Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An Autobiography

by Samuel Thompson

A CANADIAN PIONEER.

CHAPTER I.

THE AUTHOR'S ANTECEDENTS AND FORBEARS.

The writer of these pages was born in the year 1810, in the City of London, and in the Parish of Clerkenwell, being within sound of Bow Bells. My father was churchwarden of St. James's, Clerkenwell, and was a master-manufacturer of coal measures and coal shovels, now amongst the obsolete implements of by-gone days. His father was, I believe, a Scotsman, and has been illnaturedly surmised to have run away from the field of Culloden, where he may have fought under the name and style of Evan McTavish, a name which, like those of numbers of his fellow clansmen, would naturally anglicise itself into John Thompson, in order to save its owner's neck from a threatened Hanoverian halter. But he was both canny and winsome, and by-and-by succeeded in capturing the affections and "tocher" of Sarah Reynolds, daughter of the wealthy landlord of the Bull Inn, of Meriden, in Warwickshire, the greatest and oldest of those famous English hostelries, which did duty as the resting-place of monarchs en route, and combined within their solid walls whole troops of blacksmiths, carpenters, hostlers, and many other crafts and callings. No doubt from this source I got my Warwickshire blood, and English ways of thinking, in testimony of which I may cite the following facts: while living in Quebec, in 1859-60, a mason employed to rebuild a brick chimney challenged me as a brother Warwickshire man, saying he knew dozens of gentlemen there who were as like me "as two peas." Again, in 1841, a lady who claimed to be the last direct descendant of William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, and the possessor of the watch and other relics of the poet, said she was quite startled at my likeness to an original portrait of her great ancestor, in the possession of her family.

My grandfather carried on the business of timber dealer (we in Canada should call it lumber merchant), between Scotland and England, buying up the standing timber in gentlemen's parks, squaring and teaming it southward, and so became a prosperous man. Finally, at his death, he left a large family of sons and daughters, all in thriving circumstances. His second son, William, married my mother, Anna Hawkins, daughter of the Rev. Isaac Hawkins, of Taunton, in Somersetshire, and his wife, Joan Wilmington, of Wilmington Park, near Taunton. My grandfather Hawkins was one of John Wesley's earliest converts, and was by him ordained to the ministry. Through my mother, we are understood to be descended from Sir John Hawkins, the world-renowned buccaneer, admiral, and founder of the English Royal Navy, who was honoured by being associated with her most sacred Majesty Queen Elizabeth, in a secret partnership in the profits of piratical raids undertaken in the name and for the behoof of Protestant Christianity. So at least says the historian, Froude.

One word more about my father. He was a member of the London trained-bands, and served during the Gordon riots, described by Dickens in "Barnaby Rudge." He personally rescued a family of Roman Catholics from the rioters, secreted them in his house on Holborn Hill, and aided them to escape to Jamaica, whence they sent us many valuable presents of mahogany furniture, which must be still in the possession of some of my nephews or nieces in England. My mother has often told me, that she remembered well seeing dozens of miserable victims of riot and drunkenness lying in the kennel in front of her house, lapping up the streams of gin which ran burning down the foul gutter, consuming the poor wretches themselves in its fiery progress.

My father died the same year I was born. My dear mother, who was the meekest and most pious of women, did her best to teach her children to avoid the snares of worldly pride and ambition, and to be contented with the humble lot in which they had been placed by Providence. She was by religious profession a Swedenborgian, and in that denomination educated a family of eleven children, of whom I am the youngest. I was sent to a respectable day-school, and afterwards as boarder to a commercial academy, where I learnt the English branches of education, with a little Latin, French, and drawing. I was, as a child, passionately fond of reading, especially of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and of Sir Walter Scott's novels, which latter delightful books have influenced my tastes through life, and still hold me fascinated whenever I happen to take them up.

So things went on till 1823, when I was thirteen years old. My mother had been left a life-interest in freehold and leasehold property worth some thirty thousand pounds sterling; but, following the advice of her father and brother, was induced to invest in losing speculations, until scarcely sufficient was left to keep the wolf from the door. It was, therefore, settled that I must be sent to learn a trade, and, by my uncle's advice, I was placed as apprentice to one William Molineux, of the Liberty of the Rolls, in the district of Lincoln's Inn, printer. He was a hard master, though not an unkind man. For seven long years was I kept at press and case, working eleven hours a day usually, sometimes sixteen, and occasionally all night, for which latter indulgence I got half a crown for the night's work, but no other payment or present from year's end to year's end. The factory laws had not then been thought of, and the condition of apprentices in England was much the same as that of convicts condemned to hard labour, except for a couple of hours' freedom, and too often of vicious license, in the evenings.

CHAPTER II.

HISTORY OF A MAN OF GENIUS.

The course of my narrative now requires a brief account of my mother's only brother, whose example and conversation, more than anything else, taught me to turn my thoughts westwards, and finally to follow his example by crossing the Atlantic ocean, and seeking "fresh fields and pastures new" under a transatlantic sky.

John Isaac Hawkins was a name well known, both in European and American scientific circles, fifty years ago, as an inventor of the most fertile resource, and an expert in all matters relating to civil engineering. He must have left England for America somewhere about the year 1790, full of republican enthusiasm and of schemes of universal benevolence. Of his record in the United States I know very little, except that he married a wife in New Jersey, that he resided at Bordenton, that he acquired some property adjacent to Philadelphia, that he was intimate with the elder Adams, Jefferson, and many other eminent men. Returning with his wife to England, after twenty-five years' absence, he established a sugar refinery in Titchfield Street, Cavendish square, London, patronized his English relatives with much condescension, and won my childish heart by great lumps of rock-candy, and scientific experiments of a delightfully awful character. Also, he borrowed my mother's money, to be expended for the good of mankind, and the elaboration of the teeming offspring of his inexhaustible inventive faculty. Morden's patent lead pencils, Bramah's patent locks, and, I think, Gillott's steel pens were among his numerous useful achievements, from some or all of which he enjoyed to the day of his death a small income, in the shape of a royalty on the profits. He assisted in the perfecting of Perkins's steam-gun, which the Duke of Wellington condemned as too barbarous for civilized warfare, but which its discoverer, Mr. Perkins, looked upon as the destined extirpator of all warfare, by the simple process of rendering resistance utterly impossible. This appalling and destructive weapon has culminated in these times in the famous mitrailleuses of Napoleon III, at Woerth and Sedan, which, however, certainly neither exterminated the Prussians nor added glory to the French empire.

At his home I was in the habit of meeting the leading men of the Royal Society and the Society of Arts, of which he was a member, and of listening to their discussions about scientific novelties. The eccentric Duke of Norfolk, Earl Stanhope, the inventor of the Stanhope press, and other noble amateur scientists, availed themselves of his practical skill, and his name became known throughout Europe. In 1825 or thereabouts, he was selected by the Emperor Francis Joseph, of Austria, to design and superintend the first extensive works erected in Vienna for the promotion of the new manufacture of beet-root sugar, now an important national industry throughout Germany. He described the intercourse of the Austrian Imperial-Royal family with all who approached them, and even with the mendicants who were daily admitted to an audience with the Emperor at five o'clock in the morning, as of the most cordial and lovable character.

From Vienna my uncle went to Paris, and performed the same duties there for the French Government, in the erection of extensive sugar works. The chief difficulty he encountered there, was in parrying the determination of the Parisian artisans not to lose their Sunday's labour. They could not, they said, support their families on six days' wages, and unless he paid them for remaining idle on the Sabbath day, they must and would work seven days in the week. I believe they gained their point, much to his distress and chagrin.

His next exploit was in the construction of the Thames tunnel, in connection with which he acted as superintendent of the works under Sir Isambert Brunel. This occupied him nearly up to the time of my own departure for Canada, in 1833. The sequel of his story is a melancholy one. He made fortunes for other men who bought his inventions but himself sank into debt, and at last died in obscurity at Rahway, New Jersey, whither he had returned as a last resort, there to find his former friends dead, his beloved republic become a paradise for office-grabbers and sharpers, his life a mere tale of talents dissipated, and vague ambition unsatisfied.[1]

After his return from Vienna, I lived much at my uncle's house, in London, as my mother had removed to the pleasant village of Epsom in Surrey. There I studied German with some degree of success, and learnt much about foreign nations and the world at large. There too I learnt to distrust my own ability to make my way amidst the crowded industries of the old country, and began to cast a longing eye to lands where there was plenty of room for individual effort, and a reasonable prospect of a life unblighted by the dread of the parish workhouse and a pauper's grave.

CHAPTER III.

SOME REMINISCENCES OF A LONDON APPRENTICE.

Having been an indulged youngest child, I found the life of a printer's boy bitterly distasteful, and it was long before I could brace myself up to the required tasks. But time worked a change; I got to be a smart pressman and compositor; and at eighteen the foremanship of the office was entrusted to me, still without remuneration or reward. Those were the days of the Corn Law League. Col. Peyronnet Thompson, the apostle of Free Trade, author of the "Catholic State Waggon" and other political tracts, got his work done at our office. We printed the Examiner, which brought me into contact with John and Leigh Hunt, with Jeremy Bentham, then a feeble old man whose life was passed in an easy chair, and with his protegé Edwin Chadwick; also with Albany Fonblanque, Sir John Morland the philanthropist, and other eminent men. Last but not least, we printed "Figaro in London," the forerunner of "Punch," and I was favoured with the kindest encouragement by De Walden, its first editor, afterwards Police Magistrate. I have known that gentleman come into the office on the morning of publication, ask how much copy was still wanted, and have seen him stand at a desk, and without preparation or hesitation, dash off paragraph after paragraph of the pungent witticisms, which the same afternoon sent all London into roars of laughter at the expense of political humbugs of all kinds, whether friends or foes. These were not unhappy days for me. With such associations, I became a zealous Reformer, and heartily applauded my elder brother, when he refused, with thousands of others, to pay taxes at the time the first Reform Bill was rejected by the House of Lords.

At this period of my life, as might have been expected from the nature of my education and the course of reading which I preferred, I began to try my hand at poetry, and wrote several slight pieces for the Christmas Annuals, which, sad to say, were never accepted. But the fate of Chatterton, of Coleridge, and other like sufferers, discouraged me; and I adopted the prudent resolution, to prefer wealth to fame, and comfort to martyrdom in the service of the Muses.

With the termination of my seven years' apprenticeship, these literary efforts came also to an end. Disgusted with printing, I entered the service of my brother, a timber merchant, and in consequence obtained a general knowledge of the many varieties of wood used in manufactures, which I have since found serviceable. And this brings me to the year 1831, from which date to the present day, I have identified myself thoroughly with Canada, her industries and progress, without for a moment ceasing to be an Englishman of the English, a loyal subject of the Queen, and a firm believer in the high destinies of the Pan-Anglican Empire of the future.

CHAPTER IV.

WESTWARD, HO!

^"Martin Doyle," was the text-book which first awakened, amongst tens of thousands of British readers, a keen interest in the backwoods of what is now the Province of Ontario. The year 1832, the first dread year of Asiatic cholera, contributed by its terrors to the exodus of alarmed fugitives from the crowded cities of the old country. My brothers Thomas and Isaac, both a few years older than myself, made up their minds to emigrate, and I joyously offered to join them, in the expectation of a good deal of fun of the kind described by Dr. Dunlop. So we set seriously to work, "pooled" our small means, learnt to make seine-nets, economized to an unheard of extent, became curious in the purchase of stores, including pannikins and other primitive tinware, and at length engaged passage in the bark Asia, 500 tons, rated A. No. 1, formerly an East Indiaman, and now bound for Quebec, to seek a cargo of white pine lumber for the London market. So sanguine were we of returning in the course of six or seven years, with plenty of money to enrich, and perhaps bring back with us, our dear mother and unmarried sisters, that we scarcely realized the pain of leave-taking, and went on board ship in the St. Catherine's Docks, surrounded by applauding friends, and in the highest possible spirits.

Our fellow-passengers were not of the most desirable class. With the exception of a London hairdresser and his wife, very respectable people, with whom we shared the second-cabin, the emigrants were chiefly rough countrymen, with their wives and numerous children, sent out by the parish authorities from the neighbourhood of Dorking, in Surrey, and more ignorant than can readily be conceived. Helpless as infants under suffering, sulky and even savage under privations, they were a troublesome charge to the ship's officers, and very ill-fitted for the dangers of the sea which lay before us. Captain Ward was the ship's master; there were first and second mates, the former a tall Scot, the latter a short thick-set Englishman, and both good sailors. The boatswain, cook and crew of about a dozen men and boys, made up our ship's company.

All things went reasonably well for some time. Heavy head-winds detained us in the channel for a fortnight, which was relieved by landing at Torbay, climbing the heights of Brixham, and living on fresh fish for twenty-four hours. Then came a fair wind, which lasted until we got near the banks of Newfoundland. Head-winds beset us again, and this time so seriously that our vessel, which was timber-sheathed, sprang a plank, and immediately began to leak dangerously. The passengers had taken to their berths for the night, and were of course ignorant of what had happened, but feared something wrong from the hurry of tramping of feet overhead, the vehement shouts of the mates giving orders for lowering sail, and the other usual accompaniments of a heavy squall on board ship. It was not long, however, before we learned the alarming truth. "All hands on deck to pump ship," came thundering down both hatchways, in the coarse tones of the second mate. We hurried on deck half-dressed, to face a scene of confusion affrighting in the eyes of landsmen—the ship stripped to her storm-sails, almost on her beam-ends in a tremendous sea, the wind blowing "great guns," the deck at an angle of at least fifteen degrees, flooded with rain pouring in torrents, and encumbered with ropes which there had not been time to clew away, the four ship's pumps manned by twice as many landsmen, the sailors all engaged in desperate efforts to stop the leak by thrumming sails together and drawing them under the ship's bows.

Captain Ward told us very calmly that he had been in gales off the Cape of Good Hope, and thought nothing of a "little puff" like this; he also told us that he should keep on his course in the hope that the wind would abate, and that we could manage the leak; but if not, he had no doubt of carrying us safely back to the west coast of Ireland, where he might comfortably refit.

Certainly courage is infectious. We were twelve hundred miles at sea, with a great leak in our ship's side, and very little hope of escape, but the master's coolness and bravery delighted us, and even the weakest man on board took his spell at the pumps, and worked away for dear life. My brother Thomas was a martyr to sea-sickness, and could hardly stand without help; but Isaac had been bred a farmer, accustomed to hard work and field sports, and speedily took command of the pumps, worked two spells for another man's one, and by his example encouraged the grumbling steerage passengers to persevere, if only for very shame. Some of their wives even took turns with great spirit and effect. I did my best, but it was not much that I could accomplish.

In all my after-life I never experienced such supreme comfort and peace of mind, as during that night, while lying under wet sails on the sloping deck, talking with my brother of the certainty of our being at the bottom of the sea before morning, of our mother and friends at home, and of our hope of meeting them in the great Hereafter. Tired out at last, we fell asleep where we lay, and woke only at the cry, "spell ho!" which summoned us again to the pumps.

The report of "five feet of water in the hold—the ballast shifted!" determined matters for us towards morning. Capt. Ward decided that he must put about and run for Galway, and so he did. The sea had by daylight gone down so much, that the captain's cutter could be lowered and the leak examined from the outside. This was done by the first mate, Mr. Cattanagh, who brought back the cheering news that so long as we were running before the wind the leak was four feet out of water, and that we were saved for the present. The bark still remained at the same unsightly angle, her ballast, which was chiefly coals, having shifted bodily over to leeward; the pumps had to be kept going, and in this deplorable state, in constant dread of squalls, and wearied with incessant hard work, we sailed for eight days and nights, never sighting a ship until nearly off the mouth of the Shannon, where we hailed a brig whose name I forget. She passed on, however, refusing to answer our signals of distress.

Next day, to our immense relief, the Asia entered Galway Bay, and here we lay six weeks for repairs, enjoying ourselves not a little, and forgetting past danger, except as a memorable episode in the battle of life.

CHAPTER V.

CONNEMARA AND GALWAY FIFTY YEARS AGO.

The Town of Galway is a relic of the times when Spain maintained an active commerce with the west of Ireland, and meddled not a little in the intrigues of the time. Everybody has read of the warden of Galway, who hanged his son outside a window of his own house, to prevent a rescue from justice by a popular rising in the young man's favour. That house still stood, and probably yet stands, a mournful memento of a most dismal tragedy. In 1833 it was in ruins, as was also the whole long row of massive cut stone buildings of which it formed part. In front there was a tablet recording the above event; the walls were entire, but the roof was quite gone, and the upper stories open to the winds and storms. The basement story appeared to have been solidly arched, and in its cavernous recesses, and those of the adjoining cellars along that side of the street, dwelt a race of butchers and of small hucksters, dealing in potatoes, oats, some groceries and rough wares of many kinds. The first floor of a brick store opposite was occupied by a hair-dresser with whom our London fellow-passenger claimed acquaintance. One day we were sitting at his window, looking across at the old warden's house, when a singular scene was enacted under our astonished eyes. A beggarman, so ragged as barely to comply with the demands of common decency, and bearing an old sack suspended over his shoulder on a short cudgel, came lounging along the middle of the street seeking alms. A butcher's dog of aristocratic tastes took offence at the man's rags, and attacked him savagely. The old man struck at the dog, the dog's owner darted out of his cellar and struck at the beggar, somebody else took a part, and in the twinkling of an eye as it were, the narrow street was blocked up with men furiously-wielding shillelaghs, striking right and left at whoever happened to be most handy, and yelling like Dante's devils in full chorus. Another minute, and a squad of policemen in green uniforms—peelers, they are popularly called—appeared as if by magic, and with the effect of magic; for instantly, and with a celerity evidently the result of long practice, the crowd, beggarman, butcher, dog and all, vanished into the yawning cellars, and the street was left as quiet as before, the police marching leisurely back to their barracks.

We spent much of our time in rambling along the shore of Galway Bay, a beautiful and extensive harbour, where we found many curious specimens of sea-weeds, particularly the edible dilosk, and rare shells and minerals. Some of our people went out shooting snipe, and were warned on all hands to go in parties, and to take care of their guns, which would prove too strong a temptation for the native peasantry, as the spirit of Ribbonism was rife throughout Connemara. Another amusement was, to watch the groups of visitors from Tuam and the surrounding parts of Clare and other counties, who were attracted by the marvel of a ship of five hundred tons in their bay, no such phenomenon having happened within the memory of man. At another time we explored the rapid river Corrib, and the beautiful lake of the same name, a few miles distant. The salmon weirs on the river were exceedingly interesting, where we saw the largest fish confined in cribs for market, and apparently quite unconscious of their captivity. The castle of one of the Lynch family was visible from the bay, an ancient structure with its walls mounted with cannon to keep sheriffs' officers at a distance. Other feudal castles were also in sight.

Across the bay loomed the rugged mountains of Clare, seemingly utterly barren in their bleak nakedness. With the aid of the captain's telescope we could see on these inhospitable hills dark objects, which turned out to be the mud cabins of a numerous peasantry, the very class for whom, in this present year of 1883, Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues are trying to create an elysium of rural contentment. We traversed the country roads for miles, to observe the mode of farming there, and could find nothing, even up to the very streets of Galway, but mud cabins with one or two rooms, shared with the cow and pigs, and entrenched, as it were, behind a huge pile of manure that must have been the accumulation of years. Anything in the shape of valuable improvements was conspicuously absent.

Everything in Connemara seems paradoxical. These rough-coated, hard-worked, down-trodden Celts proved to be the liveliest, brightest, wittiest of mankind. They came in shoals to our ship, danced reels by the hour upon deck to a whistled accompaniment, with the most extravagant leaps and snapping of fingers. It was an amusing sight to see women driving huge pigs into the sea, held by a string tied to the hind leg, and there scraping and sluicing the unwieldy, squealing creatures until they came out as white as new cream. These Galway women are singularly handsome, with a decidedly Murillo cast of features, betokening plainly their Iberian ancestry. They might well have sat as models to the chief of Spanish painters.

In the suburbs of Galway are many acres of boggy land, which are cultivated as potato plots, highly enriched with salt sea-weed manure, and very productive. These farms—by which title they are dignified—were rented, we were told, at three to four pounds sterling per acre. Rents in the open country ranged from one pound upwards. Yet we bought cup potatoes at twopence per stone of sixteen lbs.; and for a leg of mutton paid sixpence English.

Enquiring the cause of these singular anomalies, we were assured on all hands, that the system of renting through middlemen was the bane of Ireland. A farm might be sub-let two or three times, each tenant paying an increased rental, and the landlord-in-chief, a Blake, a Lynch, or a Martin, realizing less rent than he would obtain in Scotland or England. We heard of no Protestant oppressors here; the gentry and nobility worshipped at the same altar with the humblest of their dependents, and certainly meant them well and treated them considerately.

We attended the English service in the ancient Gothic Abbey Church. The ministrations were of the strictest Puritan type; the sculptured escutcheons and tablets on the walls—the groined arches and bosses of the roof—were almost obliterated by thick coat upon coat of whitewash, laid on in an iconoclastic spirit which I have since seen equalled in the Dutch Cathedral of Rotterdam, and nowhere else. Another Sunday we visited a small Roman Catholic chapel at some distance. It was impossible to get inside the building, as the crowd of worshippers not only filled the sacred edifice, but spread themselves over a pretty extensive and well-filled churchyard, where they knelt throughout morning prayer, lasting a full hour or more.

The party-feuds of the town are quite free from sectarian feeling. The fishermen, who were dressed from head to foot in hoddengray, and the butchers, who clothed themselves entirely in sky-blue—coats, waistcoats, breeches, and stockings alike, with black hats and shoes—constituted the belligerent powers. Every Saturday night, or oftener, they would marshal their forces respectively on the wide fish-market place, by the sea-shore, or on the long wharf extending into deep water, and with their shillelaghs hold high tournament for the honour of their craft and the love of fair maidens. One night, while the Asia lay off the wharf, an unfortunate combatant fell senseless into the water and was drowned. But no inquiry followed, and no surprise was expressed at a circumstance so trivial.

By the way, it would be unpardonable to quit Connemara without recording its "potheen." Every homestead had its peat-stack, and every peat-stack might be the hiding-place of a keg of illicit native spirits. We were invited, and encouraged by example, to taste a glass; but a single mouthful almost choked us; and never again did we dare to put the fiery liquid to our lips.

Our recollections of Galway are of a mixed character—painful, because of the consciousness that the empire at large must be held responsible for the unequal distribution of nature's blessings amongst her people—pleasant, because of the uniform hospitality and courtesy shown to us by all classes and creeds of the townsfolk.

CHAPTER VI.

MORE SEA EXPERIENCES.

In the month of July we were ready for sea again. In the meantime Captain Ward had got together a new list of passengers, and we more than doubled our numbers by the addition of several Roman Catholic gentlemen of birth and education with their followers, and a party of Orangemen and their families, of a rather rough farming sort, escaping from religious feuds and hostile neighbours. A blooming widow Culleeney, of the former class, was added to the scanty female society on board; and for the first few hours after leaving port, we had fun and dancing on deck galore. But alas, sea-sickness put an end to our merriment all too soon. Our new recruits fled below, and scarcely showed their faces on deck for several days. Yet, in this apparently quiet interval, discord had found her way between decks.

We were listening one fine evening to the comical jokes and rich brogue of the most gentlemanly of the Irish Catholics above-mentioned, when suddenly a dozen men, women and children, armed with sticks and foaming at the mouth, rushed up the steerage hatchway, and without note of warning or apparent provocation, attacked the defenceless group standing near us with the blindness of insanity and the most frantic cries of rage. Fortunately there were several of the ship's officers and sailors on deck, who laid about them lustily with their fists, and speedily drove the attacking party below, where they were confined for some days, under a threat of severe punishment from the captain, who meant what he said. So this breeze passed over. What it was about, who was offended, and how, we never could discover; we set it down to the general principle, that the poor creatures were merely 'blue-mowlded for want of a bating.'

Moderately fair breezes, occasional dead calms, rude, baffling head-winds, attended us until we reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence. After sailing all day northward, and all night southerly, we found ourselves next morning actually retrograded some thirty or forty knots. But we were rewarded sometimes by strange sights and wondrous spectacles. Once a shoal of porpoises and grampuses crossed our course, frolicking and turning summersets in the air, and continuing to stream onwards for full two hours. Another time, when far north, we had the most magnificent display of aurora borealis. Night after night the sea became radiant with phosphorescent light. Icebergs attended us in thousands, compelling our captain to shorten sail frequently; once we passed near two of these ice-cliffs which exceeded five hundred feet in height, and again we were nearly overwhelmed by the sudden break-down of a huge mass as big as a cathedral. Near the Island of Anticosti we saw at least three hundred spouting whales at one view. I have crossed the Atlantic four times since, and have scarcely seen a single whale or shark. It seems that modern steamship travel has driven away the inhabitants of the deep to quieter seas, and robbed "life on the ocean wave" of much of its romance.

CHAPTER VII.

UP THE ST. LAWRENCE.

The St. Lawrence River was gained, and escaping with a few days' quarantine at Grosse Isle, we reached Quebec, there to be transferred to a fine steamer for Montreal. At Lachine we were provided with large barges, here called batteaux, which sufficed to accommodate the whole of the Asia's passengers going west, with their luggage. They were drawn by Canadian ponies, lively and perfectly hardy little animals, which, with their French-Canadian drivers, amused us exceedingly. While loading up, we were favoured with one of those accidental historical "bits"—as a painter would say—which occur so rarely in a lifetime. The then despot of the North-West, Sir George Simpson, was just starting for the seat of his government via the Ottawa River. With him were some half-dozen officers, civil and military, and the party was escorted by six or eight Nor'-West canoes—each thirty or forty feet long, and manned by some twenty-four Indians, in the full glory of war-paint, feathers, and most dazzling costumes. To see these stately boats, and their no less stately crews, gliding with measured stroke, in gallant procession, on their way to the vasty wilderness of the Hudson's Bay territory, with the British flag displayed at each prow, was a sight never to be forgotten. And as they paddled, the woods echoed far and wide to the strange weird sounds of their favourite boat-song:—

"A la claire fontaine, M'en allant promener, J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle, Que je m'y suis baigné. Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublirai."

