"Martin Doyle," was the text-book which first awakened, amongst tens of thousands of British readers, a keen interest in the backwoods of what is now the Province of Ontario. The year 1832, the first dread year of Asiatic cholera, contributed by its terrors to the exodus of alarmed fugitives from the crowded cities of the old country. My brothers Thomas and Isaac, both a few years older than myself, made up their minds to emigrate, and I joyously offered to join them, in the expectation of a good deal of fun of the kind described by Dr. Dunlop. So we set seriously to work, "pooled" our small means, learnt to make seine-nets, economized to an unheard of extent, became curious in the purchase of stores, including pannikins and other primitive tinware, and at length engaged passage in the bark _Asia_, 500 tons, rated A. No. 1, formerly an East Indiaman, and now bound for Quebec, to seek a cargo of white pine lumber for the London market. So sanguine were we of returning in the course of six or seven years, with plenty of money to enrich, and perhaps bring back with us, our dear mother and unmarried sisters, that we scarcely realized the pain of leave-taking, and went on board ship in the St. Catherine's Docks, surrounded by applauding friends, and in the highest possible spirits. Our fellow-passengers were not of the most desirable class. With the exception of a London hairdresser and his wife, very respectable people, with whom we shared the second-cabin, the emigrants were chiefly rough countrymen, with their wives and numerous children, sent out by the parish authorities from the neighbourhood of Dorking, in Surrey, and more ignorant than can readily be conceived. Helpless as infants under suffering, sulky and even savage under privations, they were a troublesome charge to the ship's officers, and very ill-fitted for the dangers of the sea which lay before us. Captain Ward was the ship's master; there were first and second mates, the former a tall Scot, the latter a short thick-set Englishman, and both good sailors. The boatswain, cook and crew of about a dozen men and boys, made up our ship's company.