So sang one in the columns of a local contemporary paper, in "Lines suggested by the Lamented Death of the late Colonel Moodie."

At a certain period in the history of Yonge Street, as indeed of all the leading thoroughfares of Upper Canada, about 1830-33, a frequent sign that property had changed hands, and that a second wave of population was rolling in, was the springing up, at intervals, of houses of an improved style, with surroundings, lawns, sheltering plantations, winding drives, well-constructed entrance-gates, and so on, indicating an appreciation of the elegant and the comfortable.

We recall two instances of this, which we used to contemplate with particular interest, a little way beyond Richmond Hill, on the left: the cosy, English-looking residences, not far apart, with a cluster of appurtenances round each—of Mr. Larratt Smith, and Mr. Francis Boyd. Both gentlemen settled here with their families in 1836.

Mr. Smith had been previously in Canada in a military capacity during the war of 1812-13, and for many years subsequently he had been Chief Commissary of the Field Train Department and Paymaster of the Artillery. He died at Southampton in 1860.

Mr. Boyd, who emigrated hither from the county of Kent, was one of the first, in these parts, to import from England improved breeds of cattle. In his house was to be seen a collection of really fine paintings, amongst them a Holbein, a Teniers, a Dominichino, a Smirke, a Wilkie, and two Horace Vernets. The families of Mr. Boyd and Mr. Smith were related by marriage. Mr. Boyd died in Toronto in 1861.

Beyond Mr. Boyd's, a solitary house, on the same side of Yonge Street, lying back near the woods, used to be eyed askance in passing:—its occupant and proprietor, Mr. Kinnear, had in 1843 been murdered therein by his man-servant, assisted by a female domestic. It was imagined by them that a considerable sum of money had just been brought to the house by Mr. Kinnear. Both criminals would probably have escaped justice had not Mr. F. C. Capreol, of Toronto, on the spur of the moment, and purely from a sense of duty to the public, undertaken their capture, which he cleverly effected at Lewiston in the United States.

The land now began to be somewhat broken as we ascended the rough and long-uncultivated region known as the Oak Ridges. The predominant tree in the primitive forest here was the pine, which attained a gigantic size; but specimens of the black oak were intermingled.

Down in one of the numerous clefts and chasms which were to be seen in this locality, in a woody dell on the right, was Bond's Lake, a pretty crescent-shaped sheet of water. We have the surrounding property offered for sale in a Gazette of 1805, in the following terms; "For Sale, Lots No. 62 and 63, in the first concession of the township of Whitchurch, on the east side of Yonge Street, containing 380 acres of land: a deed in fee simple will be given by the subscriber to any person inclined to purchase. Johnson Butler. N.B. The above lots include the whole of the Pond commonly called Bond's Lake, the house and clearing round the same. For particulars enquire of Mr. R. Ferguson and Mr. T. B. Gough at York, and the subscriber at Niagara. March 23, 1805."

Bond's farm and lake had their name from Mr. William Bond, who so early as 1800 had established in York a Nursery Garden, and introduced there most of the useful fruits. In 1801 Mr. Bond was devising to sell his York property, as appears from a quaint advertisement in a Gazette of that year. He therein professes to offer his lot in York as a free gift; the recipient however being at the same time required to do certain things.

"To be given away," he says, "that beautifully situated lot No. one, fronting on Ontario and Duchess Streets: the buildings thereon are—a small two-and-a-half storey house, with a gallery in front, which commands a view of the lake and the bay: in the cellar a never failing spring of fine water; and a stream of fine water running through one corner of the lot; there is a good kitchen in the rear of the house, and a stable sufficient for two cows and two horses, and the lot is in good fence.

"The conditions are, with the person or persons who accept of the above present, that he, she or they purchase not less than two thousand apple-trees at three shillings, New York currency, each; after which will be added, as a further present, about one hundred apple, thirty peach, and fourteen cherry trees, besides wild plums, wild cherries, English gooseberries, white and red currants, &c. There are forty of the above apple trees, as also the peach and cherry trees, planted regular, as an orchard, much of which appeared in blossom last spring, and must be considered very valuable: also as a kitchen garden, will sufficiently recommend itself to those who may please to view it.—The above are well calculated for a professional or independent gentleman; being somewhat retired—about half-way from the Lake to the late Attorney General's and opposite the town-farm of the Hon. D. W. Smith [afterwards Mr. Allan's property.] Payment will be made easy; a good deed; and possession given at any time from the first of November to the first of May next. For further particulars enquire of the subscriber on the premises. William Bond. York, Sep. 4, 1801."—The price expected was, as will be made out, 750 dollars. The property was evidently the northern portion of what became afterwards the homestead-plot of Mr. Surveyor General Ridout.

