance, is a most uncertain and capricious matter. The narrow views and interest of a clique in the colony, or even of an influential individual, often direct emigration out of its natural course, involving unnecessary suffering to the settler, a waste, or absolute loss of capital, and a retardation of the progress of the country. The circumstances and situation of the United States were less productive of these evils than those of Upper Canada, because settlement went on more uniformly from the sea-coast towards the interior. The mighty rivers and lakes of Canada, though productive of boundless prosperity, operated, in the first period of its settlement, most unfavourably on the growth of the colony, by throwing open for settlement an extensive inland coast, at that time unconnected with the ocean by means of canals. Hence numerous detached, feeble, and unprogressive settlements, came into existence, where the new settlers had to struggle for years with the most disheartening difficulties.

European settlers know but little of the value of situation. In most cases they are only desirous of acquiring a large extent of land at a low price, and thus, unless restrained by the wise regulations of a provident government, they too often ruin themselves, and waste their capital in a wilderness, where it does good to no one. When emigration from the United Kingdom began to set in to Upper Canada, the pernicious speculation in wild lands commenced in earnest. As most of the landspeculators possessed shares in the steam-boats on Lake Ontario, the interests of both speculations were combined. It was, of course, the interest of the steam-boat proprietors to direct emigration as far to the westward as possible; and influenced by their interested representations and those of the land speculators settled in Toronto, Coburg and Hamilton, the greater portion of the emigrants possessing capital were thrown into these towns, near which they were led to expect desirable locations. In the same manner the agents of the Canada Land Company, who were to be found on every steamer, were actively employed in directing the emigrants to the Huron tract.

By a simple inspection of the map of Upper Canada, it will be seen, that as the Bay of Quinté was out of the general route of the steamers, and too near the lower end of the lake navigation, it did not suit the views of the parties most interested to direct emigration to its shores. Thus the beautiful Bay of Quinté, with the most fertile land on its shores, and scenery which exceeds in variety and picturesque beauty that of any part of Upper Canada, Hamilton and Niagara alone excepted, has been passed by for years for situations much less desirable or attractive to European settlers.

The forbidding aspect of the country near Kingston, which is situated at the entrance of the bay from the St. Lawrence, where the soil has a rocky and barren appearance, has no doubt deterred emigrants from proceeding in this direction.

A FAMILY TRIP TO THE SEA-SIDE.

It really is impossible, my dear, to remain in town any longer in this dreadful heat. I declare I am half dead myself, and those poor children look quite wretched. As for you, I never saw you look so ill since we've been married. We really must go to the sea-side."

"Very well, my dear; but”

Such was the commencement of a conversation which took place in the dog-day month of July, 1852, between Mrs. Peter Swaddle and her husband-myself. It certainly had been terrifically hot weather, and if -as is commonly reported-there is but a sheet of paper between India and the regions we only refer to in print by ****, in the case of London there did not seem to be even half a sheet of the finest tissue intervening. It was truly diabolically hot. We are rather well versed in the statistics of heat, and we venture to affirm that a hotter summer was never known in London for thirty years. The returns of iced champagne and pale ale consumed at Long's and Stevens's, in Bond Street, and of "heavy wet" at the Pig and Whistle in Ratcliffe Highway, alone prove the fact: to say nothing of Lady Tabitha Tattledom having actually muzzled her pet Blenheim for the first time in its existence, lest even the dearest and sweetest of spaniels should go mad in such weather, and bite its mistress, instead of everybody else, according to its usual habits.

My wife had given utterance to the authoritative "must," and I was too much of a husband to think of resisting that awful monosyllable from conjugal lips.

66

Very well, my dear," replied I; "but where are we to go? You don't like Brighton ?"

"Detestable !-hotter than London-no trees-no shade. Besides, it is n't the Brighton season."

Ramsgate, then ?"

"Worse and worse.

If there's a place I hate more than another it's Ramsgate. Margate 's far better, in spite of all people say."

"But is n't it very vulgar ?" asked I, not wishing to be meeting my butcher and baker on the pier every day-for more reasons than one, perhaps-humph!

"It certainly is vulgar," replied my darling spouse. "Now, Broadstairs is a nice place, but it's so very expensive.'

Like Mrs. Gilpin, my wife, "though on pleasure she was bent, she had a frugal mind." And so we settled that Broadstairs would n't do.

"What do you say to Herne Bay ?" cried my wife, as if a bright idea had struck her.

"Punch!" said I.

