THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

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The Valley of the Humber

THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

1615 - 1913

By K. M. LIZARS

Joint Author with R. Lizars of "In the Days of the Canada Company, " Humours of '37," " Committed to His Charge," etc.

TORONTO :

WILLIAM BRIGGS

1913

Copyright, Canada, 1913, by K. M. L.IZARS

F 105*1

PREFACE

ONE hundred and eight years ago Mr. D'Arcy Boulton put into print his opinion that no period in the history of our own country can be considered uninteresting. Now that the wash of haste and the sponge of materialism are wiping many lines off our first pages, it behooves us to dig, and to dig quickly. Miss Marjory MacMurchy pertinently asks, in one of her reviews, " Why make a little book if you do not take a few hours to do it?" In preparing a little book of condensation a great many hours can be consumed; and in this sketch of a small tract which has hitherto been not much suspected of owning enough warp or woof out of which one could weave a fabric, a chief hope is that the future historian may find some portions of his work made easier. To gather, condense, and again sift, to reconsider translations and intermediate synopses, is a delightful occupation known to the initiated; there is a pleasant field waiting for the worker who has ability to develop it; and an earnest cartographer might even make a valuable history that would be unburdened by para- graphs.

Mr. Peter Kalm, a learned Gentleman of Sweden who 'visited Canada in 1750, asks to be excused if no extrava- gant wonders are related by him; he could not make nature otherwise than he found it, and he chose that in time to come his readers would say he related things as they were and that all was found to agree with his descrip- tions, not esteeming him a false relater. So also it is my business to repeat or copy, not to edit ; and to those of my readers who possess the historic sense it will appear fitting that certain orthography is retained according to the time and the whim of my principals, and that it is not censored out of existence.

in

iv PREFACE

George Sand apologizes for subscribing to the patri- archal fashion of prefaces; and one of the wittiest of modern tramps pokes gentle fun at that fashion in Rabe- laisian diction. No notes of thanks for help received, from him ; the helper does not want them, and the reader doesn't care. But I cannot emulate my betters; I must give thanks.

Of a certain French village that delightful tramp says that when the land-folk cannot discover folk-lore they enrich their beloved homes by inventing it. The kind folk who have helped me with many inventions come first in my list, and to them I give thanks.

The maps which accompany this letter-press are in part provided by the courtesy of the Crown Lands Department and the heads of the Surveys Branch for Ontario; some I owe to Dr. Fraser, Provincial Archivist ; and some, with many other debts, to Mr. Pardoe, Parliamentary Librarian. The unrestricted use allowed me by Professor Watson Bain of his father's rare library was a continuation of Dr. James Bain's kindness extending over many years; and some of my copies, with the Jameson sketches, come from that collection. But the largest proportion, either used herein or provided for my reference portfolio, have come to me through the kindness of Dr. Doughty, Dominion Archivist. To him, and to Mr. H. E. Holmden, who spared me many hours of expert help, I am in large debt; and I have to thank Mr. Parker, the head of the Manuscript Room, for the use of a number of valuable documents.

The ladies of our Public Reference Library have made my research there pleasant; and to Miss Staton I am again obliged, as in the old days under Dr. Bain.

Through the permission obtained for me by the lib- rarian-in-charge at the Canadian Institute I have had the advantage of reading papers of great use to me in my search; and in the lists of authorities given for the state- ments contained in each section those Papers and Trans- actions and the copies of the Institute Journal lent me by friends have been acknowledged.

PREFACE v

Mr. H. Phillips, of the Lambton General Stores, has been kind enough to lend me the beautiful photograph of the channel above the Lambtou mill, facing page 112.

My sketch owes much originally to Dr. A. H. U. Col- quhoun, and afterwards to Dr. Burwash, Dr. J. H. Coyne, Dr. G. H. Needier, and Dr. A. Cosens ; and a patient, long- tried man, Mr. E. S. Caswell, has again come to my assist- ance. Other aid is acknowledged in the body of the book.

