I took his advice, closed the bargain, and became a landed proprietor
in Canada West. On the 16th of May, 1826, I moved up with all my goods
and chattels, which were then easily packed into a single horse waggon,
and consisted of a plough iron, six pails, a sugar kettle, two iron
pots, a frying pan with a long handle, a tea kettle, a chest of
carpenters' tools, a Canadian axe, and a cross-cut saw. My stock of
provisions comprised a parcel of groceries, half a barrel of pork and a
barrel of flour.

The roads were so bad that it took me three days to perform a journey
of little more than fifty miles. We (that is to say myself and my two
labourers) had numerous upsets; but at last reached the promised land
without any further trouble. My friend in Douro turned out the next day
and assisted me to put up the walls of my shanty and roof it with bass-
wood troughs, which was completed before dark.

I was kept busy for more than a week chinking between the logs and
plastering up all the crevices, cutting out a doorway and place for a
window, casing them; making a door and hanging it on wooden hinges, &c.
I also made a rough table and some stools, which answered better than
they looked. Four thick slabs of lime-stone, placed upright in one
corner of the shanty with clay well packed behind them to keep the fire
off the logs, answered very well for a chimney with a hole cut through
the roof directly above, to vent the smoke.

I made a tolerably good bedstead out of some iron-wood poles, by
stretching strips of elm-bark across, which I plaited strongly together
to support my bed, which was a very good one, and the only article of
luxury I possessed.