A noble race! but they are gone, With their old forests wide and deep, And we have built our houses on Fields where their generations sleep. Their fountains slake our thirst at noon, Upon their fields our harvest waves, Our lovers woo beneath their moon— Then let us spare at least their graves!
Vain, however, was the poet's appeal. Even the prosaic proclamations of the civil power had but temporary effect. We quote one of them of the date of Dec. 14th, 1797, having for its object the protection of the fishing places and burying grounds of the Mississaga Indians:
"Proclamation. Upper Canada. Whereas, many heavy and grievous complaints have of late been made by the Mississaga Indians, of depredations committed by some of his Majesty's subjects and others upon their fisheries and burial places, and of other annoyances suffered by them by uncivil treatment, in violation of the friendship existing between his Majesty and the Mississaga Indians, as well as in violation of decency and good order: Be it known, therefore, that if any complaint shall hereafter be made of injuries done to the fisheries and to the burial places of the said Indians, or either of them, and the persons can be ascertained who misbehaved himself or themselves in manner aforesaid, such person or persons shall be proceeded against with the utmost severity, and a proper example made of any herein offending. Given under my hand and seal of arms, at York, this fourteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven, and in the thirty-eighth year of his Majesty's reign. Peter Russell, President, administering the government. By his Honour's command, Alex. Burns, Secretary."
As to the particular ancient burial-plot on the Sandhill north of York, however, it may perhaps be conjectured that prior to 1813 the Mississagas had transferred to other resting places the bulk of the relics which had been deposited there.
Off to the eastward of the sandy rise which we are ascending, was one of the early public nursery gardens of York, Mr. Frank's. Further to the North on the same side was another, Mr. Adams'. Mr. Adams was a tall, oval-faced, fair-complexioned Scotchman. An establishment of the same kind at York more primitive still, was that of Mr. Bond, of whom we shall have occasion to speak by and by.
Kearsny House, Mr. Proudfoot's, the grounds of which occupy the site of Frank's nursery garden, is a comparatively modern erection, dating from about 1845; an architectural object regarded with no kindly glance by the final holders of shares in the Bank of Upper Canada—an institution which in the infancy of the country had a mission and fulfilled it, but which grievously betrayed those of the second generation who, relying on its traditionary sterling repute, continued to trust it. With Kearsny House, too, is associated the recollection, not only of the president, so long identified with the Bank of Upper Canada, but of the financier, Mr. Cassells, who, as a kind of deus ex machinâ, engaged at an annual salary of ten thousand dollars, was expected to retrieve the fortunes of the institution, but in vain, although for a series of years after being pronounced moribund it continued to yield a handsome addition to the income of a number of persons.
Mr. Alexander Murray, subsequently of Yorkville, and a merchant of the olden time at York, occupied the residence which preceded Kearsny House, on the Frank property. One desires, in passing, to offer a tribute to the memory of a man of such genuine worth as was Mr. Murray, although the singular unobtrusiveness which characterized him when living seems almost to forbid the act.
The residue of the Sandhill rise that is still to be discerned westward of Yonge Street has its winsome name, Clover Hill, from the designation borne by the home of Captain Elmsley, son of the Chief Justice, situate here. The house still stands, overshadowed by some fine oaks, relics of the natural wood. The rustic cottage lodge, with diamond lattice windows, at the gate leading in to the original Clover Hill, was on the street a little further on. At the time of his decease, Captain Elmsley had taken up his abode in a building apart from the principal residence of the Clover Hill estate; a building to which he had pleasantly given the name of Barnstable, as being in fact a portion of the outbuildings of the homestead turned into a modest dwelling.
Barnstable was subsequently occupied by Mr. Maurice Scollard, a veteran attaché of the Bank of Upper Canada, of Irish birth, remembered by all frequenters of that institution, and by others for numerous estimable traits of character, but especially for a gift of genuine quiet humour and wit, which at a touch was ever unfailingly ready to manifest itself in word or act, in some unexpected, amusing, genial way. Persons transacting business at the India House in London, when Charles Lamb was a book-keeper there, must have had the solemn routine of the place now and then curiously varied by a dry "aside" from the direction of his desk. Just so the habitués of the old Bank, when absorbed in a knotty question of finance, affecting themselves individually, or the institution, would oftentimes find themselves startled from their propriety by a droll view of the case, gravely suggested by a venerable personage sure to be somewhere near at hand busily engaged over a huge ledger.