Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2

by Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

Rainey's Falls I have faintly sketched, to show the soft beauty of some parts of this river; at Healy's Falls it is more broken.

We went to Crow Bay, just above which the Crow River, from the iron mine country of Marmora, runs into the Trent. Here we found two friends, brothers, settled in great comfort. They had been about ten years in the "Bush," and had excellent farms and houses equal to any I have seen so far in the interior, with every comfort around them. In one of their pleasure-boats, we embarked for the junction of the rivers, on which it is intended to place a town when the country becomes more settled.

All is now forest, excepting a very extensive and very flourishing settlement of twelve hundred acres, undertaken by a retired field-officer in the army, which was a grant about ten years ago for his services, and is now worth two thousand pounds, or perhaps more, since a bridge has been built by the provincial legislature over the Trent, in order to connect the mail route between the townships of Seymour-East and Seymour-West, as both are filling up rapidly, and land becomes consequently dear and scarce.

The price of land in Seymour at present is, improved farm, if a good house and barns are on it, at least two pounds an acre, including clearance and forest; Canada Company's land, from fifteen to twenty shillings an acre; wild land, in lots of one hundred or two hundred acres; Clergy Reserve, or College land, called School land, according to situation, from twenty-five shillings an acre upwards to thirty, all wild land. Private Proprietors' wild land, in good situations, twenty shillings an acre, and very little for less. Along the river-banks, none, I believe, is to be had, unless at very high prices.

It is intended, no doubt, to complete the navigation of this splendid river by and by, and thus holders of land are not very anxious to sell at a cheap rate; and as the Board of Works has constructed, at an expenditure of upwards of twenty thousand pounds, timber slides, along all the worst rapids by which the lumber is taken to the mouth of the Trent, a certain importance is now attained for this river which did not before exist; but this is of very little use to Seymour, in which, new as the township is, all the best pine has already been culled and cut down by the lawless hordes of lumberers, who, of course, no longer consume any of the farm produce; yet it adds to the importance of the river generally.

The first settlers in Seymour were lumber merchants, who, seeing the wealth of the country in pine, and oak, and ash, the great fertility of the soil, and the facilities afforded everywhere for erecting mills, established themselves permanently, and, before the agriculturists were induced to think of it, had removed from all land within miles of the river the only valuable timber that the township contained. Thus one source of profit, and that a very great one to the farming settler, has been destroyed, and the enterprising timber-merchant has established at convenient distances several saw-mills, where his lumber is converted into plank and boards for the lower markets, and where he is at all times ready to saw whatever timber the farmer has left into boards and planks for him, receiving so many feet of timber, and giving so many feet of lumber, as sawed timber is called, taking care of himself, of course, in the exchange.

The flour-mills at Percy proceed upon the same principle: a farmer brings sacks of grain and receives sacks of flour in exchange, said exchange being of course three to one, or more, against him.

Throughout Canada is this truck or barter system pursued, and very little money finds its way either into or out of the back townships, unless it be the receipts of the lumber-merchant from Quebec or the lakes. The lumber-merchant is, therefore, the lord of the Trent, or of any other great internal river, whereon are new settlements; and many of them have amassed large fortunes.

Thus came timber-slides, instead of canal, upon this splendid river, which must, as soon as the Murray Canal, on the Bay of Quinte, is undertaken, be also opened to navigation, as by it the richest part of Western Canada, both in soil and in minerals, will be reached, and a direct communication had in war-time from Kingston, the great naval key of the lakes, with Penetangueshene, and Lakes Huron and Superior.

I have not time now, nor would it amuse the reader, to give a detail of the project for canalling the Trent, part of which was well executed before the troubles of 1837; but the money was voted, and is not so enormous as to justify the non-performance of so important a public work. The timber-slides I look upon as mere temporary expedients.