Prominent members of the fur companies in Montreal drew his attention to their printed report, which stated that there was not five hundred acres of arable land on the extensive banks of the whole river. "It may be to your interests to keep the Grand River from becoming settled," he said, "but you may bet your best beaver-skin on this, that there is at least five hundred thousand acres of uncleared land fit for cultivation on the banks of the Grand River." In 1797 he again visited Canada, and examined the country from Quebec to Montreal, on both sides of the St. Lawrence, and then up the Ottawa as far as the Chaudiere Falls, studying carefully the navigation of the Ottawa, and its fitness for settlement. In 1798 this enterprising but cautious man paid his third visit to his future home, and returned to Massachusetts with a full determination to commence a settlement. He failed, however, to inspire his neighbors with his own confidence in the scheme, and he therefore selected two respectable men from among them, and hired them to go with him the following summer to examine and report on what they saw. Their report, which was afterwards published in the _Canadian Magazine_ of September, 1824, is as follows: "We spent twenty days in October in exploring the Township of Hull. We climbed to the top of one hundred or more trees to view the situation of the country, which we accomplished in the following manner: We cut smaller trees in such a way as to fall slanting and to lodge in the branches of the larger ones, which we ascended until we arrived at the top. By this means we were enabled to view the country and also the timber, and by the timber we could judge the nature of the soil, which we found to answer our expectations. After having examined well the nature of the township, we descended the river and arrived, after much fatigue, at Montreal." The report was so satisfactory to the people of Woburn that Mr. Wright was able to hire as many as he wished for the new settlement. It was fully five hundred miles from Woburn to the Chaudiere, but the nineteenth century was hardly a month old when the little band braved the journey. Their leader assumed all risks himself, and with twenty-five men, five families, having a membership of thirty, fourteen horses, eight oxen, and seven sleighs loaded with mill irons, agricultural implements, carpenters' tools, household effects, provisions, left the quiet New England village. The route taken was the old stage road from Boston to Montreal, which passed through Woburn to Haverhill, thence to Concord, thence north-westward along the shore of Lake Memphremagog to Montreal, which was reached on the ninth day.