It was in consequence of a suggestion by the late S. J. Watson, Librarian of the Ontario Legislature—who urged that one who had gone through so many experiences of early Canadian history as myself, ought to put the same on record—that I first thought of writing these "Reminiscences," a portion of which appeared in the Canadian Monthly Magazine. For the assistance which has enabled me to complete and issue this volume, I am obliged to the kind support of those friends who have subscribed for its publication; for which they will please accept my grateful thanks.

In the space at my disposal, I have necessarily been compelled to give little more than a gossiping narrative of events coming under my own observation. But I have been careful to verify every statement of which I was not personally cognizant; and to avoid everything of a controversial character; as well as to touch gently on those faults of public men which I felt obliged to notice.

It has been a labour of love to me, to place on record many honourable deeds of Nature's gentlemen, whose lights ought not to be hidden altogether "under a bushel," and whose names should be enrolled by Canada amongst her earliest worthies. I have had the advantage, in several cases, of the use of family records, which have assisted me materially in rendering more complete several of the earlier chapters, particularly the account of Mackenzie's movements while in the neighbourhood of Gallows Hill; also the sketches of the "Tories of Rebellion Times;" as well as the history of the Mechanics' Institute, in which though a very old member, I never occupied any official position.

Since the first part of these pages was in type, I have had to lament the deaths of more than one comrade whose name is recorded therein; amongst them Dr. A. A. Riddel—my "Archie"—and my dearest friend Dr. Alpheus Todd, to whom I have been indebted for a thousand proofs of generous sympathy.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

REMINISCENCES

OF

A CANADIAN PIONEER.

THE AUTHOR'S ANTECEDENTS AND FORBEARS.

The writer of these pages was born in the year 1810, in the City of London, and in the Parish of Clerkenwell, being within sound of Bow Bells. My father was churchwarden of St. James's, Clerkenwell, and was a master-manufacturer of coal measures and coal shovels, now amongst the obsolete implements of by-gone days. His father was, I believe, a Scotsman, and has been illnaturedly surmised to have run away from the field of Culloden, where he may have fought under the name and style of Evan McTavish, a name which, like those of numbers of his fellow clansmen, would naturally anglicise itself into John Thompson, in order to save its owner's neck from a threatened Hanoverian halter. But he was both canny and winsome, and by-and-by succeeded in capturing the affections and "tocher" of Sarah Reynolds, daughter of the wealthy landlord of the Bull Inn, of Meriden, in Warwickshire, the greatest and oldest of those famous English hostelries, which did duty as the resting-place of monarchs en route, and combined within their solid walls whole troops of blacksmiths, carpenters, hostlers, and many other crafts and callings. No doubt from this source I got my Warwickshire blood, and English ways of thinking, in testimony of which I may cite the following facts: while living in Quebec, in 1859-60, a mason employed to rebuild a brick chimney challenged me as a brother Warwickshire man, saying he knew dozens of gentlemen there who were as like me "as two peas." Again, in 1841, a lady who claimed to be the last direct descendant of William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, and the possessor of the watch and other relics of the poet, said she was quite startled at my likeness to an original portrait of her great ancestor, in the possession of her family.

My grandfather carried on the business of timber dealer (we in Canada should call it lumber merchant), between Scotland and England, buying up the standing timber in gentlemen's parks, squaring and teaming it southward, and so became a prosperous man. Finally, at his death, he left a large family of sons and daughters, all in thriving circumstances. His second son, William, married my mother, Anna Hawkins, daughter of the Rev. Isaac Hawkins, of Taunton, in Somersetshire, and his wife, Joan Wilmington, of Wilmington Park, near Taunton. My grandfather Hawkins was one of John Wesley's earliest converts, and was by him ordained to the ministry. Through my mother, we are understood to be descended from Sir John Hawkins, the world-renowned buccaneer, admiral, and founder of the English Royal Navy, who was honoured by being associated with her most sacred Majesty Queen Elizabeth, in a secret partnership in the profits of piratical raids undertaken in the name and for the behoof of Protestant Christianity. So at least says the historian, Froude.

