The afternoon tea now serves its purpose very well, but modern society has yet to discover the equal of the quilting bee as a clearing-house for gossip. To the credit of the fair sex, we should add that they rarely made use of intoxicants; but the old grannies did enjoy a few puffs from a blackened clay pipe after their meals. Both men and women were more or less addicted to the use of snuff.
Whiskey was plentiful in the good old days, but the drinking of it was not looked upon with such horror, nor attended with such disastrous consequences as in our day. This difference was probably due both to the drink and the drinker. Some people will not admit that any whiskey is bad, while others deny that any can be good; but the whiskey of a hundred years ago does not appear to have had as fierce a serpent in it as the highly-advertised brands of the present day. It possessed one virtue, and that was its cheapness. When a quart could be purchased for sixpence, a man could hardly be charged with rash extravagance in buying enough whiskey to produce the desired effect. It was considered quite the proper thing to drink upon almost any occasion, and upon the slightest provocation; and, if a member of a company received an overdose and glided under the table, it created no more sensation than if he had fallen asleep. As the population increased, taverns were set up at nearly every crossing of the roads. Some of these, especially the recognized stopping-places of the stage coaches, were quite imposing hostelries; and as the guests gathered about the huge fire-place on a winter's evening and smoked their pipes, drank their toddy, and exchanged their tales of adventure and travel, the scene was one that has no counterpart in our day. It was a form of sociability and entertainment that departed with the passing of the stage coach.
In this age of railroads and motor cars we have no conception of the discomforts of travel eighty or a hundred or more years ago. The Loyalists clung for many years to the bateaux, the flat-bottomed boats, which conveyed them over the last stage of their journey to their new homes. These boats were very popular upon the Bay of Quinte. In going west they were carried across the Carrying Place at the head of the bay by a man named Asa Weller, who kept a low wagon and a yoke of oxen ready at hand to transport the travellers from the bay to the lake and back again upon the return trip. It is needless to add that Weller's Bay was named after this enterprising teamster.
In 1816 the first stage line in Upper Canada was inaugurated between Kingston and Bath by Samuel Purdy, of Bath, and in the following year he opened a line from Kingston to York. The roads were wretched, and the fare was eighteen dollars. Fourteen years later William Weller, a son of Asa, whose business of transporting the bateaux from one body of water to the other had brought him in contact with the travelling public and acquainted him with their needs, established a bi-weekly service between the Carrying Place and York, in connection with the steamer Sir James Kempt, which carried the passengers on to Prescott. The fare from York to Prescott was £2 10s. ($10). The stage left York at four o'clock in the morning, arriving at the Carrying Place the same evening.
The very term, stage-coach, suggests to our minds a spanking four-in-hand, in brass-mounted harness, attached to a gayly-decorated conveyance. We picture them dashing through a village under the crack of the coachman's whip. Away they go, rattling over the bridge, down the turnpike, and with a shrill blast of the guard's horn, they haul up at the wayside inn, where a fat and smiling landlord escorts the passengers in to a hot dinner. Such were not the stagecoaches of our forefathers; they were simply lumber wagons without springs and covered with canvas like the prairie schooners, or plain wooden enclosures with seats suspended by leather straps. Just think of being cooped up in such an affair from sunrise to sunset—the clumsy "coach" jolting over the rough roads, dodging stumps, rocks, and fallen trees, plunging down a steep embankment, fording rivers and streams, and sinking now and then to the axles in mud!
During the summer months the mosquitoes and black flies added to the misery of the travellers. Even so, in this, as in all things, the pioneers looked not so much on the dark side of life as on the bright. The distance had to be covered; every jolt and bump brought them one step nearer their destination. The tales of the fellow travellers were entertaining and helped to shorten the way. Perhaps one was a legislator just returning from a meeting of the House, perhaps a merchant on his way to Montreal to make his year's purchase of goods, or a young adventurer from the old country spying out an opportunity to better himself in the New World. The forest had its charms, although the insects at times were abominable. As the coach passed through a clearing the yeoman, with a swing of his hat, would wish the travellers God-speed. The monotony was broken, time and again, by a glimpse of a bay or lake; and the road, in places followed the beach, where the waves broke under the horses' feet. Awaiting them at the journey's end were that rest and peace which the home alone can afford, that bright welcome of the fireside built with their own hands, and the smiles of the loved ones who had shared all their trials and victories.
CHAPTER IV
EARLY COURTS AND ELECTIONS
All that territory from the Ottawa River to the Detroit, in which the Loyalists settled, inclusive of the western bank of the latter river, was, of course, part of the Province of Quebec; but there was very little in common between the newly-arrived settlers and their French neighbours on the lower St. Lawrence. There were no judges, no lawyers, and no regularly established courts in any of the new settlements. The people were too busy to devote much time to litigation. The nearest court was at Montreal, and to the English-speaking settlers the French civil code, which was in force, was an untried experiment, and they wisely endeavoured to avoid making use of the legal machinery at their disposal. Minor differences were frequently referred to some of the officers who had been appointed to take charge of the bands of emigrants when they left their former homes. These officers did not profess to be versed in the law, but they had exercised a certain amount of authority during the voyage and in locating the families committed to their care, and in distributing the supplies. It was quite natural that they should be appealed to when the parties to a dispute were unable to come to a satisfactory understanding between themselves. They were not hampered by hair-splitting precedents or long-established forms of procedure; but they made the best use of their common sense in their efforts to apply the Golden Rule, and so far as is known, substantial justice was done. As early as 1785, indeed, the Justices of the Peace were given jurisdiction in civil cases up to £5 ($20); but they had little to do, and their courts were very informal.
On the 24th of July, 1788, Lord Dorchester, Governor of Quebec, issued a proclamation dividing the newly-settled territory into four districts as follows: Lunenburg, composed of all that portion east of the Gananoque River; Mecklenburg, from Gananoque to the Trent; Nassau, from the Trent to a line running north and south through the extreme projection of Long Point into Lake Erie; and Hesse, that portion of the province west of the last mentioned line. There was established in each district a Court of Common Pleas of unlimited civil jurisdiction, presided over by three judges (except in Hesse, where one judge only was finally appointed), attended by a sheriff and the other necessary officers.