It would appear that Mr. Bond's property did not find a purchaser on this occasion. In 1804 he is advertising it again, but now to be sold by auction, with his right and title to the lot on Yonge Street. In the Gazette of August 4, 1804, we read as follows:—"To be sold by auction, at Cooper's tavern, in York, on Monday, the twentieth day of August next, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon (if not previously disposed of by private contract), that highly cultivated lot opposite the Printing Office [Bennett's] containing one acre, together with a nursery thereon of about ten thousand apple, three hundred peach, and twenty pear trees, and an orchard containing forty-one apple trees fit for bearing, twenty-seven of which are full of fruit; thirty peach and nine cherry trees full of fruit; besides black and red plums, red and white currants, English gooseberries, lilacs, rose bushes, &c., &c., also a very rich kitchen garden.

"The buildings are a two-and-a-half storey house, a good cellar, stable and smokehouse. On the lot is a never-failing spring of excellent water, and fine creek running through one corner most part of the year. The above premises might be made very commodious for a gentleman at a small expense; or for a tanner, brewer, or distiller, must be allowed the most convenient place in York. A view of the premises (by any person or persons desirous of purchasing the same) will be sufficient recommendation. The nursery is in such a state of forwardness that if sold in from two to three years (at which time the apple trees will be fit to transplant) at the moderate price of one shilling each, would repay a sum double of that asked for the whole, and leave a further gain to the purchasers of the lot, buildings, and flourishing orchard thereon. A good title to the above, and possession given at any time after the first of October next.

"Also at the same time and place the right as per Register, to one hundred acres in front of lot 62, east side Yonge Street, for which a deed can be procured at pleasure, and the remainder of the lot procured for a small sum. It is an excellent soil for orchard, grain and pasture land. There is a field of ten acres in fence besides other clearing. It is a beautiful situation, having part of the Lake commonly called Bond's Lake, within the said lot, which affords a great supply of Fish and Fowl. Terms of payment will be made known on the day of sale. For further particulars enquire of the subscriber on the former premises, or the printer hereof. William Bond. York, 27th June, 1804."

Thirty years later we meet with an advertisement in which the price is named at which Lot No. 63 could have been secured. Improvements expected speedily to be made on Yonge Street are therein referred to. In a Gazette of 1834 we have: "A delightful situation on Yonge Street, commonly called Bond's Farm, containing 190 acres, beautifully situated on Bond's Lake upon Yonge Street, distant about 16 miles from the city of Toronto: price £350. The picturesque beauty of this lot," the advertisement says, "and its proximity to the flourishing capital of Upper Canada, make it a most desirable situation for a gentleman of taste. The stage-coaches between Toronto and Holland Landing and Newmarket pass the place daily; and there appears every prospect of Yonge Street either having a railroad or being macadamized very shortly. Apply (if by letter, free of postage) to Robert Ferrie, at Hamilton, the proprietor."

In the advertisement of 1805, given above, Bond's Lake is styled a pond. The small lakes in these hills seemed, of course, to those who had become familiarized with the great lakes, simply ponds. The term "lake" applied to Ontario, Huron, and the rest, has given a very inadequate idea of the magnitude and appearance of those vast expanses, to externs who imagine them to be picturesque sheets of water somewhat exceeding in size, but resembling, Windermere, Loch Lomond, or possibly Lake Leman. "Sea" would have conveyed a juster notion: not however to the German, who styles the lakes of Switzerland and the Tyrol, "seas."

Bond's Lake inn, the way-side stopping place in the vale where Yonge Street skirts the lake, used to be, in an especial degree, of the old country cast, in its appliances, its fare, its parlours and other rooms.

XXVII.

That in and about the Canadian Drynoch Gaelic should be familiarly heard was in keeping with the general character of the place. The ancient Celtic tongue was in fact a necessity, as among the dependents of the house there were always some who had never learned the English language. Drynoch was the name of the old home in Skye. The Skye Drynoch was an unfenced, hilly pasture farm, of about ten miles in extent, yielding nutriment to herds of wild cattle and some 8,000 sheep. Within its limits a lake, Loch Brockadale, is still the haunt of the otter, which is hunted by the aid of the famous terriers of the island; a mountain stream abounds with salmon and trout; while the heather and bracken of the slopes shelter grouse and other game.

Whittaker, in his History of Whalley, quoted by Hallam in his Middle Ages, describes the aspect which, as he supposes, a certain portion of England presented to the eye, as seen from the top of Pendle Hill, in Yorkshire, in the Saxon times. The picture which he draws we in Canada can realize with great perfectness. "Could a curious observer of the present day," he says, "carry himself nine or ten centuries back, and ranging the summit of Pendle, survey the forked vale of Calder on one side and the bolder margins of Ribble and Hodder on the other, instead of populous towns and villages, the castles, the old tower-built house, the elegant modern mansion, the artificial plantation, the enclosed park and pleasure-ground, instead of uninterrupted enclosures which have driven sterility almost to the summit of the fells, how great then must have been the contrast when, ranging either at a distance or immediately beneath, his eye must have caught vast tracts of forest-ground, stagnating with bog or darkened by native woods, where the wild ox, the roe, the stag and the wolf, had scarcely learned the supremacy of man, when, directing his view to the intermediate spaces, to the widening of the valleys, or expanse of plains beneath, he could only have distinguished a few insulated patches of culture, each encircling a village of wretched cabins, among which would still be remarked one rude mansion of wood, scarcely equal in comfort to a modern cottage, yet there rising proudly eminent above the rest, where the Saxon lord, surrounded by his faithful cotarii, enjoyed a rude and solitary independence, having no superior but his sovereign."