From Lachine to the Coteau, thence by canal and along shore successively to Cornwall, Prescott, and Kingston, occupied several days. We were charmed to get on dry land, to follow our batteau along well-beaten paths, gathering nuts, stealing a few apples now and then from some orchard skirting the road; dining at some weather-boarded way-side tavern, with painted floors, and French cuisine, all delightfully strange and comical to us; then on board the batteau again at night. Once, in a cedar swamp, we were enraptured at finding a dazzling specimen of the scarlet lobelia fulgens, the most brilliant of wild flowers, which Indians use for making red ink. At another time, the Long Sault rapids, up which was steaming the double-hulled steamer Iroquois, amazed us by their grandeur and power, and filled our minds with a sense of the vastness of the land we had come to inhabit. And so we wended on our way until put aboard the Lake Ontario steamer United Kingdom for Little York, where we landed about the first week in September, 1833, after a journey of four months. Now-a-days, a trip to England by the Allan Line is thought tedious if it last ten days, and even five days is considered not unattainable. When we left England, a thirty mile railway from Liverpool to Manchester was all that Europe had seen. Dr. Dionysius Lardner pronounced steam voyages across the Atlantic an impossibility, and men believed him. Now, even China and Japan have their railways and steamships; Canada is being spanned from the Atlantic to the Pacific by a railroad, destined, I believe, to work still greater changes in the future of our race, and of the world.

CHAPTER VIII.

MUDDY LITTLE YORK.

When we landed at York, it contained 8,500 inhabitants or thereabouts, being the same population nearly as Belleville, St. Catharines, and Brantford severally claimed in 1881. In addition to King street the principal thoroughfares were Lot, Hospital, and Newgate streets, now more euphoniously styled Queen, Richmond and Adelaide streets respectively; Church, George, Bay and York streets were almost without buildings; Yonge street ran north thirty-three miles to Lake Simcoe, and Dundas street extended westward a hundred miles to London. More or less isolated wooden stores there were on King and Yonge streets; taverns were pretty numerous; a wooden English church; Methodist, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic churches of the like construction; a brick gaol and court-house of the ugliest architecture: scattered private houses, a wheat-field where now stands the Rossin House; beyond it a rough-cast Government House, brick Parliament Buildings uglier even than the gaol, and some government offices located in one-story brick buildings twenty-five feet square,—comprised the lions of the Toronto of that day. Of brick private buildings, only Moore's hotel at the corner of Market square; J. S. Baldwin's residence, now the Canada Company's office; James F. Smith's grocery (afterwards the Colonist office), on King street; Ridout's hardware store at the corner of King and Yonge streets, occur to my memory, but there may have been one or two others. So well did the town merit its muddy soubriquet, that in crossing Church street near St. James's Church, boots were drawn off the feet by the tough clay soil; and to reach our tavern on Market lane (now Colborne street), we had to hop from stone to stone placed loosely along the roadside. There was rude flagged pavement here and there, but not a solitary planked footpath throughout the town.

To us the sole attraction was the Emigrant Office. At that time, Sir John Colborne, Lieut. Governor of Upper Canada, was exerting himself to induce retired army officers, and other well-to-do settlers, to take up lands in the country north and west of Lake Simcoe. U. E. rights, i.e., location tickets for two hundred acres of land, subject to conditions of actual settlement, were easily obtainable. We purchased one of these for a hundred dollars, or rather for twenty pounds sterling—dollars and cents not being current in Canada at that date—and forthwith booked ourselves for Lake Simcoe, in an open waggon without springs, loaded with the bedding and cooking utensils of intending settlers, some of them our shipmates of the Asia. A day's journey brought us to Holland Landing, whence a small steamer conveyed us across the lake to Barrie. The Holland River was then a mere muddy ditch, swarming with huge bullfrogs and black snakes, and winding in and out through thickets of reeds and rushes. Arrived at Barrie, we found a wharf, a log bakery, two log taverns—one of them also a store—and a farm house, likewise log. Other farm-houses there were at some little distance, hidden by trees.

Some of our fellow travellers were discouraged by the solitary appearance of things here, and turned back at once. My brothers and myself, and one other emigrant, determined to go on; and next afternoon, armed with axes, guns, and mosquito nets, off we started for the unknown forest, then reaching, unbroken, from Lake Simcoe to Lake Huron. From Barrie to the Nottawasaga river, eleven miles, a road had been chopped and logged sixty-six feet wide; beyond the river, nothing but a bush path existed.

CHAPTER IX.

A PIONEER TAVERN.

We had walked a distance of eight miles, and it was quite dark, when we came within sight of the clearing where we were advised to stop for the night. Completely blockading the road, and full in our way, was a confused mass of felled timber, which we were afterwards told was a wind-row or brush-fence. It consisted of an irregular heap of prostrate trees, branches and all, thrown together in line, to serve as a fence against stray cattle. After several fruitless attempts to effect an entrance, there was nothing for it but to shout at the top of our voices for assistance.

Presently we heard a shrill cry, rather like the call of some strange bird than a human voice; immediately afterwards, the reflection of a strong light became visible, and a man emerged from the brush-wood, bearing a large blazing fragment of resinous wood, which lighted up every object around in a picturesque and singular manner. High over head, eighty feet at least, was a vivid green canopy of leaves, extending on all sides as far as the eye could penetrate, varied here and there by the twinkling of some lustrous star that peeped through from the dark sky without, and supported by the straight trunks and arching branches of innumerable trees—the rustic pillars of this superb natural temple. The effect was strikingly beautiful and surprising.

Nor was the figure of our guide less strange. He was the first genuine specimen of a Yankee we had encountered—a Vermonter—tall, bony and awkward, but with a good-natured simplicity in his shrewd features; he wore uncouth leather leggings, tied with deer sinews—loose mocassins, a Guernsey shirt, a scarlet sash confining his patched trowsers at the waist, and a palmetto hat, dragged out of all describable shape, the colour of each article so obscured by stains and rough usage, as to be matter rather of conjecture than certainty. He proved to be our landlord for the night, David Root by name.

Following his guidance, and climbing successively over a number of huge trunks, stumbling through a net-work of branches, and plunging into a shallow stream up to the ankles in soft mud, we reached at length what he called his tavern, at the further side of the clearing. It was a log building of a single apartment, where presided "the wife," a smart, plump, good-looking little Irishwoman, in a stuff gown, and without shoes or stockings. They had been recently married, as he promptly informed us, had selected this wild spot on a half-opened road, impassable for waggons, without a neighbour for miles, and under the inevitable necessity of shouldering all their provisions from the embryo village we had just quitted: all this with the resolute determination of "keeping tavern."

The floor was of loose split logs, hewn into some approach to evenness with an adze; the walls of logs entire, filled in the interstices with chips of pine, which, however, did not prevent an occasional glimpse of the objects visible outside, and had the advantage, moreover, of rendering a window unnecessary; the hearth was the bare soil, the ceiling slabs of pine wood, the chimney a square hole in the roof; the fire literally an entire tree, branches and all, cut into four-feet lengths, and heaped up to the height of as many feet. It was a chill evening, and the dancing flames were inspiriting, as they threw a cheerful radiance all around, and revealed to our curious eyes extraordinary pieces of furniture—a log bedstead in the darkest corner, a pair of snow-shoes, sundry spiral augers and rough tools, a bundle of dried deer-sinews, together with some articles of feminine gear, a small red framed looking-glass, a clumsy comb suspended from a nail by a string, and other similar treasures.

We were accommodated with stools of various sizes and heights, on three legs or on four, or mere pieces of log sawn short off, which latter our host justly recommended as being more steady on the uneven floor. We exchanged our wet boots for slippers, mocassins, or whatever the good-natured fellow could supply us with. The hostess was intently busy making large flat cakes; roasting them, first on one side, then on the other; and alternately boiling and frying broad slices of salt pork, when, suddenly suspending operations, she exclaimed, with a vivacity that startled us, "Oh, Root, I've cracked my spider!"

Inquiring with alarm what was the matter, we learned that the cast-iron pan on three feet, which she used for her cookery, was called a "spider," and that its fracture had occasioned the exclamation. The injured spider performed "its spiriting gently" notwithstanding, and, sooth to say, all parties did full justice to its savoury contents.

Bed-time drew near. A heap of odd-looking rugs and clean blankets was laid for our accommodation and pronounced to be ready. But how to get into it? We had heard of some rather primitive practices among the steerage passengers on board ship, it is true, but had not accustomed ourselves to "uncase" before company, and hesitated to lie down in our clothes. After waiting some little time in blank dismay, Mr. Root kindly set us an example by quietly slipping out of his nether integuments and turning into bed. There was no help for it; by one means or other we contrived to sneak under the blankets; and, after hanging up a large coloured quilt between our lair and the couch occupied by her now snoring spouse, the good wife also disappeared.

In spite of the novelty of the situation, and some occasional disturbance from gusts of wind stealing through the "chinks," and fanning into brightness the dying embers on the hearth, we slept deliciously and awoke refreshed.

CHAPTER X.

A FIRST DAY IN THE BUSH.

Before day-break breakfast was ready, and proved to be a more tempting meal than the supper of the night before. There were fine dry potatoes, roast wild pigeon, fried pork, cakes, butter, eggs, milk, "China tea," and chocolate—which last was a brown-coloured extract of cherry-tree bark, sassafras root, and wild sarsaparilla, warmly recommended by our host as "first-rate bitters." Declining this latter beverage, we made a hearty meal.

It was now day-break. As we were new comers, Root offered to convoy us "a piece of the way," a very serviceable act of kindness, for, in the dim twilight we experienced at first no little difficulty in discerning it. Pointing out some faint glimmerings of morning, which were showing themselves more and more brightly over the tall tree-tops, our friend remarked, "I guess that's where the sun's calc'lating to rise."

The day had advanced sufficiently to enable us to distinguish the road with ease. Our tavern-keeper returned to his work, and in a few minutes the forest echoed to the quick strokes of his lustily-wielded axe. We found ourselves advancing along a wide avenue, unmarked as yet by the track of wheels, and unimpeded by growing brush-wood. To the width of sixty-six feet, all the trees had been cut down to a height of between two and three feet, in a precisely straight course for miles, and burnt or drawn into the woods; while along the centre, or winding from side to side like the course of a drunken man, a waggon-track had been made by grubbing up smaller and evading the larger stumps, or by throwing a collection of small limbs and decayed wood into the deeper inequalities. Here and there, a ravine would be rendered passable by placing across it two long trunks of trees, often at a sharp angle, and crossing these transversely with shorter logs; the whole covered with brush-wood and earth, and dignified with the name of a "corduroy bridge."

At the Nottawasaga River, we found a log house recently erected, the temporary residence of Wellesley Richey, Esq., an Irish gentleman, then in charge of the new settlements thereabouts. Mr. Richey received us very courteously, and handed us over to the charge of an experienced guide, whose business it was to show lands to intending settlers—a very necessary precaution indeed, as after a mile or two the road ceased altogether.

For some miles further, the forest consisted of Norway and white pine, almost unmixed with any other timber. There is something majestic in these vast and thickly-set labyrinths of brown columnar stems averaging a hundred and fifty feet in height, perhaps, and from one to five in thickness, making a traveller feel somewhat like a Lilliputian Gulliver in a field of Brobdignagian wheat. It is singular to observe the effect of an occasional gust of wind in such situations. It may not even fan your cheek; but you hear a low surging sound, like the moaning of breakers in a calm sea, which gradually increases to a loud boisterous roar, still seemingly at a great distance; the branches remain in perfect repose, you can discover no evidence of a stirring breeze, till, looking perpendicularly upwards, you are astonished to see some patriarchal giant close at hand—six yards round and sixty high—which alone has caught the breeze, waving its huge fantastic arms wildly at a dizzy height above your head.

There are times when the hardiest woodman dares not enter the pine woods; when some unusually severe gale sweeping over them bends their strong but slender stems like willow wands, or catches the wide-spreading branches of the loftier trees with a force that fairly wrenches them out by the roots, which creeping along on the surface of the soil, present no very powerful resistance. Nothing but the close contiguity of the trees saves them from general prostration. Interlocked branches are every moment broken off and flung to a distance, and even the trunks clash, and as it were, whet themselves against each other, with a shock and uproar that startles the firmest nerves.

It were tedious to detail all the events of our morning's march: How armed with English fowling pieces and laden with ammunition, we momentarily expected to encounter some grisly she-bear, with a numerous family of cubs; or at the least a herd of deer or a flock of wild turkeys: how we saw nothing more dangerous than woodpeckers with crimson heads, hammering away at decayed trees like transmigrated carpenters; how we at last shot two partridges sitting on branches, very unlike English ones, of which we were fain to make a meal, which was utterly detestable for want of salt; how the government guide led us, helter-skelter, into the untracked woods, walking as for a wager, through thickets of ground hemlock,[2] which entangled our feet and often tripped us up; how we were obliged to follow him over and under wind-falls, to pass which it was necessary to climb sometimes twenty feet along some half-recumbent tree; how when we enquired whether clay or sand were considered the best soil, he said some preferred one, and some the other; how he showed us the front of a lot that was bad, and guessed that the rear ought to be better; how we turned back at last, thoroughly jaded, but no wiser than when we set out—all this and much more, must be left to the reader's imagination.

It was drawing towards evening. The guide strode in advance, tired and taciturn, like some evil fate. We followed in pairs, each of us provided with a small bunch of leafy twigs to flap away the mosquitoes, which rose in myriads from the thick, damp underbrush.

"It will be getting dark," said the guide, "you must look out for the blaze."

We glanced anxiously around. "What does he mean?" asked one of the party, "I see no blaze."

The man explained that the blaze (query, blazon?) was a white mark which we had noticed on some of the trees in our route, made by slicing off a portion of the bark with an axe, and invariably used by surveyors to indicate the road, as well as divisions and sub-divisions of townships. After a time this mark loses its whiteness and becomes undistinguishable in the dusk of evening, even to an experienced eye.

Not a little rejoiced were we, when we presently saw a genuine blaze in the form of a log fire, that brilliantly lighted up the forest in front of a wigwam, which, like everything else on that eventful day, was to us delightfully new and interesting. We found, seated on logs near the fire, two persons in blanket coats and red sashes, evidently gentlemen; and occupying a second wigwam at a little distance, half-a-dozen axemen. The gentlemen proved to be the Messrs. Walker, afterwards of Barrie, sons of the wealthy owner of the great shot-works at Waterloo Bridge, London, England. They had purchased a tract of a thousand acres, and commenced operations by hiring men to cut a road through the forest eight or ten miles to their new estate, which pioneering exploit they were now superintending in person. Nothing could exceed the vigour of their plans. Their property was to be enclosed in a ring fence like a park, to exclude trespassers on their game. They would have herds of deer and wild horses. The river which intersected their land was to be cleared of the drift logs, and made navigable. In short, they meant to convert it into another England. In the meanwhile, the elder brother had cut his foot with an axe, and was disabled for the present; and the younger was busily engaged in the unromantic occupation of frying pancakes, which the axemen, who were unskilled in cookery, were to have for their supper.

Nowhere does good-fellowship spring up so readily as in the bush. We were soon engaged in discussing the aforesaid pancakes, with some fried pork, as well as in sharing the sanguine hopes and bright visions which accorded so well with our own ideas and feelings.

We quitted the wigwam and its cheerful tenants with mutual good wishes for success, and shortly afterwards reached the river whence we had started, where Mr. Richey kindly invited us to stay for the night. Exhausted by our rough progress, we slept soundly till the morning sun shone high over the forest.

CHAPTER XI.

A CHAPTER ON CHOPPING.

Imagine yourself, gentle reader, who have perhaps passed most of your days between the wearisome confinement of an office or counting-house, and a rare holiday visit of a few days or weeks at your cousin's or grandfather's pleasant farm in the country—imagine yourself, I say, transplanted to a "home" like ours. No road approaches within ten miles; no footpath nearer than half that distance; the surveyor's blaze is the sole distinctive mark between the adjoining lots and your own; there are trees innumerable—splendid trees—beech, maple, elm, ash, cherry—above and around you, which, while you are wondering what on earth to do with them, as you see no chance of conveying them to market for sale, you are horrified to hear, must be consumed by fire—yea, burnt ruthlessly to ashes, and scattered over the surface of the earth as "good manure"; unless indeed—a desperately forlorn hope—you may "some day" have an opportunity of selling them in the shape of potash, "when there is a road out" to some navigable lake or river.

Well, say you, let us set to work and chop down some of these trees. Softly, good sir. In the first place, you must underbrush. With an axe or a strong, long handled bill-hook, made to be used with both hands, you cut away for some distance round—a quarter or half an acre perhaps—all the small saplings and underwood which would otherwise impede your operations upon the larger trees. In "a good hard-wood bush," that is, where the principal timber is maple, white oak, elm, white ash, hickory, and other of the harder species of timber—the "underbrush" is very trifling indeed; and in an hour or two may be cleared off sufficiently to give the forest an agreeable park-like appearance—so much so that, as has been said of English Acts of Parliament, any skilful hand might drive a coach and six through.

When you have finished "under-brushing," you stand with whetted axe, ready and willing to attack the fathers of the forest—but stay—you don't know how to chop? It is rather doubtful, as you have travelled hither in a great hurry, whether you have ever seen an axeman at work. Your man, Carroll, who has been in the country five or six years, and is quite au fait, will readily instruct you. Observe—you strike your axe, by a dexterous swing backwards and round over your shoulder,—take care there are no twigs near you, or you may perhaps hurt yourself seriously—you strike your axe into the tree with a downward slant, at about thirty inches from the ground; then, by an upward stroke you meet the former incision and release a chip, which flies out briskly. Thus you proceed, by alternate downward and upward or horizontal strokes on that side of the tree which leans over, or towards which you wish to compel it to fall, until you have made a clear gap rather more than half way through, when you attack it in rear.

Now for the reward of your perspiring exertions—a few well-aimed blows on the reverse side of the tree, rather higher than in front, and the vast mass "totters to its fall,"—another for the coup-de-grace—crack! crack! cra-a-ack!—aha!—away with you behind yon beech—the noble tree bows gently its leafy honours with graceful sweep towards the earth—for a moment slowly and leisurely, presently with giddy velocity, until it strikes the ground, amidst a whirlwind of leaves, with a loud thud, and a concussion both of air and earth, that may be felt at a considerable distance. You feel yourself a second David, who has overthrown a mightier Goliath.

Now do you step exultingly upon the prostrate trunk, which you forthwith proceed to cut up into about fourteen-foot lengths, chopping all the branches close off, and throwing the smaller on to your brush piles. It is a common mistake of new immigrants, who are naturally enough pleased with the novel spectacle of falling trees, to cut down so many before they begin to chop them into lengths, that the ground is wholly encumbered, and becomes a perfect chaos of confused and heaped-up trunks and branches, which nothing but the joint operation of decay and fire will clear off, unless at an immense waste of time and trouble. To an experienced axeman, these first attempts at chopping afford a ready text for all kinds of ironical comments upon the unworkmanlike appearance of the stumps and "cuts," which are generally—like those gnawn off by beavers in making their dams—haggled all round the tree, instead of presenting two clear smooth surfaces, in front and rear, as if sliced off with a knife. Your genuine axeman is not a little jealous of his reputation as a "clean cutter"—his axe is always bright as burnished silver, guiltless of rust or flaw, and fitted with a handle which, with its graceful curve and slender proportions, is a tolerable approach to Hogarth's "line of beauty;" he would as soon think of deserting his beloved "bush" and settling in a town! as trust his keen weapon in the hands of inexperience or even mediocrity. With him every blow tells—he never leaves the slightest chip in the "cut," nor makes a false stroke, so that in passing your hand over the surface thus left, you are almost unable to detect roughness or inequality.

But we must return to our work, and take care in so doing to avoid the mishap which befel a settler in our neighbourhood. He was busy chopping away manfully at one of those numerous trees which, yielding to the force of some sudden gust of wind, have fallen so gently among their compeers, that the greater portion of their roots still retains a powerful hold upon the soil, and the branches put forth their annual verdure as regularly as when erect. Standing on the recumbent trunk, at a height of five or six feet from the ground, the man toiled away, in happy ignorance of his danger, until having chopped nearly to the centre on both sides of the tree, instead of leaping off and completing the cut in safety on terra firma, he dealt a mighty stroke which severed at once the slight portion that remained uncut—in an instant, as if from a mortar, the poor fellow was launched sixteen feet into the air, by the powerful elasticity of the roots, which, relieved from the immense weight of the trunk and branches, reverted violently to their natural position, and flung their innocent releaser to the winds. The astonished chopper, falling on his back, lay stunned for many minutes, and when he was at length able to rise, crawled to his shanty sorely bruised and bewildered. He was able, however, to return to his work in a few days, but not without vowing earnestly never again to trust himself next the root.

There are other precautions to be observed, such as whether the branches interlock with other trees, in which case they will probably break off, and must be carefully watched, lest they fall or are flung back upon oneself—what space you have to escape at the last moment—whether the tree is likely to be caught and twisted aside in its fall, or held upright, a very dangerous position, as then you must cut down others to release it, and can hardly calculate which way it will tend: these and many other circumstances are to be noted and watched with a cool judgment and steady eye, to avoid the numerous accidents to which the inexperienced and rash are constantly exposed. One of these mischances befel an Amazonian chopper of our neighbourhood, whose history, as we can both chop and talk, I shall relate.

Mary —— was the second of several daughters of an emigrant from the county of Galway, whose family, having suffered from continual hardship and privation in their native land, had found no difficulty in adapting themselves to the habits and exigencies of the wilderness.

Hardworking they were all and thrifty. Mary and her elder sister, neither of them older than eighteen, would start before day-break to the nearest store, seventeen miles off, and return the same evening laden each with a full sack flung across the shoulder, containing about a bushel and a half, or 90lbs. weight of potatoes, destined to supply food for the family, as well as seed for their first crop. Being much out of doors, and accustomed to work about the clearing, Mary became in time a "first-rate" chopper, and would yield to none of the new settlers in the dexterity with which she would fell, brush and cut up maple or beech; and preferring such active exercise to the dull routine of household work, took her place at chopping, logging or burning, as regularly and with at least as much spirit as her brothers. Indeed, chopping is quite an accomplishment among young women in the more remote parts of the woods, where schools are unknown, and fashions from New York or Philadelphia have not yet penetrated. A belle of this class will employ her leisure hours in learning to play—not the piano-forte—but the dinner-horn, a bright tin tube sometimes nearly four feet in length, requiring the lungs of that almost forgotten individual, an English mail-coach-guard; and an intriguing mamma of those parts will bid her daughter exhibit the strength of her throat and the delicacy of her musical ear, by a series of flourishes and "mots" upon her graceful "tooting-weapon." I do not mean, however, that Mary possessed this fashionable acquirement, as the neighbourhood had not then arrived at such an advanced era of musical taste, but she made up in hard work for all other deficiencies; and being a good-looking, sunny-faced, dark-eyed, joyous-hearted girl, was not a little admired among the young axe-men of the township. But she preferred remaining under her parents' roof-tree, where her stout-arm and resolute disposition rendered her absolute mistress of the household, to the indignity of promising to "obey" any man, who could wield no better axe than her own. At length it was whispered that Mary's heart, long hard as rock-elm, had become soft as basswood, under the combined influence of the stalwart figure, handsome face and good axe of Johnny, a lad of eighteen recently arrived in the neighbourhood, who was born in one of the early Scotch settlements in the Newcastle District—settlements which have turned out a race of choppers, accustomed from their infancy to handle the axe, and unsurpassed in the cleanness of their cut, the keenness of their weapon, or the amount of cordwood they can chop, split and pile in a day.

Many a fair denizen of the abodes of fashion might have envied Mary the bright smiles and gay greetings which passed between her and young Johnny, when they met in her father's clearing at sunrise to commence the day's work. It is common for axemen to exchange labour, as they prefer working in couples, and Johnny was under a treaty of this kind with Patsy, Mary's brother. But Patsy vacated his place for Mary, who was emulous of beating the young Scotch lad at his own weapon; and she had tucked up her sleeves and taken in the slack, as a sailor would say, of her dress—Johnny meanwhile laying aside his coat, waistcoat and neckcloth, baring his brawny arms, and drawing tight the bright scarlet sash round his waist—thus equipped for their favourite occupation, they chopped away in merry rivalry, at maple, elm, ash, birch and basswood—Johnny sometimes gallantly fetching water from the deliciously-cold natural spring that oozed out of the mossy hill-side, to quench Mary's thirst, and stealing now and then a kiss by way of guerdon—for which he never failed to get a vehement box on the ear, a penalty which, although it would certainly have annihilated any lover of less robust frame, he seemed nowise unwilling to incur again and again. Thus matters proceeded, the maiden by no means acknowledging herself beaten, and the young man too gallant to outstrip overmuch his fair opponent—until the harsh sound of the breakfast or dinner horn would summon both to the house, to partake of the rude but plentiful mess of "colcannon" and milk, which was to supply strength for a long and severe day's labour.

