It is time, however, that I should introduce you to our party on board the litttle steamboat, which is now puffing and snorting, and gliding at no rapid rate over the blue tranquil waters of Lake St. Clair. First, then, there are the captain, and his mate or steersman, two young men of good manners and appearance; one English-the other Irish; one a military, the other a naval officer; both have land, and are near neighbours up somewhere by Lake Simcoe; but both being wearied out by three years solitary life in the bush, they have taken the steamboat for this season on speculation, and it seems likely to answer. The boat was built to navigate the ports of Lake Huron from Penetanguishine, to Goderich and St. Joseph's Island, but there it utterly failed. It is a wretched little boat, dirty and ill contrived. The upper deck, to which I have fled from the close hot cabin, is an open platform, with no defence or railing around it, and I have here my establishment-a chair, a little table, with pencil and paper, and a great umbrella; a gust of wind or a pitch of the vessel would inevitably send me sliding overboard. The passengers consist of my acquaintance, the Moravian missionary, with a family of women and children, (his own wife and the relatives of

Most of the small steamboats on the American lakes have highpressure engines, which make a horrible and perpetual snorting like the engine on a railroad.

his assistant Volger,) who are about to emigrate with the Indians beyond the Missouri. These people speak a dialect of German among themselves, being descended from the early German Moravians. I find them civil, but neither prepossessing nor intelligent; in short, I can make nothing of them; I cannot extract an idea beyond eating, drinking, dressing, and praying; nor can I make out with what feelings, whether of regret, or hope, or indifference, they con. template their intended exile to the far, far west. Meantime the children squeal, and the women chatter incessantly.

We took in at Chatham a large cargo of the usual articles of exportation from Canada to the United States, viz., barrels of flour, sacks of grain, and emi. grants proceeding to Michigan and the Illinois. There are on board, in the steerage, a great number of poor Scotch and Irish of the lowest grade, and also one large family of American emigrants, who have taken up their station on the deck, and whose ope. rations amuse me exceedingly. I wish I could place before you this very original ménage, even as it is before me now while I write. Such a group could be

encountered nowhere on earth, methinks, but here in the west, or among the migratory Tartar hordes of the east.

They are from Vermont, and on their way to the Illinois, having been already eleven weeks travelling through New York and Upper Canada. They have two wagons covered in with canvass, a yoke of oxen, and a pair of horses. The chief or patriarch of the set is an old Vermont farmer, upwards of sixty at least,

whose thin shrewd face has been burnt to a deep brickdust colour by the sun and travel, and wrinkled by age or care into a texture like that of tanned sail. canvass,―(the simile nearest to me at this moment.) The sinews of his neck and hands are like knotted whipcord; his turned-up nose, with large nostrils, snuffs the wind, and his small light blue eyes have a most keen, cunning expression. He wears a smockfrock over a flannel shirt, blue woollen stockings, and a broken pipe stuck in his straw hat, and all day long he smokes or chews tobacco. He has with him fifteen children of different ages by three wives. The present wife, a delicate, intelligent, care-worn looking woman, seems about thirty years younger than her helpmate. She sits on the shaft of one of the wagons I have mentioned, a baby in her lap, and two of the three younger children crawling about her feet. Her time and attention are completely taken up in dispensing to the whole brood, young and old, rations of food, consisting of lard, bread of Indian corn, and pieces of sassafras root. The appearance of all (except of the poor anxious mother) is equally robust and cheerful, half-civilized, coarse, and by no means clean; all are barefooted except the two eldest girls, who are uncommonly handsome, with fine dark eyes. The eldest son, a very young man, has been recently married to a very young wife, and these two recline together all day, hand in hand, under the shade of a sail, neither noticing the rest nor conversing with each other, but, as it seems to me, in silent contentment with their lot. I found these people, most unlike others of their class I have met

with before, neither curious nor communicative, answering to all my questions and advances with cautious monosyllables, and the old man with even laconic rudeness. The contrast which the gentle anxious wife and her baby presented to all the others, interested me; but she looked so overpowered by fatigue, and so disinclined to converse, that I found no opportunity to satisfy my curiosity without being impertinently intrusive; so, after one or two ineffectual advances to the shy, wild children, I withdrew, and contented myself with observing the group at a distance.

The banks of the Thames are studded with a succession of farms, cultivated by the descendants of the early French settlers-precisely the same class of people as the Habitans in Lower Canada. They go on exactly as their ancestors did a century ago, raising on their rich fertile lands just sufficient for a subsistence, wholly uneducated, speaking only a French patois, without an idea of advance or improvement of any kind submissive to their priests, gay, contented, courteous, and apparently retaining their ancestral tastes for dancing, singing, and flowers.

In the midst of half-dilapidated, old-fashioned farm-houses, you could always distinguish the priest's dwelling, with a flower-garden in front, and the little chapel or church surmounted by a cross,-both being generally neat, clean, fresh-painted, and forming a strange contrast with the neglect and slovenliness around.

Ague prevails very much at certain seasons along the banks of the river, and I could see by the manner in which the houses are built, that it overflows its banks annually; it abounds in the small fresh-water turtle (the Terrapin ;) every log floating on the water, or muddy islet, was covered with them.

We stopped half way down the river to take in wood. Opposite to the landing-place stood an extensive farmhouse, in better condition than any I had yet seen; and under the boughs of an enormous tree, which threw an ample and grateful shade around, our boat was moored. Two Indian boys, about seven or eight years old, were shooting with bow and arrows at a mark stuck up against the huge trunk of the tree. They wore cotton shirts, with a crimson belt round the waist ornamented with beads, such as is commonly worn by the Canadian Indians; one had a gay handkerchief knotted round his head, from beneath which his long black hair hung in mat. ted elf locks on his shoulders. The elegant forms, free movements, and haughty indifference of these Indian boys, were contrasted with the figures of some little dirty, ragged Canadians, who stood staring upon us with their hands in their pockets, or impor. tunately begging for cents. An Indian hunter and his wife, the father and mother of the boys, were standing by, and at the feet of the man a dead deer lay on the grass. The steward of the boat was bar. gaining with the squaw for some venison, while the hunter stood leaning on his rifle, haughty and silent. At the window of the farmhouse sat a well-dressed female, engaged in needlework. After looking up at