This writer asks us to carry ourselves nine or ten centuries back, to realize the picture which he has conceived. From the upland here in the vicinity of Drynoch, less than half a century ago, gazing southwards over the expanse thence to be commanded, we should have beheld a scene closely resembling that which, as he supposed, was seen from the summit of Pendle in the Saxon days; while at the present day we see everywhere, throughout the same expanse, an approximation to the old mother-lands, England, Ireland, and Scotland, in condition and appearance: in its style of agriculture, and the character of its towns, villages, hamlets, farm-houses, and country villas.

We now entered a region once occupied by a number of French military refugees. During the revolution in France, at the close of the last century, many of the devotees of the royalist cause passed over into England, where, as elsewhere, they were known and spoken of as émigrés. Amongst them were numerous officers of the regular army, all of them, of course, of the noblesse order, or else, as the inherited rule was, no commission in the King's service could have been theirs. When now the royal cause became desperate, and they had suffered the loss of all their worldly goods, the British Government of the day, in its sympathy for the monarchical cause in France, offered them grants of land in the newly organized province of Upper Canada.

Some of them availed themselves of the generosity of the British Crown. Having been comrades in arms they desired to occupy a block of contiguous lots. Whilst there was yet almost all western Canada to choose from, by some chance these Oak Ridges, especially difficult to bring under cultivation and somewhat sterile when subdued, were preferred, partly perhaps through the influence of sentiment; they may have discovered some resemblance to regions familiar to themselves in their native land. Or in a mood inspired and made fashionable by Rousseau they may have longed for a lodge in some vast wilderness, where the "mortal coil" which had descended upon the old society of Europe should no longer harass them. When twitted by the passing wayfarer who had selected land in a more propitious situation, they would point to the gigantic boles of the surrounding pines in proof of the intrinsic excellence of the soil below, which must be good, they said, to nourish such a vegetation.

After all, however, this particular locality may have been selected rather for them than by them. On the early map of 1798 a range of nine lots on each side of Yonge Street, just here in the Ridges, is bracketed and marked, "French Royalists: by order of his Honor," i.e., the President, Peter Russell. A postscript to the Gazetteer of 1799 gives the reader the information that "lands have been appropriated in the year of York as a refuge for some French Royalists, and their settlement has commenced."

On the Vaughan side, No. 56 was occupied conjointly by Michel Saigeon and Francis Reneoux; No. 57 by Julien le Bugle; No. 58 by René Aug. Comte de Chalûs, Amboise de Farcy and Quetton St. George conjointly; No. 59 by Quetton St. George; No. 60 by Jean Louis Vicomte de Chalûs. In King, No. 61 by René Aug. Comte de Chalûs and Augustin Boiton conjointly. On the Markham side: No. 52 is occupied by the Comte de Puisaye; No. 53 by René Aug. Comte de Chalûs; No. 54 by Jean Louis Vicomte de Chalûs and René Aug. Comte de Chalûs conjointly;—No. 55 by Jean Louis Vicomte de Chalûs; No. 66 by le Chevalier de Marseuil and Michael Fauchard conjointly; No. 57 by the Chev. de Marseuil; No. 58 by René Letourneaux, Augustin Boiton and J. L. Vicomte de Chalûs conjointly; No. 59 by Quetton St. George and Jean Furon conjointly; No. 60 by Amboise de Farcy. In Whitchurch, No. 61 by Michel Saigeon.

After felling the trees in a few acres of their respective allotments, some of these emigrés withdrew from the country. Hence in the Ridges was to be seen here and there the rather unusual sight of abandoned clearings returning to a state of nature.

The officers styled Comte and Vicomte de Chalûs derived their title from the veritable domain and castle of Chalûs in Normandy, associated in the minds of young readers of English History with the death of Richard Coeur de Lion. Jean Louis de Chalûs, whose name appears on numbers 54 and in 55 Markham and on other lots, was a Major-General in the Royal Army of Brittany. At the balls given by the Governor and others at York, the jewels of Madame la Comtesse created a great sensation, wholly surpassing everything of the kind that had hitherto been seen by the ladies of Upper Canada. Amboise de Farcy, of No. 58 in Vaughan and No. 60 in Markham, had also the rank of General. Augustin Boiton, of No. 48 in Markham and No. 61 in Vaughan, was a Lieutenant-Colonel.

The Comte de Puisaye, of No. 52 in Markham, figures conspicuously in the contemporary accounts of the royalist struggle against the Convention. He himself published in London in 1803 five octavo volumes of Memoirs, justificatory of his proceedings in that contest. Carlyle in his "French Revolution" speaks of de Puisaye's work, and, referring to the so-called Calvados war, says that those who are curious in such matters may read therein "how our Girondin National forces, i.e., the Moderates, marching off with plenty of wind music, were drawn out about the old château of Brécourt, in the wood-country near Vernon (in Brittany), to meet the Mountain National forces (the Communist) advancing from Paris. How on the fifteenth afternoon of July, 1793, they did meet:—and, as it were, shrieked mutually, and took mutually to flight, without loss. How Puisaye thereafter,—for the Mountain Nationals fled first, and we thought ourselves the victors,—was roused from his warm bed in the Castle of Brécourt and had to gallop without boots; our Nationals in the night watches having fallen unexpectedly into sauve qui peut."