One word more about my father. He was a member of the London trained-bands, and served during the Gordon riots, described by Dickens in "Barnaby Rudge." He personally rescued a family of Roman Catholics from the rioters, secreted them in his house on Holborn Hill, and aided them to escape to Jamaica, whence they sent us many valuable presents of mahogany furniture, which must be still in the possession of some of my nephews or nieces in England. My mother has often told me, that she remembered well seeing dozens of miserable victims of riot and drunkenness lying in the kennel in front of her house, lapping up the streams of gin which ran burning down the foul gutter, consuming the poor wretches themselves in its fiery progress.

My father died the same year I was born. My dear mother, who was the meekest and most pious of women, did her best to teach her children to avoid the snares of worldly pride and ambition, and to be contented with the humble lot in which they had been placed by Providence. She was by religious profession a Swedenborgian, and in that denomination educated a family of eleven children, of whom I am the youngest. I was sent to a respectable day-school, and afterwards as boarder to a commercial academy, where I learnt the English branches of education, with a little Latin, French, and drawing. I was, as a child, passionately fond of reading, especially of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and of Sir Walter Scott's novels, which latter delightful books have influenced my tastes through life, and still hold me fascinated whenever I happen to take them up.

So things went on till 1823, when I was thirteen years old. My mother had been left a life-interest in freehold and leasehold property worth some thirty thousand pounds sterling; but, following the advice of her father and brother, was induced to invest in losing speculations, until scarcely sufficient was left to keep the wolf from the door. It was, therefore, settled that I must be sent to learn a trade, and, by my uncle's advice, I was placed as apprentice to one William Molineux, of the Liberty of the Rolls, in the district of Lincoln's Inn, printer. He was a hard master, though not an unkind man. For seven long years was I kept at press and case, working eleven hours a day usually, sometimes sixteen, and occasionally all night, for which latter indulgence I got half a crown for the night's work, but no other payment or present from year's end to year's end. The factory laws had not then been thought of, and the condition of apprentices in England was much the same as that of convicts condemned to hard labour, except for a couple of hours' freedom, and too often of vicious license, in the evenings.

HISTORY OF A MAN OF GENIUS.

The course of my narrative now requires a brief account of my mother's only brother, whose example and conversation, more than anything else, taught me to turn my thoughts westwards, and finally to follow his example by crossing the Atlantic ocean, and seeking "fresh fields and pastures new" under a transatlantic sky.

John Isaac Hawkins was a name well known, both in European and American scientific circles, fifty years ago, as an inventor of the most fertile resource, and an expert in all matters relating to civil engineering. He must have left England for America somewhere about the year 1790, full of republican enthusiasm and of schemes of universal benevolence. Of his record in the United States I know very little, except that he married a wife in New Jersey, that he resided at Bordenton, that he acquired some property adjacent to Philadelphia, that he was intimate with the elder Adams, Jefferson, and many other eminent men. Returning with his wife to England, after twenty-five years' absence, he established a sugar refinery in Titchfield Street, Cavendish square, London, patronized his English relatives with much condescension, and won my childish heart by great lumps of rock-candy, and scientific experiments of a delightfully awful character. Also, he borrowed my mother's money, to be expended for the good of mankind, and the elaboration of the teeming offspring of his inexhaustible inventive faculty. Morden's patent lead pencils, Bramah's patent locks, and, I think, Gillott's steel pens were among his numerous useful achievements, from some or all of which he enjoyed to the day of his death a small income, in the shape of a royalty on the profits. He assisted in the perfecting of Perkins's steam-gun, which the Duke of Wellington condemned as too barbarous for civilized warfare, but which its discoverer, Mr. Perkins, looked upon as the destined extirpator of all warfare, by the simple process of rendering resistance utterly impossible. This appalling and destructive weapon has culminated in these times in the famous mitrailleuses of Napoleon III, at Woerth and Sedan, which, however, certainly neither exterminated the Prussians nor added glory to the French empire.

