1 62
��A Summer on the Great Lakes.
��good, so we, having the same disposition, followed him below to the dining- saloon.
We arrived at Toronto, one hundred and sixty miles from Oswego, a little before dusk. This city, the capital of the province of Ontario, is situated on an arm of the lake. Its bay is a beauti- ful inlet about four miles long and two miles wide, forming a capacious and well-protected harbor. The site of the town is low, but rises gently from the water's edge. The streets are regular and wide, crossing each other generally at right angles. There is an esplanade fronting the bay which extends for a distance of two miles. The population of the city has increased from twelve hundred in 1817 to nearly sixty thou- sand at present. In the morning we took a hurried survey of its chief build- ings, visited Queen's Park in the centre of the city, and got round in season to take the afternoon steamer for Buffalo.
The district situated between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, as it has been longest settled, so also is it the best- cultivated part of Western Canada. The vicinity to the two Great Lakes renders the climate more agreeable, by diminishing the severity of the winters and tempering the summers' heats. Fruits of various kind arrive at great perfection, cargoes of which are ex- ported to Montreal, Quebec, and other places situated in the less genial parts of the eastern province. Mrs. Jameson speaks of this district as " superlatively beautiful." The only place approach- ing a town in size and the number of inhabitants, from the Falls along the shores of Lake Erie for a great distance, beyond even Grand River, is Chippewa, situated on the river Welland, or Chip- pewa, which empties itself into Niagara Strait, just where the rapids commence
��and navigation terminates. One or more steamers run between Chippewa and Buffalo. Chippewa is still but a small village, but, as it lies directly on the great route from the Western States of the Union to the Falls of Niagara and the Eastern States, it will probably rise into importance. Its greatest cele- brity at present arises from the fact of there having been a great battle foughit near by between the British and Ameri- cans in the war of 181 2.
The line of navigation by the St. Lawrence did not extend beyond Lake Ontario until the Welland Canal was constructed. This important work is thirty-two miles long, and admits ships of one hundred and twenty-five guns, which is about the average tonnage of the trading-vessels on the lakes. The Niagara Strait is nearly parallel to the Welland Canal, and more than one third of it is not navigable. The canal, by opening this communication between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, has con- ferred an immense benefit on all the districts west of Ontario. The great Erie Canal has been still more beneficial, by connecting the lakes with New York and the Atlantic by the Hudson River, which the canal joins after a course of three hundred and sixty miles. The effect of these two canals was quickly perceptible in the increased activity of commerce on Lake Erie, and the Erie Canal has rendered this lake the great line of transit from New York to the Western States.
Lake Erie is the most shallow of all the lakes, its average depth being only sixty or seventy feet. Owing to this shallowness the lake is readily dis- turbed by the wind ; and for this reason, and for its paucity of good harbors, it has the reputation of being the most dangerous to navigate of any cf the
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