Carlyle alludes again to this misadventure, when approaching the subject of the Quiberon expedition, two years later, towards the close of La Vendée war. Affecting for the moment a prophetic tone, in his peculiar way Carlyle proceeds thus, introducing at the close of his sketch de Puisaye once more, who was in command of the invading force spoken of, although not undividedly so. "In the month of July, 1795, English ships," he says, "will ride in Quiberon roads. There will be debarkation of chivalrous ci-devants, (i.e. ex-noblesse), of volunteer prisoners of war—eager to desert; of fire-arms, proclamations, clothes chests, royalists, and specie. Whereupon also, on the Republican side, there will be rapid stand-to arms; with ambuscade-marchings by Quiberon beach at midnight; storming of Fort Penthièvre; war-thunder mingling with the roar of the mighty main; and such a morning light as has seldom dawned; debarkation hurled back into its boats, or into the devouring billows, with wreck and wail;—in one word, a ci-devant Puisaye as totally ineffectual here as he was at Calvados, when he rode from Vernon Castle without boots."

The impression which Carlyle gives of M. de Puisaye is not greatly bettered by what M. de Lamartine says of him in the History of the Girondists, when speaking of him in connexion with the affair near the Château of Brécourt. He is there ranked with adventurers rather than heroes. "This man," de Lamartine says, "was at once an orator, a diplomatist, and a soldier,—a character eminently adapted for civil war, which produces more adventurers than heroes." De Lamartine describes how, prior to the repulse at Château Brécourt, "M. de Puisaye had passed a whole year concealed in a cavern in the midst of the forests of Brittany, where, by his manoeuvres and correspondence he kindled the fire of revolt against the republic." He professed to act in the interest of the moderates, believing that, through his influence, they would at last be induced to espouse heartily the cause of constitutional royalty.

Thiers, in his "History of the French Revolution," vii. 146, speaks in respectful terms of Puisaye. He says that "with great intelligence and extraordinary skill in uniting the elements of a party, he combined extreme activity of body and mind, and vast ambition:" and even after Quiberon, Thiers says "it was certain that Puisaye had done all that lay in his power." De Puisaye ended his days in England, in the neighbourhood of London, in 1827.—In one of the letters of Mr. Surveyor Jones we observe some of the improvements of the Oak Ridges spoken of as "Puisaye's Town."

It is possibly to the settlement, then only in contemplation, of emigrés here in the Oak Ridges of Yonge Street, that Burke alludes, when in his Reflections on the French Revolution he says: "I hear that there are considerable emigrations from France, and that many, quitting that voluptuous climate and that seductive Circean liberty, have taken refuge in the frozen regions, and under the British despotism, of Canada."

"The frozen regions of Canada," the great rhetorician's expression in this place, has become a stereotyped phrase with declaimers. The reports of the first settlers at Tadousac and Quebec made an indelible impression on the European mind. To this day in transatlantic communities, it is realized only to a limited extent that Canada has a spring, summer and autumn as well as a winter, and that her skies wear an aspect not always gloomy and inhospitable. "British despotism" is, of course, ironically said, and means, in reality, British constitutional freedom. (In some instances these Royalist officers appear to have accepted commissions from the British Crown, and so to have become nominally entitled to grants of land.)

There are some representatives of the original émigrés still to be met with in the neighbourhood of the Oak Ridges; but they have not in every instance continued to be seised of the lands granted in 1798. The Comte de Chalûs, son of René Augustin, retains property here; but he resides in Montreal.

An estate, however, at the distance of one lot eastward from Yonge Street, in Whitchurch, is yet in the actual occupation of a direct descendant of one of the first settlers in this region. Mr. Henry Quetton St. George here engages with energy in the various operations of a practical farmer, on land inherited immediately from his father, the Chevalier de St. George, at the same time dispensing to his many friends a refined hospitality. If at Glenlonely the circular turrets and pointed roofs of the old French château are not to be seen,—what is of greater importance, the amenities and gentle life of the old French château are to be found. Moreover, by another successful enterprise added to agriculture, the present proprietor of Glenlonely has brought it to pass that the name of St. George is no longer suggestive, as in the first instance it was, of wars in La Vendée and fightings on the Garonne and Dordogne, but redolent in Canada, far and wide, only of vineyards in Languedoc and of pleasant wines from across the Pyrenees.

A large group of superior farm buildings, formerly seen on the right just after the turn which leads to Glenlonely, bore the graceful name of Larchmere,—an appellation glancing at the mere or little lake within view of the windows of the house: a sheet of water more generally known as Lake Willcocks—so called from an early owner of the spot, Col. Willcocks, of whom we have spoken in another section. Larchmere was for some time the home of his great grandson, William Willcocks Baldwin. The house has since been destroyed by fire.