"What do you mean?" inquired the lady, rather angry, as ladies always are when they don't understand you, and think you want to be witty at their expense.

"I say, my dear, I have read 'Punch ;' and from my reminiscences of Punch's' description of that benighted locality, I have a horror of Herne Bay. Does it really still exist?”

"Don't be ridiculous, Peter," said my wife snubbingly. "The Tomkinses were there last year, and liked it very much, though it is n't very lively."

"Tom Filigree told me that several friends of his had gone there, but were never known to come back," said I; "it's supposed that they all sunk under the weight of the atmosphere there."

"Never mind what any of your scapegrace bachelor friends say about the place; but we won't go there, for I fear it 's expensive also." Gracious heavens! thought I, then people do go there, in spite of "Punch."

"I've been told that Sandsend is a charming little place," said Mrs. Peter, after a pause: "they say it's pretty, and quiet, and nice air, and very cheap."

All excellent recommendations-especially the last," said I, deeply touched by the particular virtue which appealed to the scanty purse of an author and a father!

And so it was settled that among the earliest forthcoming departures from town should be that of "Mr. and Mrs. Peter Swaddles and family from Bloomsbury to Sandsend."

I wonder whether any one ever liked "packing-up," as the ingenious process of cramming an indefinite number of habiliments into impossible spaces is termed. When I was a bachelor I detested it, though then it consisted of little more than throwing things in a heap into portmanteaus and carpet-bags, and stamping and sitting on them to make the locks close. But, mercy on us! if I were to attempt such a process now, Mrs. Peter would stand aghast with horror at my depravity, and rate me for a week afterwards on my slovenliness, carelessness, want of economy, and ten thousand other little domestic vices, making in the aggregate an amount of moral turpitude perfectly shocking to a correct lady's notions. I am obliged to fold every individual shirt separately, and flatten the collars, and lay them neatly between each shirt; I have to make my coats, waistcoats, and pantaloons into neat and convenient packages, roll my pockethandkerchiefs, neckcloths, and socks into little cylinders, twist the tops of my Wellingtons round the feet, and wrap each one separately in paper, while even then, if I should deposit one of them in the same compartment with my clean shirts, I verily believe my spouse would faint. And then when I fancy my labours are at an end, and that I have done the thing as it ought to be (for positively the locks will close), Mrs. Peter will suddenly exclaim, in the blandest of tones,

"And now, dear, I want you to make room for two or three dozen 'baby's things' in your portmanteau."

"Baby's things!" and in my portmanteau, too! Why, there isn't space left to cram in the leg of a fly. Nonsense! nonsense! Mrs. Peter will soon show me that there's plenty. Out go my boots, out goes my razor-case,-ladies never treat razor-cases with proper respect,-out go half a hundred things which Mrs. Peter re-folds, and squeezes into smaller compass, adding, perhaps, when she comes to the razor-case, "Can't you put this nasty thing into your pocket, dear?" There, again, is a fallacy of the female sex-they think that a man's pockets will hold everything. If you object, they say, "What! not hold a little bit of a thing like that?" perfectly forgetful of the five hundred other "little bits of things" which they have already entombed in the same place, making you feel as heavy as a felon in fetters, and fearful to sit down, lest you should smash a scent-bottle or a fan, a sandwich, or a pomatum-pot.

However, the feat is accomplished-six square inches of space are gained, and two dozen "baby's things" are crammed into it. After all,

your own packing-up is nothing to your wife's and your children's. The infinite number of delicate, gauzy, flimsy little things that make up the sum of a modern lady's wardrobe are awful to contemplate; and if, instead of cleansing the Augean stable, Hercules had been set to "pack up" a fashionable lady's wardrobe properly, and within the space of three days, my private opinion is, that he would have pitched up the labour as a thing impossible of accomplishment. Perhaps it would more resemble his battle with the Hydra, where two fresh heads sprang up as soon as he had knocked in an old one, for as soon as everything that it seems possible for a lady to put on any part of her person is knocked in to the portmanteau, half a hundred others, that no one but the oldest and most experienced of Benedicts in our sex ever dreamt of, start up and claim admission into the already-crammed receptacle. And then the children! Master Tommy's bath and Master Bobby's cradle; and both young gentlemen's wearing apparel, toys, baskets, jugs, mugs, and everything that the infantile mind or infantile body can require for its amusement, sustenance, or cleanliness-all these, with household articles without end, and Mary's box, and the nurse's box, both without locks, and with very weak cords, and two or three bandboxes that gape and look rickety, complete an amount of travelling discomfort clinging to your back, compared with which the barnacles on a whale, or the parasitical insects that stick to various animals, and torment them to madness or death, appear but trifling inconveniences.

