While we were viewing this edifice a young Englishman introduced himself with a welcome to us, and hopes expressed that I should settle among them; he was, I found, the medical man of the place, and in himself certainly formed one inducement to stay, for he seemed to be a very pleasant communicative man, he possessed a very prettily finished picturesque cottage and seemed sanguine in his hopes of the success of the settlement. We visited a wheelwright next; one of the many who had been induced by Mr. Birkbeck to emigrate soon after he himself left England:--The man's story is shortly this: he and his brother sailed {113} for America; and were induced by Mr. B.'s "Notes" to leave the Eastern parts where good employment was offered to them, and to repair to the Prairies. On arriving, he found none of the cottages ready for the reception of emigrants which _his reading_ had led him to expect, nor any comforts whatever: he was hired however by Mr. B., and got a log hut erected; but for six months the food left for his subsistence was only some _reasty_ bacon and Indian corn, with water a considerable part of the time completely muddy; while Mr. B., himself at Princetown and elsewhere, did not, as he might have done, send him any relief. On account of these hardships the man left him, set up for himself, and now has, he told me, plenty of work, but he seemed doubtful of the pay. These are the facts as related to me by others, and corroborated by the man:--If true, without some strong qualifying circumstances, I leave Mr. B. to settle with his conscience the bringing people out thus far, by his misrepresentations, to hopeless banishment; for return they cannot, though they would be glad so to do.