ould ever travel in Canada without an axe,
for you never know, even on the great main roads, when you may want it
to remove a fallen tree, or to mend your waggon with. A first-rate axe
will cost you, handle and all, seven shillings and sixpence currency,
but then it is a treasure afterwards; whereas, a cheap article will
soon wear out or break. Strange to say, Sheffield and Birmingham do
not produce coarse cutting tools for the Canada market, that can
compete with the American. It has been remarked, of late years, that
even all carpenters' tools, and spades, pickaxes, shovels, _et id
genus omne_, are all cheaper, better, and more durable from the
States, than those imported from England. Let our manufacturers at
home look to this in time, and, eschewing the spirit of gain, cease to
make cutting tools like Peter Pindar's razors. In the finer
departments, such as surgical and other scientific instruments,
Jonathan is as far astern; and, although he may use a sword-blade very
well, he has not yet made one like Prosser's.

In heavy ironwork Jonathan is advancing with rapid strides; and even
the Canadian, whom he looks down upon with some contempt, is competing
with him in the forging and casting of steam-engines. There are very
respectable foundries at Kingston, Toronto, Niagara, and Montreal. The
only difficulty I have yet heard of is in making large shafts. Every
other kind of heavy iron or steel manufacture can now be rapidly and
better done in Canada than in the United States--I say advisedly
_better_ done, because the boilers made in Canada do not burst, nor do
the engines break, as they do in the charming mud valley of the
Mississippi. For one accident in Canada there are five hundred in the
States; in fact, I remember only one by which lives were lost, and
that happened to a small steamer near Montreal, about four years ago;
whereas, they go to smash in the Union with the same go-ahead velocity
as they go to caucus, and seem to care as little about the matter.
John Bull often calculates much more sedately and to the purpose than
his restless offspring, who seem to hold it as a first principle of
the declaration of independence that a man has a right to be blown up
or scalded to death.

They are as national in this as in naming new cities. What names, by
the by, they do give them!--think of _Alphadelphia_ in Michigan,
Buc_y_rus in Ohio, _Cass_-opolis, from, I suppose, General Cass, in
Michigan, Juliet in Illinois, K