proportionable cultivation.

This evil is so very destructive and alarming, that, if the great
have not virtue enough to remedy it, it is to be hoped it will in time,
like most great evils, cure itself.

Your Lordship enquires into the nature of this climate in respect to
health. The air being uncommonly pure and serene, it is favorable to
life beyond any I ever knew: the people live generally to a very
advanced age; and are remarkably free from diseases of every kind,
except consumptions, to which the younger part of the inhabitants are a
good deal subject.

It is however a circumstance one cannot help observing, that they
begin to look old much sooner than the people in Europe; on which my
daughter observes, that it is not very pleasant for women to come to
reside in a country where people have a short youth, and a long old
age.

The diseases of cold countries are in general owing to want of
perspiration; for which reason exercise, and even dissipation, are here
the best medicines.

The Indians therefore shewed their good sense in advising the
French, on their first arrival, to use dancing, mirth, chearfulness,
and content, as the best remedies against the inconveniences of the
climate.

I have already swelled this letter to such a length, that I must
postpone to another time my account of the peculiar natural
productions of Canada; only observing, that one would imagine heaven
intended a social intercourse between the most distant nations, by
giving them productions of the earth so very different each from the
other, and each more than sufficient for itself, that the exchange
might be the means of spreading the bond of society and brotherhood
over the whole globe.

In my opinion, the man who conveys, and causes to grow, in any
country, a grain, a fruit, or even a flower, it never possessed before,
deserves more praise than a thousand heroes: he is a benefactor, he is
in some degree a creator.

I have the honor to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's &c.
William Fermor.

LETTER 124.

To Miss Montague, at Quebec.

Montreal, April 14.

Is it possible, my dear Emily, you can, after all I have said,
persist in endeavoring to disswade me from a design on which my whole
happiness depends, and which I flattered myself was equally essential
to yours? I forgave, I even admired, your first scruple; I thought it
generosity: but I have answered it; and if you had loved as I do, you
would