Just beneath the surface of the soil on the borders of the lakelets of the Ridges, was early noticed a plentiful deposit of white shell-marl, resembling the substance brought up from the oozy floor of the Atlantic in the soundings preparatory to laying the telegraph-cable. It was, in fact, incipient chalk. It used to be employed in the composition of a whitewash for walls and fences. It may since have been found of value as a manure. In these quarters, as elsewhere in Canada, fine specimens of the antlers of the Wapiti, or great American stag, were occasionally dug up.

The summit level of the Ridges was now reached, the most elevated land in this part of the basin of the St. Lawrence; a height, however, after all, of only about eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. The attention of the wayfarer was hereabout always directed to a small stream, which the road crossed, flowing out of Lake Willcocks: and then a short distance further on, he was desired to notice a slight swale or shallow morass on the left. The stream in question, he was told, was the infant Humber, just starting south for Lake Ontario; while the swale or morass, he was assured, was a feeder of the east branch of the Holland River, flowing north into Lake Simcoe.

Notwithstanding the comparative nearness to each other of the waters of the Holland and the Humber, thus made visible to the eye, the earliest project of a canal in these parts was, as has once before been observed, for the connection, not of the Holland river and the Humber, but of the Holland river and the Rouge or Nen. The Mississaga Indians attached great importance to the Rouge and its valley as a link in one of their ancient trails between Huron and Ontario; and they seem to have imparted to the first white men their own notions on the subject. "It apparently rises," says the Gazetteer of 1799, speaking of the Rouge or Nen, "in the vicinity of one of the branches of Holland's river, with which it will probably, at some future period, be connected by a canal." A "proposed canal" is accordingly here marked on one of the first manuscript maps of Upper Canada.

Father St. Lawrence and Father Mississippi pour their streams—so travellers assure us—from urns situated at no great distance apart. Lake Itaska and its vicinity, just west of Lake Superior, possess a charm for this reason. In like manner, to compare small things with great, the particular quarter of the Ridges where the waters of the Humber and the Holland used to be seen in near proximity to each other, had always with ourselves a special interest. Two small lakes, called respectively Lake Sproxton and Lake Simon, important feeders of the Rouge, a little to the east of the Glenlonely property, are situated very close to the streams that pass into the east branch of the Holland river; so that the conjecture of the author of the Gazetteer was a good one. He says, "apparently the sources of the Rouge and Holland lie near each other."

After passing the notable locality of the Ridges just spoken of, the land began perceptibly to decline; and soon emerging from the confused glens and hillocks and woods that had long on every side been hedging in the view, we suddenly came out upon a brow where a wide prospect was obtained, stretching far to the north, and far to the east and west. From such an elevation the acres here and there denuded of their woods by the solitary axemen could not be distinguished; accordingly, the panorama presented here for many a year continued to be exactly that which met the eyes of the first exploring party from York in 1793.

As we used to see it, it seemed in effect to be an unbroken forest; in the foreground bold and billowy and of every variety of green; in the middle distance assuming neutral, indistinct tints, as it dipped down into what looked like a wide vale; then apparently rising by successive gentle stages, coloured now deep violet, now a tender blue, up to the line of the sky. In a depression in the far horizon, immediately in front, was seen the silvery sheen of water. This, of course, was the lake known since 1793 as Lake Simcoe; but previously spoken of by the French sometimes as Lake Sinion or Sheniong; sometimes as Lake Ouentironk, Ouentaron, and Toronto—the very name which is so familiar to us now, as appertaining to a locality thirty miles southward of this lake.

The French also in their own tongue sometimes designated it, perhaps for some reason connected with fishing operations, Lac aux Claies, Hurdle Lake. Thus in the Gazetteer of 1799 we have "Simcoe Lake: formerly Lake aux Claies, Ouentironk, Sheniong, situated between York and Gloucester upon Lake Huron: it has a few small islands and several good harbours." And again on another page of the same Gazetteer, we have the article: "Toronto Lake (or Toronto): lake le Clie [i. e. Lac aux Claies] was formerly so called by some: (others," the same article proceeds to say, "called the chain of lakes from the vicinity of Matchedash towards the head of the Bay of Quinté, the Toronto lakes and the communication from the one to the other was called the Toronto river:" whilst in another place in the Gazetteer we have the information given us that the Humber was also styled the Toronto river, thus: "Toronto river, called by some St. John's; now called the Humber.")

The region of which we here obtained a kind of Pisgah view, where

on the northern brow of the Ridges, is a classic one, renowned in the history of the Wyandots or Hurons, and in the early French missionary annals.

It did not chance to enter into the poet Longfellow's plan to lay the scene of any portion of his song of Hiawatha so far to the eastward; and the legends gathered by him

tell of an era just anterior to the period when this district becomes invested with interest for us. Francis Parkman, however, in an agreeably written work, entitled "The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century," has dwelt somewhat at length on the history of this locality, which is the well-peopled Toronto region, lieu où il y a beaucoup de gens, of which we have formerly spoken. (p. 74.)

