as, we visited Mr. Wilson's
stable, and saw a splendid stud horse which he was rearing, and as
handsome a thorough-bred black as you could wish to see in the
backwoods.

Proceeding in rain, we drove, by what in England would be called an
execrable road, through the townships of Innisfil and Vespra to Barrie,
the capital hamlet of the district of Simcoe.

On emerging from the woods three or four miles from Barrie, Kempenfeldt
Bay suddenly appears before you, and if the road was better, a more
beautiful ride there is not in all broad Canada. Fancy, however, that,
without any Hibernicism, the best road is in the water of the lake. This
is owing to the swampy nature of the land, and to the circumstance that
a belt of hard sand lines the edge of the bay; so Paddy drove smack into
the water of Kempenfeldt, and, as he said, sure we were travelling by
water every way, for we had a deluge of rain above, and Lake Simcoe
under us.

But natheless we arrived at Barrie by mid-day, a very fair journey of
twenty-eight miles in eight hours, over roads, as the French say,
_inconcevable_; and alighted like river gods at the Queen's Arms, J.
Bingham, Barrie.

Barrie, named after the late commodore, Sir Robert Barrie, is no common
village, nor is the Queen's Arms a common hostel. It is a good,
substantial, stone edifice, fitted up and kept in a style which neither
Toronto nor Kingston, nay, nor Montreal can rival, as far as its extent
goes. I do assure you, it is a perfect paradise after the road from St.
Alban's; and, as the culinary department is unexceptionable, and the
beds free from bugs, and all neatness and no noise, I will award Mrs.
Bingham a place in these pages, which must of course immortalize her.
They are English people; and, when I last visited their house, in 1837,
had only a log-hut: now they are well to do, and have built themselves a
neat country-house.

When I first saw Barrie, or rather before Barrie was, as I passed over
its present site, in 1831, there was but one building and a little
clearance. In 1846, it is fast approaching to be a town, and will be a
city, as it is admirably placed at the bottom of an immense inlet of
Lake Simcoe, with every capability of opening a communication with the
new settlements of Owen Sound and St. Vincent, and the south shore of
Lake Huron.

It has been objected, to this opinion respecting Barrie, that the
Narrows of Lake Simcoe is the proper site for "The City of the North,"