The material of Mr. Small's dwelling was hewn timber. It was one of the earliest domestic erections in York. When re-constructed at a subsequent period, Mr. Charles Small preserved, in the enlarged and elevated building, now known as Berkeley House, the shape and even a portion of the inner substance of the original structure.
We have before us a curious plan (undated but old) of the piece of ground originally occupied and enclosed by Mr. Small, as a yard and garden round his primitive homestead: occupied and enclosed, as it would seem, before any building lots were set off by authority on the Government reserve or common here. The plan referred to is entitled "A sketch showing the land occupied by John Small, Esq., upon the Reserve appropriated for the Government House at York by His Excellency Lt. Gov. Simcoe." An irregular oblong, coloured red, is bounded on the north side by King Street, and is lettered within—"Mr. Small's Improvements." Round the irregular piece thus shewn, lines are drawn enclosing additional space, and bringing the whole into the shape of a parallelogram: the parts outside the irregularly shaped red portion, are colored yellow: and on the yellow, the memorandum appears—"This added would make an Acre." The block thus brought into shapely form is about one-half of the piece of ground that at present appertains to Berkeley House.
The plan before us also incidentally shows where the Town of York was supposed to terminate:—an inscription—"Front Line of the Town"—runs along the following route: up what is now the lane through Dr. Widmer's property: and then, at a right angle eastward along what is now the north boundary of King Street opposite the block which it was necessary to get into shape round Mr. Small's first "Improvements." King Street proper, in this plan, terminates at "Ontario Street:" from the eastern limit of Ontario Street, the continuation of the highway is marked "Road to Quebec,"—with an arrow shewing the direction in which the traveller must keep his horse's head, if he would reach that ancient city.—The arrow at the end of the inscription just given points slightly upwards, indicating the fact that the said "Road to Quebec" trends slightly to the north after leaving Mr. Small's clearing.
XVI.
FROM BERKELEY STREET TO THE BRIDGE AND ACROSS IT.
e now propose to pass rapidly down "the road to Quebec" as far as the Bridge. First we cross, in the hollow, Goodwin's creek, the stream which enters the Bay by the cut-stone Jail. Lieutenant Givins (afterwards Colonel Givins), on the occasion of his first visit to Toronto in 1793, forced his way in a canoe with a friend up several of the meanderings of this stream, under the impression that he was exploring the Don. He had heard that a river leading to the North-West entered the Bay of Toronto, somewhere near its head; and he mistook the lesser for the greater stream: thus on a small scale performing the exploit accomplished by several of the explorers of the North American coast, who, under the firm persuasion that a water highway to Japan and China existed somewhere across this continent, lighted upon Baffin's Bay, Davis Strait, the Hudson River, and the St. Lawrence itself, in the course of their investigations.