In the early Reports of the Jesuit fathers themselves, too, this area figures largely. They, in fact, constructed a map, which must have led the central mission-board of their association, at Rome, to believe that this portion of Western Canada was as thickly strewn with villages and towns as a district of equal area in old France. In the "Chorographia Regionis Huronum," attached to Father du Creux's Map of New France, of the date 1660, given in Bressani's Abridgment of "the Relations," we have the following places conspicuously marked as stations or sub-missions in the peninsula bounded by Notawasaga bay, Matchedash or Sturgeon bay, the river Severn, Lake Couchichin, and Lake Simcoe, implying population in and round each of them:—St. Xavier, St. Charles, St. Louis, St. Ignatius, St. Denis, St. Joachim, St. Athanasius, St. Elizabeth, St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Mary, St. Michael, La Conception, St. Mary Magdalene, and others.

(In Schoolcraft's American Indians, p. 130, ed. 1851, the scene of the story of Aingodon and Naywadaha is laid at Toronto, by which a spot near Lake Simcoe seems to be meant, and not the trading-post of Toronto on Lake Ontario.)

But we must push on. The end of our journey is in sight. The impediments to our advance have been innumerable, but unavoidable. In spite of appearances, "Semper ad eventum festina," has all along been secretly goading us forward.

The farmhouses and their surroundings in the Quaker settlement through which, after descending from the Ridges on the northern side, we passed, came to be notable at an early date for a characteristic neatness, completeness, and visible judiciousness; and for an air of enviable general comfort and prosperity. The farmers here were emigrants chiefly from Pennsylvania. Coming from a quarter where large tracts had been rapidly transformed by human toil from a state of nature to a condition of high cultivation, they brought with them an inherited experience in regard to such matters; and on planting themselves down in the midst of an unbroken wild, they regarded the situation with more intelligence perhaps than the ordinary emigrant from the British Islands and interior of Germany, and so, unretarded by blunders and by doubts as to the issue, were enabled very speedily to turn their industry to profitable account.

The old Gazetteer of 1799 speaks in an exalted sentimental strain of an emigration then going on from the United States into Canada. "The loyal peasant," it says, "sighing after the government he lost by the late revolution, travels from Pennsylvania in search of his former laws and protection; and having his expectations fulfilled by new marks of favour from the Crown in a grant of lands, he turns his plough at once into these fertile plains [the immediate reference is to the neighbourhood of Woodhouse on Lake Erie], and an abundant crop reminds him of his gratitude to his God and to his king."

We do not know for certain whether the Quaker settlers of the region north of the Ridges came into Canada under the influence of feelings exactly such as those described by the Gazetteer of 1799. In 1806, however, we find them coming forward in a body to congratulate a new Lieutenant-Governor on his arrival in Upper Canada. In the Gazette of Oct. 4, 1806, we read: "On Tuesday, the 30th September (1806), the following address from the Quakers residing on Yonge Street was presented to his Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor: "The Society of the people called Quakers, to Francis Gore, Governor of Upper Canada, sendeth greeting. Notwithstanding we are a people who hold forth to the world a principle which in many respects differs from the greater part of mankind, yet we believe it our reasonable duty, as saith the Apostle, 'Submit yourselves unto every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be the king as supreme, or unto governors as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well:' in this we hope to be his humble and peaceful subjects. Although we cannot for conscience sake join with many of our fellow-mortals in complimentary customs of man, neither in taking up the sword in order to shed human blood—for the Scripture saith that 'it is righteousness that exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people'—we feel concerned for thy welfare and the prosperity of the province, hoping thy administration may be such as to be a terror to the evil-minded and a pleasure to them that do well: then will the province flourish and prosper under thy direction; which is the earnest desire and prayer of thy sincere friends.—Read and approved in Yonge Street monthly meeting, held the 18th day of the ninth month, 1806. Timothy Rogers and Amos Armitage are appointed to attend on the Governor therewith." Signed by order of the said meeting, Nathaniel Pearson, clerk."

To this address, characteristic alike in the peculiar syntax of its sentences and in the well-meant platitudes to which it gives expression, his Excellency was pleased to return the following answer: "I return you my thanks for your dutiful address and for your good wishes for my welfare and prosperity of this province. I have no doubt of your proving peaceful and good subjects to his Majesty, as well as industrious and respectable members of society. I shall at all times be happy to afford to such persons my countenance and support. Francis Gore, Lieut.-Governor. Government House, York, Upper Canada, 30th Sept., 1806."

The Timothy Rogers here named bore a leading part in the first establishment of the Quaker settlement. He and Jacob Lundy were the two original managers of its affairs. On the arrival of Governor Peter Hunter, predecessor to Gov. Gore, Timothy Rogers and Jacob Lundy with a deputation from the settlement, came into town to complain to him of the delay which they and their co-religionists had experienced in obtaining the patents for their lands.

