r building, either
lime, stone, brick, or wood, also very moderate in price from their
abundance.

Cultivated, or rather cleared, farms may be purchased now near the
settlements for about six pounds per acre, with very often dwelling and
farms on them, and a clear title may be readily obtained, after inquiry
at the registry office of the county, to see whether any mortgage or
other encumbrance exist--a course always to be adopted, both in Upper
and Lower Canada. A settler must take the precaution of tracing the
original grant, and that the land, if he buys from an individual, is
neither Crown nor Clergy reserve, nor set apart for school or any other
public purposes. Never buy, moreover, of a squatter, or land on which a
squatter is located, for the law is very favourable to these gentry.

A squatter is a man who, axe in hand, with his gun, dog, and baggage,
sets himself down in the deep forest, to clear and improve; and this he
very frequently does, both upon public and private property; and the
Government is lenient, so that, if he makes well of it, he generally
has a right of pre-emption, or perhaps pays up only instalments, and
then sells and goes deeper into the bush. Every way there is difficulty
about squatted land, and very often the squatter will significantly
enough hint that there is such a thing as a rifle in his log castle.
Squatters are usually Americans, of the very lowest grade, or the most
ignorant of the Irish, who really believe they have a right to the soil
they occupy.

I do not profess to give an account of the Eastern Townships; the
prospectus of the British American Land Company will do that; and, as I
have never been through them entirely, so I could only advance
assertion; but I believe that they are admirably adapted for English and
Scotch settlers, and that, bounded as they are by the French Canadians
on one side, and by the United States on the other, with every facility
for roads, canals, and railways, they must become one of the richest,
most and important portions of Canada before half a century has passed
over; but it will take that time, notwithstanding railways and
locomotives, to make Jean Baptiste a useful agriculturist; and the fly
must be eradicated from the wheat before Lower Canada can ever come
within a great distance of competition in the flour market with the
upper province.

Take a steamboat voyage from Quebec to Montreal, and you pass through
French Canada; for, although