Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

462 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
on a sufficiently large scale. His autobiography gives
in much greater detail these large public transactions,
and the sowing of that seed of commerce and founda-
tion of communities which comes to such rapid results
on the other side of the Atlantic, though scarcely then
with such suddenness of growth as is sometimes the
case now. But the simple record of the day's work
has a great reality and life :
John Gait to W. Blackwood.
—
BuBLiNGTON Beach, U. C, 20 Nov. 1827.
This will serve to let you know that I am still in the land of
the living. After the most active year of my whole life, I have
at last obtained a little leisure, and perhaps before the winter
is over may send you something ; but hitherto I have not had
a day to spare from the road or the office.
I do not know that I should have written at this time, but a
person of the name of Davidson, a mason, has brought me a
letter from your brother, to whom I intended to say, which I
think you will do for me, that he is to be employed as foreman
on a house I am building for myself. When the house is finished,
it will perhaps be in my power to give him a lift at my
new city, which, by the way, is royally thriving. The population,
Dunlop tells me, is well on to a thousand souls, and two
churches are building.
Besides other journeys, I have been round Lake Huron, and
fixed upon the site of another town; and in the course of
a few days I have the foundations of a third to lay. The first I
called Guelph, the second has been named Goderich, and the
third is, at the request of a friend, to be Meldrum. Three
settlements in one year, you will allow, is pretty well; but
they form only a small part of my labours.
It is now settled that I am not to return, but to remain as
sole superintendent with a salary of sufficient respectability,
inferior only to that of the Governor. With the country I am
much pleased. It opens out far finer than I had expected, and
my avocations suit my disposition. But although I have as yet
had no time for tales, still I look forward to comparative leisure