Governor Hunter, who was also Commander-in-Chief and a Lieut.-General in the army, received them in the garrison, and after hearing how on coming to York on former occasions they had been sent about from one office to another for a reply to their inquiries about the patents, he requested them to come to him again the next day at noon. Orders were at the same instant despatched to Mr. D. W. Smith, the Surveyor-General, to Mr. Small, Clerk of the Executive Council, to Mr. Burns, Clerk of the Crown, and to Mr. Jarvis, Secretary and Registrar of the Province (all of whom it appeared at one time or another had failed to reply satisfactorily to the Quakers), to wait at the same hour on the Lieut.-Governor, bringing with them, each respectively, such papers and memoranda as might be in their possession, having relation to patents for lands in Whitchurch and King.

Governor Hunter had a reputation for considerable severity of character; and all functionaries, from the judge on the bench to the humblest employé, held office in those days very literally during pleasure.

"These gentlemen complain,"—the personages above enumerated having duly appeared, together with the deputation from Yonge Street—"These gentlemen complain," the Governor said, pointing to the Quakers, "that they cannot get their patents."

Each of the official personages present offered in succession some indistinct observations; expressive it would seem of a degree of regret, and hinting exculpatory reasons, so far as he individually was concerned.

On closer interrogation, one thing however came out very clear, that the order for the patents was more than twelve months old.

At length the onus of blame seemed to settle down on the head of the Secretary and Registrar, Mr. Jarvis, who could only say that really the pressure of business in his office was so great that he had been absolutely unable, up to the present moment, to get ready the particular patents referred to.

"Sir!" was the Governor's immediate rejoinder, "if they are not forthcoming, every one of them, and placed in the hands of these gentlemen here in my presence at noon on Thursday next (it was now Tuesday), by George! I'll un-Jarvis you!"—implying, as we suppose, a summary congé as Secretary and Registrar.

It is needless to say that Mr. Rogers and his colleagues of the deputation carried back with them to Whitchurch lively accounts of the vigour and rigour of the new Governor—as well as their patents.

General Hunter was very peremptory in his dismissals occasionally. In a Gazette of July 16, 1803, is to be seen an ominous announcement that the Governor is going to be very strict with the Government clerks in regard to hours: "Lieut.-Governor's office, 21st June, 1803. Notice is hereby given that regular attendance for the transaction of the public business of the Province will in future be given at the office of the Secretary of the Province, the Executive Council office, and the Surveyor-General's office, every day in the year (Sundays, Good Friday, and Christmas day only excepted) from ten o'clock in the morning until three in the afternoon, and from five o'clock in the afternoon until seven in the evening. By order of the Lieutenant-Governor, Jas. Green, Secretary."

Soon after the appearance of this notice, it happened one forenoon that young Alexander Macnab, a clerk in one of the public offices, was innocently watching the Governor's debarkation from a boat, preparatory to his being conveyed up to the Council-chamber in a sedan-chair which was in waiting for him. The youth suddenly caught his Excellency's eye, and was asked—"What business he had to be there? Did he not belong to the Surveyor-General's office? Sir! your services are no longer required!"

For this same young Macnab, thus summarily dismissed, Governor Hunter, we have been told, procured subsequently a commission. He attained the rank of captain and met a soldier's fate on the field of Waterloo, the only Upper Canadian known to have been engaged or to have fallen in that famous battle. (We have before mentioned that so late as 1868, Captain Macnab's Waterloo medal was presented, by the Duke of Cambridge personally, to the Rev. Dr. Macnab, of Bowmanville, nephew of the deceased officer.)

Two stray characteristic items relating to Governor Hunter may here be subjoined. The following was his brief reply to the Address of the Inhabitants of York on his arrival there in 1799:—"Gentlemen, nothing that is in my power shall be wanting to contribute to the happiness and welfare of this colony." (Gazette, Aug. 24, 1799)—At Niagara, an Address from "the mechanics and husbandmen" was refused by him, on the ground that an address professedly from the inhabitants generally had been presented already. On this, the Constellation of Sep. 10 (1799), prints the following "anecdote," which is a hit at Gov. Hunter. "Anecdote.—When Governor Simcoe arrived at Kingston on his way here to take upon him the government of the Province, the magistrates and gentlemen of that town presented him with a very polite address. It was politely and verbally answered. The inhabitants of the country and town, who move not in the upper circles, presented theirs. And this also his Excellency very politely answered, and the answer being in writing, is carefully preserved to this day."

Among the patents carried home by Mr. Timothy Rogers, above named, were at least seven in which he was more or less personally interested. His own lot was 95 on the west or King side of Yonge Street. Immediately in front of him on the Whitchurch or east side, on lots 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, and 96, all in a row, were enjoyed by sons or near relatives of his, bearing the names respectively of Rufus Rogers, Asa Rogers, Isaac Rogers, Wing Rogers, James Rogers, and Obadiah Rogers.

Mr. Lundy's name does not appear among those of the original patentees; but lots or portions of lot in the "Quaker Settlement" are marked at an earlier period with the names of Shadrach Lundy, Oliver Lundy, Jacob Lundy, Reuben Lundy, and perhaps more.

