. An
officer of engineers, Captain Baddely, was the astronomer and geologist;
a naval officer the pilot; with surveyors and a hardy suite.

They left Lake Simcoe in the township of Rama from the Severn river,
and, going a short journey eastward, struck the division line of the
Home and the Newcastle districts, which commences between the townships
of Whitby and Darlington, on the shore of Lake Ontario, and runs a
little to the westward of north in a straight course, until it strikes
the south-east borders of Lake Nipissang, embracing more than two
degrees of latitude, not one half of which has ever been fully explored.

The plan adopted was to cut out this line, and diverge occasionally from
it to the right and left, until a great extent of unknown land on the
east, and the distance between it and Lake Huron, which contained a
large portion of the Chippewa Indian hunting-grounds, was thoroughly
surveyed.

In performing so very arduous a task, much privation and many obstacles
occurred--forests, swamps, rivers, lakes, rocky ridges--all had to be
passed.

To the eastward of the main line, and for some distance to the westward,
good land appeared; and, as the agricultural probe was freely used,
chance was not permitted to sway. The agricultural probe is an
instrument which I first saw slung over my friend Baddely's shoulders,
and of his invention. It is a sort of huge screw gimblet, or auger,
which readily penetrates the ground by being worked with a long
cross-handle, and brings up the subsoil in a groove to a considerable
depth. Specimens of the soil and of rocks and minerals were collected,
and a plan was adopted which is a useful lesson to future explorers. A
small piece of linen or cotton, about four inches square, had two pieces
of twine sewed on opposite corners, and the cloth was marked in
printers' ink, from stamps, with figures from 1 to 500. A knapsack was
provided, and the specimens were reduced to a size small enough to be
carefully tied up in one of these numbered square cloths; and, as the
specimens were collected, they were entered in the journal as to number
and locality, strata, dip, and appearance. Thus a vast number of small
specimens could be brought on a man's back, and examined at leisure.

The toils, however, of such a journey in the vast and untrodden
wilderness are very severe, and the privations greater. For, in this
tract, on the side next to Lake Huron, there was an absence of game
which