adoption of this course (apart from foreign travel) was
two years since, when a month's daily sea-bathing, boating and
walking, at Cape Elizabeth, near Portland, State of Maine,
contributed greatly to the improvement of my health and strength.
After again resuming my usual work for several weeks, I found that
my relief, if not safety, required a further suspension of ordinary
mental labour, and diversion of my thought by new objects. I
determined to visit the place of my birth and the scenes of my
youth. At Port Ryerse I made myself a little skiff after the model
of one I had seen at the sea-side, and in which I rowed myself to
and from Ryerson's Island, a distance of some thirteen miles from
Port Ryerse, and about four miles from the nearest mainland--the
end of Turkey Point.

Last autumn I lodged two weeks on the farm on which I was born,
with the family of Mr. Joseph Duncan, where the meals were taken
daily in a room the wood-work of which I, as an amateur carpenter,
had finished more than forty years ago, while recovering from a
long and serious illness.

When invited to meet and address the common schools of the county
of Norfolk, at a county school picnic held in a grove near Simcoe,
the 24th of last June, I determined to proceed thither, not by
railroad and stage, as usual, but in a skiff fifteen feet and a
half long, in which I had been accustomed for some months to row in
Toronto Harbour, between six and eight o'clock in the morning.

Providing, as far as possible, against the double danger of
swamping and capsizing, by a canvas deck, proper ballast, and
fittings of the sail, I crossed Lake Ontario alone from Toronto to
Port Dalhousie in nine hours; had my skiff conveyed thence to Port
Colborne on a Canadian vessel, through the Welland Canal, and
proceeded along the north shore of Lake Erie, rowing in one day,
half-way against head wind, from the mouth of Grand River to Port
Dover, a distance of forty miles, taking refreshments and rest at
farm houses, and bathing three times during the day. The following
day scarcely conscious of fatigue, I delivered two addresses; the
one to a vast assemblage of school pupils and their friends, in a
grove; the other a lecture to teachers and trustees in the evening.

After visiting my island and