The celebrated Anthony J.W.G. Von Egmond, who commanded the rebels at Gallows Hill during Mackenzie’s rebellion, was the first agricultural settler on the Huron tract. He had formerly been a Colonel in the old Imperial Army; and after Buonaparte’s abdication and retirement to Elba, he joined the Allies, and held the rank of an officer in one of the Belgian regiments at Waterloo. He was a pushing, clever sort of man; and had he but been contented, and stuck to his last, instead of troubling his head about politics, he would, in all probability, have become one of the richest and most independent farmers in the Huron tract. Within the short period of twenty months, Von Egmond had chopped and cleared, fit for a crop, nearly a hundred acres of land, fifty of which were sown wheat. As this was the first field ripe in the tract, the old man determined to celebrate the event by asking some of the gentlemen connected with the Canada Company to dinner, and to witness the cutting of the first sheaf. Thomas Mercer Jones, Esq., one of the Company’s Commissioners, Dr. Dunlop, Mr. Prior, the Professor, and myself, composed the party on this important occasion. As the distance was little short of eighteen miles through the Bush, and we had no way of getting there—except by walking—it was arranged that we should start the day previous, and sleep all night at Von Egmond’s. Accordingly, we left Goderich about eleven o’clock, A.M., by the newly cut-out road, through the forest. I wonder what our English friends would think of walking in their shirt-sleeves, with their coats and neckcloths thrown over their arms, eighteen miles to a dinner-party, with the thermometer ranging something like 90 degrees in the shade. The day was hot, though not unpleasantly so; for the leafy screen above our heads effectually protected us from the scorching rays of a July sun, which would otherwise have been very oppressive. The musquitoes were particularly civil—indeed the reign of these gentlemen was nearly over for the season. They begin to be troublesome in the middle of May. From the 1st of June to the middle of July, they are in the very height of their impertinence; and, although they have not sufficient strength in their proboscis to penetrate a top-boot, yet they easily pierce through a summer coat and shirt, and a wee bit into the skin beneath. From the middle of July to the middle of August, they become much less venomous; and are then only annoying for an hour or so in the evening, in the woods or marshes. By the 1st of September, they finally disappear for the season. Our long road was considerably shortened by the amusing stories and anecdotes of the Doctor, who kept us in good humour during the whole journey. Nearly mid-way between Goderich and Von Egmond’s, a small rill crosses the road: here we stopped for an hour, and refreshed ourselves with beef-sandwiches and brandy and water—no bad things in the Bush.