Alas! that I should have to relate the melancholy termination of poor Mary's unsophisticated career. Whether Johnny's image occupied her thoughts, to the exclusion of the huge yellow birch she was one day chopping, or that the wicked genius who takes delight in thwarting the course of true love had caught her guardian angel asleep on his post, I know not; but certain it is, that in an evil hour she miscalculated the cut, and was thoughtlessly continuing her work, when the birch, overbalancing, split upwards, and the side nearest to Mary, springing suddenly out, struck her a blow so severe as to destroy life instantaneously. Her yet warm remains were carried hastily to the house, and every expedient for her recovery that the slender knowledge of the family could suggest, was resorted to, but in vain. I pass over the silent agony of poor Johnny, and the heart-rending lamentations of the mother and sisters. In a decent coffin, contrived after many unsuccessful attempts by Johnny and Patsy, the unfortunate girl was carried to her grave, in the same field which she had assisted to clear, amid a concourse of simple-minded, coarsely-clad, but kindly sympathising neighbours, from all parts of the surrounding district. Many years have rolled away since I stood by Mary's fresh-made grave, and it may be that Johnny has forgotten his first love; but I was told, that no other had yet taken the place of her, whom he once hoped to make his "bonny bride."

By this time you have cut down trees enough to enable you fairly to see the sky! Yes, dear sir, it was entirely hidden before, and the sight is not a little exhilarating to a new "bush-whacker." We must think of preparing fire-wood for the night. It is highly amusing to see a party of axemen, just returning from their work, set about this necessary task. Four "hands" commence at once upon some luckless maple, whose excellent burning qualities ensure it the preference. Two on each side, they strike alternate blows—one with the right hand, his "mate" with the left—in a rapid succession of strokes that seem perfectly miraculous to the inexperienced beholder—the tree is felled in a trice—a dozen men jump upon it, each intent on exhibiting his skill by making his "cut" in the shortest possible time. The more modest select the upper end of the tree—the bolder attack the butt—their bright axes, flashing vividly in the sunbeams, are whirled around their heads with such velocity as to elude the eye—huge chips a foot broad are thrown off incessantly—they wheel round for the "back cut" at the same instant, like a file of soldiers facing about upon some enemy in rear—and in the space of two or three minutes, the once tall and graceful trunk lies dissevered in as many fragments as there are choppers.

It invariably astonishes new comers to observe with what dexterity and ease an axeman will fell a tree in the precise spot which he wishes it to occupy so as to suit his convenience in cutting it up, or in removing it by oxen to the log-pile where it is destined to be consumed. If it should happen to overhang a creek or "swale" (wet places where oxen cannot readily operate), every contrivance is resorted to, to overcome its apparently inevitable tendency. Choosing a time when not a breath of air is stirring to defeat his operations, or better still, when the wind is favourable, he cuts deeply into the huge victim on the side to which he wishes to throw it, until it actually trembles on the slight remaining support, cautiously regulating the direction of the "cut" so that the tree may not overbalance itself—then he gently fells among its branches on the reverse side all the smaller trees with which it may be reached—and last and boldest expedient of all, he cuts several "spring poles"—trimmed saplings from twenty to forty feet in length and four to eight inches thick—which with great care and labour are set up against the stem, and by the united strength and weight of several men used as spring levers, after the manner in which ladders are employed by fire-men to overthrow tottering stacks of chimneys; the squared end of these poles holding firmly in the rough bark, they slowly but surely compel the unwilling monster to obey the might of its hereditary ruler, man. With such certainty is this feat accomplished, that I have seen a solitary pine, nearly five feet thick and somewhere about a hundred and seventy feet in height, forced by this latter means, aided by the strength of two men only, against its decided natural bearing, to fall down the side of a mound, at the bottom of which a saw-pit was already prepared to convert it into lumber. The moment when the enormous mass is about yielding to its fate, is one of breathless interest—it sways alarmingly, as if it must inevitably fall backward, crushing poles and perhaps axemen to atoms in its overwhelming descent—ha! there is a slight cat's paw of air in our favour—cling to your pole—now! an inch or two gained!—the stout stick trembles and bends at the revulsive sway of the monstrous tree but still holds its own—drive your axe into the back cut—that helps her—again, another axe! soh, the first is loose—again!—she must go—both axes are fixed in the cut as immovably as her roots in the ground—another puff of wind—she sways the wrong way—no, no! hold on—she cracks—strike in again the slackened axes—bravo! one blow more—quick, catch your axe and clear out!—see! what a sweep—what a rush of wind—what an enormous top—down! down! how beautifully she falls—hurrah! just in the right place!

CHAPTER XII.

LIFE IN THE BACKWOODS.

We had selected, on the advice of our guide, a tolerably good hard-wood lot in the centre of the Township of Sunnidale, part of which is now the site of the village of New Lowell, on the Northern Railway. To engage a young Scotch axeman from the County of Lanark, on the Ottawa river; to try our virgin axes upon the splendid maples and beeches which it seemed almost a profanation to destroy; to fell half an acre of trees; to build a bark wigwam for our night's lodging; and in time to put up a substantial log shanty, roofed with wooden troughs and "chinked" with slats and moss—these things were to us more than mortal felicity. Our mansion was twenty-five feet long and eighteen wide. At one end an open fire-place, at the other sumptuous beds laid on flatted logs, cushioned with soft hemlock twigs, redolent of turpentine and health. For our provisions, cakes made of flour; salt pork of the best; tea and coffee without milk; with the occasional luxury of a few partridges and pigeons, and even a haunch of venison of our own shooting; also some potatoes. We wanted no more. There were few other settlers within many miles, and those as raw as ourselves; so we mended our own clothes, did our own cooking, and washed our own linen.

Owing to the tedious length of our sea voyage, there was no time for getting in crops that year; not even fall wheat; so we had plenty of leisure to make ourselves comfortable for the winter. And we were by no means without visitors. Sometimes a surveyor's party sought shelter for the night on their way to the strangely-named townships of Alta and Zero—now Collingwood and St. Vincent. Among these were Charles Rankin, surveyor, now of London; his brother, Arthur Rankin, since M.P. for Essex; a young gentleman from England, now Dr. Barrett, late of Upper Canada College. By-and-by came some Chippawa Indians, en route to or from the Christian Islands of Lake Huron; we were great friends with them. I had made a sort of harp or zittern, and they were charmed with its simple music. Their mode of counting money on their fingers was highly comical—"one cop, one cop, one cop, three cop!" and so on up to twenty, which was the largest sum they could accomplish. At night, they wrapped their blankets round them, lay down on the bare earthen floor near the fire, and slept quietly till day-break, when they would start on their way with many smiles and hand-shakings. In fact, our shanty, being the only comfortable shelter between Barrie and the Georgian Bay, became a sort of half-way house, at which travellers looked for a night's lodging; and we were not sorry when the opening of a log-tavern, a mile off, by an old Scotchwoman, ycleped Mother McNeil, enabled us to select our visitors. This tavern was a curiosity in its way, built of the roughest logs, with no artificial floor, but the soil being swaley or wet—a mud-hole yawned just inside the door, where bullfrogs not unfrequently saluted the wayfarer with their deepest diapason notes.

I must record my own experiences with their congeners, the toads. We were annoyed by flies, and I noticed an old toad creep stealthily from under the house logs, wait patiently near a patch of sunshine on the floor, and as soon as two or three flies, attracted by the sun's warmth, drew near its post, dart out its long slender tongue, and so catch them all one after another. Improving upon the hint, we afterwards regularly scattered a few grains of sugar, to attract more flies within the old fellow's reach, and thus kept the shanty comparatively clear of those winged nuisances, and secured quiet repose for ourselves in the early mornings. Another toad soon joined the first one, and they became so much at home as to allow us to scratch their backs gently with a stick, when they would heave up their puffed sides to be scrubbed. These toads swallow mice and young ducks, and in their turn fall victims to garter and other snakes.

During the following year, 1834, the Government opened up a settlement on the Sunnidale road, employing the new immigrants in road making, chopping and clearing, and putting up log shanties; and gave them the land so cleared to live on, but without power of sale. In this way, two or three hundred settlers, English, Irish and Highland Scotch, chiefly the latter, were located in Sunnidale. A Scottish gentleman, a Mr. H. C. Young, was appointed local immigrant agent, and spent some time with us. Eventually it was found that the laud was too aguish for settlement, being close to a large cedar swamp extending several miles to the Nottawasaga River; and on the representation of the agent, it was in 1835 determined to transfer operations to the adjoining township of Nottawasaga, in which the town of Collingwood is now situated.

It was about this time that the prospect of a railway from Toronto to the Georgian Bay was first mooted, the mouth of the Nottawasaga River being the expected terminus. A talented Toronto engineer whose name I think was Lynn, published a pamphlet containing an outline route for the railroad, which was extended through to the North-West. To him, doubtless, is due the first practical suggestion of a Canadian Pacific Railway. We, in Sunnidale, were confidently assured that the line would pass directly through our own land, and many a weary sigh at hope deferred did the delusion cost us.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOME GATHERINGS FROM NATURAL HISTORY.

I need not weary the reader with details of our farming proceedings, which differed in no respect from the now well-known routine of bush life. I will, however, add one or two notices of occurrences which may be thought worth relating. We were not without wild animals in our bush. Bears, wolves, foxes, racoons, skunks, mink and ermine among beasts; eagles, jays, many kinds of hawks, wood-peckers, loons, partridges and pigeons, besides a host of other birds, were common enough. Bears' nests abounded, consisting of a kind of arbour which the bear makes for himself in the top of the loftiest beech trees, by dragging inwards all the upper branches laden with their wealth of nuts, upon which he feasts at leisure. The marks of his formidable claws are plainly visible the whole length of the trunks of most large beech-trees. In Canada West the bear is seldom dangerous. One old fellow which we often encountered, haunted a favourite raspberry patch on the road-side; when anybody passed near him he would scamper off in such haste that I have seen him dash himself violently against any tree or fallen branch that might be in his way. Once we saw a bear roll himself headlong from the forks of a tree fully forty feet from the ground, tumbling over and over, but alighting safely, and "making tracks" with the utmost expedition.

An Englishman whom I knew, of a very studious temperament, was strolling along the Medonte road deeply intent upon a volume of Ovid or some other Latin author, when, looking up to ascertain the cause of a shadow which fell across his book, he found himself nearly stumbling against a huge brown bear, standing erect on its hind legs, and with formidable paw raised ready to strike. The surprise seems to have been mutual, for after waiting a moment or two as if to recognise each other's features should they meet again, the student merely said "Oh! a bear!" coolly turned on his heel, plunged into his book again, and walked slowly back toward the village, leaving Bruin to move off at leisure in an opposite direction. So saith my informant.

Another friend, when a youth, was quail-shooting on the site of the City of Toronto, which was nothing but a rough swampy thicket of cedars and pines mixed with hardwood. Stepping hastily across a rotten pine log, the lad plumped full upon a great fat bear taking its siesta in the shade. Which of the two fled the fastest is not known, but it was probably the animal, judging by my own experience in Sunnidale.

Wolves often disturbed us with their hideous howlings. We had a beautiful liver and white English setter, called Dash, with her two pups. One night in winter, poor Dash, whom we kept within doors, was excited by the yelping of her pups outside, which appeared to be alarmed by some intruder about the premises. A wolf had been seen prowling near, so we got out our guns and whatever weapon was handy, but incautiously opened the door and let out the slut before we were ourselves quite dressed. She rushed out in eager haste, and in a few seconds we heard the wolf and dog fighting, with the most frightful discord of yells and howls that ever deafened the human ear. The noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun. We followed as fast as we could to the scene of the struggle, but found nothing there except a trampled space in the snow stained with blood, the dog having evidently been killed and dragged away. Next morning we followed the track further, and found at no great distance another similar spot, where the wolf had devoured its victim so utterly, that not a hair, bone, nor anything else was left, save the poor animal's heart, which had been flung away to a little distance in the snow. Beyond this were no signs of blood. We set a trap for the wolf, and tracked him for miles in the hope of avenging poor Dash, but without effect. This same wolf, we heard afterwards, was killed by a settler with a handspike, to our great satisfaction.

Among our neighbours of the Sunnidale settlement was a married couple from England, named Sewell, very well-conducted and industrious. They had a fair little child under two years old, named Hetty, whom we often stopped to admire for her prettiness and engaging simplicity. They also possessed, and were very proud of, several broods of newly-hatched chickens, some of which had been carried off by an immense falcon, which would swoop down from the lofty elm-trees still left standing in the half-chopped clearing, too suddenly to be easily shot. One day Hetty was feeding the young chickens when the hawk pounced upon the old hen, which struggled desperately; whereupon little Hetty bravely joined in the battle, seized the intruder by the wings from behind and held him fast, crying out loudly, "I've got him, mother!" It turned out, after the hawk was killed, that it had been blind of one eye.

In the spring of 1834, we had with infinite labour managed to clear off a small patch of ground, which we sowed with spring wheat, and watched its growth with the most intense anxiety, until it attained a height of ten inches, and began to put forth tender ears. Already the exquisite pleasure of eating bread the product of our own land, and of our own labour, was present to our imaginations, and the number of bushels to be reaped, the barn for storage, the journeys to mill, were eagerly discussed. But one day in August, occurred a hail-storm such as is seldom experienced in half a century. A perfect cataract of ice fell upon our hapless wheat crop. Flattened hailstones measuring two and a half inches in diameter, seven and a half in circumference, covered the ground several inches deep. Every blade of wheat was utterly destroyed, and with it all our sanguine hopes of plenty for that year. I have preserved a tracing which I made at the time, of one of those hailstones. The centre was spherical, an inch in girth, from which laterally radiated lines three fourths of an inch long, like the spokes of a wheel, and outside of them again a wavy border resembling the undulating edge of pie crust. The superficial structure of the whole, was much like that of a full blown rose. A remarkable hail-storm occurred in Toronto, in the year 1878, but the stones, although similar in formation, were scarcely as bulky.

It was one night in November following, when our axeman, William Whitelaw, who had risen from bed at eleven o'clock to fetch a new log for the fire shouted to us to come out and see a strange sight. Lazily we complied, expecting nothing extraordinary; but, on getting into the cold frosty air outside, we were transfixed with astonishment and admiration. Our clearing being small, and the timber partly hemlock, we seemed to be environed with a dense black wall the height of the forest trees, while over all, in dazzling splendour, shone a canopy of the most brilliant meteors, radiating in all directions from a single point in the heavens, nearly over-head, but slightly to the north-west. I have since read all the descriptions of meteoric showers I could find in our scientific annals, and watched year after year for a return of the same wonderful vision, but neither in the records of history nor otherwise, since that night, have I read of or seen anything so marvellously beautiful. Hour after hour we gazed in wonder and awe, as the radiant messengers streamed on their courses, sometimes singly, sometimes in starry cohorts of thousands, appearing to descend amongst the trees close beside us, but in reality shooting far beyond the horizon. Those who have looked upwards during a fall of snow will remember how the large flakes seem to radiate from a centre. Thus I believe astronomers account for the appearance of these showers of stars, by the circumstance that they meet the earth full in its orbit, and so dart past it from an opposite point, like a flight of birds confronting a locomotive, or a storm of hail directly facing a vessel under full steam. No description I have read has given even a faint idea of the reality as I saw it on that memorable night. From eleven p.m. to three in the morning, the majestic spectacle continued in full glory, gradually fading away before the approach of daybreak.

We often had knotty and not very logical discussions about the origin of seeds, and the cause of the thick growth of new varieties of plants and trees wherever the forest had been burnt over. On our land, and everywhere in the immediate neighbourhood, the process of clearing by fire was sure to be followed by a spontaneous growth, first of fire-weed or wild lettuce, and secondly by a crop of young cherry trees, so thick as to choke one another. At other spots, where pine-trees had stood for a century, the outcome of their destruction by fire was invariably a thick growth of raspberries, with poplars of the aspen variety. Our Celtic friends, most of whom were pious Presbyterians, insisted that a new creation of plants must be constantly going on to account for such miraculous growth. To test the matter, I scooped up a panful of black soil from our clearing, washed it, and got a small tea-cupful of cherry-stones, exactly similar to those growing in the forest. The cause of this surprising accumulation of seed was not far to find. A few miles distant was a pigeon-roost. In spring, the birds would come flying round the east shore of Lake Huron, skirting the Georgian Bay, in such vast clouds as to darken the sun; and so swiftly that swan-shot failed to bring them down unless striking them in rear; and, even then, we rarely got them, as the velocity of their flight impelled them far into the thicket before falling. These beautiful creatures attacked our crops with serious results, and devoured all our young peas. I have known twenty-five pigeons killed at a single shot; and have myself got a dozen by firing at random into a maple-tree on which they had alighted, but where not one had been visible.

The pigeon-roost itself was a marvel. Men, women and children went by the hundred, some with guns, but the majority with baskets, to pick up the countless birds that had been disabled by the fall of great branches of trees broken off by the weight of their roosting comrades overhead. The women skinned the birds, cut off their plump breasts, throwing the remainder away, and packed them in barrels with salt, for keeping. To these pigeons we were, doubtless, indebted for our crop of young cherry-trees.

Where there was so much seed, a corresponding crop might be expected; and dense thickets of choke-cherry trees grew up in neglected clearings accordingly. Forcing my way through one of these, I found myself literally face to face with a garter snake five feet long, which was also in search of cherries, and had wriggled its way to the upper branches of a young tree ten feet high. Garter snakes, however, are as harmless as frogs, and like them, are the victims of a general persecution. In some places they are exceedingly numerous. One summer's evening I was travelling on foot from Holland Landing to Bradford, across the Holland river, a distance of three miles, nearly all marsh, laid with cedar logs placed crosswise, to form a passable road. The sun was nearing the horizon; the snakes—garter chiefly, but a few copperhead and black—glided on to the logs to bask apparently in the sunshine, in such numbers, that after vainly trying to step across without treading on them, I was fain to take to flight, springing from log to log like some long-legged bird, and so escaping from the unpleasant companionship.[3]

One of the most perplexing tasks to new settlers is that of keeping cows. "Bossy" soon learns that the bush is "all before her where to choose," and she indulges her whims by straying away in the most unexpected directions, and putting you to half-a-day's toilsome search before she can be captured. The obvious remedy is the cow-bell, but even with this tell-tale appendage, the experienced cow contrives to baffle your vigilance. She will ensconce herself in the midst of a clump of underbrush, lying perfectly still, and paying no heed to your most endearing appeals of "Co' bossy, co' bossy," until some fly-sting obliges her to jerk her head and betray her hiding-place by a single note of the bell. Then she will deliberately get up, and walk off straight to the shanty, ready to be milked.

CHAPTER XIV.

OUR REMOVAL TO NOTTAWASAGA.

In the autumn of 1835, we were favoured with a visit from Mr. A. B. Hawke, chief emigrant agent for Upper Canada, and a gentleman held in general esteem, as a friend to emigrants, and a kind-hearted man. He slept, or rather tried to sleep, at our shanty. It was very hot weather, the mosquitoes were in full vigour, and the tortures they inflicted on the poor man were truly pitiable. We being acclimatised, could cover our heads, and lie perdu, sleeping in spite of the humming hosts outside. But our visitor had learnt no such philosophy. He threw off the bedclothes on account of the heat; slapped his face and hands to kill his tormentors; and actually roared with pain and anger, relieving himself now and then by objurgations mingled with expletives not a little profane. It was impossible to resist laughing at the desperate emphasis of his protests, although our mirth did not help much to soothe the annoyance, at which, however, he could not help laughing in turn.

Mosquitoes do not plague all night, and our friend got a little repose in the cool of the morning, but vowed, most solemnly, that nothing should induce him to pass another night in Sunnidale.

To this circumstance, perhaps, were we indebted for the permission we soon afterwards obtained, to exchange our Sunnidale lot for one in Nottawasaga, where some clearing had been done by the new settlers, on what was called the Scotch line; and gladly we quitted our first location for land decidedly more eligible for farm purposes, although seventeen miles further distant from Barrie, which was still the only village within reasonably easy access.

We had obtained small government contracts for corduroying, or causewaying, the many swampy spots on the Sunnidale road, which enabled us to employ a number of axemen, and to live a little more comfortably; and about this time, Mr. Young being in weak health, and unequal to the hardships of bush life, resigned his agency, and got my brother Thomas appointed temporarily as his successor; so we had the benefit of a good log-house he had built on the Nottawasaga road, near the Batteau creek, on which is now situated the Batteau station of the Northern Railway. We abode there until we found time to cut a road to our land, and afterwards to erect a comfortable cedar-log house thereon.

Here, with a large open clearing around us, plenty of neighbours, and a sawmill at no great distance, we were able to make our home nearly as comfortable as are the majority of Canadian farm-houses of to-day. We had a neat picket-fenced garden, a large double log barn, a yoke of oxen, and plenty of poultry. The house stood on a handsome rising eminence, and commanded a noble prospect, which included the Georgian Bay, visible at a distance of six miles, and the Christian Islands, twenty miles further north. The land was productive, and the air highly salubrious.

Would some of my readers like to know how to raise a log barn? I shall try to teach them. For such an undertaking much previous labour and foresight are required. In our case, fortunately, there was a small cedar swamp within a hundred paces of the site we had chosen for our barn, which was picturesquely separated from the house by a ravine some thirty feet deep, with a clear spring of the sweetest and coldest water flowing between steep banks. The barn was to consist of two large bays, each thirty feet square and eight logs high, with a threshing floor twelve feet wide between, the whole combined into one by an upper story or loft, twenty by seventy-two feet, and four logs high, including the roof-plates.

It will be seen, then, that to build such a barn would require sixty-four logs of thirty feet each for the lower story; and sixteen more of the same length, as well as eight of seventy-two feet each, for the loft. Our handy swamp provided all these, not from standing trees only, but from many fallen patriarchs buried four or five feet under the surface in black muck, and perfectly sound. To get them out of the mud required both skill and patience. All the branches having been cleared off as thoroughly as possible, the entire tree was drawn out by those most patient of all patient drudges, the oxen, and when on solid ground, sawn to the required length. A number of skids were also provided, of the size and kind of the spring-poles already described in chapter XI., and plenty of handspikes.

Having got these prime essentials ready, the next business was to summon our good neighbours to a "raising bee." On the day named, accordingly, we had about thirty practised axemen on the ground by day-break, all in the best of spirits, and confident in their powers for work. Eight of the heaviest logs, about two feet thick, had been placed in position as sleepers or foundation logs, duly saddled at the corners. Parallel with these at a distance of twenty-feet on either side, were ranged in order all the logs required to complete the building.

Well, now we begin. Eight of the smartest men jump at once on the eight corners. In a few minutes each of the four men in front has his saddle ready—that is, he has chopped his end of the first log into an angular shape, thus /\. The four men in rear have done the same thing no less expeditiously, and all are waiting for the next log. Meanwhile, at the ends of both bays, four several parties of three men each, stationed below, have placed their skids in a sloping position—the upper end on the rising wall and the lower on the ground—and up these skids they roll additional logs transversely to those already in position. These are received by the corner-men above, and carefully adjusted in their places according to their "natural lie," that is, so that they will be least likely to render the wall unsteady; then turned half-back to receive the undercut, which should be exactly an inverse counterpart of the saddle. A skilful hand will make this undercut with unerring certainty, so that the log when turned forward again, will fit down upon its two saddles without further adjustment. Now for more logs back and front; then others at the ends, and so on, every log fitted as before, and each one somewhat lighter than its predecessor. All this time the oxen have been busily employed in drawing more logs where needed. The skids have to be re-adjusted for every successive log, and a supply of new logs rolled up as fast as wanted. The quick strokes of eight axes wielded by active fellows perched on the still rising walls, and balancing themselves dexterously and even gracefully as they work, the constant demand for "another log," and the merry voices and rough jokes of the workers, altogether form as lively and exciting a picture as is often witnessed. Add to these a bright sky and a fresh breeze, with the beautiful green back-ground of the noble hardwood trees around—and I know of no mere pleasure party that I would rather join.

Breakfast and dinner form welcome interludes. Ample stores of provender, meat, bread, potatoes, puddings various, tea and coffee, have been prepared and are thoroughly enjoyed, inasmuch as they are rare luxuries to many of the guests. Then again to work, until the last crowning effort of all—the raising of the seventy-two-foot logs—has to be encountered. Great care is necessary here, as accidents are not infrequent. The best skids, the stoutest handspikes, the strongest and hardiest men, must be selected. Our logs being cedar and therefore light, there was comparatively little danger; and they were all successfully raised, and well secured by cross-girders before sundown.

Then, and not till then, after supper, a little whiskey was allowed. Teetotalism had not made its way into our backwoods; and we were considered very straightlaced indeed to set our faces as we did against all excess. Our Highland and Irish neighbours looked upon the weak stuff sold in Canada with supreme contempt; and recollecting our Galway experience, we felt no surprise thereat.

The roofing such a building is a subsequent operation, for which no "bee" is required. Shingles four feet long, on round rafters, are generally used for log barns, to be replaced at some future day by more perfect roofing. A well-made cedar barn will stand for forty years with proper care, by which time there should be no difficulty in replacing it by a good substantial, roomy frame building.

CHAPTER XV.

SOCIETY IN THE BACKWOODS.

Sir John Colborne, as has been mentioned already, did all in his power to induce well-to-do immigrants, and particularly military men, to settle on lands west and north of Lake Simcoe. Some of these gentlemen were entitled, in those days, to draw from three to twelve hundred acres of land in their own right; but the privilege was of very doubtful value. Take an example. Captain Workman, with his wife, highly educated and thoroughly estimable people, were persuaded to select their land on the Georgian Bay, near the site of the present village of Meaford. A small rivulet which enters the bay there, is still called "the Captain's creek." To get there, they had to go to Penetanguishene, then a military station, now the seat of a Reformatory for boys. From thence they embarked on scows, with their servants, furniture, cows, farm implements and provisions. Rough weather obliged them to land on one of the Christian Islands, very bleak spots outside of Penetanguishene harbour, occupied only by a few Chippewa Indians. After nearly two weeks' delay and severe privation, they at length reached their destination, and had then to camp out until a roof could be put up to shelter them from the storms, not uncommon on that exposed coast.

