ed away. Virgil, Horace, Pliny, and Juvenal, all speak of the ice in Italy in their day; and the rivers of ancient Gaul were as much frozen in the time of Julius Cæsar, as the American rivers are now.— From the enquiries which I have made, I believe the length of time the farmers fodder their cattle here, to be much about the usual time we have for the same business in England. The spring commences sooner in England than it does here; but the grass grows with more rapidity in this country than in that, when the winter is gone. From an examination of meteorological tables, long kept, it appears that more rain falls in the United States, in a year, than in Europe, during the same time; but there are not so many rainy days here in other words, less of mist and vapour. The spring much resembles our English spring, where in spite of all that is said or sung by our Poets, it very frequently happens that "Winter lingering chills the lap of May." When the spring commences here, the influence of the sun, in consequence of the more southern ⚫ situation, is more decisive than in England. The American autumn is much finer than in our island; and there is none of that misty, foggy, raining, soulsubduing weather, over which all the blue demons hover, like an assemblage of Fuseli's night-mares ; and to which some Frenchman alludes, when he begins his romance with, "It was in the gloomy "month of November, when Englishmen hang "themselves." Here the sun is bright and beaming, and the November which I have passed here, was as fine as an English September. I was desirous of procuring a statement of all the births and deaths which had occurred in this township (Silver Lake) since its first settlement; but as no such record had been kept, and as the early settlers are little careful to remember these events, I found this impossible. My next attempt was to learn who amongst all the heads of families had died within that time; and in this I was more successful. Mr. Bliss, the near neighbour of Mr. R., a very respectable man, and a magistrate, was the earliest settler, after him, in the township. He assures me, that among the heads of families only one had died since the first settlement, which was nine years ago. There are now seventy families, or one hundred and forty heads of families, settled in the township. As the increase of settlement has been pretty regular, it would be fair to suppose this equal to the residence of half that number for the whole time; or seventy multiplied by nine, which would give 630 for one year. Now, it is calculated in Europe, that of one thousand persons living in large cities, thirty-five or thirty-six die annually; and in country places, twenty-eight or thirty die out of that number, in the same space of time; while, according to the above statement, the deaths in this township have been only as one in six hundred and thirty. If it be said, that in this estimate of from twenty-eight to thirty deaths happening in a thousand, it is meant to be extended to young and old, of whom, indiscriminately, more would die than of heads of families, taken at the most vigorous period of life; then, let us make an estimate on that ground, and take thirty as the age to make the calculation on. A person of thirty will, probably, live thirty-two years; divide six hundred and thirty by thirty-two, and we find the chance is, that twenty will die in a twelve month out of that number. According to Dr. Price's calculations of life, the chance of a person thirty years, old is twenty-three years and six months; which would give nearly twentyseven deaths in six hundred and thirty; while here there has been but one death. This is a very surprising statement; but I am well satisfied of its correctness. Indeed the aspect of the country gives promise of its healthiness: The fountain's fall, the rivers flow, The windy summit wild and high, all so opposite to the stagnant waters, and dead levels of the western "prairies," indicate the purity of its streams, and the salubrity of its air. Its exemption from musquitoes, is indicated by its freedom from the " green mantle of the standing "pool," so common in the western countries, whose musquitoes and frogs chase sleep from the eyes of many a weary traveller. "Mali culices ranæque palustres avertunt somnos," 66 unless they are grossly misrepresented by many of our disappointed countrymen, who, through "brake, through bog, through bush, and through brier," have plodded to those distant regions, in search of a new Utopia, and who, on their return, spoke of the musquitoe's buz in a tone which would justify the exclamation of the poet, Hark, his shrill horn its fearful larum flings! But though this tormentor is diminutive, he is not the less to be dreaded; besides his buz and bite, his presence indicates the neighbourhood of the pestilential marsh, from which he sprang. The number of musquitoes, that I was assured I should meet on the western waters, was a strong inducement for me to turn my course to a higher and drier country, in which I and my friends might hope to forget the toils of the day in tranquil repose. In the commencement of the French revolution, Brissot was sent to the United States by some of his co-patriots, to select a body of land for them to settle on, if they should be so fortunate as to keep their necks from under the national axe. They desired him to be particularly careful to avoid every place where there were musquitoes. However visionary they were in some of their instructions, there was much sound sense in this caution. I do not know whether Brissot found what he sought. Instead of remaining here in safety, he returned to France, and was sent to the guillotine, by the sanguinary demon who rode in the whirlwind, and directed the storm of the revolution, at its most desolating period. Alas! the sound of the tocsin was worse than even the buz of the musquitoe, and the axe's edge sharper than its bite. A strongly marked passage in the letter of instructions given to me by my friends in England is: "LET NO CON66 SIDERATION TEMPT YOU TO SELECT AN UN"HEALTHY SITUATION." This appears to me to be decisive against a flat and low country. ་་ Volney, who travelled through them, speaking of the flat countries in the western parts of America, says: "Autumnal intermittents prevail to a degree scarcely credible. In a journey of seven "hundred miles, I scarcely found twenty houses "free from agues and fevers. All the banks of the Ohio, and a great part of Kentucky, of Lake "Erie, the Genesee country, and its lakes and rivers, are annually infested with them. In a journey "of two hundred and fifty miles, from Cincinnati "to Detroit, began on the eighth of September, in a company of twenty-five persons, we did not encamp one night without one, at least, of the party being seized with a periodical fever. At Green 66 66 66 |