During our stay at Navy Hall, Messrs. Du Petit Thouars and Guillemard, took the opportunity of the return of a gun-boat, to pay a visit to York. Indolence, courtesy towards the Governor (with whom the author was then residing at Navy Hall), and the conviction that I would meet with few objects of interest in that place, combined to dissuade me from this journey. My friends informed me on their return, that this town, which the Governor had fixed upon as the Capital of Upper Canada, has a fine, extensive bay, detached from the lake by a tongue of land of unequal breadth, being in some places a mile, in others only six score yards broad; that the entrance of this bay, about a mile in width, is obstructed in the middle by a shoal or sand-bank, the narrow passages on each side of which may be easily defended by works erected on the two points of land at the entrance, on which two block-houses have already been constructed; that this bay is two miles and a half long, and a mile wide, and that the elevation of its banks greatly increases its capability of defence by fortifications thrown up at convenient points. There have not been more than a dozen houses built hitherto in York, and these are situated in the inner extremity of the bay, near the river Don. The inhabitants, it is said, do not possess the fairest character. One of them is the noted Batzy, the leader of the German families, whom Captain Williamson accuses the English of decoying away from him, in order to injure and obstruct the prosperity of his settlement. The barracks which are occupied by the Governor's Regiment, stand on the bay near the lake, about two miles from the town. The Indians are for one hundred and fifty miles round the sole neighbours of York. Nothing shows better than this that we must remember that Old World measurements of growth and cultural life cannot be applied to the condition of a new continent where every foot of land had to be taken from the aborigines, a continent in its agricultural infancy, devastated by wars, changing ownership thrice within one hundred years. The Indians in the district one hundred and fifty miles around Toronto have been replaced to-day by a million of people as enterprising as they can be found on the surface of the globe. In lieu of the dozen huts described by our noble writer in 1795, you will find to-day a city of a quarter million inhabitants, steamships, railroads, telegraph, electric light--the "City of Churches."