When the engineer, Bouchette, was sent by General Simcoe to survey the site (in 1793), it was a mere swamp, a tangled wilderness; the birch, the hemlock, and the tamarac-trees were growing down to the water's edge, and even into the lake. I have been told that Toronto, the Indian appellation of the whole district, signifies _trees growing out of water_. Colonel Bouchette says, that at this time the only vestige of humanity for a hundred miles on every side was one solitary wigwam on the shore, the dwelling of a few Missassagua Indians. Three years afterwards, when the Duc de Rochefoucauld was here, the infant metropolis consisted of a fort and twelve miserable log huts, the inhabitants of which, as the duke tells us, bore no good reputation. The town was, however, already marked out in streets running parallel with the shore of the bay for about two miles, and crossed by others at right angles. It is a pity that while they were about it they did not follow the example of the Americans in such cases, and make the principal streets of ample width; some hundred feet, or even furlongs, more or less, would have made little difference where the wild unowned forest extended, for all they knew, from the lake to the north pole,--_now_, it would not be so easy to amend the error. King Street, the principal street, looks narrow, and will look narrower when the houses are higher, better, and more regularly built. I perceive that in laying out the _fashionable_, or west-end of the city, they have avoided the same mistake. A wide space between the building lots and Lake Ontario has been reserved very properly as a road or esplanade, but I doubt whether even this be wide enough. One of the most curious and inexplicable phenomena connected with these immense inland seas is the gradual rise of the waters; and even within these few years, as I am informed, great part of the high bank has been washed away, and a carriage-road at the foot of it along the shore has been wholly covered. If this process goes on, and at the same rate, there must be a solid embankment, or quay, raised as a barrier against the encroaching waters, or the esplanade itself will in time disappear. * * * * * January 14.