At his home I was in the habit of meeting the leading men of the Royal Society and the Society of Arts, of which he was a member, and of listening to their discussions about scientific novelties. The eccentric Duke of Norfolk, Earl Stanhope, the inventor of the Stanhope press, and other noble amateur scientists, availed themselves of his practical skill, and his name became known throughout Europe. In 1825 or thereabouts, he was selected by the Emperor Francis Joseph, of Austria, to design and superintend the first extensive works erected in Vienna for the promotion of the new manufacture of beet-root sugar, now an important national industry throughout Germany. He described the intercourse of the Austrian Imperial-Royal family with all who approached them, and even with the mendicants who were daily admitted to an audience with the Emperor at five o'clock in the morning, as of the most cordial and lovable character.

From Vienna my uncle went to Paris, and performed the same duties there for the French Government, in the erection of extensive sugar works. The chief difficulty he encountered there, was in parrying the determination of the Parisian artisans not to lose their Sunday's labour. They could not, they said, support their families on six days' wages, and unless he paid them for remaining idle on the Sabbath day, they must and would work seven days in the week. I believe they gained their point, much to his distress and chagrin.

SOME REMINISCENCES OF A LONDON APPRENTICE.

Having been an indulged youngest child, I found the life of a printer's boy bitterly distasteful, and it was long before I could brace myself up to the required tasks. But time worked a change; I got to be a smart pressman and compositor; and at eighteen the foremanship of the office was entrusted to me, still without remuneration or reward. Those were the days of the Corn Law League. Col. Peyronnet Thompson, the apostle of Free Trade, author of the "Catholic State Waggon" and other political tracts, got his work done at our office. We printed the Examiner, which brought me into contact with John and Leigh Hunt, with Jeremy Bentham, then a feeble old man whose life was passed in an easy chair, and with his protegé Edwin Chadwick; also with Albany Fonblanque, Sir John Morland the philanthropist, and other eminent men. Last but not least, we printed "Figaro in London," the forerunner of "Punch," and I was favoured with the kindest encouragement by De Walden, its first editor, afterwards Police Magistrate. I have known that gentleman come into the office on the morning of publication, ask how much copy was still wanted, and have seen him stand at a desk, and without preparation or hesitation, dash off paragraph after paragraph of the pungent witticisms, which the same afternoon sent all London into roars of laughter at the expense of political humbugs of all kinds, whether friends or foes. These were not unhappy days for me. With such associations, I became a zealous Reformer, and heartily applauded my elder brother, when he refused, with thousands of others, to pay taxes at the time the first Reform Bill was rejected by the House of Lords.

At this period of my life, as might have been expected from the nature of my education and the course of reading which I preferred, I began to try my hand at poetry, and wrote several slight pieces for the Christmas Annuals, which, sad to say, were never accepted. But the fate of Chatterton, of Coleridge, and other like sufferers, discouraged me; and I adopted the prudent resolution, to prefer wealth to fame, and comfort to martyrdom in the service of the Muses.

With the termination of my seven years' apprenticeship, these literary efforts came also to an end. Disgusted with printing, I entered the service of my brother, a timber merchant, and in consequence obtained a general knowledge of the many varieties of wood used in manufactures, which I have since found serviceable. And this brings me to the year 1831, from which date to the present day, I have identified myself thoroughly with Canada, her industries and progress, without for a moment ceasing to be an Englishman of the English, a loyal subject of the Queen, and a firm believer in the high destinies of the Pan-Anglican Empire of the future.

WESTWARD, HO!

