As I passed along to Fort Erie I killed a great many large snakes of different sorts that I found basking in the sun. Amongst them I did not find any rattlesnakes: these reptiles, however, are very commonly met with here; and at the distance of twenty or thirty miles from the river, up the country, it is said that they are so numerous as to render the surveying of land a matter of very great danger. It is a circumstance strongly in favour of Lower Canada, that the rattlesnake is not found there; it is seldom found, indeed, to the northward of the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude. Fort Erie stands at the eastern extremity of Lake Erie; it is a small stockaded fort, somewhat similar to that at Chippeway; and adjoining it are extensive stores as at Chippeway, and about half a dozen miserable little dwellings. On arriving there I had no difficulty in discovering my companions; I found them lodged in a small log-house, which contained but the one room, and just sitting down to a supper, they had procured through the assistance of a gentleman in the Indian department, who accompanied them from Chippeway. This habitation was the property of an old woman, who in her younger days had followed the drum, and now gained her livelihood by accommodating, to the best of her power, such travellers as passed by Fort Erie. A sorry habitation it was; the crazy door was ready to drop off the hinges, and in all the three windows of it not one pane of glass was there, a young gentleman from Detroit having amused himself, whilst detained in the place by contrary winds, some little time before our arrival, with shooting arrows through them. It was not likely that these windows would be speedily repaired, for no glazier was to be met with nearer than Newark, thirty-six miles distant. Here, as we lay folded in our skins on the floor, the rain beat in upon us, and the wind whistled about our ears; but this was not the worst. In the morning we found it a difficult matter to get wherewith to satisfy our hunger; dinner was more difficult to be had than breakfast, supper than dinner; there seemed to be a greater scarcity of provisions also the second day than there was on the first. At last, fearing that we should be famished if we remained longer under the care of old mother Palmer, we embarked at once on board the vessel of war in which we intended to cross the lake, where although sometimes tossed about by the raging contrary winds, yet we had comfortable births, and fared plenteously every day. [Sidenote: FORT ERIE.]