Being informed that several days would probably elapse before our luggage could reach Prescot, I was induced to make a temporary arrangement for my family remaining there, while I proceeded to York by the steam-boat, to determine my future location, as the inhabitants of the country call the spot on which a settler fixes himself.

Now that the country has been surveyed, the necessity of this journey to the Surveyor-general's office was not very apparent. It would be more convenient to the public were there District Offices, to which strangers, as they proceeded, could apply for locations: but as I have said, I came not to Canada to turn politician, and should therefore avoid observations for the public good, lest they be regarded as seditious offences.

Previous to parting from Eric Pullicate in Glasgow, I had in some measure arranged to settle in the township of Nox, but I could gain no other intelligence respecting it at Prescot, than that it lay somewhere in the rear of the Home District. My reason for preferring Nox, was partly because some of Mr. Pullicate's radical friends had written to him favourably of the soil and climate, and that they only wanted a gentleman with capital to come among them, who would take a magisterial interest in their general affairs.