t with the
thermometer at 100 deg. Fahrenheit over a Canadian tap-room.

I was glad to leave London in Canada West for that reason, and
departed the next day in a fresh waggon at half-past five p.m.,
arriving at the Corners, six miles off, where a bran-new settlement
and bran-new toll-gate appeared with a fine cross road, that to the
right leading to Westminster, that to the left to Lake Erie. I was
sorry that the plank road was finished only to this place; but we had
fine settlements all the way.

Then begins a new country, and that most dreary and monotonous of
Canadian landscape scenery--the Long Woods. This lasts to Delaware,
where we stopped at eight o'clock, on a fine evening, having travelled
twelve miles from the Corners.

Here the road suddenly turns from the river to the right; and we drove
past Buller's New House, which he is building, to his old stand. It
was ancient enough, but respectable; and if the rats and mice and
other small deer could only have been persuaded that one had had no
sleep the night before and that the weather was intensely hot, we
should have done well enough; although some soldiers on a look-out
party for deserters, and some travellers, were not at all inclined to
sleep themselves, or to let others enjoy the blessings of repose.

Delaware is a very pretty village, and the Indians are settled some
seven miles from it. It has a very large and very long bridge over the
Thames.

We started, most militarily, at four in the morning of Friday the 12th
of July, without recollecting King William, or the Pious, Glorious,
and Immortal Memory. But we were to be reminded of it.

Here we saw the labours of the Board of Works in the Great Western
Road to much advantage, in deep cuttings and embankments, fine
culverts and bridges, with lots of the sons of green Erin--"first
flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea"--and their cabins along
the line of works, preparing the level for planking.

The country is flat, but very fine and well settled. Quails amused
themselves along the road, looking at us from the wooden rail fences,
and did not leave their perches without persuasion. The rascals looked
knowing, too, as if they were aware that waggoners did not carry guns.

I heard the real whip-poor-will or night-jar last night frequently,
sighing his melancholy ditty along the banks of the beautiful Thames.
The cry of the Canada quail, which is a very small partridge-like
bird, is very plainti