^"Martin Doyle," was the text-book which first awakened, amongst tens of thousands of British readers, a keen interest in the backwoods of what is now the Province of Ontario. The year 1832, the first dread year of Asiatic cholera, contributed by its terrors to the exodus of alarmed fugitives from the crowded cities of the old country. My brothers Thomas and Isaac, both a few years older than myself, made up their minds to emigrate, and I joyously offered to join them, in the expectation of a good deal of fun of the kind described by Dr. Dunlop. So we set seriously to work, "pooled" our small means, learnt to make seine-nets, economized to an unheard of extent, became curious in the purchase of stores, including pannikins and other primitive tinware, and at length engaged passage in the bark Asia, 500 tons, rated A. No. 1, formerly an East Indiaman, and now bound for Quebec, to seek a cargo of white pine lumber for the London market. So sanguine were we of returning in the course of six or seven years, with plenty of money to enrich, and perhaps bring back with us, our dear mother and unmarried sisters, that we scarcely realized the pain of leave-taking, and went on board ship in the St. Catherine's Docks, surrounded by applauding friends, and in the highest possible spirits.

Our fellow-passengers were not of the most desirable class. With the exception of a London hairdresser and his wife, very respectable people, with whom we shared the second-cabin, the emigrants were chiefly rough countrymen, with their wives and numerous children, sent out by the parish authorities from the neighbourhood of Dorking, in Surrey, and more ignorant than can readily be conceived. Helpless as infants under suffering, sulky and even savage under privations, they were a troublesome charge to the ship's officers, and very ill-fitted for the dangers of the sea which lay before us. Captain Ward was the ship's master; there were first and second mates, the former a tall Scot, the latter a short thick-set Englishman, and both good sailors. The boatswain, cook and crew of about a dozen men and boys, made up our ship's company.

All things went reasonably well for some time. Heavy head-winds detained us in the channel for a fortnight, which was relieved by landing at Torbay, climbing the heights of Brixham, and living on fresh fish for twenty-four hours. Then came a fair wind, which lasted until we got near the banks of Newfoundland. Head-winds beset us again, and this time so seriously that our vessel, which was timber-sheathed, sprang a plank, and immediately began to leak dangerously. The passengers had taken to their berths for the night, and were of course ignorant of what had happened, but feared something wrong from the hurry of tramping of feet overhead, the vehement shouts of the mates giving orders for lowering sail, and the other usual accompaniments of a heavy squall on board ship. It was not long, however, before we learned the alarming truth. "All hands on deck to pump ship," came thundering down both hatchways, in the coarse tones of the second mate. We hurried on deck half-dressed, to face a scene of confusion affrighting in the eyes of landsmen—the ship stripped to her storm-sails, almost on her beam-ends in a tremendous sea, the wind blowing "great guns," the deck at an angle of at least fifteen degrees, flooded with rain pouring in torrents, and encumbered with ropes which there had not been time to clew away, the four ship's pumps manned by twice as many landsmen, the sailors all engaged in desperate efforts to stop the leak by thrumming sails together and drawing them under the ship's bows.

Captain Ward told us very calmly that he had been in gales off the Cape of Good Hope, and thought nothing of a "little puff" like this; he also told us that he should keep on his course in the hope that the wind would abate, and that we could manage the leak; but if not, he had no doubt of carrying us safely back to the west coast of Ireland, where he might comfortably refit.

Certainly courage is infectious. We were twelve hundred miles at sea, with a great leak in our ship's side, and very little hope of escape, but the master's coolness and bravery delighted us, and even the weakest man on board took his spell at the pumps, and worked away for dear life. My brother Thomas was a martyr to sea-sickness, and could hardly stand without help; but Isaac had been bred a farmer, accustomed to hard work and field sports, and speedily took command of the pumps, worked two spells for another man's one, and by his example encouraged the grumbling steerage passengers to persevere, if only for very shame. Some of their wives even took turns with great spirit and effect. I did my best, but it was not much that I could accomplish.

In all my after-life I never experienced such supreme comfort and peace of mind, as during that night, while lying under wet sails on the sloping deck, talking with my brother of the certainty of our being at the bottom of the sea before morning, of our mother and friends at home, and of our hope of meeting them in the great Hereafter. Tired out at last, we fell asleep where we lay, and woke only at the cry, "spell ho!" which summoned us again to the pumps.

