ports flour
largely, the Yonge Street settlement being a grain country of vast
extent, which not only supplies his mills, but the Red Mills, near
Holland Landing, and many others.

From Montgomery's Tavern to Toronto is almost a continued series for
four miles of gentlemen's seats and cottages, and, being a straight
road, you see the great lake for miles before its shores are reached.
Large sums have been expended on this road, which is carried through a
brick-clay soil, in which the Don has cut deep ravines, so that immense
embankments and deep excavations for the level have been requisite.

Near Toronto, at Blue Hill, large brick yards are in operation, and here
white brick is now made, of which a handsome specimen of church
architecture has been lately erected in the west end of the city. Tiles,
elsewhere not seen in Canada, are also manufactured near Blue Hill; but
they are not extensively used, the snow and high winds being
unfavourable to their adoption, shingles or split wood being cheaper,
and tinned iron plates more durable and less liable to accident.

In most parts of Upper Canada, near the shores of the great lakes, you
can build a house either of stone or brick, as it suits your fancy, for
both these materials are plentiful, particularly clay; but at Toronto
there is no suitable building-stone; plenty of clay, however, is found,
for there you may build your house out of the very excavations for your
cellars; and I confess that I prefer a brick house in Canada to one of
limestone, for the latter material imbibes moisture; and if a brick
house has a good projecting roof, it lasts very long, and is always
warm.

It is surprising to observe the effects of the climate on buildings in
this country. A good stone house, not ten years old, carefully built,
and pointed between the joints of the masonry with the best cement,
requires a total repair after that period, and often before. The
window-sills and lintels of limestone break and crack, and the chimneys
soon become disjointed and unsafe. Although it may seem paradoxical, yet
it is true that the woodwork of a house lasts good much longer than the
stone, or rather the cement, which joins the stone; but wood decays
also very rapidly. A bridge becomes rotten in ten years, and a shingled
roof lasts only fifteen; but then wood is never seasoned in America; it
would not pay.

CHAPTER VII.

Toronto and the Transit--The ice and its innovations--Siege and