th of that month, the steamboat
_Accommodation_ arrived at Quebec, with ten passengers from Montreal.
She made the passage (180 miles) in sixty-six hours, having been thirty
hours at anchor. In twenty hours, after leaving Montreal, she arrived
at Three Rivers. The passage money was only eight dollars for the
downward trip and nine dollars for the trip upward. Neither wind nor
tide could stop the _Accommodation_, and the _Accommodation_ was
eighty-two feet long on deck. The accommodation afforded to passengers
was not, however, very great. Twenty berths were all that cabin
passengers could be accommodated with. Great crowds visited her
saloons. The _Mercury_ told its readers that the steamboat received her
impulse from an open, double-spoked perpendicular wheel, on either
side, without any circular band or rim. To the end of each
double-spoke, a square board was fixed, which entered the water, and by
the rotatory motion, acted like a paddle. The wheels were put and kept
in motion by steam, which operated in the vessel. And a mast was to be
fixed in her for the purpose of using a sail, when the wind was
favourable, which would occasionally accelerate her headway. After the
_Accommodation_ had made several trips, Upper Canada began to "guess"
about the expediency of having "Walks-in-the-Water." The
_Accommodation_ was built by Mr. John Molson, of Montreal, an
exceedingly enterprising man of business, and for a number of years,
his enterprise secured to him a monopoly of the steam navigation of the
lower St. Lawrence. He died an "honorable," only a few years ago.

During 1808, 334 vessels, or according to the Harbour Master's
statement, 440 vessels, arrived at Quebec from sea, making up 66,373
tons of shipping, in addition to which, 2,902 tons of shipping were
built at the port. The revenue was L40,608, and the civil expenditure
L1,251 sterling. The salaries and contingencies of the Legislature
amounted to L3,077. The salary of the Governor-in-Chief was L4,500
sterling, and that of the Lieutenant-Governor, who had been three years
absent in England, L1,500. On the 28th of November, in this year, Sir
Francis Nathaniel Burton, whose brother was Marquis of Cunningham,
succeeded Sir Robert Shore Milnes, in the now sinecure office of
Lieutenant-Governor, where he remained to enjoy the _otium sine
dignitate_.

A continuance of the peace between His Majesty's government and that of
the United States was, in the beginning of 1810