I do not mean that these names conclude the list of men and women who have put me in the way of acquiring bits of history, and to each and all I offer my sincere apprecia- tion.

This little tract by Brule's pathway to the Lake, this Humber of St. John, must have somewhere, perhaps in boxes of letters in garrets, much material for a better his- tory than an outsider can hint at concerning later days; and perhaps an insider will yet write all that should be written. The first step has been taken in the saving of some part of the beauty. When indiscriminate building was imminent and the manufacturer went a-site-seeing, there arose a small band of enthusiasts who mingled their money with their faith, who contrived to buy and to plan, and who had strength in sitting still. A peculiar admix- ture of romance with their grasp of facts and potentialities made the little Company of Associates a target for many shots; but the immediate development and the apparently inevitable future of their area are proofs that these men have given Toronto a suburb of which Ontario must needs be proud.

To the unthinking, to the underdone, to the ignorant in general, a compilation is dull reading, a thing of shreds of paper and patches of paste, snippets only. I don't mean that this compilation will not be read by some such people. But always there are others; and to those others I would appeal. The parts contain the whole; and the gathering of material for any compilation, however so humble, teaches one that the parts are sometimes few or sometimes not accepted seriously and that the history of Ontario may

vi PREFACE

never be a whole. This generation is passing; and the coming one will have to dig deeper still to find all that may yet be written of our beginnings. Dig, chorograph; monograph, paragraph; compile, compile, and again com- pile. Paragraph your findings, monograph your district; and in the future other searchers will arise and bless your industry.

TORONTO, September 9, 1913.

CONTENTS

PREFACE iii

I. DISCOVERY 1

II. THE FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBER . . 3

III. OF CARTOGRAPHY 11

IV. LA SALLE 20

V. MISSION, FORT AND LOG HOUSE .... 28

VI. THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN .... 36

VII. THE LAKE SHORE EOAD 49

VIII. OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLERS ... 67

IX. FROM SCARLETT PLAINS TO A MODERN CLUB . 83

X. CARIOLING 89

XI. OF INDIANS 94

XII. OF SALMON; AND FISH STORIES, MOSTLY TRUE 113

XIII. FORMATION, FAUNA, FLORA .... 127

XIV. THE CHURCH ON THE HILL .... 143

XV. OF TRANSITIONS AND ENTHUSIASTS . . . 147

%

AUTHORITIES CITED 16a

PAGE

BY BRUL£: LAKE ONTARIO WAS DISCOVERED; AND BY HIM THE HTJMBEB

WAS USED AS His PATHWAY TO REACH IT 9

THE CORONELLI AND RAFFEIX MAPS GlVE THE HUMBER PORTAGE . 20

IN LA SALLE'S TIME TEIAIAGON, AT THE MOUTH OF THE HUMBER, WAS

COUNTED A DAY'S JOURNEY FROM LAC DE TARONTO ... 23

THE SECOND BEND IN THE RIVER, ON THE WAY FROM TOIOIAGON TO

MlSSILIMACKINAK 26

THE WORD TORONTO FINALLY RESTED AT THE LANDING AND THE

MOUTH OF THE HUMBER 38

THE CARRYING-PLACE MENTIONED BY BENJAMIN FROBISHER IN 1785 43

IN THE EARLY FIELD BOOKS AND DIARIES ST. JOHN is THE HOST OF

ALL PARTIES AS THEY LEAVE FOR OR RETURN FROM THE NORTH 45

" THE TORONTO RIVER, SOMETIMES CALLED ST. JOHN'S CREEK, NOW

THE HUMBER" 48

ST. JOHN'S WAS THE STARTING-POINT FOR A TOUR OF EXPLOBATION . 50

WHERE THE TORONTO RIVER AND ST. JOHN'S CREEK ARE THE HUMBER, AND WHERE THE KINGSWAY AND THE OLD MILL ARE FORE- SHADOWED 55

HUMBER BAY AND MRS. JAMESON IN JANUARY, 1837 . . . .61

WHILE MRS. JAMESON WAS FORETELLING THE NEED OF A WALL, SHE WAS ALSO SKETCHING THE WEAK PARAPET AT THE MOUTH OF THE HUMBER 64

EXTRACT FROM A COPY IN THE DOMINION ARCHIVES OF A D. W.

