After prospecting, he determined to locate near the confluence of the "Soo" and Garden rivers.
Behold us, then, moving out by wagon, on to Cobourg, and taking steamboat from there to Toronto; thence staging across to Holland Landing. Then going aboard the steamer Beaver, we landed one evening at Orillia, took stage at once, and pounded across many corduroy bridges to Coldwater, where, in the early morning, we went aboard the little side-wheeler Gore, and then out to Owen Sound, where my brother David joined us, and we sailed across Georgian Bay, up through the islands into the majestic river which connects these great lakes, and landed at the Indian village of Garden River.
I am now in my ninth year, and, as father says, quite a help.
We rented a small one-roomed house from an Indian, and into this we moved from the steamboat. Whiskey was king here. Nearly all the Indians were drunk the first night of our arrival. Such noise and din! We children were frightened, and very glad when morning dawned.
Things became more quiet, and now we went to work to build a mission house, a church, and a school-house.
Father was everywhere—in the bush chopping logs, among the Indians preaching the Gospel, and fighting the whiskey traffic. I drove the oxen and hauled the timber to its place. I interpreted for father in the home and by the wayside. My brother and myself fished, picked berries, did anything to supplement our scanty fare, for father's salary was only $320, and prices were very high. In our wanderings after berries I had to be responsible for my brother. The Indian boys would go with us. Every little while I would shout, "David, come on!" They would take it up, "Dape-tic-o-mon!" This was how the sounds came to their ears. This they would shout; and this they named my brother, and the name still sticks to him in that country.
My Indian name was "Pa-ke-noh-ka" ("the Winner"). I earned this by leaving all boys of my age in foot-races. After some months of hard work we got the home up, and moved into it. Then the school-house was erected.
A wonderful change was going on in the meantime. The people became sober. To see any drunk became the exception. A strong temperance feeling took hold of the Indians. Many of them were converted. Though but a boy, I could not help but see and note all the changes. What meetings I attended with father in the houses, and camps, and sugar-bushes of the people!
Our means of transport were, in summer, by boat and canoe, and in winter, by sleigh and snow-shoes.
Many a long trip I had with father in sail or Mackinaw boat, away up into Lake Superior, then down to the Bruce Mines, calling en route and preaching to a few Indians who lived at Punkin Point. We sailed when the wind would let us. Then father would pull and I would steer, on into the night, across long stretches and along what seemed to me interminable shores.