We had ourselves, along with others, taken up additional land on what was called "the Blue Mountains," which are considered to be a spur of the Alleghanies, extending northerly across by Niagara, from the State of New York. The then newly-surveyed townships of St. Vincent and Euphrasia were attracting settlers, and amongst them our axe-man, Whitelaw, and many more of the like class. To reach this land, we had bought a smart sail-boat, and in her enjoyed ourselves by coasting from the Nottawasaga river north-westerly along the bay. In this way we happened one evening to put in at the little harbour where Capt. Workman had chosen his location. It was early in the spring. The snows from the uplands had swelled the rivulet into a rushing torrent. The garden, prettily laid out, was converted into an island, the water whirling and eddying close to the house both in front and rear, and altogether presenting a scene of wild confusion. We found the captain highly excited, but bravely contending with his watery adversary; the lady of the house in a state of alarmed perplexity; the servants at their wits' end, hurrying here and there with little effect. Fortunately, when we got there the actual danger was past, the waters subsiding rapidly during the night. But it struck us as a most cruel and inconsiderate act on the part of the Government, to expose tenderly reared families to hazards which even the rudest of rough pioneers would not care to encounter.

After enduring several years of severe hardship, and expending a considerable income in this out-of-the-world spot, Captain Workman and his family removed to Toronto, and afterwards returned to England, wiser, perhaps, but no richer certainly, than when they left the old country.

A couple of miles along the shore, we found another military settler, Lieutenant Waddell, who had served as brigade-major at the Battle of Waterloo; with him were his wife, two sons, and two daughters. On landing, the first person we encountered was the eldest son, John, a youth of twenty years—six feet in stature at least, and bearing on his shoulder, sustained by a stick thrust through its gills, a sturgeon so large that its tail trailed on the ground behind him. He had just caught it with a floating line. Here again the same melancholy story: ladies delicately nurtured, exposed to rough labour, and deprived of all the comforts of civilized life, exhausting themselves in weary struggle with the elements. Brave soldiers in the decline of life, condemned to tasks only adapted to hinds and navvies. What worse fate can be reserved for Siberian exiles! This family also soon removed to Toronto, and afterwards to Niagara, where the kindly, excellent old soldier is well remembered; then to Chatham, where he became barrack-master, and died there. His son, John Waddell, married into the Eberts family, and prospered; later he was member for Kent; and ultimately met his death by drowning on a lumbering excursion in the Georgian Bay. Other members of the family now reside at Goderich.

Along the west shore of Lake Simcoe, several other military and naval officers, with their households, were scattered. Some, whose names I shall not record, had left their families at home, and brought out with them female companions of questionable position, whom, nevertheless, they introduced as their wives. The appearance of the true wives rid the county of the scandal and its actors.

Conspicuous among the best class of gentlemen settlers was the late Col. E. G. O'Brien, of Shanty Bay, near Barrie, of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. Capt. St. John, of Lake Couchiching, was equally respected. The Messrs. Lally, of Medonte; Walker, of Tecumseth and Barrie; Sibbald, of Kempenfeldt Bay; are all names well known in those days, as are also many others of the like class. But where are the results of the policy which sent them there? What did they gain—what have their families and descendants gained—by the ruinous outlay to which they were subjected? With one or two exceptions, absolutely nothing but wasted means and saddest memories.

It is pleasant to turn to a different class of settlers—the hardy Scots, Irish, English, and Germans, to whom the Counties of Simcoe and Grey stand indebted for their present state of prosperity. The Sunnidale settlement was ill-chosen, and therefore a failure. But in the north of that township, much better land and a healthier situation are found, and there, as well as in Nottawasaga adjoining, the true conditions of rational colonization, and the practical development of those conditions, are plainly to be seen.

The system of clearing five acre lots, and erecting log shanties thereon, to be given to immigrants without power of sale, which was commenced in Sunnidale, was continued in Nottawasaga. The settlement was called the Scotch line, nearly all the people being from the islands of Arran and Islay, lying off Argyleshire, in Scotland. Very few of them knew a word of English. There were Campbells, McGillivrays, Livingstons, McDiarmids, McAlmons, McNees, Jardines, and other characteristic names. The chief man among them was Angus Campbell, who had been a tradesman of some kind in the old country, and exercised a beneficial influence over the rest. He was well informed, sternly Presbyterian, and often reminded us of "douce Davie Deans" in the "Heart of Midlothian." One of the Livingstons was a school-master. They were, one and all, hardy and industrious folk. Day after day, month after month, year after year, added to their wealth and comfort. Cows were purchased, and soon became common. There were a few oxen and horses before long. When I visited the township of Nottawasaga some years since, I found Angus Campbell, postmaster and justice of the peace; Andrew Jardine, township clerk or treasurer; and McDiarmids, Livingstons, Shaws, &c., spread all over the surrounding country, possessing large farms richly stocked, good barns well-filled, and even commodious frame houses comfortably furnished. They ride to church or market in handsome buggies well horsed; have their temperance meetings and political gatherings of the most zealous sort, and altogether present a model specimen of a prosperous farming community. What has been said of the Scotch, is no less applicable to the Irish, Germans and English, who formed the minority in that township. I hear of their sons, and their sons' sons, as thriving farmers and storekeepers, all over Ontario.

Our axeman, Whitelaw, was of Scottish parentage, but a Canadian by birth, and won his way with the rest. He settled in St. Vincent, married a smart and pretty Irish lass, had many sons and daughters, acquired a farm of five hundred acres, of which he cleared and cultivated a large portion almost single-handed, and in time became able to build the finest frame house in the township; served as reeve, was a justice of peace, and even a candidate for parliament, in which, well for himself, he failed. His excessive labours, however, brought on asthma, of which he died not long since, leaving several families of descendants to represent him.

I could go on with the list of prosperous settlers of this class, to fill a volume. Some of the young men entered the ministry, and I recognise their names occasionally at Presbyterian and Wesleyan conventions. Some less fortunate were tempted away to Iowa and Illinois, and there died victims to ague and heat.

But if we "look on this picture and on that;" if we compare the results of the settlement of educated people and of the labouring classes, the former withering away and leaving no sign behind—the latter growing in numbers and advancing in wealth and position until they fill the whole land, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, that except as leaders and teachers of their companions, gentlefolk of refined tastes and of superior education, have no place in the bush, and should shun it as a wild delusion and a cruel snare.

CHAPTER XVI.

MORE ABOUT NOTTAWASAGA AND ITS PEOPLE.

Among the duties handed over to my brother Thomas, by his predecessor in the emigrant agency, was the care of a large medicine chest full of quinine, rhubarb, jalap, and a host of other drugs, strong enough for horses as well as men, including a long catalogue of poisons, such as arsenic, belladonna, vitriol, &c. To assist in the distribution of this rather formidable charge, a copy of "Buchan's Domestic Medicine" was added. My brother had no taste for drugs, and therefore deputed the care of the medicine chest to me. So I studied "Buchan" zealously, and was fortunate enough to secure the aid of an old army sergeant, an Irishman who had been accustomed to camp hospital life, and knew how to bleed, and treat wounds. Time and practice gave me courage to dispense the medicines, which I did cautiously, and so successfully as to earn the soubriquet of "Doctor," and to be sought after in cases both dangerous and difficult. As, however, about this time, a clever, licensed practitioner had established himself at Barrie, thirty-four miles distant, I declined to prescribe in serious cases, except in one or two of great urgency. A Prussian soldier named Murtz, had received a gun-shot wound in the chest at the battle of Quatre Bras, under Marshal Blücher, and had frequently suffered therefrom. One day in winter, when the thermometer ranged far below zero, this man had been threshing in our barn, when he was seized with inflammation of the chest, and forced to return home. As it appeared to be a case of life and death, I ventured to act boldly, ordered bleeding, a blister on the chest, and poultices to the feet—in fact, everything that Buchan directed. My brave serjeant took charge of the patient; and between us, or perhaps in spite of us, the man got over the attack. The singular part of the case was, that the old bullet wound never troubled him afterwards, and he looked upon me as the first of living physicians.

In 1836, a band of Potawatomie Indians, claiming allegiance to the Queen, was allowed to leave the State of Michigan and settle in Canada. They travelled from Sarnia through the woods, along the eastern shore of Lake Huron, and passed through Nottawasaga, on their way to Penetanguishene. Between the Scotch line and Sunnidale, near the present village of Stayner, lived an old Highland piper named Campbell, very partial to whiskey and dirt. There were two or three small clearings grouped together, and the principal crop was potatoes, nearly full grown. The old man was sitting sunning himself at his shanty-door. The young men were all absent at mill or elsewhere, and none but women and children about, when a party of Indians, men and squaws with their papooses, came stealing from the woods, and very quietly began to dig the potatoes with their fingers and fill their bags with the spoil. The poor old piper was horribly frightened and perplexed; and in his agitation could think of nothing but climbing on to his shanty roof, which was covered with earth, and there playing with all his might upon his Highland pipes, partly as a summons for assistance from his friends, partly to terrify the enemy. But the enemy were not at all terrified. They gathered in a ring round the shanty, laughed, danced, and enjoyed the fun immensely; nor would they pass on until the return of some of the younger settlers summoned by the din of the bagpipes, relieved the old piper from his elevated post. In the meantime, the presence and efforts of the women of the settlement sufficed to rescue their potato crop.

CHAPTER XVII.

A RUDE WINTER EXPERIENCE.

The chief inconvenience we sustained in Nottawasaga arose from the depth of snow in winter, which was generally four feet and sometimes more. We had got our large log barn well filled with grain and hay. Two feet of snow had fallen during the day, and it continued snowing throughout the night. Next morning, to our great tribulation, neither snow nor roof was to be seen on the barn, the whole having fallen inside. No time was to be lost. My share of the work was to hurry to the Scotch line, there to warn every settler to send at least one stout hand to assist in re-raising the roof. None but those who have suffered can imagine what it is to have to walk at speed through several feet of soft snow. The sinews of the knees very soon begin to be painfully affected, and finally to feel as if they were being cut with a sharp knife. This is what Indians call "snow evil," their cure for which is to apply a hot cinder to the spot, thus raising a blister. I toiled on, however, and once in the settlement, walked with comparative ease. Everybody was ready and eager to help, and so we had plenty of assistance at our need, and before night got our barn roof restored.

The practice of exchanging work is universal in new settlements; and, indeed, without it nothing of importance can be effected. Each man gives a day's work to his neighbour, for a logging or raising-bee; and looks for the same help when he is ready for it. Thus as many as twenty or forty able axemen can be relied upon at an emergency.

At a later time, some of us became expert in the use of snow-shoes, and took long journeys through the woods, not merely with ease but with a great deal of pleasure. As a rule, snow is far from being considered an evil in the backwoods, on account of the very great facility it affords for travelling and teaming, both for business and pleasure, as well as for the aid it gives to the hunter or trapper.

My own feelings on the subject, I found leisure to embody in the following verses:

THE TRAPPER.

Away, away! my dog and I; The woodland boughs are bare, The radiant sun shines warm and high, The frost-flake[4] gems the air. Away, away! thro' forests wide Our course is swift and free; Warm 'neath the snow the saplings hide— Its ice-crust firm pace we. The partridge[5] with expanded crest Struts proudly by his mate; The squirrel trims its glossy vest, Or eats its nut in state. Quick echoes answer, shrill and short, The woodcock's frequent cry; We heed them not—a keener sport We seek—my dog and I. Far in the woods our traps are set In loneliest, thickest glade, Where summer's soil is soft and wet, And dark firs lend their shade. Hurrah! a gallant spoil is here To glad a trapper's sight— The warm-clad marten, sleek and fair, The ermine soft and white; Or mink, or fox—a welcome prize— Or useful squirrel grey, Or wild-cat fierce with flaming eyes, Or fisher,[6] meaner prey. On, on! the cautious toils once more Are set—the task is done; Our pleasant morning's labour o'er, Our pastime but begun. Away, away! till fall of eve, The deer-track be our guide, The antler'd stag our quarry brave, Our park the forest wide. At night, the bright fire at our feet, Our couch the wigwam dry— No laggard tastes a rest so sweet As thou, good dog, and I.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FOREST WEALTH OF CANADA.

Having been accustomed to gardening all my life, I have taken great pleasure in roaming the bush in search of botanical treasures of all kinds, and have often thought that it would be easy to fill a large and showy garden with the native plants of Canada alone.

But of course, her main vegetable wealth consists in the forests with which the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario were formerly clothed. In the country around the Georgian Bay, especially, abound the very finest specimens of hardwood timber. Standing on a hill overlooking the River Saugeen at the village of Durham, one sees for twenty miles round scarcely a single pine tree in the whole prospect. The townships of Arran and Derby, when first surveyed, were wonderfully studded with noble trees. Oak, elm, beech, butternut, ash and maple, seemed to vie with each other in the size of their stems and the spread of their branches. In our own clearing in St. Vincent, the axemen considered that five of these great forest kings would occupy an acre of ground, leaving little space for younger trees or underbrush.

I once saw a white or wainscot oak that measured fully twelve feet in circumference at the butt, and eighty feet clear of branches. This noble tree must have contained somewhere about seven thousand square feet of inch boarding, and would represent a value approaching one hundred and thirty pounds sterling in the English market. White and black ash, black birch, red beech, maple and even basswood or lime, are of little, if any, less intrinsic worth. Rock elm is very valuable, competing as it does with hickory for many purposes.

When residing in the city of Quebec, in the year 1859-60, I published a series of articles in the Quebec Advertiser, descriptive of the hardwoods of Ontario. The lumber merchants of that city held then, that their correspondents in Liverpool was so wedded to old-fashioned ideas, that they would not so much as look at any price-list except for pine and the few other woods for which there was an assured demand. But I know that my papers were transmitted home, and they may possibly have converted some few readers, as, since then, our rock elm, our white ash, and the black birch of Lower Canada, have been in increased demand, and are regularly quoted at London and Liverpool. But even though old country dealers should make light of our products, that is no reason why we should undervalue them ourselves.

Not merely is our larger timber improvidently wasted, but the smaller kinds, such as blue beech, ironwood or hornbeam, buttonwood or plane tree, and red and white cedar, are swept away without a thought of their great marketable value in the Old World.[7]

It seems absolute fatuity to allow this waste of our natural wealth to go on unheeded. We send our pine across the Atlantic, as if it were the most valuable wood that we have, instead of being, as it really is, amongst the most inferior. From our eastern seaports white oak is shipped in the form of staves chiefly, also some ash, birch and elm. So far well. But what about the millions of tons of hardwood of all kinds which we destroy annually for fuel, and which ought to realize, if exported, four times as many millions of dollars?

Besides the plain, straight-grained timber which we heedlessly burn up to get it out of the way, there are our ornamental woods—our beautiful curled and bird's eye maple, our waved ash, our serviceable butternut or yellow walnut, our comely cherry, and even our exquisite black walnut, all doomed to the same perdition. Little of this waste would occur if once the owners of land knew that a market could be got for their timber. Cheese and butter factories for export, have already spread over the land—why not furniture factories also? Why not warm ourselves with the coal of Nova Scotia, of Manitoba, and, by-and-by, of the Saskatchewan, and spare our forest treasures for nobler uses? Would not this whole question be a fitting subject for the appointment of a competent parliamentary commission?

To me these reflections are not the birth of to-day, but date from my bush residence in the township of Nottawasaga. If I should succeed now in bringing them effectively before my fellow Canadians ere it is too late, I shall feel that I have neither thought nor written in vain.

CHAPTER XIX.

A MELANCHOLY TALE.

The Scottish settlers in Nottawasaga were respectable, God-fearing, and though somewhat stern in their manners, thoroughly estimable people on the whole. They married young, had numerous families, and taught their children at an early age the duties of good citizenship, and the religious principles of their Presbyterian forefathers.

Among them, not the prettiest certainly, but the most amiable and beloved, was Flora McDiarmid, a tall, bright-complexioned lass of twenty, perhaps, who was the chief mainstay of her widowed father, whose log shanty she kept in perfect order as far as their simple resources permitted, while she exercised a vigilant watch over her younger brothers and sisters, and with their assistance contrived to work their four acre allotment to good advantage.

Wherever there was trouble in the settlement, or mirth afoot, Flora was sure to be there, nursing the sick, cheering the unhappy, helping to provide the good things for the simple feast,—she was, in fact, the life of the somewhat dull and overworked community. Was the minister from afar to be received with due honour, was the sober church service to be celebrated in a shanty with becoming propriety—Flora was ever on hand, at the head of all the other lassies, guiding and directing everything, and in so kindly and cheerful a way that none thought of disputing her behests or hesitating at their fulfilment.

Such being the case, no wonder that Malcolm McAlmon and other young fellows contended for her hand in marriage. But Malcolm won the preference, and blithely he set to work to build a splendid log shanty, twenty-five feet square, divided into inner compartments, with windows and doors, and other unequalled conveniences for domestic comfort new to the settlement; and when it was ready, and supplied with plenishings of all kinds, Flora and Malcolm were married amid the rejoicings of the whole township, and settled quietly down to the steady hard work of a life in the extreme backwoods, some miles distant from our clearing.

The next thing I heard of them was many months afterwards, when Malcolm was happy in the expectation of an heir to his two hundred acre lot, in the ninth or tenth concession of the township. But alas! as time stole on, accounts were unfavourable, and grew worse and worse. The nearest professional man lived at Barrie, thirty-four miles distant. A wandering herb doctor, as he called himself, of the Yankee eclectic school, was the best who had yet visited the township, and even he was far away at this time. There were experienced matrons enough in the settlement, but their skill deserted them, or the case was beyond their ability. And so poor Flora died, and her infant with her.

The same day her brother John, in deep distress, came to beg us to lend them pine boards enough to make the poor dead woman a coffin. Except the pine tree which we had cut down and sawn up, as related already, there was not a foot of sawn lumber in the settlement, and scarcely a hammer or a nail either, but what we possessed ourselves. So, being very sorry for their affliction, I told them they should have the coffin by next morning; and I set to work myself, made a tolerably handsome box, stained in black, of the right shape and dimensions, and gave it to them at the appointed hour. We of course attended the funeral, which was conducted with due solemnity by the Presbyterian minister above-mentioned. And never shall I forget the weeping bearers, staggering under their burthen through tangled brushwood and round upturned roots and cradle holes, and the long train of mourners following in their rear, to the chosen grave in the wilderness, where now I hear stands a small Presbyterian church in the village of Duntroon.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM BARRIE TO NOTTAWASAGA.

For nearly three years we continued to work on contentedly at our bush farm. In the summer of 1837, we received intelligence that two of our sisters were on their way to join us in Canada, and soon afterwards that they had reached Toronto, and expected to meet us at Barrie on a certain day. At the same time we learnt that the bridge across the Nottawasaga river, eleven miles from Barrie, had given way, and was barely passable on foot, as it lay floating on the water. One of our span of horses had been killed and his fellow sold, so that we had to hire a team to convey our sisters' goods from Barrie to the bridge where it was necessary to meet them with our own ox-team and waggon. I walked to Barrie accordingly, and found my sisters at Bingham's tavern, very glad to see me, but in a state of complete bewilderment and some alarm at the rough ways of the place, then only containing a tavern or two, and some twenty stores and dwellings. My fustian clothes, which I had made myself, and considered first-rate, they "laughed at consumedly." My boots! they were soaked and trod out of all fashionable proportions. Fortunately, other people in Barrie were nearly as open to criticism as myself, and as we had to get on our way without loss of time, I forgot my eccentricities of dress in the rough experiences of the road.

From Barrie to Root's tavern was pleasant travelling, the day being fine and the road fairly good. We took some rest and refreshment there, and started again, but had not gone two miles before a serious misfortune befel us. I have mentioned corduroy-bridges before; one of these had been thrown across a beautifully clear white-paved streamlet known to travellers on this road as "sweet-water." The waggon was heavily laden with chests and other luggage, and the horses not being very strong, found it beyond their power to drag the load across the bridge on account of its steepness. Alarmed for my eldest sister, who was riding, I persuaded her to descend and walk on. Again and again, the teamster whipped his horses, and again and again, after they had almost scaled the crest, the weight of the load dragged them backward. I wanted to lighten the load, but the man said it was needless, and bade me block the wheels with a piece of broken branch lying near, which I did; the next moment I was petrified to see the waggon overbalance itself and fall sideways into the stream seven or eight feet beneath, dragging the horses over with it, their forefeet clinging to the bridge and their hind feet entangled amongst the spokes of the wheels below.

My elder sister had gone on. The younger bravely caught the horses' heads and held them by main force to quiet their struggles, while the man and I got out an axe, cut the spokes of the wheels, and so in a few minutes got the horses on to firm ground, where they stood panting and terrified for some minutes. Meanwhile, to get the heavy sea-boxes out of the water and carry them up the face of a nearly perpendicular bank, then get up the waggon and reload it, was no easy task, but was accomplished at last.

The teamster, being afraid of injury to his horses' legs, at first refused to go further on the road. However, they had suffered no harm; and we finished our journey to the bridge where my brother awaited us. Here the unlucky boxes had to be carried across loose floating logs, and loaded on to the ox-waggon, which ended our hard work for that day.

Two days longer were we slowly travelling through Sunnidale and into Nottawasaga, spending each night at some friendly settler's shanty, and so lightening the fatigues of the way.

CHAPTER XXI.

FAREWELL TO THE BACKWOODS.

My sisters had come into the woods fresh from the lovely village of Epsom, in Surrey, and accustomed to all the comforts of English life. Their consternation at the rudeness of the accommodations which we had considered rather luxurious than otherwise, dispelled all our illusions, and made us think seriously of moving nearer to Toronto. I was the first to feel the need of change, and as I had occasionally walked ninety miles to the city, to draw money for our road contracts, and the same distance back again, and had gained some friends there, it took me very little time to make up my mind. My brothers and sisters remained throughout the following winter, and then removed to a rented farm at Bradford.

Not that the bush has ever lost its charms for me. I still delight to escape thither, to roam at large, admiring the stately trees with their graceful outlines of varied foliage, seeking in their delicious shade for ferns and all kinds of wild plants, forgetting the turmoil and anxieties of the business world, and wishing I could leave it behind for ever and aye. In some such mood it was that I wrote—

"COME TO THE WOODS."[8]

Come to the woods—the dark old woods, Where our life is blithe and free; No thought of sorrow or strife intrudes Beneath the wild woodland tree. Our wigwam is raised with skill and care In some quiet forest nook; Our healthful fare is of ven'son rare, Our draught from the crystal brook. In summer we trap the beaver shy, In winter we chase the deer, And, summer or winter, our days pass by In honest and hearty cheer. And when at the last we fall asleep On mother earth's ancient breast, The forest-dirge deep shall o'er us sweep, And lull us to peaceful rest.

CHAPTER XXII.

A JOURNEY TO TORONTO.

To make my narrative intelligible to those who are not familiar with the times of which I am about to write, I must revert briefly to the year 1834. During that year I made my first business visit to Toronto, then newly erected into a city. As the journey may be taken as a fair specimen of our facilities for travelling in those days, I shall describe it.

I left our shanty in Sunnidale in the bright early morning, equipped only with an umbrella and a blue bag, such as is usually carried by lawyers, containing some articles of clothing. The first three or four miles of the road lay over felled trees cut into logs, but not hauled out of the way. To step or jump over these logs every few feet may be amusing enough by way of sport, but it becomes not a little tiresome when repeated mile after mile, with scarcely any intermission, and without the stimulus of companionship. After getting into a better cleared road, the chief difficulty lay with the imperfectly "stubbed" underbrush and the frequency of cradle-holes—that is, hollows caused by up-turned roots—in roughly timbered land. This kind of travelling continued till mid-day, when I got a substantial dinner and a boisterous welcome from my old friend Root and his family. He had a pretty little daughter by this time.

An hour's rest, and an easy walk of seven miles to Barrie, were pleasant enough, in spite of stumps and hollows. At Barrie I met with more friends, who would have had me remain there for the night; but time was too valuable. So on I trudged, skirting round the sandy beach of beautiful Kempenfeldt Bay, and into the thick dark woods of Innisfil, where the road was a mere brushed track, easily missed in the twilight, and very muddy from recent rains. Making all the expedition in my power, I sped on towards Clement's tavern, then the only hostelry between Barrie and Bradford, and situated close to the height of land whence arise, in a single field, the sources of various streams flowing into the Nottawasaga, the Holland, and the Credit Rivers. But rain came on, and the road became a succession of water-holes so deep that I all but lost my boots, and, moreover, it was so dark that it was impossible to walk along logs laid by the roadside, which was the local custom in daylight.

I felt myself in a dilemma. To go forward or backward seemed equally unpromising. I had often spent nights in the bush, with or without a wigwam, and the thought of danger did not occur to me. Suddenly I recollected that about half a mile back I had passed a newly chopped and partially-logged clearing, and that there might possibly be workmen still about. So I returned to the place, and shouted for assistance; but no person was within hearing. There was, however, a small log hut, about six feet square, which the axe-men had roughly put up for protection from the rain, and in it had left some fire still burning. I was glad enough to secure even so poor a shelter as this. Everything was wet. I was without supper, and very tired after thirty miles' walk. But I tried to make the best of a bad job: collected plenty of half-consumed brands from the still blazing log-heaps, to keep up some warmth during the night, and then lay down on the round logs that had been used for seats, to sleep as best I might.

