The total population of the province in 1824 was 149,941, of whom 63,000 were in the western district, that is, west of York. Between the eastern boundary of the province and York, there were twenty-six post offices. Four of these--Perth, Lanark, Richmond and Hawkesbury--served inland settlements, the nearest of which was over twenty-five miles from the St. Lawrence. The line of settlements which these four offices served was scattered over a territory over one hundred miles in length, and from twenty to thirty in width. It comprised a population of 12,476. The remaining twenty-two offices, east of York, were, with one exception, situated on the shores of the river St. Lawrence and lake Ontario. Each afforded accommodation to a district about fourteen miles in length, and between twenty and thirty miles in depth. The mails were carried twice a week over this route. These arrangements gave a fair service to the settlements through which the couriers passed, but they compared meanly with the daily service from New York to Buffalo, on the other side of lake Ontario. But it was the inland settlements west of York that had most reason to complain of the lack of facilities for communication. The Niagara peninsula, embracing the territory between lake Ontario and lake Erie, and lying west of a line dropped perpendicularly from Hamilton to lake Erie, contained a population of 20,000, distributed with fair evenness over a stretch of country forty-five miles in length, and from twenty-five to thirty in breadth. The people of this district were served by four offices on its northern border--Dundas, Grimsby, St. Catherines and Niagara--and one office--Queenstown--on its eastern border. Although there were settlements in every part of the district, there was not a single post office within it on the lake Erie shore, or, indeed, anywhere farther inland than three miles from the shore of lake Ontario, or of the Niagara river. Poorly provided as the Niagara district was, the people living in it had less ground for grievance in respect of post office facilities than the settlers in the London district. This district was an immense irregular block made up of the counties of Middlesex, Oxford, Brant, Norfolk and Elgin. It measured eighty miles in length, and from forty to fifty miles in depth. It contained in 1824 a population of 16,588, which, as in the other districts, was distributed through every part. This great district had but five post offices in it, one in each county. The two offices on the lake Erie shore--Vittoria and Port Talbot--were sixty miles apart; while the three offices--Burford, Woodstock and Delaware--were twenty miles from lake Erie.