The report of "five feet of water in the hold—the ballast shifted!" determined matters for us towards morning. Capt. Ward decided that he must put about and run for Galway, and so he did. The sea had by daylight gone down so much, that the captain's cutter could be lowered and the leak examined from the outside. This was done by the first mate, Mr. Cattanagh, who brought back the cheering news that so long as we were running before the wind the leak was four feet out of water, and that we were saved for the present. The bark still remained at the same unsightly angle, her ballast, which was chiefly coals, having shifted bodily over to leeward; the pumps had to be kept going, and in this deplorable state, in constant dread of squalls, and wearied with incessant hard work, we sailed for eight days and nights, never sighting a ship until nearly off the mouth of the Shannon, where we hailed a brig whose name I forget. She passed on, however, refusing to answer our signals of distress.

Next day, to our immense relief, the Asia entered Galway Bay, and here we lay six weeks for repairs, enjoying ourselves not a little, and forgetting past danger, except as a memorable episode in the battle of life.

CONNEMARA AND GALWAY FIFTY YEARS AGO.

The Town of Galway is a relic of the times when Spain maintained an active commerce with the west of Ireland, and meddled not a little in the intrigues of the time. Everybody has read of the warden of Galway, who hanged his son outside a window of his own house, to prevent a rescue from justice by a popular rising in the young man's favour. That house still stood, and probably yet stands, a mournful memento of a most dismal tragedy. In 1833 it was in ruins, as was also the whole long row of massive cut stone buildings of which it formed part. In front there was a tablet recording the above event; the walls were entire, but the roof was quite gone, and the upper stories open to the winds and storms. The basement story appeared to have been solidly arched, and in its cavernous recesses, and those of the adjoining cellars along that side of the street, dwelt a race of butchers and of small hucksters, dealing in potatoes, oats, some groceries and rough wares of many kinds. The first floor of a brick store opposite was occupied by a hair-dresser with whom our London fellow-passenger claimed acquaintance. One day we were sitting at his window, looking across at the old warden's house, when a singular scene was enacted under our astonished eyes. A beggarman, so ragged as barely to comply with the demands of common decency, and bearing an old sack suspended over his shoulder on a short cudgel, came lounging along the middle of the street seeking alms. A butcher's dog of aristocratic tastes took offence at the man's rags, and attacked him savagely. The old man struck at the dog, the dog's owner darted out of his cellar and struck at the beggar, somebody else took a part, and in the twinkling of an eye as it were, the narrow street was blocked up with men furiously-wielding shillelaghs, striking right and left at whoever happened to be most handy, and yelling like Dante's devils in full chorus. Another minute, and a squad of policemen in green uniforms—peelers, they are popularly called—appeared as if by magic, and with the effect of magic; for instantly, and with a celerity evidently the result of long practice, the crowd, beggarman, butcher, dog and all, vanished into the yawning cellars, and the street was left as quiet as before, the police marching leisurely back to their barracks.

We spent much of our time in rambling along the shore of Galway Bay, a beautiful and extensive harbour, where we found many curious specimens of sea-weeds, particularly the edible dilosk, and rare shells and minerals. Some of our people went out shooting snipe, and were warned on all hands to go in parties, and to take care of their guns, which would prove too strong a temptation for the native peasantry, as the spirit of Ribbonism was rife throughout Connemara. Another amusement was, to watch the groups of visitors from Tuam and the surrounding parts of Clare and other counties, who were attracted by the marvel of a ship of five hundred tons in their bay, no such phenomenon having happened within the memory of man. At another time we explored the rapid river Corrib, and the beautiful lake of the same name, a few miles distant. The salmon weirs on the river were exceedingly interesting, where we saw the largest fish confined in cribs for market, and apparently quite unconscious of their captivity. The castle of one of the Lynch family was visible from the bay, an ancient structure with its walls mounted with cannon to keep sheriffs' officers at a distance. Other feudal castles were also in sight.