But this was not to be. At about nine o'clock there arose from the woods, first a sharp snapping bark, answered by a single yelp; then two or three yells at intervals. Again a silence, lasting perhaps five minutes. This kept on, the noise increasing in frequency, and coming nearer and again nearer, until it became impossible to mistake it for aught but the howling of wolves. The clearing might be five or six acres. Scattered over it were partially or wholly burnt log heaps. I knew that wolves would not be likely to venture amongst the fires, and that I was practically safe. But the position was not pleasant, and I should have preferred a bed at Clement's, as a matter of choice. I, however, kept up my fire very assiduously, and the evil brutes continued their concert of fiendish discords—sometimes remaining silent for a time, and anon bursting into a full chorus fortissimo—for many long, long hours, until the glad beams of morning peeped through the trees, and the sky grew brighter and brighter; when the wolves ceased their serenade, and I fell fast asleep, with my damp umbrella for a pillow.

With the advancing day, I awoke, stiffened in every joint, and very hungry. A few minutes' walk on my road showed me a distant opening in the woods, towards which I hastened, and found a new shanty, inhabited by a good-natured settler and his family, from whom I got some breakfast, for which they would accept nothing but thanks. They had lately been much troubled, they said, with wolves about their cattle sheds at night.

From thence I proceeded to Bradford, fifteen miles, by a road interlaced with pine roots, with deep water-holes between, and so desperately rugged as to defy any wheeled vehicle but an ox-cart to struggle over it. Here my troubles ended for the present. Mr. Thomas Drury, of that village, had been in partnership with a cousin of my own, as brewers, at Mile End, London. His hospitable reception, and a good night's repose, made me forget previous discomforts, and I went on my way next morning with a light heart, carrying with me a letter of introduction to a man of whom I had occasionally heard in the bush, one William Lyon Mackenzie.

The day's journey by way of Yonge Street was easily accomplished by stage—an old-fashioned conveyance enough, swung on leather straps, and subject to tremendous jerks from loose stones on the rough road, innocent of Macadam, and full of the deepest ruts. A fellow-passenger, by way of encouragement, told me how an old man, a few weeks before, had been jolted so violently against the roof, as to leave marks of his blood there, which, being not uncommon, were left unheeded for days. My friend advised me to keep on my hat, which I had laid aside on account of the heat of the day, and I was not slow to adopt the suggestion.

Arrived in town, my first business was to seek out Mr. William Hawkins, well-known in those days as an eminent provincial land surveyor. I found him at a house on the south side of Newgate (now Adelaide) street, two or three doors west of Bay Street. He was living as a private boarder with an English family; and, at his friendly intercession, I was admitted to the same privilege. The home was that of Mr. H. C. Todd, with his wife and two sons. With them, I continued to reside as often as I visited Toronto, and for long after I became a citizen. That I spent there many happy days, among kind and considerate friends, numbers of my readers will be well assured when I mention, that the two boys were Alfred and Alpheus Todd, the one loved and lamented as the late Clerk of Committees in the Canadian House of Commons—the other widely known in Europe and America, as the late Librarian of the Dominion Parliament.

My stay in Toronto on that occasion was very brief. To wait upon the Chief Emigrant Agent for instructions about road-making in Sunnidale; to make a few small purchases of clothing and tea; and to start back again, without loss of time, were matters of course. One thing, however, I found time to do, which had more bearing upon this narrative, and that was, to present Mr. Drury's letter of introduction to William L. Mackenzie, M. P. P., at his printing-office on Hospital Street. I had often seen copies, in the bush, of the Colonial Advocate, as well as of the Courier and Gazette newspapers, but had the faintest possible idea of Canadian politics. The letter was from one whose hospitality Mackenzie had experienced for weeks in London, and consequently I felt certain of a courteous reception. Without descending from the high stool he used at his desk, he received the letter, read it, looked at me frigidly, and said in his singular, harsh Dundee dialect: "We must look after our own people before doing anything for strangers." Mr. Drury had told him that I wished to know if there were any opening for proof-readers in Toronto. I was not a little surprised to find myself ostracized as a stranger in a British colony, but, having other views, thought no more of the circumstance at the time.

This reminds me of another characteristic anecdote of Mackenzie, which was related to me by one who was on the spot where it happened. In 1820, on his first arrival in Montreal from Scotland, he got an engagement as chain-bearer on the survey of the Lachine canal. A few days afterwards, the surveying party, as usual at noon, sat down on a grassy bank to eat their dinner. They had been thus occupied for half an hour, and were getting ready for a smoke, when the new chain-bearer suddenly jumped up with an exclamation, "Now, boys, time for work! we mustn't waste the government money!" The consequence of which ill-timed outburst was his prompt dismissal from the service.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SOME GLIMPSES OF UPPER CANADIAN POLITICS.

In the course of the years 1835, '6 and '7, I made many journeys to Toronto, sometimes wholly on foot, sometimes partly by steamboat and stage. I became very intimate with the Todd family and connections, which included Mrs. Todd's brother, William P. Patrick, then, and long afterwards, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly; his brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas D. Morrison, M. P. P.; Thomas Vaux, Accountant of the Legislature; Caleb Hopkins, M. P. P., for Halton; William H. Doel, brewer; William C. Keele, attorney, and their families. Nearly all these persons were, or had been, zealous admirers of Wm. L. Mackenzie's political course. And the same thing must be said of my friend Mr. Drury, of Bradford; his sister married Edward Henderson, merchant tailor, of King Street west, whose father, E. T. Henderson, was well known amongst Mackenzie's supporters. It was his cottage on Yonge Street (near what is now Gloucester Street), at which the leaders of the popular party used often to meet in council. The house stood in an orchard, well fenced, and was then very rural and secluded from observation.

Amongst all these really estimable people, and at their houses, nothing of course was heard disparaging to the Reformers of that day, and their active leader. My own political prejudices also were in his favour. And so matters went on until the arrival, in 1835, of Sir Francis Bond Head, as Lieutenant-Governor, when we, in the bush, began to hear of violent struggles between the House of Assembly on the one side, and the Lieutenant-Governor supported by the Legislative Council on the other. Each political party, by turns, had had its successes and reverses at the polls. In 1825, the majority of the Assembly was Tory; in 1826, and for several years afterwards, a Reform majority was elected; in 1831, again, Toryism was successful; in 1835, the balance veered over to the popular side once more, by a majority only of four. This majority, led by Mackenzie, refused to pass the supplies; whereupon, Sir Francis appealed to the people by dissolving the Parliament.

What were the precise grounds of difference in principle between the opposing parties, did not very clearly appear to us in the bush. Sir Francis Head had no power to grant "Responsible Government," as it has since been interpreted. On each side there were friends and opponents of that system. Among Tories, Ogle R. Gowan, Charles Fothergill, and others, advocated a responsible ministry, and were loud in their denunciations of the "Family Compact." On the Reform side were ranged such men as Marshall S. Bidwell and Dr. Rolph, who preferred American Republicanism, in which "Responsible Government" was and is utterly unknown. We consequently found it hard to understand the party cries of the day. But we began to perceive that there was a Republican bias on one hand, contending with a Monarchical leaning on the other; and we had come to Canada, as had most well-informed immigrants, expressly to avoid the evils of Republicanism, and to preserve our British constitutional heritage intact.

When therefore Sir Francis Head threw himself with great energy into the electoral arena, when he bade the foes of the Empire "come if they dare!" when he called upon the "United Empire Loyalists,"—men, who in 1770 had thrown away their all, rather than accept an alien rule—to vindicate once more their right to choose whom they would follow, King or President—when he traversed the length and breadth of the land, making himself at home in the farm-houses, and calling upon fathers and husbands and sons to stand up for their hearths, and their old traditions of honour and fealty to the Crown, it would have been strange indeed had he failed.

The next House of Assembly, elected in 1837, contained a majority of twenty-six to fourteen in favour of Sir F. B. Head's policy. This precipitated matters. Had Mackenzie been capable of enduring defeat with a good grace; had he restrained his natural irritability of temper, and kept his skirts cautiously clear of all contact with men of Republican aspirations, he might and probably would have recovered his position as a parliamentary leader, and died an honoured and very likely even a titled veteran! But he became frantic with choler and disappointment, and rushed headlong into the most passionate extremes, which ended in making him a mere cat's-paw in the hands of cunning schemers, who did not fail, after their manner, to disavow their own handiwork when it had ceased to serve their purposes.

CHAPTER XXIV.

TORONTO DURING THE REBELLION.

In November, 1837, I had travelled to Toronto for the purpose of seeking permanent employment in the city, and meant to return in the first week of December, to spend my last Christmas in the woods. But the fates and William Lyon Mackenzie had decided otherwise. I was staying for a few days with my friend Joseph Heughen, the London hairdresser mentioned as a fellow-passenger on board the Asia, whose name must be familiar to most Toronto citizens of that day. His shop was near Ridout's hardware-store, on King Street, at the corner of Yonge Street. On Sunday, the 3rd, we heard that armed men were assembling at the Holland Landing and Newmarket to attack the city, and that lists of houses to be burned by them were in the hands of their leaders; that Samuel Lount, blacksmith, had been manufacturing pikes at the Landing for their use; that two or three persons had been warned by friends in the secret to sell their houses, or to leave the city, or to look for startling changes of some sort. Then it was known that a quantity of arms and a couple of cannon were being brought from the garrison, and stored in the covered way under the old City Hall. Every idle report was eagerly caught up, and magnified a hundred-fold. But the burthen of all invariably was, an expected invasion by the Yankees to drive all loyalists from Canada. In this way rumour followed rumour, all business ceased, and everybody listened anxiously for the next alarm. At length it came in earnest. At eleven o'clock on Monday night, the 4th of December, every bell in the city was set ringing, occasional gun-shots were fired, by accident as it turned out, but none the less startling to nervous people; a confused murmur arose in the streets, becoming louder every minute; presently the sound of a horse's hoofs was heard, echoing loudly along Yonge Street. With others I hurried out, and found at Ridout's corner a horseman, who proved to be Alderman John Powell, who told his breathless listeners, how he had been stopped beyond the Yonge Street toll-gate, two miles out, by Mackenzie and Anderson at the head of a number of rebels in arms; how he had shot Anderson and missed Mackenzie; how he had dodged behind a log when pursued; and had finally got into town by the College Avenue.

There was but little sleep in Toronto that night, and next day everything was uproar and excitement, heightened by the news that Col. Moodie, of Richmond Hill, a retired officer of the army, who was determined to force his way through the armed bodies of rebels, to bring tidings of the rising to the Government in Toronto, had been shot down and inhumanly left to bleed to death at Montgomery's tavern. The flames and smoke from Dr. Horne's house at Rosedale, were visible all over the city; it had been fired in the presence of Mackenzie in person, in retaliation, it was said, for the refusal of discount by the Bank of Upper Canada, of which Dr. Horne was teller. The ruins of the still-burning building were visited by hundreds of citizens, and added greatly to the excitement and exasperation of the hour. By-and-by it became known that Mr. Robert Baldwin and Dr. John Rolph had been sent, with a flag of truce, to learn the wants of the insurgents. Many citizens accompanied the party at a little distance. A flag of truce was in itself a delightful novelty, and the street urchins cheered vociferously, scudding away at the smallest alarm. Arrived at the toll-gate, there were waiting outside Mackenzie, Lount, Gibson, Fletcher and other leaders, with a couple of hundred of their men. In reply to the Lieutenant-Governor's message of inquiry, as to what was wanted, the answer was, "Independence, and a convention to arrange details," which rather compendious demand, being reported to Sir Francis, was at once rejected. So there was nothing for it but to fight.

Mackenzie did his best to induce his men to advance on the city that evening; but as most of his followers had been led to expect that there would be no resistance, and no bloodshed, they were shocked and discouraged by Col. Moodie's death, as well as by those of Anderson and one or two others. A picket of volunteers under Col. Jarvis, fired on them, when not far within the toll-gate, killing one and wounding two others, and retired still firing. After this the insurgents lost all confidence, and even threatened to shoot Mackenzie himself, for reproaching them with cowardice. A farmer living by the roadside told me at the time, that while a detachment of rebels were marching southwards down the hill, since known as Mount Pleasant, they saw a waggon-load of cordwood standing on the opposite rise, and supposing it to be a piece of artillery loaded to the muzzle with grape or canister, these brave warriors leaped the fences right and left like squirrels, and could by no effort of their officers be induced again to advance.

By this time the principal buildings in the city—the City Hall, Upper Canada Bank, the Parliament Buildings, Osgoode Hall, Government House, the Canada Company's office, and many private dwellings and shops, were put in a state of defence by barricading the windows and doors with two-inch plank, loopholed for musketry; and the city bore a rather formidable appearance. Arms and ammunition were distributed to all householders who chose to accept them. I remember well the trepidation with which my friend Heughen shrank from touching the musket that was held out for his acceptance; and the outspoken indignation of the militia sergeant, whose proffer of the firearm was declined. The poor hairdresser told me afterwards, that many of his customers were rebels, and that he dreaded the loss of their patronage.

The same evening came Mr. Speaker McNab, with a steamer from Hamilton, bringing sixty of the "men of Gore." It was an inspiriting thing to see these fine fellows land on the wharf, bright and fresh from their short voyage, and full of zeal and loyalty. The ringing cheers they sent forth were re-echoed with interest by the townsmen. From Scarborough also, marched in a party of militia, under Captain McLean.

It was on the same day that a lady, still living, was travelling by stage from Streetsville, on her way through Toronto to Cornwall, having with her a large trunk of new clothing prepared for a long visit to her relatives. Very awkwardly for her, Mackenzie had started, at the head of a few men, from Yonge Street across to Dundas Street, to stop the stage and capture the mails, so as to intercept news of Dr. Duncombe's rising in the London District. Not content with seizing the mail-bags and all the money they contained, Mackenzie himself, pistol in hand, demanded the surrender of the poor woman's portmanteau, and carried it off bodily. It was asserted at the time that he only succeeded in evading capture a few days after, at Oakville, by disguising himself in woman's clothes, which may explain his raid upon the lady's wardrobe; for which, I believe, she failed to get any compensation whatsoever under the Rebellion Losses Act. This lady afterwards became the wife of John F. Rogers, who was my partner in business for several subsequent years.

In the course of the next day, Wednesday, parties of men arrived from Niagara, Hamilton, Oakville, Port Credit and other places in greater or less numbers—many of them Orangemen, delighted with their new occupation. The Lieutenant-Governor was thus enabled to vacate the City Hall and take up his headquarters in the Parliament Buildings; and before night as many as fifteen hundred volunteers were armed and partially drilled. Among them were a number of Mackenzie's former supporters, with their sons and relatives, now thoroughly ashamed of the man, and utterly alienated by his declared republicanism.

Next morning followed the "Battle of Gallows Hill," or, as it might more fitly be styled, the "Skirmish of Montgomery's Farm." Being a stranger in the city, I had not then formally volunteered, but took upon myself to accompany the advancing force, on the chance of finding something to do, either as a volunteer or a newspaper correspondent, should an opening occur. The main body, led by Sir Francis himself, with Colonels Fitzgibbon and McNab as Adjutants, marched by Yonge Street, and consisted of six hundred men with two guns; while two other bodies, of two hundred and a hundred and twenty men, respectively, headed by Colonels W. Chisholm and S. P. Jarvis, advanced by bye-roads and fields on the east and on the west of Yonge Street. Nothing was seen of the enemy till within half-a-mile of Montgomery's tavern. The road was there bordered on the west side by pine woods, from whence dropping rifle-shots began to be heard, which were answered by the louder muskets of the militia. Presently our artillery opened their hoarse throats, and the woods rang with strong reverberations. Splinters were dashed from the trees, threatening, and I believe causing worse mischief than the shots themselves. It is said that this kind of skirmishing continued for half-an-hour—to me it seemed but a few minutes. As the militia advanced, their opponents melted away. Parties of volunteers dashed over the fences and into the woods, shouting and firing as they ran. Two or three wounded men of both parties were lifted tenderly into carts and sent off to the city to be placed in hospital. Others lay bleeding by the road-side—rebels by their rustic clothing; their wounds were bound up, and they were removed in their turn. Soon a movement was visible through the smoke, on the hill fronting the tavern, where some tall pines were then standing. I could see there two or three hundred men, now firing irregularly at the advancing loyalists; now swaying to and fro without any apparent design. Some horsemen were among them, who seemed to act more as scouts than as leaders.

We had by this time arrived within cannon shot of the tavern itself. Two or three balls were seen to strike and pass through it. A crowd of men rushed from the doors, and scattered wildly in a northerly direction. Those on the hill wavered, receded under shelter of the undulating land, and then fled like their fellows. Their horsemen took the side-road westward, and were pursued, but not in time to prevent their escape. Had our right and left wings kept pace with the main body, the whole insurgent force must have been captured.

Sir Francis halted his men opposite the tavern, and gave the word to demolish the building, by way of a severe lesson to the disaffected. This was promptly done by firing the furniture in the lower rooms, and presently thick clouds of smoke and vivid flames burst from doors and windows. The battalion next moved on to perform the same service at Gibson's house, several miles further north. Many prisoners were taken in the pursuit, all of whom Sir Francis released, after admonishing them to be better subjects in future. The march back to Toronto was very leisurely executed, several of the mounted officers carrying dead pigs and geese slung across their saddle-bows as trophies of victory.

Next day, volunteers for the city guard were called for, and among them I was regularly enrolled and placed under pay, at three shillings and nine pence per diem. My captain was George Percival Ridout; and his brother, Joseph D. Ridout, was lieutenant. Our company was duly drilled at the City Hall, and continued to do duty as long as their services were required, which was about four months. I have a vivid recollection of being stationed at the Don Bridge to look out for a second visit from Peter Matthews's band of rebels, eighty of whom had attempted to burn the bridge, and succeeded in burning three adjoining houses; also, of being forgotten and kept there without food or relief throughout a bitter cold winter's night and morning. Also, of doing duty as sentry over poor old Colonel Van Egmond, a Dutch officer who had served under Napoleon I., and who was grievously sick from exposure in the woods and confinement in gaol, of which he soon afterwards died. Another day, I was placed, as one of a corporal's guard, in charge of Lesslie's stationery and drug-store, and found there a saucy little shop-boy who has since developed into the portly person of Alderman Baxter, now one, and not the least, of our city notabilities. The guards and the guarded were on the best of terms. We were treated with much hospitality by Mr. Joseph Lesslie, late Postmaster of Toronto, and have all been excellent friends ever since. Our corporal, I ought to say, was Anthony Blachford, since a well-known and respected citizen.

Those were exciting times in Toronto. The day after the battle, six hundred men of Simcoe, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dewson, came marching down Yonge Street, headed by Highland pipers playing the national pibroch. In their ranks I first saw Hugh Scobie, a stalwart Scotsman, afterwards widely known as publisher of the British Colonist newspaper. With this party were brought in sixty prisoners, tied to a long rope, most of whom were afterwards released on parole.

A day or two afterwards, entered the volunteers from the Newcastle District, who had marched the whole distance from Brockville, under the command, I think, of Lieutenant-Colonel Ogle R. Gowan. They were a fine body of men, and in the highest spirits at the prospect of a fight with the young Queen Victoria's enemies.

A great sensation was created when the leaders who had been arrested after the battle, Dr. Thomas D. Morrison, John G. Parker, and two others, preceded by a loaded cannon pointed towards the prisoners, were marched along King Street to the Common Jail, which is the same building now occupied as York Chambers, at the corner of Toronto and Court Streets. The Court House stood, and still stands, converted into shops and offices, on Church Street; between the two was an open common which was used in those days as the place of public executions. It was here that, on the 12th of April following, I witnessed, with great sorrow, the execution by hanging of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews, two of the principal rebel leaders.

Sir F. B. Head had then left the Province.

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The following narrative of circumstances which occurred during the time when Mackenzie was in command of the rebel force on Yonge Street, has been kindly communicated to me by a gentleman, who, as a young lad, was personally cognizant of the facts described. It has, I believe, never been published, and will interest many of my readers:

"It was on Monday morning, the 5th of December, 1837, when rumours of the disturbances that had broken out in Lower Canada were causing great excitement throughout the Home District, that the late James S. Howard's servant-man, named Bolton, went into his master's bed-room and asked if Mr. H. had heard shots fired during the night. He replied that he had not, and told the man to go down to the street and find out what was the matter. Bolton returned shortly with the news, that a man named Anderson had been shot at the foot of the hill, and that his body was lying in a house near by. Shortly after came the startling report of the death of poor Col. Moodie, which was a great shock to Mrs. Howard, who knew him well, and was herself a native of Fredericton, where the Colonel's regiment (the old Hundred and Fourth) had been raised during the war of 1812. Mr. Howard immediately ordered his carriage, and started for the city, from whence he did not return for ten days. About nine o'clock, a man named Pool, who held the rank of captain in the rebel army, called at Mr. Howard's house, to ask if Anderson's body was there. Being told where it was said to be, he turned and went away. Immediately afterwards, the first detachment of the rebel army came in sight, consisting of some fifteen or twenty men, who drew up on the lawn in front of the house. Presently, at the word of command they wheeled round and went away in search of the dead rebel. Next came three or four men (loyalists) hurrying down the road, who said that there were five hundred rebels behind them. Then was heard the report of fire arms, and anon more armed men showed themselves along the brow of Gallows Hill, and took up ground near the present residence of Mr. Hooper. About eleven o'clock, another detachment appeared, headed by a man on a small white horse, almost a pony, who turned out to be the commander-in-chief, Mackenzie himself. He wore a great coat buttoned up to the chin, and presented the appearance of being stuffed. In talking among themselves, the men intimated that he had on a great many coats, as if to make himself bullet proof. To enable the man on the white pony to enter the lawn, his men wrenched off the fence boards; he entered the house without knocking, took possession of the sitting room where Mrs. and Miss Howard and her brother were sitting, and ordered dinner to be got ready for fifty men. Utterly astonished at such a demand, Mrs. Howard said she could do nothing of the kind. After abusing Mr. Howard for some time—who had incurred his dislike by refusing him special privileges at the Post Office—Mackenzie said Howard had held his office long enough, and that it was time somebody else had it. Mrs. Howard at length referred him to the servant in the kitchen; which hint he took, and went to see about dinner himself. There happened to be a large iron sugar-kettle, in which was boiling a sheep killed by dogs shortly before. This they emptied, and refilled with beef from a barrel in the cellar. A baking of bread just made was also confiscated, and cut up by a tall thin man, named Eckhardt, from Markham. While these preparations were going on, other men were busy in the tool house mending their arms, which consisted of all sorts of weapons, from chisels and gouges fixed on poles, to hatchets, knives and guns of all descriptions. About two o'clock there was a regular stampede, and the family were left quite alone, much to their relief; with the exception of a young Highland Scotchman mounting guard. He must have been a recent arrival from the old country, as he wore the blue jacket and trowsers of the sea-faring men of the western isles. Mrs. Howard seeing all the rest had left, went out to speak to him, saying she regretted to see so fine a young Scotchman turning rebel against his Queen. His answer was, "Country first, Queen next." He told her that it was the flag of truce which had called his comrades away. About half-past three they all returned, headed by the commander-in-chief, who demanded of Mrs. Howard whether the dinner he had ordered was ready? She said it was just as they had left it. Irritated at her coolness he got very angry, shook his horse-whip, pulled her from her chair to the window, bidding her look out and be thankful that her own house was not in the same state. He pointed to Dr. Horne's house at Blue Hill, on the east side of the road, which during his absence he had set on fire, much to the disappointment of his men, whom, though very hungry, he would not allow to touch anything, but burnt all up. There was considerable grumbling among the men about it. Poor Lount, who was with them, told Mrs. Howard not to mind Mackenzie, but to give them all they wanted, and they would not harm her. They got through their dinner about dusk, and returned to the lawn, where they had some barrels of whiskey. They kept up a regular—or rather an irregular firing all night. The family were much alarmed, having only one servant woman with them; the man Bolton had escaped for fear as he said of being taken prisoner by the rebels. There the men remained until Wednesday, when they returned to Montgomery's tavern, a mile or two up the street, where is now the village of Eglinton. About eleven o'clock in the morning, the loyalist force marched out to attack the rebels, who were posted at the Paul Pry Inn, on the east side of the road, with their main body at Montgomery's, some distance further north. It was a very fine sunny day, and the loyalists made a formidable appearance, as the sun shone on their bright musket-barrels and bayonets. The first shot fired was from the artillery, under the command of Captain Craig; it went through the Paul Pry under the eaves and out of the roof. The rebels took to the woods on each side of the road, which at that time were much nearer than at present. Thomas Bell, who had charge of a company of volunteers, said that on the morning of the battle, a stranger asked leave to accompany him. The man wore a long beard, and was rumoured to have been one of Napoleon's officers. Mr. Bell saw him take aim at one of the retreating rebels, who was crouching behind a stump, firing at the loyalists. Nothing could be seen but the top of his head. The stranger fired with fatal effect. The dead man turned out to be a farmer of the name of Widman, from Whitchurch. Montgomery's tavern, a large building on the hill-side of the road, was next attacked, and was quickly evacuated by the flying rebels, who got into the woods to the west and dispersed. It was then that Mackenzie made his escape. The tavern having been the rebel head-quarters, and the place from which Col. Moodie was shot, was set on fire and burned down. The house of Gibson, another rebel rendezvous, about eight miles north, was also burnt. With that small effort the rebellion in Upper Canada was crushed. A few days after, some fifty or sixty rebel prisoners from about Sharon and Lloydtown, were marched down to the city, roped together, two and two in a long string; and shortly afterwards a volunteer corps—commanded by Colonels Hill and Dewson, raised amongst the log-cabin settlers, in the County of Simcoe, came down in sleighs to the city, where they did duty all winter. It was an extraordinary fact, that these poor settlers, living in contentment in their log-cabins, with their potato patches around, should turn out and put down a rebellion, originated among old settlers and wealthy farmers in the prosperous County of York. Mackenzie early lost the sympathies of a great proportion of his followers. One of them, named Jacob Kurtz, swore most lustily, the same winter, that if he could catch his old leader he would shoot him. While retreating eastward, a party of the rebels attempted to burn the Don Bridge, and would have succeeded, but for the determined efforts of a Mrs. Ross, who put out the fire, at the expense of a bullet in her knee; the ball was extracted by the late Dr. Widmer, who was very popular about Yorkville and the east end of the city."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED.

