perhaps in a week, with a small supply of flour. In the early days there was no wheat for export. The question then may be asked, was there anything to market? Yes; as the development went on, the settlers found a market for two surplus products, timber and potash. The larger pine trees were hewn into timber and floated down the streams to some convenient point where they were collected into rafts, which were taken down the St Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec. Black salt or crude potash was obtained by concentrating the ashes that resulted from burning the brush and trees that were not suitable for timber.

For the first thirty years of the new settlements the chief concern of the people was the clearing of their land, the increasing of their field crops, and the improving of their homes and furnishings. It was slow going, and had it not been for government assistance, progress, and even maintenance of life, would have been impossible. That was the heroic age of Upper Canada, the period of foundation-laying in the province. Farming was the main occupation, and men, women, and children shared the burdens in the forest, in the field, and in the home. Roads were few and poorly built, except the three great military roads planned by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe running east, west, and north from the town of York. Social intercourse was of a limited nature. Here and there a school was formed when a competent teacher could be secured. Church services were held once a month, on which occasions the missionary preacher rode into the district on horseback. Perhaps once or twice in the summer the weary postman, with his pack on his back, arrived at the isolated farmhouse to leave a letter, on which heavy toll had to be collected.

Progress was slow in those days, but after thirty years fair hope of an agricultural country was beginning to dawn upon the people when the War of 1812 broke out. By this time the population of the province had increased to about eighty thousand. During this first thirty years very little had been done in the way of stimulating public interest in agricultural work. Conditions were not favourable to organization. The 'town meeting' was concerned mainly with the question of the height of fences and regulations as to stock running at large. One attempt, however, was made which should be noted. Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe took charge of affairs early in 1792, and, immediately after the close of the first session of the legislature at Newark (Niagara) in the autumn of that year, organized an agricultural society at the headquarters which met occasionally to discuss agricultural questions. There are no records to show whether social intercourse or practical agricultural matters formed the main business. The struggle for existence was too exacting and the conditions were not yet favourable for organization to advance general agricultural matters.

When the War of 1812 broke out the clearings of the original settlers had been extended, and some of the loyalists still lived, grown grey with time and hardened by the rough life of the backwoods. Their sons, many of whom had faint recollection of their early homes across the line, had grown up in an atmosphere of strictest loyalty to the British crown, and had put in long years in clearing the farms on which they lived and adding such comforts to their houses, that to them, perhaps as to no other generation, their homes meant everything in life. The summons came to help to defend those homes and their province. For three years the agricultural growth received a severe check. Fathers and sons took their turn in going to the front. The cultivation of the fields, the sowing and the harvesting of the crops, fell largely to the lot of the mothers and the daughters left at home. But they were equal to it. In those days the women were trained to help in the work of the fields. They did men's work willingly and well. In many cases they had to continue their heroic work after the close of the war, until their surviving boys were grown to years of manhood, for many husbands and sons went to the front never to return.

A Period of Expansion, 1816-46

The close of the war saw a province that had been checked at a time of vigorous growth now more or less impoverished, and, in some sections, devastated. This was, however, but the gloomy outlook before a period of rapid expansion. In 1816, on the close of the Napoleonic wars in Europe, large numbers of troops were disbanded, and for these new homes and new occupations had to be found. Then began the first emigration from Britain overseas to Upper Canada. All over the British Isles little groups were forming of old soldiers reunited to their families. A few household furnishings were packed, a supply of provisions laid in, a sailing vessel chartered, and the trek began across the Atlantic. The emigrants sailed from many ports of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Sometimes the trip was made in three or four weeks; but often, through contrary winds or rough weather, three or four months passed before the vessel sailed up the St Lawrence and landed the newcomers at Montreal. Hardly half of their difficulties were then overcome or half of their dangers passed. If they were to find their new locations by land, they must walk or travel by slow ox-cart; if they journeyed by water, they must make their way up the St Lawrence by open boat, surmounting the many rapids in succession, poling the boats, pulling against the stream, at times helping to carry heavy loads over the portages. Their new homes in the backwoods were in townships in the rear of those settled by the loyalists, or in unoccupied areas lying on the lake-fronts between the four districts referred to as having been taken up by the loyalists. Then began the settlements along the north shore of Lake Ontario and of Lake Erie, and the population moved forward steadily. In 1816 the total population of the province was approximately 100,000; by 1826, according to returns made to the government, it had increased to 166,000; in 1836 it was 374,000, and in 1841 it was 456,000. The great majority of these people, of course, lived upon the land, the towns being comparatively small, and the villages were composed largely of people engaged in agricultural work.

This peaceful British invasion contributed a new element to the province and added still further to the variety of the people. In one township could be found a group of English settlers, most of whom came from a southern county of England, near by a township peopled by Scottish Lowlanders, and not far away a colony of north of Ireland farmers, or perhaps a settlement composed entirely of people from the vicinity of Cork or Limerick.

These British settlers brought new lines of life, new plans for houses and barns, new methods of cultivation, new varieties of seed, and, what was perhaps of most influence upon the agricultural life of the province, new kinds of live stock. Even to this day can be seen traces of the differences in construction of buildings introduced by the different nationalities that came as pioneers into the various sections of the province—the French Canadian constructed his buildings with long, steep roofs; the Englishman followed his home plan of many small, low outbuildings with doors somewhat rounded at the top; the German and Dutch settler built big barns with their capacious mows. These latter have become the type now generally followed, the main improvement in later years being the raising of the frames upon stone foundations so