This River, At Belleville, Is Often Dammed Up By Confused Piles Of Timber.

No sooner are these removed than its waters are covered over by vast quantities of oak staves, which are

Floated down separately to be rafted off like the squared lumber for the Quebec market. The greater proportion of the saw-logs are, however, cut up for exportation to the United States by the various saw-mills on the river, or by a large steam saw-mill with twenty or thirty run of saws, erected on a little island in the mouth of the river. Several large schooners are constantly loading with sawed lumber, and there are two or three steamboats always running between Belleville and Kingston, carrying passengers to and fro, and generally heavily laden with goods or produce. The Bay of Quinte offers more than common facilities in the summer months for rapid and safe communication with other places; and, in the winter time, being but slightly affected by the current of the river Trent, it affords excellent sleighing.

Large quantities of wheat and other farm produce are transported over the ice to Belleville from the neighbouring county of Prince Edward, which is an exceedingly prosperous agricultural settlement, yielding wheat of the finest quality, and particularly excellent cheese and butter. The scenery on the shores of Prince Edward is exceedingly picturesque, and there are numerous wharfs at short distances, from whence the farmers roll their barrels of flour and other articles on board the steamers on their way to market. I have seen no scenery in Upper Canada presenting the same variety and beauty as that of the shores of Prince Edward in particular.

The peninsular situation of this county is its only disadvantage - being out of the line of the land travel and of the telegraphic communication which passes through Belleville. The county of Prince Edward having nearly exhausted its exportation lumber - the people are thus freed from the evils of a trade that is always more or less demoralising in its tendency and can now give their undivided attention to the cultivation of their farms. Certain it is, that more quiet, industrious, and prosperous settlers, are not to be found in the Province.

A few miles below Belleville, on the south side of the bay, is a very remarkable natural curiosity, called "The Stone Mills." On the summit of a table-land, rising abruptly several hundred feet above the shore of the bay, there is a lake of considerable size and very great depth, and which apparently receives a very inadequate supply from the elevated land on which it is situated. The lake has no natural outlet, and the common opinion is that it is unfathomable, and that it is supplied with water by means of a subterranean communication with Lake Huron, or some other lake at the same level. This is, of course, extremely improbable, but there can be no doubt of its great depth, and that it cannot be supplied from the Bay of Quinte, so far beneath its level.

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