Accordingly, I started on my journey, and travelled east, along the Kingston road, parallel with the shore of lake Ontario for about twenty-four or five miles to the boundary line, between the townships of Hope and Hamilton. After this I walked for twenty-seven miles through Cavan and Monaghan, to the town of Peterborough, which, at that time contained one log-house and a very poor saw-mill, erected some five or six years before by one Adam Scott to supply the new settlement of Smith with lumber.
I found several hundreds of Mr. Robinson’s Irish emigrants camped on the plains. Many had built themselves huts of pine and spruce boughs; some with slabs and others with logs of trees. Three or four Government store-houses and a house for the Superintendent, the Hon. Peter Robinson, were in course of erection. I had letters of introduction to that gentleman, and also to the Hon. T. A. Stewart, and Robert Reid, Esq. The two latter gentlemen resided in the township of Douro, and were at that time the only settlers in that part of Canada.
As I did not much like the appearance of the lodgings I was likely to obtain in the new town, I went on to Mr. Stewart’s house, and presented my credentials. Nothing could have been more cordial than the welcome I received from him. This gentleman and his brother-in-law, Robert Reid, Esq., obtained a grant of land from the Colonial Government, on condition that they would become actual settlers on the land, and perform certain settlement duties, which consisted in chopping out and clearing the concession lines.[[1]] Before the Crown patent could issue, the party contracting to perform the settlement duties was obliged to appear before a magistrate, and make an affidavit that he or they had chopped and cleared certain concession lines opposite the lots of land mentioned in the certificate.
[1] Every township is laid out by the surveyor in parallel lines, sixty-six chains apart. These lines are sixty-six feet in width, and are given by government as road allowances, for the use of the public, and are called concession lines. Cross lines run at right angles with the former every thirty chains, and are called lot-lines: they subdivide the township into two hundred acre lots: every fifth cross line is a road allowance.
This was a bad law, because many of these lines crossing high hills, swamps or lakes, were impracticable for road-purposes: many thousand pounds consequently were entirely and uselessly thrown away: besides, it opened a door for perjury.
Land-speculators would employ a third party to perform their settlement duties; all they required to obtain the deed, or “lift” as it is called in Canadian parlance, was the sworn certificate for cutting the road, allowances, and the payment of certain fees to Government. The consequence of this was, that many false certificates were sworn to, as few persons or magistrates would be at the trouble and expense of travelling thirty or forty miles back into an uninhabited part of the country, to ascertain if the parties had sworn truly or not.
A magistrate in my neighbourhood told me that a Yankee chopper came to him one day and demanded to be sworn on a settlement duty certificate, which he did to the following effect, “that he had cut a chain between two posts opposite lots so and so, in the concession of—— township. The road allowances are a chain in width, and posts are planted and marked on each side of the concession, at the corners of each lot.
“I had some suspicions,” he said, “in my own mind that the fellow had sworn falsely, so I determined to ascertain the truth. I knew a person residing within a mile or two of the place, to whom I wrote for information, when I found, as I expected, that not a tree bad been cut on the line. I therefore summoned the Yankee, on the information of the farmer, to appear before a brother magistrate and myself to answer for his delinquency.
“So, sir,” I said, “you came before me and swore to a false certificate. Do not you know you have committed perjury, which is a very serious offence. What have you to say for yourself?”
“Wal, I guess, Mister, I han’t committed no perjury. I swore I cut a chain between two posts opposite them lots, and I can prove it by Ina Buck, for he was with me the hul time I was doing on’t.”