ce, is
soon attainable; the acquisition of the latter uncertain and fickle.

No free grants of land are now given, but the settler may obtain them
upon easy terms from the government, or the Canada and British American
companies.

The settler with a small capital cannot do better than purchase out and
out. Instalments are a bad mode of purchasing; for, if all should not
turn out right, instalments are sometimes difficult to meet; and the
very best land, in the best locations, as we shall hereafter see, is to
be had from 7s. 6d., if in the deep Bush, as the forest is called; to
10s., if nearer a market; or 15s. and 20s., if very eligibly situated.
Thus for two hundred pounds a settler can buy two hundred acres of good
land, can build an excellent house for two hundred and fifty more, and
stock his farm with another fifty, as a beginning; or, in other words,
he can commence Canadian life for five hundred pounds sterling, with
every prospect before him, if he has a family, of leaving them
prosperous and happy. But he and they must work, work, work. He and all
his sons must avoid whiskey, that bane of the backwoods, as they would
avoid the rattlesnake, which sometimes comes across their path. Whiskey
and wet feet destroy more promising young men in Canada than ague and
fever, that scourge of all well watered woody countries; for the ague
and fever seldom kill but with the assistance of the dram and of
exposure.

Men nurtured in luxury or competence at home, as soon as the unfailing
_ennui_ arising from want of society in the backwoods begins to succeed
the excitement of settling, too frequently drink, and in many cases
drink from their waking hour until they sink at night into sottish
sleep. This is peculiarly the case where there is no village nor town
within a day's journey; and thus many otherwise estimable young men
become habitual drunkards, and sink from the caste of gentlemen
gradually into the dregs of society, whilst their wives and families
suffer proportionably.

In Lower Canada, this vice does not prevail to the same extent as in the
upper portion of the province. The French Canadians are not addicted to
the vice of drinking ardent spirits as a people, although the lumberers
and voyageurs shorten their lives very considerably by the use of
whiskey. The _lumberers_, who are the cutters and conveyers of timber,
pass a short and excited existence.

In the winter, buried in the eternal forest, far, far away fr