It is now forty-five years since the last act of the rebellion was consummated, by the defeat of Duncombe's party in the London district, the punishment of Sutherland's brigands at Windsor, and the destruction of the steamer Caroline and dispersal of the discreditable ruffians, of whom their "president," Mackenzie, was heartily sick, at Navy Island. None of these events came within my own observation, and I pass them by without special remark.

But respecting Sir Francis Bond Head and his antagonist, I feel that more should be said, in justice to both. It is eminently unfair to censure Sir Francis for not doing that which he was not commissioned to do. Even so thorough a Reformer and so just a man as Earl Russell, had failed to see the advisability of extending "responsible government" to any of Her Majesty's Colonies. Up to the time of Lord Durham's report in 1839, no such proposal had been even mooted; and it appears to have been the general opinion of British statesmen, at the date of Sir Francis Head's appointment, that to give a responsible ministry to Canada was equivalent to offering her independence. In taking it for granted that Canadians as a whole were unfit to have conferred on them the same rights of self-government as were possessed by Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotchmen in the old country, consisted the original error. This error, however, Sir Francis shared with the Colonial Office and both Houses of the Imperial Parliament. Since those days the mistake has been admitted, and not Canada alone, but the Australian colonies and South Africa have profited by our advancement in self-government.

As for Sir Francis's personal character, even Mackenzie's biographer allows that he was frank, kindly and generous in an unusual degree. That he won the entire esteem of so many men of whom all Canadians of whatever party are proud—such men as Chief Justice Robinson, Bishop Strachan, Chief Justices Macaulay, Draper and McLean, Sir Allan N. McNab, Messrs. Henry Ruttan, Mahlon Burwell, Jno. W. Gamble and many others, I hold to be indubitable proof of his high qualities and honest intentions. Nobody can doubt that had he been sent here to carry out responsible government, he would have done it zealously and honourably. But he was sent to oppose it, and, in opposing it, he simply did his duty.

A gentleman[9] well qualified to judge, and who knew him personally, has favoured me with the following remarks apropos of the subject, which I have pleasure in laying before my readers:

"As a boy, I had a sincere admiration for his [Sir Francis's] devoted loyalty, and genuine English character; and I have since learnt to respect and appreciate with greater discrimination his great services to the Crown and Empire. He was a little Quixotic perhaps. He had a marked individuality of his own. But he was as true as steel, and most staunch to British law and British principle in the trying days of his administration in Canada. His loyalty was chivalrous and magnetic; by his enlightened enthusiasm in a good cause he evoked a true spirit of loyalty in Upper Canada, that had well-nigh become extinct, being overlaid with the spirit of ultra-radicalism that had for years previously got uppermost among our people. But Upper Canada loyalty had a deep and solid foundation in the patriotism of the U. E. Loyalists, a noble race who had proved by deeds, not words, their attachment to the Crown and government of the mother land. These U. E. Loyalists were the true founders of Upper Canada; and they were forefathers of whom we may be justly proud—themselves 'honouring the father and the mother'—their sovereign and the institutions under which they were born—they did literally obtain the promised reward of that 'first commandment with promise,' viz.: length of days and honour."

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William Lyon Mackenzie was principally remarkable for his indomitable perseverance and unhesitating self-reliance. Of toleration for other men's opinions, he seems to have had none. He did, or strove to do, whatsoever he himself thought right, and those who differed with him he denounced in the most unmeasured terms. For example, writing of the Imperial Government in 1837, he says:

"Small cause have Highlanders and the descendants of Highlanders to feel a friendship for the Guelphic family. If the Stuarts had their faults, they never enforced loyalty in the glens and valleys of the north by banishing and extirpating the people; it was reserved for the Brunswickers to give, as a sequel to the massacre of Glencoe, the cruel order for depopulation. I am proud of my descent from a rebel race; who held borrowed chieftains, a scrip nobility, rag money and national debt in abomination. . . . Words cannot express my contempt at witnessing the servile, crouching attitude of the country of my choice. If the people felt as I feel, there is never a Grant or Glenelg who crossed the Tay and Tweed to exchange high-born Highland poverty for substantial Lowland wealth, who would dare to insult Upper Canada with the official presence, as its ruler, of such an equivocal character as this Mr. what do they call him—Francis Bond Head."

Had Mackenzie confined himself to this kind of vituperation, all might have gone well for him, and for his followers. People would only have laughed at his vehemence. The advocacy of the principle of responsible government in Canada would have been and was taken up by Orangemen, U. E. Loyalists, and other known Tories. Ever since the day when the manufacture of even a hob-nail in the American colonies was declared by English statesmen to be intolerable, the struggle has gone on for colonial equality as against imperial centralization. The final adoption of the theory of ministerial responsibility by all political parties in Canada, is Mackenzie's best justification.

But he sold himself in his disappointment to the republican tempter, and justly paid the penalty. That he felt this himself long before he died, will be incontestably shown by his own words, which I copy from Mr. Lindsey's "Life of Mackenzie," vol. ii., page 290:

"After what I have seen here, I frankly confess to you that, had I passed nine years in the United States before, instead of after, the outbreak, I am very sure I would have been the last man in America to be engaged in it."

And, again, page 291:

"A course of careful observations during the last eleven years has fully satisfied me that, had the violent movements in which I and many others were engaged on both sides of the Niagara proved successful, that success would have deeply injured the people of Canada, whom I then believed I was serving at great risks; that it would have deprived millions, perhaps, of our own countrymen in Europe of a home upon this continent, except upon conditions which, though many hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been constrained to accept them, are of an exceedingly onerous and degrading character. . . . There is not a living man on this continent who more sincerely desires that British Government in Canada may long continue, and give a home and a welcome to the old countryman, than myself."

Of Mackenzie's imprisonment and career in the United States, nothing need be said here. I saw him once more in the Canadian Parliament after his return from exile, in the year 1858. He was then remarkable for his good humour, and for his personal independence of party. His chosen associates were, as it seemed to me, chiefly on the Opposition or Conservative side of the House.

Before closing this chapter, I cannot help referring to the unfortunate men who suffered in various ways. They were farmers of the best class, and of the most simple habits. The poor fellows who lay wounded by the road side on Yonge Street, were not persons astute enough to discuss political theories, but feeble creatures who could only shed bitter tears over their bodily sufferings, and look helplessly for assistance from their conquerors. There were among them boys of twelve or fifteen years old, one of whom had been commissioned by his ignorant old mother at St. Catharines, to be sure and bring her home a check-apron full of tea from one of the Toronto groceries.

I thought at the time, and I think still, that the Government ought to have interfered before matters came to a head, and so saved all these hapless people from the cruel consequences of their leaders' folly. On the other hand, it is asserted that neither Sir Francis nor his Council could be brought to credit the probability of an armed rising. A friend has told me that his father, who was then a member of the Executive Council, attended a meeting as late as nine o'clock on the 4th December, 1837. That he returned home and retired to rest at eleven. In half an hour a messenger from Government House came knocking violently at the door, with the news of the rising; when he jumped out of bed exclaiming, "I hope Robinson will believe me next time." The Chief Justice had received with entire incredulity the information laid before the Council, of the threatened movement that week.

CHAPTER XXVI.

RESULTS IN THE FUTURE.

Whatever may be thought of Sir Francis B. Head's policy—whether we prefer to call it mere foolhardiness or chivalric zeal—there can be no doubt that he served as an effective instrument in the hands of Providence for the building up of a "Greater Britain" on the American continent. The success of the outbreak of 1837 could only have ended in Canada's absorption by the United States, which must surely have proved a lamentable finale to the grand heroic act of the loyalists of the old colonies, who came here to preserve what they held to be their duty alike to their God and their earthly sovereign. It is certain, I think, that religious principle is the true basis, and the one only safeguard of Canadian existence. It was the influence of the Anglican, and especially of the Methodist pastors, of 1770, that led their flocks into the wilderness to find here a congenial home. In Lower Canada, in 1837, it was in like manner the influence of the clergy, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, that defeated Papineau and his Republican followers. And it is the religious and moral sentiment of Canada, in all her seven Provinces, that now constitutes the true bond of union between us and the parent Empire. Only a few years since, the statesmen of the old country felt no shame in preferring United States amity to Colonial connection. To-day a British premier openly and even ostentatiously repudiates any such policy as suicidal.

That Canada possesses, in every sense of the word, a healthier atmosphere than its Southern neighbour, and that it owes its continued moral salubrity to the defeat of Mackenzie's allies in 1837-8, I for one confidently hold—with Mackenzie himself. That this superiority is due to the greater and more habitual respect paid to all authority—Divine and secular—I devoutly believe. That our present and future welfare hangs, as by a thread, upon that one inherent, all-important characteristic, that we are a religious community, seems to me plain to all who care to read correctly the signs of the times.

The historian of the future will find in these considerations his best clue to our existing status in relation to our cousins to the south of us. He will discover on the one side of the line, peaceful industry, home affections, unaffected charity, harmless recreations, a general desire for education, and a sincere reverence for law and authority. On the other, he may observe a heterogeneous commixture of many races, and notably of their worst elements; he will see the marriage-tie degraded into a mockery, the Sabbath-day a scoffing, the house of God a rostrum or a concert-hall, the law a screen for crime, the judicial bench a purchasable commodity, the patrimony of the State an asylum for Mormonism.

I am fully sensible that the United States possesses estimable citizens in great numbers, who feel, and lament more than anybody else, the flagrant abuses of her free institutions. But do they exercise any controlling voice in elections? Do they even hope to influence the popular vote? They tell us themselves that they are powerless. And so—we have only to wish them a fairer prospect; and to pray that Canada may escape the inevitable Nemesis that attends upon great national faults such as theirs.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A CONFIRMED TORY.

My good friend and host, Henry Cook Todd, was one of the most uncompromising Tories I ever met with. He might have sat for the portrait of Mr. Grimwig in "Oliver Twist." Like that celebrated old gentleman, "his bark was aye waur than his bite." He would pour out a torrent of scorn and sarcasm upon some luckless object of his indignation, public or private; and, having exhausted the full vials of his wrath, would end with some kind act toward, perhaps, the very person he had been anathematizing, and subside into an amiable mood of compassion for the weaknesses of erring mankind generally.

He was a graduate of the University of Oxford, and afterwards had charge of a large private school in one of the English counties. Having inherited and acquired a moderate competency, he retired into private life; but later on he lost by the failure of companies wherein his savings had been invested. He then commenced business as a bookseller, did not succeed, and finally decided, at the persuasion of his wife's brother, Mr. William P. Patrick, of Toronto, to emigrate to Canada. Having first satisfied himself of the prudence of the step, by a tour in the United States and Canada, he sent for his family, who arrived here in 1833.

His two sons, Alfred and Alpheus, got the full benefit of their father's classical attainments, and were kept closely to their studies. At an early age, their uncle Patrick took charge of their interests, and placed them about him in the Legislative Assembly, where I recollect to have seen one or both of them, in the capacity of pages, on the floor of the House. From that lowly position, step by step, they worked their way, as we have seen, to the very summit of their respective departments.

Mr. Todd was also an accomplished amateur artist, and drew exquisitely. An etching of the interior of Winchester Cathedral, by him, I have never seen surpassed.

He was fond of retirement and of antiquarian reading, and, while engaged in some learned philological investigation, would shut himself up in his peculiar sanctum and remain invisible for days, even to his own family.

Between the years 1833 and 1840, Mr. Todd published a book, entitled "Notes on Canada and the United States," and I cannot better illustrate his peculiar habits of thought, and mode of expressing them, than by quoting two or three brief passages from that work, and from "Addenda" which I printed for him myself, in 1840:

"As an acidulated mixture with the purest element will embitter its sweetness, so vice and impurity imported to any country must corrupt and debase it. To this hour, when plunderers no longer feel secure in the scenes of their misdeeds, or culprits would evade the strong arm of the law, to what country do they escape? America—for here, if not positively welcomed (?), they are, at least, safe. If it be asked, did not ancient Rome do the same thing? I answer, slightly so, whilst yet an infant, but never in any shape afterwards; but America, by still receiving, and with open arms, the vicious and the vile from all corners of the earth, does so in her full growth. As she therefore plants, so must she also reap.

* * * "The Episcopal clergy in this country [United States] were originally supported by an annual contribution of tobacco, each male, so tithable, paying 40lbs.; the regular clergy of the then thinly-settled state of Virginia receiving 16,000 lbs. yearly as salary. In Canada they are maintained by an assignment of lands from the Crown, which moreover extends its assistance to ministers of other denominations; so that the people are not called upon to contribute for that or any similar purpose; and yet, such is the deplorable abandonment to error, and obstinate perversion of fact, amongst the low or radical party here—a small one, it is true, but not on that account less censurable—that this very thing which should ensure their gratitude is a never-ending theme for their vituperation and abuse; proving to demonstration, that no government on earth, or any concession whatever, can long satisfy or please them.

* * * "The mention of periodicals reminds me, that newspapers on the arrival of a stranger are about the first things he takes up; but on perusing them, he must exercise his utmost judgment and penetration; for of all the fabrications, clothed too in the coarsest language, that ever came under my observation, many papers here, for low scurrility, and vilifying the authorities, certainly surpass any I ever met with. It is to be regretted that men without principle and others void of character should be permitted thus to abuse the public ear. * * The misguided individuals in the late disturbance, on being questioned upon the subject, unreservedly admitted, that until reading Mackenzie's flagitious and slanderous newspaper, they were happy, contented, and loyal subjects."

When the seat of Government was removed to Kingston, Mr. Todd's family accompanied it thither; but he remained in Toronto, to look after his property, which was considerable, and died here at the age of 77.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES.

Early in the year 1838, I obtained an engagement as manager of the Palladium, a newspaper issued by Charles Fothergill, on the plan of the New York Albion. The printing office, situated on the corner of York and Boulton Streets, was very small, and I found it a mass of little better than pi, with an old hand-press of the Columbian pattern. To bring this office into something like presentable order, to train a rough lot of lads to their business, and to supply an occasional original article, occupied me during great part of that year. Mr. Fothergill was a man of talent, a scholar, and a gentleman; but so entirely given up to the study of natural history and the practice of taxidermy, that his newspaper received but scant attention, and his personal appearance and the cleanliness of his surroundings still less. He had been King's Printer under the Family Compact régime, and was dismissed for some imprudent criticism upon the policy of the Government. His family sometimes suffered from the want of common necessaries, while the money which should have fed them went to pay for some rare bird or strange fish. This could not last long. The Palladium died a natural death, and I had to seek elsewhere for employment.

Amongst the visitors at Mr. Todd's house was John F. Rogers, an Englishman, who, in conjunction with George H. Hackstaff, published the Toronto Herald, a weekly journal of very humble pretensions. Mr. Hackstaff was from the United States, and found himself regarded with great distrust, in consequence of the Navy Island and Prescott invasions. He therefore offered to sell me his interest in the newspaper and printing office for a few dollars. I accepted the offer, and thus became a member of the Fourth Estate, with all the dignities, immunities, and profits attaching thereto. From that time until the year 1860, I continued in the same profession, publishing successively the Herald, Patriot, News of the Week, Atlas and Daily Colonist newspapers, and lastly the Quebec Advertiser. I mention them all now, to save wearisome details hereafter.

I have a very lively recollection of the first job which I printed in my new office. It was on the Sunday on which St. James's Cathedral was burnt owing to some negligence about the stoves. Our office was two doors north of the burnt edifice, on Church Street, where the Public Library now stands; and I was hurriedly required to print a small placard, announcing that divine service would be held that afternoon at the City Hall, where I had then recently drilled as a volunteer in the City Guard.

The Herald was the organ, and Mr. Rogers an active member, of the Orange body in Toronto. I had no previous knowledge of the peculiar features of Orangeism, and it took me some months to acquire an insight into the ways of thinking and acting of the order. I busied myself chiefly in the practical work of the office, such as type-setting and press-work, and took no part in editorials, except to write an occasional paragraph or musical notice.

The first book I undertook to print, and the first law book published in Canada, was my young friend Alpheus Todd's "Parliamentary Law," a volume of 400 pages, which was a creditable achievement for an office which could boast but two or three hundred dollars worth of type in all. With this book is connected an anecdote which I cannot refrain from relating:

I had removed my office to a small frame building on Church Street, next door south of C. Clinkinbroomer, the watchmaker's, at the south-west corner of King and Church Streets. One day, a strange-looking youth of fourteen or fifteen entered the office. He had in his hand a roll of manuscript, soiled and dog's-eared, which he asked me to look at. I did so, expecting to find verses intended for publication. It consisted indeed of a number of poems, extending to thirty or forty pages or more, defective in grammar and spelling, and in some parts not very legible.

Feeling interested in the lad, I enquired where he came from, what he could do, and what he wanted. It appeared that his father held some subordinate position in the English House of Commons; that, being put to a trade that he disliked, the boy ran away to Canada, where he verbally apprenticed himself to a shoemaker in Toronto, whom he quitted because his master wanted him to mend shoes, while he wished to spend his time in writing poetry; and that for the last year or so he had been working on a farm. He begged me to give him a trial as an apprentice to the printing business. I had known a fellow-apprentice of my own, who was first taken in as an office-boy, subsequently acquired a little education, became a printer's-devil, and when last I heard of him, was King's printer in Australia.

Well, I told the lad, whose name was Archie, that I would try him. I was just then perplexed with the problem of making and using composition rollers in the cold winter of Canada, and in an old frame office, where it was almost impossible to keep anything from freezing. So I resolved to use a composition ball, such as may be seen in the pictures of early German printing offices, printing four duodecimo pages of book-work at one impression, and perfecting the sheet—or printing the obverse, as medallists would say—with other four pages. Archie was tall and strong—I gave him a regular drilling in the use of the ball, and after some days' practice, found I could trust him as beater at the press. Robinson Crusoe's man Friday was not a more willing, faithful, conscientious slave than was my Archie. Never absent, never grumbling, never idle; if there was no work ready for him, there was always plenty of mischief at hand. He was very fond of a tough argument; plodded on with his press-work; learnt to set type pretty well, before it was suspected that he even knew the letter boxes; studied hard at grammar and the dictionary; acquired knowledge with facility, and retained it tenaciously. He remained with me many years, and ultimately became my foreman. After the destruction of the establishment by fire in 1849, he was engaged as foreman of the University printing office of Mr. Henry Rowsell, and left there after a long term to enter the Toronto School of Medicine, then presided over by Dr. Rolph, on Richmond Street, just west of where Knox's Church now stands. After obtaining his license to practise the profession of medicine, he studied Spanish, and then went to Mexico, to practise among the semi-savages of that politically and naturally volcanic republic. There he made a little money.

The country was at the time in a state of general civil war; not only was there national strife between two political parties for the ascendency, but in many of the separate states pronunciamentos (proclamations) were issued against the men in power, followed by bloody contests between the different factions. In the "united state" of Coahuila and Nuevo-Leon, in which the doctor then resided, General Vidauri held the reins of power at Monterey, the capital; and General Aramberri flew to arms to wrest the government from him. The opposing armies were no other than bands of robbers and murderers. Aramberri's forces had passed near the town of Salinas, where the doctor lived, plundering everybody on their route. Next day Vidauri's troops came in pursuit, appropriating everything of value which had not been already confiscated. General Julio Quiroga, one of the most inhuman and cruel monsters of the republic—a native of the town, near which he had but recently been a cowherd (gauadéro)—commanded the pursuing force. On the evening previous to his entry, a peon (really a slave, though slavery was said to have been abolished in the republic) had been severely injured in a quarrel with another of his class, and the doctor was sent for by the Alcalde to dress his wounds. As the man was said to belong to a rich proprietor, the doctor objected unless his fee were assured. An old, rough, and dirty-looking man thereupon stepped forward and said he would be answerable for the pay, stating at the same time that his name was Quiroga, and that he was the father of Don Julio! When General Quiroga heard his father's account of the affair, he had the wounded man placed in the stocks in the open plaza under a broiling sun; fined the Alcalde $500 for not having done so himself, as well as for not having imprisoned the Doctor; had the Doctor arrested by an armed guard under a lieutenant, and in the presence of a dozen or more officers ordered him to be shot within twenty minutes for having insulted his (Quiroga's) father. The execution, however, as may be inferred, did not take place. The explanation the Doctor gives of his escape is a curious one. He cursed and swore at the General so bitterly and rapidly in English (not being at the time well versed in Spanish expletives) that Don Julio was frightened by his grimaces, and the horrible unknown words that issued from his lips, and fell off his chair in an epileptic fit, to which he was subject. The Doctor had the clothing about the General's throat and chest thrown open, and dashed some cold water in his face. On reviving, Quiroga told the Doctor to return to his house; that he need be under no fear; said he supposed the difficulty was caused by his (the Doctor's) not understanding the Spanish language; and added, that he intended to consult our friend some day about those atagues (fits). Quiroga never returned to Salinas during the Doctor's stay there, and some years after these events, like most Mexican generals, was publicly executed, thus meeting the fate he had so cruelly dealt out to many better men than himself, and to which he had sentenced our fellow-citizen.

The Doctor remained in Mexico till the French invasion in 1863, when, partly on account of the illness of his wife, and partly because of the disturbed state of the country, he returned to Toronto. He practised his profession here and became a well-known public character, still, he said, cherishing a warm love for the sunny south, styling the land of the Montezumas "Mi Mejico amado"—my beloved Mexico—and corresponding with his friends there, who but very recently offered him some inducements to return.

That truant boy was afterwards known as Dr. Archibald A. Riddel, ex-alderman, and for many years coroner for the City of Toronto, which latter office he resigned so lately as the 30th of June, 1883. He died in December last, and was buried in the Necropolis, whither his remains were followed by a large concourse of sympathizing friends.

CHAPTER XXIX.

The burning of St. James's Cathedral in 1839, marks another phase of my Toronto life, which is associated with many pleasant and some sorrowful memories. The services of the Church of England were, for some months after that event, conducted in the old City Hall. The choir was an amateur one, led by Mr. J. D. Humphreys, whose reputation as an accomplished musician must be familiar to many of my readers. Of that choir I became a member, and continued one until my removal to Carlton in 1853. During those fourteen years I was concerned in almost every musical movement in Toronto, wrote musical notices, and even composed some music to my own poetry. An amateur glee club, of which Mr. E. L. Cull, until lately of the Canada Company's office, and myself are probably the only survivors, used occasionally to meet and amuse ourselves with singing glees and quartettes on Christmas and New Year's Eve, opposite the houses of our several friends. It was then the custom to invite our party indoors, to be sumptuously entertained with the good things provided for the purpose.

Thus the time passed away after the rebellion, and during the period of Sir George Arthur's stay in Canada, without the occurrence of any public event in which I was personally concerned. Lord Durham came; made his celebrated Report: and went home again. Then followed Lord Sydenham, to whom I propose to pay some attention, as with him commenced my first experience of Canadian party politics.

Mackenzie's rebellion had convinced me of the necessity of taking and holding firm ground in defence of monarchical institutions, as opposed to republicanism. It is well known that nearly all Old Country Whigs, when transplanted to Canada, become staunch Tories. So most moderate Reformers from the British Isles are classed here as Liberal Conservatives. Even English Chartists are transformed into Canadian Anti-Republicans.

I had been neither Chartist nor ultra-Radical, but simply a quiet Reformer, disposed to venerate, but not blindly to idolize, old institutions, and by no means to pull down an ancient fabric without knowing what kind of structure was to be erected in its place. Thus it followed, as a matter of course, that I should gravitate towards the Conservative side of Canadian party politics, in which I found so many of the solid, respectable, well-to-do citizens of Toronto had ranged themselves.

CHAPTER XXX.

LORD SYDENHAM'S MISSION.

I have frequently remarked that, although in England any person may pass a life-time without becoming acquainted with his next-door neighbour, he can hardly fall into conversation with a fellow-countryman in Canada, without finding some latent link of relationship or propinquity between them. Thus, in the case of Mr. C. Poulett Thomson, I trace more than one circumstance connecting that great man with my humble self. He was a member—the active member—of the firm of Thomson, Bonar & Co., Russia Merchants, Cannon Street, London, at the same time that my brother-in-law, William Tatchell, of the firm of Tatchell & Clarke, carried on the same business of Russia Merchants in Upper Thames Street. There were occasional transactions between them: and my brother Thomas, who was chief accountant in the Thames Street house, has told me that the firm of Thomson, Bonar & Co. was looked upon in the trade with a good deal of distrust, for certain sharp practices to which they were addicted.

Again, Sir John Rae Reid, of the East India Company, had been the Tory member of Parliament for Dover. On his retirement, Mr. Poulett Thomson started as Reform candidate for the same city. I knew the former slightly as a neighbour of my mother's, at Ewell, in Surrey, and felt some interest in the Dover election in consequence. It was in the old borough-mongering times, and the newspapers on both sides rang with accounts of the immense sums that were expended in this little Dover contest, in which Mr. Thomson, aided by his party, literally bought every inch of his way, and succeeded in obtaining his first seat in the House of Commons, at a cost, as his biographer states, of £3,000 sterling. In the matter of corruption, there was probably little difference between the rival candidates.

