Company, with whom I completed the purchase. The situation was very
pretty, commanding a fine view of the Lake. I immediately prepared to
build a suitable house, to receive my wife and family, whom I had been
under the necessity of leaving behind me in Guelph, till I could make
suitable preparations to receive them here.

At this time, there was only one saw-mill* in the whole Company's
tract, and that was ten miles up the river, situated near the mouth of
a large creek, which flowed into the Maitland. This mill was built
close to one of the finest pine-groves in the block.

[* "In no situation can settlers be distant from a mill, as there are
at convenient places distributed throughout the tract twelve grist-
mills and twenty saw-mills, and the facilities for communication are
very great; for seventeen of the townships are bounded on the one side
by the great roads traversing the tract in two directions for one
hundred miles in extent, and six of them are bounded by the Lake on the
other side."--Statistics published by the Canada Company.]

I hired a man, who had been a raftsman on the Delaware, to go with me
by land up to the mill, for a few thousand feet of boards, that I
required for my new house. It was only seven miles to the mill by a new
cut-out sleigh-track, through the township of Goderich as far as the
Falls, which we crossed by wading the river just above them, which at
that time we were able to do, though not without some caution; for,
although the spring-floods were considerably abated, the water ran with
great rapidity, and in some places was up to our middles; but with the
help of a strong setting-pole, we got over with safety.

We made our little raft in three cribs, of a thousand feet of boards in