Eight years after the occupation of the country by the English, a considerable traffic was being carried on at Toronto. We learn this from a despatch of Sir William Johnson's to the Earl of Shelburne, on the subject of Indian affairs, bearing date 1767. Sir William affirms that persons could be found willing to pay £1,000 per annum for the monopoly of the trade at Toronto. Some remarks of his that precede the reference to Toronto give us some idea of the commercial tactics of the Indian and Indian trader of the time. "The Indians have no business to follow when at peace," Sir William Johnson says, "but hunting. Between each hunt they have a recess of several months. They are naturally very covetous," the same authority asserts, "and become daily better acquainted with the value of our goods and their own peltry; they are everywhere at home, and travel without the expense or inconvenience attending our journey to them. On the other hand, every step our traders take beyond the posts, is attended at least with some risk and a very heavy expense, which the Indians must feel as heavily on the purchase of their commodities; all which considered, is it not reasonable to suppose that they would rather employ their idle time in quest of a cheap market, than sit down with such slender returns as they must receive in their own villages?" He then instances Toronto. "As a proof of which," Sir William continues, "I shall give one instance concerning Toronto, on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Notwithstanding the assertion of Major Rogers," Sir William Johnson says, "that even a single trader would not think it worth attention to supply a dependent post, yet I have heard traders of long experience and good circumstances affirm, that for the exclusive trade of that place, for one season, they would willingly pay £1,000--so certain were they of a quiet market--from the cheapness at which they could afford their goods there." Although after the Conquest the two sides of Lake Ontario and of the St. Lawrence generally were no longer under different crowns, the previous rivalry between the two routes, the St. Lawrence and Mohawk river routes, to the seaboard continued; and it was plainly to the interest of those who desired the aggrandisement of Albany and New York to the detriment of Montreal and Quebec, to discourage serious trading enterprises with Indians on the northern side of the St. Lawrence waters. We have an example of this spirit in a "Journal of Indian Transactions at [Fort] Niagara, in the year 1767," published in the documentary History of New York (ii. 868, 8vo. ed.), in which Toronto is named, and a great chieftain from that region figures--in one respect, somewhat discreditably, however. We give the passage of the journal to which we refer. The document appears to have been drawn up by Norman M'Leod, an Indian agent, visiting Fort Niagara.