The Right Hon. Charles Poulett Thomson, it was understood in England, always had the dirty work of the Melbourne Ministry to do; and it was probably his usefulness in that capacity that recommended him for the task of uniting the two Canadas, in accordance with that report of Lord Durham, which his lordship himself disavowed.[10] That Mr. Thomson did his work well, cannot be denied. He was, in fact, the Castlereagh of Canadian Union. What were the exact means employed by him in Montreal and Toronto is not known, but the results were visible enough. Government officials coerced, sometimes through the agency of their wives, sometimes by direct threats of dismissal; the Legislature overawed by the presence and interference of His Excellency's secretaries and aides-de-camp; votes sought and obtained by appeals to the personal interests of members of Parliament. These and such-like were the dignified processes by which the Union of the Canadas was effected, in spite of the unwillingness of at least one of the parties to that ceremony.

His Excellency did not even condescend to veil his contempt for his tools. When a newly nominated Cabinet Minister waited upon the great man with humility, to thank him for an honour for which he felt his education did not qualify him, the reported answer was—"Oh, I think you are all pretty much alike here."

In Toronto, anything like opposition to His Excellency's policy was sought to be silenced by the threat of depriving the city of its tenure of the Seat of Government. The offices of the principal city journals, the Patriot and Courier, were besieged by anxious subscribers, entreating that nothing should appear at all distasteful to His Excellency. Therefore it happened, that our little sheet, the Herald, became the only mouth-piece of Toronto dissentients; and was well supplied with satires and criticisms upon the politic manoeuvres of Government House. We used to issue on New Year's Day a sheet of doggerel verses, styled, "The News Boy's Address to his Patrons," which gave me an opportunity, of which I did not fail to avail myself, of telling His Excellency some wholesome truths in not very complimentary phrase. It is but justice to him to say, that he enjoyed the fun, such as it was, as much as anybody, and sent a servant in livery to our office, for extra copies to be placed on his drawing-room tables for the amusement of New Year's callers, to whom he read them himself. I am sorry that I cannot now treat my readers to extracts from those sheets, which may some centuries hence be unearthed by future Canadian antiquaries, as rare and priceless historical documents.

Whether the course he pursued be thought creditable or the reverse, there is no doubt that Lord Sydenham did Canada immense service by the measures enacted under his dictation. The Union of the Provinces, Municipal Councils, Educational Institutions, sound financial arrangements, and other minor matters, are benefits which cannot be ignored. But all these questions were carried in a high-handed, arbitrary manner, and some of them by downright compulsion. To connect in any way with his name the credit of bestowing upon the united provinces "Responsible Government" upon the British model, is a gross absurdity.

In the Memoirs of his lordship, by his brother, Mr. G. Poulett Scrope, page 236, I find the following plain statements:

"On the subject of 'Responsible Government,' which question was again dragged into discussion by Mr. Baldwin, with a view of putting the sincerity of the Government to the test, he (Lord S.) introduced and carried unanimously a series of resolutions in opposition to those proposed by Mr. Baldwin, distinctly recognising the irresponsibility of the Governor to any but the Imperial authorities, and placing the doctrine on the sound and rational basis which he had ever maintained."

What that "sound and rational basis" was, is conclusively shown in an extract from one of his own private letters, given on page 143 of the same work:

"I am not a bit afraid of the Responsible Government cry. I have already done much to put it down in its inadmissible sense, namely, that the Council shall be responsible to the Assembly, and that the Government shall take their advice, and be bound by it. In fact, this demand has been made much more for the people than by them. And I have not met with any one who has not at once admitted the absurdity of claiming to put the Council over the head of the Governor. It is but fair too, to say that everything has in times past been done by the different Governors to excite the feelings of the people on this question. First, the Executive Council has generally been composed of the persons most obnoxious to the majority of the Assembly; and next, the Governor has taken extreme care to make every act of his own go forth to the public on the responsibility of the Executive Council. So the people have been carefully taught to believe that the Governor is nobody, and the Executive Council the real power, and that by the Governor himself. At the same time they have seen that power placed in the hands of their opponents. Under such a system it is not to be wondered at, if one argument founded on the responsibility of the Governor to the Home Government falls to the ground. I have told the people plainly that, as I cannot get rid of my responsibility to the Home Government, I will place no responsibility on the Council; that they are a Council for the Governor to consult, but no more. And I have yet met with no 'Responsible Government' man, who was not satisfied with the doctrine. In fact, there is no other theory which has common sense. Either the Governor is the Sovereign or the Minister. If the first, he may have ministers, but he cannot be responsible to the Government at home, and all colonial government becomes impossible. He must, therefore, be the Minister, in which case he cannot be under the control of men in the colony."

It is only just that the truth should be clearly established on this question. Responsible Government was not an issue between Canadian Reformers and Tories in any sense; but exclusively between the Colonies and the statesmen of the Mother Country. On several occasions prior to Mackenzie's Rebellion, Tory majorities had affirmed the principle; and Ogle R. Gowan, an influential Orangeman, had published a pamphlet in its favour. Yet some recent historians of Canada have fallen into the foolish habit of claiming for the Reform party all the good legislation of the past forty years, until they seem really to believe the figment themselves.[11]

I am surprised that writers who condemn Sir F. B. Head for acting as his own Prime Minister, in strict accordance with his instructions, can see nothing to find fault with in Lord Sydenham's doing the very same thing in an infinitely more arbitrary and offensive manner. Where Sir Francis persuaded, Lord Sydenham coerced, bribed and derided.

Lower Canada was never consulted as to her own destiny. Because a fraction of her people chose to strike for independence, peaceable French Canadians were treated bodily as a conquered race, with the undisguised object of swamping their nationality and language, and over-riding their feelings and wishes. It is said that the result has justified the means. But what casuistry is this? What sort of friend to Responsible Government must he be, who employs force to back his argument? To inculcate the voluntary principle at the point of the bayonet, is a peculiarly Hibernian process, to say the least.

CHAPTER XXXI.

TORIES OF THE REBELLION TIMES.

Having, I hope, sufficiently exposed the misrepresentations of party writers, who have persistently made it their business to calumniate the Loyalists of 1837-8, I now proceed to the pleasanter task of recording the good deeds of some of those Loyalists, with whom I was brought into personal contact. I begin with—

ALDERMAN GEORGE T. DENISON, SEN.

No Toronto citizen of '37 can fail to recall the bluff, hale, strongly-built figure of George Taylor Denison, of Bellevue, the very embodiment of the English country squire of the times of Addison and Goldsmith. Resolute to enforce obedience, generous to the poor, just and fair as a magistrate, hospitable to strangers and friends, a sound and consistent Churchman, a brave soldier and a loyal subject, it seemed almost an anachronism to meet with him anywhere else than at his own birth-place of Dover Court, within sight of the Goodwin Sands, in the old-fashioned County of Essex, in England.

He was the son of John Denison, of Hedon, Yorkshire, and was born in 1783. He came with his father to Canada in 1792, and to Toronto in 1796. Here he married the only daughter of Captain Richard Lippincott, a noted U. E. Loyalist, who had fought through the Civil War in the revolted Colonies now forming the United States. In the war of 1812, Mr. Denison served as Ensign in the York Volunteers, and was frequently employed on special service. He was the officer who, with sixty men, cut out the present line of the Dundas Road, from the Garrison Common to Lambton Mills, which was necessary to enable communication between York and the Mills to be carried on without interruption from the hostile fleet on the lake. During the attack on York, in the following year, he was commissioned to destroy our vessels in the Bay, to save them from falling into the enemy's hands. With some he succeeded, but on one frigate the captain refused to obey the order, and while the point was in dispute, the enemy settled the question by capturing the ship, in consequence of which Mr. Denison was held as a prisoner for several months, until exchanged.

Of his services and escapes during the war many amusing stories are told. He was once sent with a very large sum in army bills—some $40,000—to pay the force then on the Niagara River. To avoid suspicion, the money was concealed in his saddle-bags, and he wore civilian's clothing. His destination was the village of St. David's. Within a mile or two of the place, he became aware of a cavalry soldier galloping furiously towards him, who, on coming up, asked if he was the officer with the money, and said he must ride back as fast as possible; the Yankees had driven the British out of St. David's, and parties of their cavalry were spreading over the country. Presently another dragoon came in sight, riding at speed and pursued by several of the enemy's horsemen. Ensign Denison turned at once, and after an exciting chase for many miles, succeeded in distancing his foes and escaping with his valuable charge.

On another occasion, he had under his orders a number of boats employed in bringing army munitions from Kingston to York. Somewhere near Port Hope, while creeping alongshore to avoid the United States vessels cruising in the lake, he observed several of them bearing down in his direction. Immediately he ran his boats up a small stream, destroying a bridge across its mouth to open a passage, and hid them so effectually that the enemy's fleet passed by without suspecting their presence.

About the year 1821, Captain Denison formed the design to purchase the farm west of the city, now known as the Rusholme property. The owner lived at Niagara. A friend who knew of his intention, told him one summer's morning, while he was looking at some goods in a store, that he would not get the land, as another man had left that morning for Niagara, in Oates's sloop, to gain the start of him. The day being unusually fine, Mr. Denison noticed that the sloop was still in sight, becalmed a mile or two off Gibraltar Point. Home he went, put up some money for the purchase, mounted his horse and set out for Niagara round the head of the lake, travelling all day and through the night, and arriving shortly after daybreak. There he saw the sloop in the river, endeavouring with the morning breeze to make the landing. To rouse up the intending vendor, to close the bargain, and get a receipt for the money, was soon accomplished; and when the gentleman who had hoped to forestall him came on the scene, he was wofully chopfallen to find himself distanced in the race.

From the close of the war until the year 1837, Mr. Denison was occupied, like other men of his position, with his duties as a magistrate, the cultivation of his farm, and the rearing of his family. In 1822, he organized the cavalry corps now known as the Governor-General's Body-Guard. When the rebellion broke out, he took up arms again in defence of the Crown, and on the day of the march up Yonge Street, was entrusted with the command of the Old Fort. At about noon a body of men was seen approaching. Eagerly and anxiously the defenders waited, expecting every moment an onset, and determined to meet it like men. The suspense lasted some minutes, when suddenly the Major exclaimed, "Why surely that's my brother Tom!" And so it was. The party consisted of a number of good loyalists, headed by Thomas Denison, of Weston, hastening to the aid of the Government against Mackenzie and his adherents. Of course, the gates were soon thrown open, and, with hearty cheers on both sides, the new-comers entered the Fort.

For six months Major Denison continued in active service with his cavalry, and in the summer of 1838, was promoted to command the battalion of West York Militia. His eldest son, the late Richard L. Denison, succeeded to the command of the cavalry corps, which was kept on service for six months in the winter of 1838-9.

Mr. Denison was elected an alderman of Toronto in the year 1834, and served in the same capacity up to the end of 1843.

That he was quite independent of the "Family Compact," or of any other official clique, is shown by the fact, that on Mackenzie's second expulsion from the House of Assembly in 1832, Alderman Denison voted for his re-election for the County of York.

Our old friend died in 1853, leaving four sons, viz.: Richard L. Denison, of Dover Court, named above; the late George Taylor Denison, of Rusholme; Robert B. Denison, of Bellevue, now Deputy-Adjutant-General for this district; Charles L. Denison, of Brockton: and also one daughter, living. Among his grandchildren are Colonel George T. Denison, commanding the Governor-General's Body Guard, and Police Magistrate; Major F. C. Denison, of the same corps: and Lieutenant John Denison, R. N. The whole number of the Canadian descendants of John Denison, of Hedon, now living, is over one hundred.

---

Col. Richard Lippincott Denison, eldest son of the above, was born June 13th, 1814, at the old family estate near Weston, on the Humber River, and followed the occupation of farming all his life. During the troubles of 1837-8, he served his country as captain in command of a troop of the Queen's Light Dragoons. He took a prominent part in the organization of the Agricultural and Arts Association in 1844, and for twenty-two years was its treasurer. In 1855, he was a commissioner from Canada at the great exposition in Paris, France. He also held a prominent position in the different county and township agricultural societies for over forty-five years; was one of the first directors of the Canada Landed Credit Company, and served on its board for several years; was at one time President of the late Beaver Fire Insurance Company; and at the time of his death, President of the Society of York Pioneers. For many years he commanded the Militia in the West Riding of the City of Toronto; and was alderman for St. Stephen's Ward in the City Council, which he represented at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876.

As a private citizen, Richard L. Denison was generally popular, notwithstanding his strongly-marked Toryism, and outspoken bluntness of speech. His portly presence, handsome features, flowing beard, and kindly smile were universally welcomed; and when he drove along in his sleigh on a bright winter's day, strangers stopped to look at him with admiration, and to ask who that fine-looking man was? Nor did his personal qualities belie his noble exterior. For many years his house at Dover Court was one continuous scene of open-handed hospitality. He was generous to a fault; a warm friend, and an ever reliable comrade.

He died March 10th, 1878, at the age of sixty-four years, leaving his widow and eight sons and one daughter. Few deaths have left so wide a gap as his, in our social circles.

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Colonel George T. Denison, of Rusholme, second son of Alderman George T. Denison, sen., was born 17th of July, 1816, at Bellevue, Toronto. He was educated at Upper Canada College, and became a barrister in 1840.

He was a volunteer in Col. Fitzgibbon's rifle company, prior to the Rebellion of 1837, and attended every drill until it was disbanded. On the Rebellion breaking out, he served for a while as one of the guard protecting the Commercial Bank; and was in the force that marched out to Gallows Hill and dispersed Mackenzie's followers. A few days after, he went as lieutenant in a company of militia, forming part of the column commanded by Col. Sir A. MacNab, to the village of Scotland, in the County of Brant, and from thence to Navy Island, where he served throughout the whole siege. He was one of the three officers who carried the information to Sir Allan, which led to the cutting out and destruction of the steamer Caroline.

In November, 1838, he was appointed lieutenant in his father's troop of cavalry, now the Governor-General's Body Guard; and then just placed under the command of his brother, the late Col. Richard L. Denison. He served for six months in active service that winter, and put in a course of drill for some weeks with the King's Dragoon Guards, at Niagara.

He was alderman for St. Patrick's ward for some years. In 1849, when Lord Elgin, in Toronto, opened the session of Parliament, Col. G. T. Denison escorted His Excellency to and from the Parliament House.

The following account of this affair is copied from the "Historical Record of the Governor-General's Body Guard," by Capt. F. C. Denison:—

"In Montreal, during the riots that followed the passage of the Rebellion Losses bill, the troops of cavalry that had been on regular service for over ten years, forgot their discipline, forgot their duty to their Queen's representative, forgot their esprit de corps, and sat on their horses and laughed while the mob were engaged in pelting Lord Elgin with eggs. This Toronto troop acted differently, and established a name then for obedience to orders, that should be looked back to with pride by every man who ever serves in its ranks. Unquestionably there was a great deal politically to tempt them from their duty, and to lead them to remain inactive if nothing worse. But their sense of duty to their Queen, through her representative, was so strong, that they turned out, taking the Governor-General safely to and from the Parliament Buildings, much against the will of a noisy, turbulent crowd. This was an excellent proof of what esprit de corps will do, and of the good state the troop must have been in. His Excellency was so pleased with the loyalty, discipline and general conduct of the escort on this occasion, that he sent orders to the officer commanding, to dismount his men, and bring them into the drawing room. By His Excellency's request, Captain Denison presented each man individually to him, and he shook hands with them all, thanking them personally for their services. They were then invited to sit down to a handsome lunch with His Excellency's staff."

In 1855, when the volunteer force was created, Col. Denison took a squadron of cavalry into the new force, and afterwards organized the Toronto Field Battery, and in 1860, the Queen's Own Rifles; and was appointed commandant of the 5th and 10th Military Districts, which position he held until his death. He was recommended, with Colonel Sewell and Colonel Dyde, for the order of St. Michael and St. George; but before the order was granted he had died, and Col. Dyde, C.M.G., alone of the three, lived to enjoy the honour. Col. Denison was the senior officer in Ontario at the time of his death, and may be said to have been the father of the volunteer force of this district.

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ALDERMAN DIXON.

Few persons engaged in business took a more prominent part in the early history of Toronto, and in the political events of the time, than the subject of this sketch. For several years he was engaged in trade in the City of Dublin, being the proprietor of the most extensive business of the kind, in saddlery and hardware, having the contracts for the supply of the cavalry in the Dublin garrison, and also the Viceregal establishment. At that time he took a very active part in the political warfare of the day, when Daniel O'Connell was in the zenith of his power. He and Mr. S. P. Bull—father of the late Senator Harcourt P. Bull—were active agents in organizing the "Brunswick Lodges," which played no inconsiderable part in the politics of that exciting period. The despondency that fell upon Irish Protestant loyalists when the Emancipation Bill became law, induced many to emigrate to America, and among them Mr. Dixon. Though actively employed in the management of his business both in Dublin and Toronto, yet he had found time to lay in a solid foundation of standard literature, and even of theological lore, which qualified him to take a position in intellectual society of a high order. He also possessed great readiness of speech, a genial, good-natured countenance and manner, and a fund of drollery and comic wit, which, added to a strong Irish accent he at times assumed, made him a special favourite in the City Council, as well as at public dinners, and on social festive occasions. I had the privilege of an intimate acquaintance with him from 1838 until his death, and can speak with confidence of his feelings and principles.

Though so thoroughly Irish, his ancestors came originally from Lanarkshire in Scotland, in the reign of James I., and held a grant of land in the north of Ireland. He felt proud of one of his ancestors, who raised a troop of volunteer cavalry, lost an arm at the Battle of the Boyne, and was rewarded by a captain's commission given under King William's own hand a few days after. His own father served in the "Black Horse," a volunteer regiment of much note in the Irish rebellion.

When Mr. Dixon came to York, his intention was to settle at Mount Vernon, in the State of Ohio, where he had been informed there was an Episcopal College, and a settlement of Episcopalians on the College territory. In order to satisfy himself of the truth of these statements, he travelled thither alone, leaving his family in the then town of York. Disappointed in the result of his visit, he returned here, and had almost made up his mind to go back to Dublin, but abandoned the intention in consequence of the urgent arguments of the Hon. John Henry Dunn, Receiver-General,[12] who persuaded him to remain. His first step was to secure a lease of the lot of land on King Street, where the Messrs. W. A. Murray & Co's. warehouses now stand. He built there two frame shops, which were considered marvels of architecture at that day, and continued to occupy one of them until Wellington Buildings, between Church and Toronto Streets, were erected by himself and other enterprising tradesmen. Merchants of all ranks lived over their shops in those times, and very handsome residences these buildings made.

In 1834, Mr. Dixon was elected alderman for St. Lawrence Ward, which position he continued to hold against all assailants, up to the end of 1850. He was also a justice of the peace, and did good service in that capacity. In the City Council no man was more useful and industrious in all good works, and none exercised greater influence over its deliberations.

When the troubles of 1837 began, Alderman Dixon threw all his energies into the cause of loyalty, and took so active a part in support of Sir F. B. Head's policy, that his advice was on most occasions sought by the Lieutenant-Governor, and frequently acted upon. Many communications on the burning questions of the day passed between them. This continued throughout the rule of Sir George Arthur, and until the arrival of the Right Hon. C. Poulett Thomson, who cared little for the opinions of other men, however well qualified to advise and inform. Mr. Dixon was too independent and too incorruptible a patriot for that accomplished politician.

Few men in Toronto have done more for the beautifying of our city. The Adelaide Buildings on King Street were long the handsomest, as they were the best built, of their class. His house, at the corner of Jarvis and Gerrard Streets, set an example for our finest private residences. The St. Lawrence Hall, which is considered by visitors a great ornament to the city, was erected from plans suggested by him. And among religious edifices, Trinity Church and St. James's Cathedral are indebted to him, the former mainly and the latter in part, for their complete adaptation in style and convenience, to the services of the Church to which he belonged and which he highly venerated. To Trinity Church, especially, which was finished and opened for divine service on February 14th, 1844, he gave himself up with the most unflagging zeal and watchfulness, examining the plans in the minutest details, supervising the work as it progressed, almost counting the bricks and measuring the stonework, with the eye of a father watching his infant's first footsteps. In fact, he was popularly styled "the father and founder of Trinity Church," a designation which was justly recognised by Bishop Strachan in his dedication sermon.[13]

As a friend, I had something to say respecting most of his building plans, and fully sympathized with the objects he had in view; one of the fruits of my appreciation was the following poem, which, although of little merit in itself, is perhaps worth preserving as a record of honourable deeds and well employed talents:

THE POOR MAN'S CHURCH.

Wake, harp of Zion, silent long, Nor voiceless and unheard be thou While meetest theme of sacred song Awaits thy chorded numbers now! Too seldom, 'mid the sounds of strife That rudely ring unwelcome here, Thy music soothes this fever'd life With breathings from a holier sphere. The warrior, wading deep in crime, Desertless, lives in poets' lays; The statesman wants not stirring rhyme To cheer the chequer'd part he plays: And Zion's harp, to whom alone, Soft-echoing, higher themes belong, Oh lend thy sweet aerial tone— 'Tis meek-eyed Virtue claims the song.

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Beyond the limits of the town A summer's ramble, may be seen A scattered suburb, newly grown, Rude huts, and ruder fields between. Life's luxuries abound not there, Labour and hardship share the spot; Hope wrestles hard with frowning care, And lesser wants are heeded not. Religion was neglected too— 'Twas far to town—the poor are proud— They could not boast a garb as new, And shunn'd to join the well-drest crowd. No country church adorned the scene, In modest beauty smiling fair, Of mien so peaceful and serene, The poor man feels his home is there. Oh England! with thy village chimes, Thy church-wed hamlets, scattered wide, The emigrant to other climes Remembers thee with grateful pride; And owns that once at home again, With fonder love his heart would bless Each humble, lowly, haloëd fane That sanctifies thy loveliness. But here, alas! the heart was wrung To see so wan, so drear a waste— Life's thorns and briars rankly sprung, And peace and love, its flowers, displaced. And weary seasons pass'd away, As time's fast ebbing tide roll'd by, To thousands rose no Sabbath-day, They lived—to suffer—sin—and die! Then men of Christian spirit came, They saw the mournful scene with grief; To such it e'er hath been the same To know distress and give relief. They told the tale, nor vainly told— They won assistance far and wide; His heart were dull indeed and cold Who such petitioner denied. They chose a slightly rising hill That bordered closely on the road, And workmen brought of care and skill, And wains with many a cumbrous load. With holy prayer and chanted hymn The task was sped upon its way; And hearts beat high and eyes were dim To see so glad a sight that day. And slowly as the work ascends, In just proportions strong and fair, How watchfully its early friends With zealous ardour linger near. 'Tis finished now—a Gothic pile, —Brave handiwork of faith and love— In England's ancient hallowed style, That pointeth aye, like hope, above: With stately tower and turret high, And quaint-arch'd door, and buttress'd wall, And window stain'd of various dye, And antique moulding over all. And hark! the Sabbath-going bell! A solemn tale it peals abroad— To all around its echoes tell "This building is the house of God!"

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Say, Churchman! doth no still, small voice Within you whisper—"while 'tis day Go bid the desert place rejoice!" Your Saviour's high behest obey: "Say not your pow'rs are scant and weak, What hath been done, may be anew; He addeth strength to all who seek To serve Him with affection true."

Alderman Dixon was not only a thorough-going and free-handed Churchman, but was very popular with the ministers and pastors of other religious denominations. The heads of the Methodist Church, and even the higher Roman Catholic clergy of Toronto, frequently sought his advice and assistance to smooth down asperities and reconcile feuds. He was every man's friend, and had no enemies of whom I ever heard. He wrote with facility, and argued with skill and readiness. His memory was exceedingly retentive; he knew and could repeat page after page from Dryden's "Virgil" and Pope's "Homer." Any allusion to them would draw from him forty or fifty lines in connection with its subject. Mickle's "Lusiad" he knew equally well, and was fond of reciting its most beautiful descriptions of scenery and places in South Africa and India. He was an enthusiastic book-collector, and left a valuable library, containing many very rare and curious books he had brought from Dublin, and to which he made several additions. It is now in the possession of his eldest son, Archdeacon Dixon, of Guelph.

With the Orange body, Alderman Dixon exercised considerable influence, which he always exerted in favour of a Christian regard for the rights and feelings of those who differed from them. On one occasion, and only one, I remember his suffering some indignity at their hands. He and others had exerted themselves to induce the Orangemen to waive their annual procession, and had succeeded so far as the city lodges were concerned. But the country lodges would not forego their cherished rights, and on "the 12th"—I forget the year—entered Toronto from the west in imposing numbers. At the request of the other magistrates, Alderman Dixon and, I think, the late Mayor Gurnett, met the procession opposite Osgoode Hall, and remonstrated with the leaders for disregarding the wishes of the City Council and the example of their city brethren. His eloquence, however, was of no avail, and he and his colleague were rudely thrust aside.

As president of the St. Patrick's Society, he did much to preserve unanimity in that body, which then embraced Irishmen of all creeds among its members. His speeches at its annual dinners were greatly admired for their ability and liberality; and it was a favourite theme of his, that the three nationalities—Irish, Scotch and English—together formed an invincible combination; while if unhappily separated, they might have to succumb to inferior races. He concluded his argument on one occasion by quoting Scott's striking lines on the Battle of Waterloo:—

"Yes—Agincourt may be forgot, And Cressy be an unknown spot, And Blenheim's name be new: But still in glory and in song, For many an age remembered long, Shall live the tow'rs of Hougoumont And Field of Waterloo."

