X PREFACE.

for or against the question. The information col- lected for the Emigration Committee, and the obser- vations founded on that information, by the Right Honourable VVilmot Horton, as far as regards emi- gration on a grand scale, afford, it is true, correct details; but they are not within the reach of general readers, nor to be obtained by persons in humble life, who emigrate at their own expense. The valuable work of the late Lord Selkirk would form another ex— ception to the above observation, if it detailed as fully the difficulties that attended, as it does, the causes that, in Scotland, led to emigration. It is no common— day business, but a most serious consideration, for a man with his family to remove from the place in which he was born and brought up, and from occu- pations to which he has been trained and habituated from his childhood, to a country far distant, and, in many respects, different from his own, and in which he must assume pursuits, and acquire ideas, to which he is a perfect stranger. I have therefore endea- voured to point out, occasionally in the descriptive pages, and concisely in the Sixth Book of the first volume, the advantages and the difficulties which may be expected to attend emigrating from the Uni- ted Kingdom and settling in America.

T he establishing of steam—vessels between the

United Kingdom and British America, touching at