fowls, &c.

We saw several fields of tobacco along the banks of the river, which
looked healthy and flourishing. I believe tobacco is cultivated to some
extent in both provinces; but the Canadian tobacco is not held in such
high esteem as that of Virginia.

There is a flourishing and very pretty town situated at the junction of
the Richelieu river with the St. Laurence, formerly called Sorel, now
called Fort William Henry. The situation is excellent. There are several
churches, a military fort, with mills, and other public buildings, with
some fine stone houses. The land, however, in the immediate vicinity of
the town seems very light and sandy.

I was anxious to obtain a near view of a log-house or a shanty, and was
somewhat disappointed in the few buildings of this kind that I saw along
the banks of the river. It was not the rudeness of the material so much
as the barn-like form of the buildings of this kind, and the little
attention that paid to the picturesque, that displeased me. In Britain
even the peasant has taste enough to plant a few roses or honeysuckles
about his door or his casement, and there is the little bit of garden
enclosed and neatly kept; but here no such attempt is made to ornament
the cottages. We saw no smiling orchard or grove to conceal the bare log
walls; and as to the little farm-houses, they are uglier still, and look
so pert and ungraceful stuck upon the bank close to the water's edge.

Further back a different style of building and cultivation appears. The
farms and frame-houses are really handsome places, and in good taste,
with clumps of trees here and there to break the monotony of the
clearing. The land is nearly one unbroken level plain, apparently