The peals of applause and rapture with which these patriotic sentiments were received, will not easily be forgotten by his hearers.

Nor were his literary acquirements limited to such subjects. The works of Jeremy Taylor and the other great divines of the Stewart period, he was very familiar with, and esteemed highly. He was also a great authority in Irish history and antiquities; enquiries often came to him from persons in the United States and elsewhere, respecting disputed and doubtful questions, which he was generally competent to solve.

Mr. Dixon was long an active member of the committee of the Church Society; and the first delegate of St. James's Church to the first Diocesan Synod. In these and all other good works, he was untiring and disinterested. Whenever there was any gathering of clergy he received as many as possible in his house, treating them with warm-hearted hospitality.

Mr. Dixon died in the year 1855, leaving a large family of sons and daughters, of whom several have acquired distinction in various ways. His eldest son, Alexander, graduated in King's College, at the time when Adam Crooks, Judge Boyd, Christopher Robinson, Judge Kingsmill, D. McMichael, the Rev. W. Stennett, and others well known in public life, were connected with that university. Mr. Dixon was university prizeman in History and Belles-Lettres in his third year; took the prize for English oration; and wrote the prize poem two years in succession. He is now Rector of Guelph, and Archdeacon of the northern half of the Niagara diocese. He was also one of the contributors to the "Maple Leaf."

William, second son of Alderman Dixon, was Dominion Emigration Agent in London, England, where he died in 1873. Concerning him, the Hon. J. H. Pope, Minister of Agriculture, stated that he "was the most correct and conscientious administrator he had ever met." He said further in Parliament:—

"The Premier had gone so far as to state that the present Agent General was a person of wonderful ability, and had done more than his predecessors to promote emigration to Canada. He (Mr. Pope) regretted more than he could express the death of Mr. Dixon, the late agent. He was held in high esteem both here and in the old country, and was a gentleman who never identified himself with any political party, but fairly and honestly represented Canada."

Another son, Major Fred. E. Dixon, is well known in connection with the Queen's Own, of Toronto.

CHAPTER XXXII.

MORE TORIES OF REBELLION TIMES.

EDWARD G. O'BRIEN.

My first introduction to this gentleman was on the day after I landed at Barrie, in 1833. He was then living at his log cottage at Shanty Bay, an indentation of the shore near the mouth of Kempenfeldt Bay, at the south-west angle of Lake Simcoe. I was struck with the comparative elegance pervading so primitive an establishment. Its owner was evidently a thorough gentleman, his wife an accomplished lady, and their children well taught and courteous. The surrounding scenery was picturesque and delightful. The broad expanse of the bay opening out to Lake Simcoe—the graceful sweep of the natural foliage sloping down from high banks to the water's edge—are impressed vividly upon my memory, even at this long interval of fifty years. It seemed to me a perfect gem of civilization, set in the wildest of natural surroundings.

I was a commissioner of the Court of Requests at Barrie, along with Col. O'Brien, in 1834, and in that capacity had constant opportunities of meeting and appreciating him. He had seen service as midshipman in the Royal Navy, as well as in the Army; was an expert yachtsman of course; and had ample opportunities of indulging his predilection for the water, on the fine bay fronting his house. At that time it was no unusual thing in winter, to see wolves chasing deer over the thick ice of the bay. On one occasion, being laid up with illness, the Captain was holding a magistrate's court in his dining-room overlooking the bay. In front of the house was a wide lawn, and beyond it a sunken fence, not visible from the house. The case under consideration was probably some riotous quarrel among the inhabitants of a coloured settlement near at hand, who were constantly at loggerheads with each other or with their white neighbours. In the midst of the proceedings, the Captain happened to catch sight of a noble stag dashing across the ice, pursued by several wolves. He beckoned a relative who assisted on the farm, and whispered to him to get out the dogs. A few seconds afterwards the baying of the hounds was heard. The unruly suitors caught the sound, rushed to the window and door, then out to the grounds, plaintiff, defendant, constables and all, helter skelter, until they reached the sunken fence, deeply buried in snow, over which they tumbled en masse, amid a chorus of mingled shouts and objurgations that baffles description. Whether the hearing of the case was resumed that day or not, I cannot say, but it seems doubtful.

His naval and military experience naturally showed itself in Colonel O'Brien's general bearing; he possessed the polished manners and high-bred courtesy of some old Spanish hidalgo, together with a sufficient share of corresponding hauteur when displeased. The first whispers of the Rebellion of 1837, brought him to the front. He called together his loyal neighbours, who responded so promptly that not a single able-bodied man was left in the locality; only women and children, and two or three male invalids, staying behind. With his men he marched for Toronto; but, when at Bond Head, received orders from the Lieutenant-Governor to remain there, and take charge of the district, which had been the head quarters of disaffection. When quiet was restored, he returned to Shanty Bay, and resided there for several years; occupying the position of chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the Simcoe District. After the erection of the County of Simcoe into a municipality, he removed with his family to Toronto, where he entered into business as a land agent; was instrumental in forming a company to construct a railroad to Lake Huron via Sarnia, of which he acted as secretary; afterwards organized and became manager of the Provincial Insurance Company, which position he occupied until 1857.

In the year 1840, died Mr. Thos. Dalton, proprietor and editor of the Toronto Patriot newspaper; the paper was continued by his widow until 1848, when Col. O'Brien, through my agency, became proprietor of that journal, which I engaged to manage for him. The editor was his brother, Dr. Lucius O'Brien, a highly educated and talented, but not popular, writer. Col. O'Brien's motive in purchasing the paper was solely patriotic, and he was anxiously desirous that its columns should be closed to everything that was not strictly—even quixotically—chivalrous. His sensitiveness on this score finally led to a difference of opinion between the brothers, which ended in Dr. O'Brien's retirement.

At that time, as a matter of course, the Patriot and the Globe were politically antagonistic. The Colonist, then conducted by Hugh Scobie, represented the Scottish Conservatives in politics, and the Kirk of Scotland in religious matters. Therefore, it often happened, that the Patriot and Colonist were allied together against the Globe; while at other times, the Patriot stood alone in its support of the English Church, and had to meet the assaults of the other two journals—a triangular duel, in fact. A spiteful correspondent of the Colonist had raked up some old Edinburgh slanders affecting the personal reputation of Mr. Peter Brown, father of George Brown, and joint publisher of the Globe. Those slanders were quoted editorially in the Patriot, without my knowledge until I saw them in print on the morning of publication. I at once expressed my entire disapproval of their insertion; and Col. O'Brien took the matter so much to heart, that, without letting me know his decision, he removed his brother from the editorship, and placed it temporarily in my hands. My first editorial act was, by Col. O'Brien's desire, to disavow the offensive allusions, and to apologize personally to Mr. Peter Brown therefor. This led to a friendly feeling between the latter gentleman and myself, which continued during his lifetime.

On the 25th of May, 1849, the great fire occurred in Toronto, which consumed the Patriot office, as well as the cathedral and many other buildings. Soon afterwards Col. O'Brien sold his interest in the Patriot to Mr. Ogle R. Gowan.

I have been favoured with the perusal of some "jottings" in the Colonel's own hand-writing, from which I make an extract, describing his first experience of the service at the age of fourteen, as midshipman on board H. M. 36 gun Frigate Doris, commanded by his father's cousin, Capt. (afterwards Admiral) Robert O'Brien:

"The Doris joined the outward-bound fleet at Portsmouth, where about 1700 vessels of all sizes, from first-class Indiamen of 1400 tons to small fruit-carriers from the Mediterranean of 60 tons, were assembled for convoy. At first, and along the more dangerous parts of the Channel from privateers, the convoy continued to be a large one, including especially many of the smaller men-of-war, but among them were two or three line-of-battle ships and heavy frigates under orders for the Mediterranean. The whole formed a magnificent sight, not often seen. After a while the outsiders dropped off, some to one place, some to another, one large section being the North American trade, another the Mediterranean, until the Doris was left commodore of the main body, being the West Indiamen, South American traders, and Cape and East Indiamen, and a stately fleet it was. With the Doris was the Salsette, a frigate of the same class, and some smaller craft. This convoy, though small apparently for such a fleet in that very active war, was materially strengthened by the heavy armaments of the regular traders in the East India Company's service in the China trade, of which there were twelve, I think. These ships were arranged in two lines, between which all the others were directed to keep their course; the Doris leading in the centre between the two lines of Chinamen, and the Salsette bringing up the rear, while two or three sloops of war hovered about. My berth on board the Doris was that of signal midshipman, which was simply to keep an eye on every individual craft in the fleet. . . . . On reaching the Canaries, the fleet came to an anchor in Santa Cruz roads, at the island of Teneriffe, for the purpose of filling up water, and enabling the Indiamen to lay in a stock of wine for the round voyage. The Doris and larger ships outside, and the Salsette and smaller ones closer in, and an uncommon tight pack it was. The proper landing place, and only place indeed where casks could be conveniently shipped, was the mole, a long, narrow, high pier or wharf, with a flight of stairs or steps to the water. This was generally one jam from end to end, as well on the pier as on the water, crowded above by casks of all sizes, wine and water, every spare foot or interstice between the casks crammed with idle, lazy, loafing Portuguese, the scum and chief part of the population of the town, assembled there certainly not to work, but amazingly active and busy in looking on, swearing, directing and scolding—terribly in the seamen's way, and by them very unceremoniously kicked and flung aside and into the next man's path. Sometimes there was a scuffle, and then a rare scrimmage caused by a party of soldiers from the mole rushing in to keep the peace. They were immediately pitched into by the blue jackets, who instead of rolling their casks towards their boats, tacked as they called it, and sent the barrels flying among the soldiers' legs. More than one cask of wine in this manner went the wrong way over the pier, down among the boats below, where there was, in its own way, much the same state of confusion, with a good deal more danger. Ships' boats, from the jolly-boat manned by lads, hurried ashore to seek stray pursers' clerks with their small plunder, or stewards and servants with bundles of washed clothing—to the heavy launch loaded with water casks pushing out or striving to get in—each boat's crew utterly reckless, and under no control, intent only on breaking their own way in or out, so that it was marvellous how any escaped damage. And the thing reached its climax, when at daylight on the last day, the signal was made to prepare to weigh anchor. I had been ashore the day before, with a strong working party and three of the frigate's boats, under the command of one of the lieutenants, assisting the Indiamen in getting off their wine and water; and so, when sent this morning on the same duty, I was somewhat up to the work. I had therefore put on my worst clothes; all I wanted was to have my midshipman's jacket as conspicuous as possible, having discovered in the previous day's experience the value of the authority of discipline. Our work this day was also increased by the sure precursor of bad weather, a rising sea; and as the town is situated on an open roadstead, the surf on the beach, which, though always more or less an obstruction, had been hitherto passable, was now insurmountable; all traffic had to be crowded over the pier, including late passengers, men and women, and more than one bunch of children, with all the odds and ends of clothes-baskets, marketing, curiosities, &c., &c. What a scene! We naval mids found ourselves suddenly raised to great importance; and towards noon I became a very great man indeed. The Doris being outside, she was of course the first under weigh, and around her were the larger Indiamen, also getting under sail—the commodore constantly enforcing his signals by heavy firing. But big as these ships were, and notwithstanding their superior discipline, they had nearly as many laggards as the smaller fry. . . . All the forenoon the weather had been getting more and more threatening, and the breeze and sea rose together. About 11 o'clock a.m. we all knew that we were in for something in the shape of a gale, and the Doris made signal for her boats and the working party to return to the ship; and soon after, for the Salsette and the inshore ships to get under weigh. Our lieutenant, however, seeing the state of things ashore, directed me to remain with one of the cutters and three or four spare hands; and if the frigate should be blown off during the night, to get on board a particular vessel—a fast sailing South Sea whaler, that had acted as tender to the frigate, and whose master promised to look after us, as well as any others of the Doris's people who might still be on shore. Thus I was left in sole command, as the Salsette had also recalled her boats and working parties. Although she would send no help ashore, she remained still at anchor. Capt. Bowen, her commander, contenting himself with sheeting home his top-sails, and repeating the commodore's signal to the inshore ships. We afterwards found out the secret of all this. Bowen disliked the idea of playing second fiddle, and wanted to be commodore himself, and this was a beautiful opportunity to divide the fleet. But as matters got worse, and difficulties increased, we succeeded in getting them more under control. The crowd, both of casks and live stock on the wharf, and of boats beneath, gradually diminished. The merchant seamen, and especially the crews of the larger boats of the Indiamen, worked manfully. The smaller boats were taken outside, and regular gangs formed to pass all small parcels, and especially women and children passengers, across the inner heavy tier to them. This, the moment the seamen caught the idea, became great fun; and a rousing cheer was raised when a fat, jolly steward's wife was regularly parbuckled over the side of the pier, and passed, decently and decorously (on her back, she dare not kick for fear of showing her legs) like a bale of goods, from hand to hand, or rather from arms to arms, to a light gig outside all. This being successfully achieved, I turned to a party of passengers standing by, and who, though anxious themselves, could not help laughing, and proposed to pass them out in the same manner; making the first offer to a comely nurse-maid of the party. I was very near getting my ears boxed for my kindness and courtesy, so I turned to the mistress instead, who however contented herself by quietly enquiring whether there was no other way; of course another way was soon found; a few chairs were got, which were soon rigged by the seamen, by means of which, first the children, and then their elders, men and women, were easily passed down to the boats below, and from thence to the boat waiting safely outside. In all this work I was not only supported in authority by the different ships' officers and mates superintending their own immediate concerns, but also by a number of gentlemen, merchants and others, most of whom came down to the pier to see and assist their friends among the passengers safe off. By their help also I was enabled, not knowing a word of their language myself, to get material help from the Portuguese standing by; and also got the officer in command of the guard at the mole-head, to clear the pier of all useless hands, and place sentries here and there over stray packages, put down while the owners sought their own proper boats among the crowd. And so at length our work was fairly pushed through, and though late, I managed to get my party safe aboard our friend the whaler, who had kept his signal lights burning for us. Long before, the Doris had bore up, and under bare poles had drifted with a large portion of the fleet to the southward; and I saw no more of her, until some months afterwards I joined her in Macao Roads."

This was in the year 1814; soon afterwards the peace with America put an end to our midshipman's prospects of advancement in the navy, to his great and life-long regret. He obtained a commission in the Scots Greys, and exchanged into the 58th Regiment, then under orders for service in the West Indies, where his health failed him, and he was compelled to retire on half-pay. But his love for the sea soon induced him to enter the merchant service, in which he made many voyages to the East. This also, a severe illness obliged him to resign, and to abandon the sea for ever. He then came to Canada, to seek his fortune in the backwoods, where I found him in 1833.

Mr. O'Brien's relations with his neighbours in the backwoods were always kindly, and gratifying to both parties. One evening, some friends of his heard voices on the water, as a boat rowed past his grounds. One man asked "Who lives here?" "Mr. O'Brien," was the reply. "What is he like?" "He's a regular old tory." "Oh then, I suppose he's very proud and distant?" But that he was either proud or distant, his neighbour would not allow, and other voices joined in describing him as the freest and kindest of men—still they all agreed that he was a "regular old tory." The colonel was the last man in the world to object to such an epithet, but those who used it meant probably to describe his sturdy, uncompromising principles, and manly independence. A more utterly guileless, single-hearted man never breathed. Warm and tender-hearted, humble-minded and forgiving, he deplored his hastiness of temper, which was, indeed, due to nervous irritability, the result of severe illness coupled with heavy mental strain when young, from the effects of which he never entirely recovered. He was incapable of a mean thought or dishonourable deed, and never fully realized that there could be others who were unlike him in this respect. Hence, during the long course of his happy and useful, but not wholly prosperous life, he met each such lapse from his own high standard of honour with the same indignant surprise and pain. His habitual reverent-mindedness led him to respect men of all shades of thought and feeling, while to sympathize with sorrow and suffering was as natural to him as the air he breathed.

A neighbour who had had a sudden, sharp attack of illness, meeting one of the colonel's family, said very simply, "I knew you had not heard that I was ill, for Mr. O'Brien has not been to see me; but please tell him I shall not be about for some time." The man looked upon it as a matter of course that his old friend the colonel would have gone to see him if informed of his illness.

And if Mr. O'Brien's friends and neighbours have kindly recollections of him and of his family, these latter on their part are never tired of recalling unvarying friendliness and countless acts of kindness from all their neighbours.

Before leaving this subject, it may be appropriately added that Mrs. O'Brien (his wife) was his guardian angel—a mother in Israel—the nurse of the sick, the comforter of the miserable; wise, discreet, loving, patient, adored by children, the embodiment of unselfishness. To her Toronto was indebted for its first ragged school.

A few years before the colonel's death, his foreman on the farm, living at the lodge, had five children, of whom three died there of diphtheria. Mrs. O'Brien brought the remainder to her own house—"The Woods,"—to try and save them, the parents being broken-hearted and helpless. It is said to have been a touching spectacle to see the old Colonel carrying about one poor dying child to soothe it, while Mrs. O'Brien nursed the other. Of these two, one died and the other recovered.

The selfish are—happily—forgotten. The unselfish, never. Their memory lives in Shanty Bay as a sweet odour that never seems to pass away. It is still a frequent suggestion, "what would Mrs. O'Brien or the Colonel have done under the circumstances."

In his declining years, failing health, and disease contracted in India, dimmed the cheerfulness of Mr. O'Brien's nature. But none so chivalrously anxious to repair an unintentional injury or a hasty word.

He and his wife lie side by side in the burial ground of the church he was mainly instrumental in building. Over them is a simple monument in shape of an Irish cross—on it these words:—

"In loving remembrance of Edward George O'Brien, who died September 8, 1875, age 76: and of Mary Sophia his wife, who died October 14, 1876, age 78: This stone is raised by their children. He, having served his country by sea and land, became A.D. 1830 the founder of the settlement and mission of Shanty Bay. She was a true wife and zealous in all good works. Faithful servants, they rest in hope."

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JOHN W. GAMBLE.

"Squire Gamble"—the name by which this gentleman was familiarly known throughout the County of York—was born at the Old Fort in Toronto, in 1799. His father, Dr. John Gamble, was stationed there as resident surgeon to the garrison. The family afterwards removed to Kingston, where the boy received his education. It was characteristic of him, that when about to travel to York, at the age of fifteen, to enter the store of the late Hon. Wm. Allan, he chose to make the journey in a canoe, in which he coasted along by day, and by night camped on shore. In course of time, he entered extensively into the business of a miller and country merchant, in which he continued all his life with some intervals.

In manner and appearance Mr. Gamble was a fine specimen of a country magistrate of half a century ago. While the rougher sort of farming men looked up to him with very salutary apprehension, as a stern represser of vice and evil doing, they and everybody else did justice to his innate kindness of heart, and his generosity towards the poor and suffering. He was, in the best sense of the phrase, a popular man. His neighbours knew that in every good work, either in the way of personal enterprise, in the promotion of religious and educational objects, or in the furtherance of the general welfare, Squire Gamble was sure to be in the foremost place. His farm was a model to all others; his fields were better cleared; his fences better kept; his homestead was just perfection, both in point of orderly management and in an intellectual sense—at least, such was the opinion of his country neighbours, and they were not very far astray. Add to these merits, a tall manly form, an eagle eye, and a commanding mien, and you have a pretty fair picture of Squire Gamble.

As a member of parliament, to which he was three times elected by considerable majorities, Mr. Gamble was hard-working and independent. He supported good measures, from whichever side of the House they might originate, and his vote was always safe for progressive reforms. His toryism was limited entirely to questions of a constitutional character, particularly such as involved loyalty to the throne and the Empire. And in this, Mr. Gamble was a fair representative of his class. And here I venture to assert, that more narrowness of political views, more rigidity of theological dogma, more absolutism in a party sense, has been exhibited in Canada by men of the Puritan school calling themselves Reformers, than by those who are styled Tories.

Perhaps the most important act of Mr. Gamble's political life, was the part he took in the organization of the British American League in 1849. Into that movement he threw all his energies, and the ultimate realization of its views affords the best proof of the correctness of his judgment and foresight. About it, however, I shall have more to say in another chapter.

Mr. Gamble, as I have said, was foremost in all public improvements. To his exertions are chiefly due the opening and construction of the Vaughan plank road, from near Weston, by St. Andrew's, to Woodbridge, Pine Grove, and Kleinburg; which gave an easy outlet to a large tract of country to the north-west of Toronto, and enabled the farmers to reach our market to their and our great mutual advantage.

He was a man who made warm friends and active enemies, being very outspoken in the expression of his opinions and feelings. But even his strongest political foes came to him in full confidence that they were certain to get justice at his hands. And occasionally his friends found out, that no inducement of personal regard could warp his judgment in any matter affecting the rights of other men. In this way he made some bitter adversaries on his own side of politics.

Among Mr. Gamble's public acts was the erection of the church at Mimico, and that at Pine Grove; in aid of which he was the chief promoter, giving freely both time and means to their completion. For years he acted as lay-reader at one or other of those churches, travelling some distance in all weathers to do so. His whole life, indeed, was spent in benefiting his neighbours in all possible ways.

He died in December, 1873, and was buried at Woodbridge.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A CHOICE OF A CHURCH.

I have mentioned that I was educated as a Swedenborgian, or rather a member of the New Jerusalem Church, as the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg prefer to be called. As a boy, I was well read in his works, and was prepared to tilt with all comers in his cause. But I grew less confident as I became more conversant with the world and with general literature. At the age of fifteen I was nominated a Sunday-school teacher in a small Swedenborgian chapel in the Waterloo road, and declined to act because the school was established with the object of converting from the religion of their parents the children of poor Roman Catholic families in that neighbourhood, which I thought an insidious, and therefore an evil mode of disseminating religious doctrine. Of course, this was a sufficiently conceited proceeding on the part of so young a theologian. But the same feeling has grown up with me in after life. I hold that Christians are ill-employed, who spend their strength in missionary attempts to change the creed of other branches of the Christian Church, while their efforts at conversion might be much better utilised in behalf of the heathen, or, what is the same thing in effect, the untaught multitudes in our midst who know nothing whatever of the teachings of the Gospel of Christ.

It will, perhaps, surprise some of my readers to hear that Swedenborg never contemplated the founding of a sect. He was a civil engineer, high in rank at the Swedish court, and was ennobled for the marvellous feat of transporting the Swedish fleet from sea to sea, across the kingdom and over a formidable chain of mountains. He was also what would now be called an eminent scientist, ranking with Buffon, Humboldt, Kant, Herschel, and others of the first men of his day in Europe, and even surpassing them all in the extent and variety of his philosophical researches. His "Animal Kingdom" and "Physical Sciences" are wonderful efforts of the human mind, and still maintain a high reputation as scientific works.

At length Swedenborg conceived the idea that he enjoyed supernatural privileges—that he had communings with angels and archangels—that he was permitted to enter the spiritual world, and to record what he there saw and heard. Nay, even to approach our Saviour himself, in His character of the Triune God, or sole impersonation of the Divine Trinity. Unlike Mahomet and most other pretenders to inspired missions, Swedenborg never sought for power, honour or applause. He was to the day of his death a quiet gentleman of the old school, unassuming, courteous, and a good man in every sense of the word.

I remember that one of my first objections to the writings of Swedenborg, was on account of his declaring the Church of France to be the most spiritual of all the churches on earth; which dogma immensely offended my youthful English pride. His first "readers" were members of various churches—clergymen of the Church of England, professors in universities, literary students, followers of Wesley, and generally devout men and women of all denominations. In time they began to assemble together for "reading meetings;" and so at length grew into a sect—a designation, by the way, which they still stoutly repudiate. I remember one clergyman, the Rev. John Clowes, rector of a church in Manchester, who applied to the Bishop of Lichfield for leave to read and teach from the works of Swedenborg, and was permitted to do so on account of their entirely harmless character.

When still young, I noticed with astonishment, that the transcendental virtues which Swedenborg inculcated were very feebly evidenced in the lives of his followers; that they were not by any means free from pride, ostentation, even peculation and the ordinary trickery of trade—in fact, that they were no better than their fellow-Christians generally. When I came to Toronto, I of course mixed with all sorts of people, and found examples of thoroughly consistent Christian life amongst all the various denominations—Roman Catholics, English Churchmen, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and many others—which taught me the lesson, that it is not a man's formal creed that is of importance, so much as his personal sincerity as a follower of Christ's teachings and example.

I was at the same time forcibly impressed with another leading idea—that no where in the Scriptures have we any instance of a divinely regulated government, in which the worship of God did not occupy a chief place. I thought—I still think—that the same beneficent principle which makes Christianity a part of the common law of England, and of all her colonies, including the United States, should extend to the religious instruction of every soul in the community, gentle or simple, and more especially to what are called the off-scourings of society.

Looking around me, I saw that of all the churches within my purview, the Church of England most completely met my ideal—that she was the Church by law established in my motherland—that she allowed the utmost latitude to individual opinion—in fine, that she held the Bible wide open to all her children, and did her best to extend its knowledge to all mankind. Had I been a native of Scotland, upon the same reasoning I must have become a Presbyterian, or a Lutheran in Holland or Germany, or a Roman Catholic in France or Spain. But that contingency did not then present itself to me.

So I entered the Church of England; was confirmed by Bishop Strachan, at St. James's Cathedral, in the year 1839, if I remember rightly, and have never since, for one instant, doubted the soundness of my conclusions.

On this occasion, as on many others, my emotions shaped themselves in a poetical form. The two following pieces were written for the Church newspaper, of which I was then the printer, in partnership with the Messrs. Rowsell:—