We left Darlington in a one-horse pleasure-waggon so called, or rather mis-called, by the natives. For my part, I never could find in what the pleasure consisted, unless in being jerked every minute two or three feet from your seat by the unevenness of the road and want of springs in your vehicle, or the next moment being soused to the axletree in a mud-hole, from which, perhaps, you were obliged to extricate your carriage by the help of a lever in the shape of a rail taken from some farmer’s fence by the roadside. You are no sooner freed from this Charybdis, than you fall into Scylla, formed by half a mile of corduroy-bridge, made of round logs, varying from nine to fifteen inches in diameter, which, as you may suppose, does not make the most even surface imaginable, and over which you are jolted in the roughest style possible, at the expense of your breath and injury of your person. I am happy to say that better roads and a better description of pleasure-carriages have superseded these inconvenient conveyances. Since the institution of county councils, and the formation of towns and townships into municipalities, great attention has been bestowed, and large sums of money voted, for the improvement of roads and bridges; and several Joint-stock companies, chartered by the Provincial Parliament, have completed sundry lines of plank and macadamized roads, on which toll-gates have been erected. What has already been done in this way has added greatly to the wealth and settlement of the province. No one can understand, indeed, except the early settler, what a blessing a good road is, especially to those who are too far back for the benefit of water communication. The day was fine and clear when we started, and we congratulated ourselves on the prospect of a pleasant journey, which, I am sorry to say, was not to be verified. Distant thunder soon warned us that we might expect a storm. We hurried on as fast as possible, in hope we might be able to get through the nine-mile woods, in the township of Clarke, before the bursting of the storm. In this, however, we were disappointed; for, before we were half through the woods, the rain fell in torrents, accompanied by the loudest thunder and most vivid lightning I had ever seen. After above an hour’s most pitiless pelting, we found ourselves suddenly before a small log-house, in front of which, swinging between two upright posts, a cross-bar connecting them at the top, depended a sign, on which was described, in large characters, for the information of all way-worn or thirsty-travellers, “that good liquor, good beds, and good accommodations, both for man and horse, could be had from the proprietor, Thomas Turner Orton.”