future dwelling.

"If you go into the backwoods your house must necessarily be a log-
house," said an elderly gentleman, who had been a settler many years in
the country. "For you will most probably be out of the way of a saw-
mill, and you will find so much to do, and so many obstacles to
encounter, for the first two or three years, that you will hardly have
opportunity for carrying these improvements into effect.

"There is an old saying," he added, with a mixture of gravity and good
humour in his looks, "that I used to hear when I was a boy, 'first
creep* and then go'. [* Derived from infants crawling on all-fours
before they have strength to walk.] Matters are not carried on quite so
easily here as at home; and the truth of this a very few weeks'
acquaintance with the _bush_, as we term all unbroken forest land, will
prove. At the end of five years you may begin to talk of these pretty
improvements and elegancies, and you will then be able to see a little
what you are about."

"I thought," said I, "every thing in this country was done with so much
expedition. I am sure I have heard and read of houses being built in a
day." The old gentleman laughed.

"Yes, yes," he replied, "travellers find no difficulty in putting up a
house in twelve or twenty-four hours, and so the log-walls can be raised
in that time or even less; but the house is not completed when the outer
walls are up, as your husband will find to his cost."

"But all the works on emigration that I leave read," replied I, "give a
fair and flattering picture of a settler's life; for, according to their
statements, the difficulties are easily removed."

"Never mind books," said my companion, "use your own reason. Look on
those interminable forests, through which the eye can only penetrate a
few yards, and tell me how those vast timbers are to be removed, utterly
extirpated, I may say, from the face of the earth, the ground cleared
and burnt, a crop sown and fenced, and a house to shelter you raised,
without difficulty, without expense, and without great labour. Never
tell me of what is said in books, written very frequently by tarry-at-
home travellers. Give me facts. One honest, candid emigrant's experience
is worth all that has been written on the subject. Besides, that which
may be a true picture of one part of the country will hardly suit
another. The advantages and disadvantages arising from soil, situation,
and progress of civilization, are very di