Across the bay loomed the rugged mountains of Clare, seemingly utterly barren in their bleak nakedness. With the aid of the captain's telescope we could see on these inhospitable hills dark objects, which turned out to be the mud cabins of a numerous peasantry, the very class for whom, in this present year of 1883, Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues are trying to create an elysium of rural contentment. We traversed the country roads for miles, to observe the mode of farming there, and could find nothing, even up to the very streets of Galway, but mud cabins with one or two rooms, shared with the cow and pigs, and entrenched, as it were, behind a huge pile of manure that must have been the accumulation of years. Anything in the shape of valuable improvements was conspicuously absent.

Everything in Connemara seems paradoxical. These rough-coated, hard-worked, down-trodden Celts proved to be the liveliest, brightest, wittiest of mankind. They came in shoals to our ship, danced reels by the hour upon deck to a whistled accompaniment, with the most extravagant leaps and snapping of fingers. It was an amusing sight to see women driving huge pigs into the sea, held by a string tied to the hind leg, and there scraping and sluicing the unwieldy, squealing creatures until they came out as white as new cream. These Galway women are singularly handsome, with a decidedly Murillo cast of features, betokening plainly their Iberian ancestry. They might well have sat as models to the chief of Spanish painters.

In the suburbs of Galway are many acres of boggy land, which are cultivated as potato plots, highly enriched with salt sea-weed manure, and very productive. These farms—by which title they are dignified—were rented, we were told, at three to four pounds sterling per acre. Rents in the open country ranged from one pound upwards. Yet we bought cup potatoes at twopence per stone of sixteen lbs.; and for a leg of mutton paid sixpence English.

Enquiring the cause of these singular anomalies, we were assured on all hands, that the system of renting through middlemen was the bane of Ireland. A farm might be sub-let two or three times, each tenant paying an increased rental, and the landlord-in-chief, a Blake, a Lynch, or a Martin, realizing less rent than he would obtain in Scotland or England. We heard of no Protestant oppressors here; the gentry and nobility worshipped at the same altar with the humblest of their dependents, and certainly meant them well and treated them considerately.

We attended the English service in the ancient Gothic Abbey Church. The ministrations were of the strictest Puritan type; the sculptured escutcheons and tablets on the walls—the groined arches and bosses of the roof—were almost obliterated by thick coat upon coat of whitewash, laid on in an iconoclastic spirit which I have since seen equalled in the Dutch Cathedral of Rotterdam, and nowhere else. Another Sunday we visited a small Roman Catholic chapel at some distance. It was impossible to get inside the building, as the crowd of worshippers not only filled the sacred edifice, but spread themselves over a pretty extensive and well-filled churchyard, where they knelt throughout morning prayer, lasting a full hour or more.

The party-feuds of the town are quite free from sectarian feeling. The fishermen, who were dressed from head to foot in hoddengray, and the butchers, who clothed themselves entirely in sky-blue—coats, waistcoats, breeches, and stockings alike, with black hats and shoes—constituted the belligerent powers. Every Saturday night, or oftener, they would marshal their forces respectively on the wide fish-market place, by the sea-shore, or on the long wharf extending into deep water, and with their shillelaghs hold high tournament for the honour of their craft and the love of fair maidens. One night, while the Asia lay off the wharf, an unfortunate combatant fell senseless into the water and was drowned. But no inquiry followed, and no surprise was expressed at a circumstance so trivial.

By the way, it would be unpardonable to quit Connemara without recording its "potheen." Every homestead had its peat-stack, and every peat-stack might be the hiding-place of a keg of illicit native spirits. We were invited, and encouraged by example, to taste a glass; but a single mouthful almost choked us; and never again did we dare to put the fiery liquid to our lips.

Our recollections of Galway are of a mixed character—painful, because of the consciousness that the empire at large must be held responsible for the unequal distribution of nature's blessings amongst her people—pleasant, because of the uniform hospitality and courtesy shown to us by all classes and creeds of the townsfolk.