In the region just beyond the Ridges there were farmers also of the community known as Mennonists or Tunkers. Long beards, when such appendages were rarities, dangling hair, antique-shaped, buttonless, home-spun coats, and wide-brimmed low-crowned hats, made these persons conspicuous in the street. On the seat of a loaded country-waggon, or on the back of a solitary rustic nag, would now and then be seen a man of this community, who might pass for John Huss or John á Lasco, as represented in the pictures. It was always curious to gaze upon these waifs and strays from old Holland, perpetuating, or at least trying to perpetuate, on a new continent, customs and notions originating in the peculiar circumstances of obscure localities in another hemisphere three hundred years ago.

Simon Menno, the founder and prophet of the Mennonists, was a native of Friesland in 1496. He advocated the utmost rigour of life. Although there are, as we are informed, modernized Mennonists now in Holland, at Amsterdam, for example, who are distinguished for luxury in their tables, their equipages and their country seats, yet a sub-section of the community known as Uke-Wallists, from one Uke Walles, adhere to the primitive strictness enjoined by Menno. Their apparel, we are told, is mean beyond expression, and they avoid everything that has the most distant appearance of elegance or ornament. They let their beards grow to an enormous length; their hair, uncombed, lies in a disorderly manner on their shoulders; their countenances are marked with the strongest lines of dejection and melancholy; and their habitations and household furniture are such as are only fitted to answer the demands of mere necessity. "We shall not enlarge," Mosheim adds, "upon the circumstances of their ritual, but only observe that they prevent all attempts to alter or modify their religious discipline, by preserving their people from everything that bears the remotest aspect of learning and science; from whatever, in a word, that may have a tendency to enlighten their devout ignorance."

The sympathies of our primitive Tunkers beyond the Ridges, were, as we may suppose, with this section of the fatherland Mennonists.

Thus, to get the clue to social phenomena which we see around us here in Canada, we have to concern ourselves occasionally with uninviting pages, not only of Irish, Scottish and English religious history, but of German and Netherlandish religious history likewise. Pity 'tis, in some respects, that on a new continent our immigrants could not have made a tabula rasa of the past, and taken a start de novo on another level—a higher one; on a new gauge—a widened one.

Though only a minute fraction of our population, an exception was early made by the local parliament in favour of the Mennonists or Tunkers, allowing them to make affirmations in the Courts, like the Quakers, and to compound for military service.—Like Lollard, Quaker and some other similar terms, Tunker, i. e. Dipper, was probably at first used in a spirit of ridicule.

Digression to Newmarket and Sharon.

When Newmarket came in view off to the right, a large portion of the traffic of the street turned aside for a certain distance out of the straight route to the north, in that direction.

About this point the ancient dwellers at York used to take note of signs that they had passed into a higher latitude. Half a degree to the south of their homes—at Niagara, for example—they were in the land, if not of the citron and myrtle, certainly of the tulip-tree and pawpaw—where the edible chestnut grew plentifully in the natural woods, and the peach luxuriantly flourished.

Now, half a degree the other way, in the tramontane region north of the Ridges, they found themselves in the presence of a vegetation that spoke of an advance, however minute, towards the pole. Here, all along the wayside, beautiful specimens of the spruce-pine and balsam-fir, strangers in the forest about York, were encountered. Sweeping the sward with their drooping branches and sending up their dark green spires high in the air, these trees were always regarded with interest, and desired as graceful objects worthy to be transferred to the lawn or ornamental shrubbery.

A little way off the road, on the left, just before the turn leading to Newmarket, was the great Quaker meeting-house of this region—the "Friends' Meeting-house"—a building of the usual plain cast, generally seen with its solid shutters closed up. This was the successor of the first Quaker meeting-house in Upper Canada. Here Mr. Joseph John Gurney, the eminent English Quaker, who travelled on this continent in 1837-40, delivered several addresses, with a view especially to the re-uniting, if possible, of the Orthodox and the Hicksites.

Gourlay, in his "Statistical Account of Upper Canada," took note that this Quaker meeting-house and a wooden chapel at Hogg's Hollow, belonging to the Church of England, were the only two places of public worship to be seen on Yonge Street between York and the Holland Landing—a distance, he says, of nearly forty miles. This was in 1817.

Following now the wheel-marks of clearly the majority of vehicles travelling on the street, we turn aside to Newmarket.

Newmarket had for its germ or nucleus the mills and stores of Mr. Elisha Beaman, who emigrated hither from the State of New York in 1806. Here also, on the branch of the Holland river, mills at an early date were established by Mr. Mordecai Millard, and tanneries by Mr. Joseph Hill. Mr. Beaman's mills became subsequently the property of Mr. Peter Robinson, who was Commissioner of Crown Lands in 1827, and one of the representatives of the united counties of York and Simcoe; and afterwards, the property of his brother, Mr. W. B. Robinson, who for a time resided here, and for a number of years represented the County of Simcoe in the provincial parliament. Most gentlemen travelling north or to the north-west brought with them, from friends in York, a note of commendation to Mr. Robinson, whose friendly and hospitable disposition were well known: