of Upper Canada, it may be said that most of the settlers
had been placed on their feet. The soil was fruitful;
communication and transportation improved; and metallic
currency gradually found its way into the settlements.
When Mrs Simcoe, the wife of the lieutenant-governor,
passed through the country in 1792, she was struck by
the neatness of the farms of the Dutch and German settlers
from the Mohawk valley, and by the high quality of the
wheat. 'I observed on my way thither,' she says in her
diary, 'that the wheat appeared finer than any I have
seen in England, and totally free from weeds.' And a few
months later an anonymous English traveller, passing the
same way, wrote: 'In so infant a settlement, it would
have been irrational to expect that abundance which bursts
the granaries, and lows in the stalls of more cultivated
countries. There was, however, that kind of appearance
which indicated that with economy and industry, there
would be enough.'

Next in size to the settlements at Cataraqui and on the
Upper St Lawrence was the settlement at Niagara. During
the war Niagara had been a haven of refuge for the
Loyalists of Pennsylvania and the frontier districts,
just as Oswego and St Johns had been havens of refuge
for the Loyalists of northern and western New York. As
early as 1776 there arrived at Fort George, Niagara, in
a starving condition, five women and thirty-six children,
bearing names which are still to be found in the Niagara
peninsula. From that date until the end of the war refugees
continued to come in. Many of these refugees were the