rapid Trent, is still more so; and fearful it is to
observe its _conducteur_, who looks in the rapid by no means so much at
his ease as the functionary of that name to whom the Paris diligence is
entrusted.

Numberless accidents happen; the drams are torn to pieces by the
violence of the stream; the rafts are broken by storm and tempest; the
men get drunk and fall over; and altogether it appears extraordinary
that a raft put together at the Trent village for its final voyage to
Quebec should ever reach its destination, the transport being at least
four hundred and fifty miles, and many go much farther, through an open
and ever agitated fresh water sea, and amongst the intricate channels of
The Thousand Islands, and down the tremendous rapids of the Longue
Sault, the Gallope, the Cedars, the Cascades, &c.

But a new trade, has lately commenced on Lake Ontario, which will break
up some of the hardships of the rafting. Old steamboats of very large
size, when no longer serviceable in their vocation, are now cut down,
and perhaps lengthened, masted, and rigged as barques or ships, and
treated in every respect like the Atlantic timber-vessels. Into these
three-masters, these Leviathans of Lake Ontario, the timber, boards,
staves, handspikes, &c., from the interior are now shipped, and the
timber carried to the head of the St. Lawrence navigation.

One step more, and they will, as soon as the canals are widened, proceed
from Lake Superior to London without a raft being ever made.

That this will soon occur is very evident; for a large vessel of this
kind, as big as a frigate, and named the Goliath, is at the moment that
I am writing preparing at Toronto, near the head of Lake Ontario, a
thousand miles from the open sea, for a voyage direct to the West Indies
and back again. Success to her! What with the railroad from Halifax to
Lake Huron, from the Atlantic Ocean to the great fresh ocean of the
West--what with the electric telegraph now in operation on the banks of
the Niagara by the Americans--what with the lighting of villages on the
shores of Lake Erie with natural gas, as Fredonia is lit, and as the
city of the Falls of Niagara, if ever it is built, will also be, there
is no telling what will happen: at all events, the poor lumberer must
benefit in the next generation, for the worst portion of his toils will
be done away with for ever.

Settler, never become a lumberer, if you can avoid it.

But, as we have in this f