By the aid of unnumbered cabs and porters we got on board the boat for Sandsend. How thankful I was to have accomplished it at last! How little did I dream that I was mentally expressing my gratitude too soon! and that within five minutes on counting the parcels, of which there ought to have been twenty-nine, only fifteen were to be foundthe others having been left behind! Of course I swore at everybody except my wife (that's dangerous) like a true Briton, threatened the servants with dismissal, and the cabmen with a magistrate—at length, setting down into the calm conviction that it was all my own faultand that as a punishment, not a single article of mine had been brought with us.

Away went our boat steaming and puffing down the Thames, threatening wherries with destruction, and colliers with collisions. Of course I bought a "Times" to read, rejecting the attractions of a new panorama of the Thames, which I recollect to have seen sixteen years ago, and of "The Penny Punch," consisting of our Fleet-street friend's puns of ten years ago, newly dished up and spoilt, like all other rechauffes. Having secured the greatest blessing of life, my morning paper, I sneaked off while my wife's back was turned, and sought refuge in one of the little paddle-box cabins to read the news.

The "Times" was very strong that day, pitching into Lord Derby with more than its usual vigour, and though I'm a bit of a Derbyite myself, I like to see a good fight, even if my own favourites get the worst of it. At all events I was greatly interested in the "leader" in question when my ears were saluted by well-known accents, saying, "Where can papa be? Let's come and find papa, dear." It was my wife with the senior olive-branch. Papa instantly crouched behind the broad-sheet of the Times, and pretended to be anybody but himself but it would n't do. Olive-branch No. 1 has the eyes of a lynx, and found me out directly. Of course I was pounced on at once, and made

to perform all sorts of little domestic offices, leaving Lord Derby to the mercies of the "Times" for an indefinite period.

What an extraordinary capacity for eating children have! I verily believe that a "fine, healthy, little darling" of two years old can consume about his own weight in food every twenty-four hours. I won't tell how many cakes, biscuits, buns, sandwiches, &c., I paid for between London and Sandsend, because I desire to be regarded as a truthful chronicler, and I fear that my veracity would be impugned by the publication of the bill in question.

They have an extraordinary habit on board steamers of waiting till the sea just begins to be troublesome to Cockney travellers, and then two frantic stewards rush about the deck proclaiming "dinner on table," and running over a very greasy bill of fare by way of enticing you to partake of it. The consequences may be imagined, but cannot with perfect delicacy be described. Suffice it that very few go down to dinner at all, and fewer still sit it out; for of those who determine to be nautical, and to think nothing about a rolling sea, most get very pale when they ought to be ready for a second cut of the joint, and dash precipitately up the companion-ladder as if they were intent on running away without paying.

We would suggest to stewards of steamers the propriety of not postponing the dinner beyond Gravesend, as that is about the limit which can safely be allowed to a Cockney stomach. It would be a different matter if people were bound to pay for the dinner provided, whether they partook of it or not-in that case the stewards' present custom would be perfectly defensible on the usual well-known principles of trade in general, which consist in getting all you can out of your neighbour, and giving him as little as possible in return. And right well do we recollect paying 18 francs for two days' "provisions" on board a French steamer in the gulf of Lyons, when we had not even seen a crumb of them, having been lying in our berth foodless the whole period, and only wishing we could be quietly thrown overboard.

"Fine fresh breeze, Sir," says an amphibious-looking man to a palefaced cit, who has been trying to persuade himself for the last quarter of an hour that it is only the heat of the sun that slightly incommodes him: "fine fresh breeze, Sir."

"Ve-ry," falters White-face.

"Been to dinner?" asks the other in friendly anxiety; "boiled mutton, rather underdone, in capital order-fowls and boiled bacon, not bad."

White-face has vanished-no one knows where. The next time he is seen he is paler than ever, and is receiving with languid hands a glass of brandy and water from the steward's mate.

A sudden shriek from a well-known female voice startles me, and I am just in time to save Olive-branch No. 1 from breaking his neck by dragging him out by the leg from the skylight of the cabin, down which he was apparently plunging headlong.

We have not a very long voyage to go, and at length some one points out a white spot ahead, and tells us that is Sandsend. We observe a very long projection into the water, and are told that it is the pier. As far as we can guess it must be twice the length of any other we have ever seen. We approach nearer and nearer, and at length we distinctly discern this said pier, which is of enormous length, but very low out of