SMYTH MAP PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK IN 1813 .... 70

" THAT VOICE OF UNPRETENDING HARMONY " . . 73

THE LAND THAT WAS CALLED THE GARDEN OF EDEN .... 76

THE PRESENT ASPECT OF " THE NEAT WHITE FRAME MANSION "

OF 1840 . . . . . .80

HOWLAND AND ELLIOTT'S, THE MILL THAT IN WHEAT-TEAMING DAYS

WAS SPOKEN OF AS " THE HUMBER " 83

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

FROM A MAP INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL OF HALIFAX AND THE OTHER RIGHT HONORABLE. THE LORDS COM- MISSIONERS FOR TRADE AND PLANTATIONS 90

AN EXTRACT FROM AN UNSIGNED MAP MADE FROM SURVEYS BETWEEN

THE YEARS 1784-1790 . 101

" YOUR RED CHILDREN ONLY ASK You TO CAUSK LAWS TO BE MADE

TO KEEP THESE BAD MEN AWAY FROM OUR FISHERY " . . 104

WHEN THE MILLS AT LAMBTON WERE YOUNG, INDIANS WOULD SHOOT

THE DAM ON THEIR WAY DOWN TO SPEAR SALMON . . . 112

SECTION AT HUMBER BAY 131

NOT ONLY DID MRS. CHAMBERLIN FIND BY THE HUMBER MOST OF THE ORIGINALS FOR HER PAINTINGS, BUT THE GREATER NUMBER CAME FROM BABY POINT 138

FROM " THE MAP THAT WAS PURELY IDEAL," BY GOTHER MANN; WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF THE HARBOUR SHORE ADDED FROM A COLLINS PLAN . . . 149

A RAILWAY BRIDGE THAT DOES NOT DEFACE . 152

The Valley of the Humber

The Valley of the Humber

i.

«

DISCOVERY.

WITHIN the last few years the Ancient and Royal Game has brought the land called Humber Flats within the reach of a large membership. The beauty of the place is known to many men and women who have been guests from remote countries or from our own Provinces; below the sharp slope from the Club verandah, in the bottom of the cup, the links stretch into distance ; and in the leafy month the little river and Black Creek sing their quiet tune. On one still day a guest stood looking at the view, with eyes fresh from the glories of the Fraser and the Thompson. There was a world of disappointment in the tone :

" And that is the Humber !"

Its quiet reaches, its gently cut lines of former banks, its English beauty, gave no hint of the story it could tell. For in the story of the Humber is the discovery of Lake Ontario.

For the historical birthday of our river, and the romance and tragedy of an explorer's life, we must look to that pioneer of pioneers, the interpreter Etienne Brule, the youth who combined French enthusiasm, flawless cour- age and Indian tenacity with apparently a total absence of self-seeking in all his motives.

By him Lake Ontario was discovered; and by him the Humber was used as his pathway to reach it.

The northern shore was not the most interesting to French explorers. For years the ordinary reader accepted the bare statement that Ontario was the second great lake to be seen by the French, and that Champlain had caught sight of its eastern end in the autumn of 1615. But Cham-

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2 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

plain had arrived there by the arduous route of the north- ern water-chains, and mention of his young interpreter is incidental. Eecords of absorbing interest on the explora- tion of the country have been left by those who took a greater or lesser part in it, and each year brings out some new discovery in direct or collateral evidence.

To the French this country owes two supreme debts: one, for the single purpose of their explorers, whether from motives of good or ill; the other, for the maps and narratives left by the missionaries, whose labours and actions and selfless motive will be their monument for- ever. The conventional Jesuit is a familiar figure, repel- lent to the Protestant mind; but in missionary work and self-sacrifice, history can hardly show his peer. It is diffi- cult to know to which of the three, Franciscan, Sulpitian or Jesuit, belongs the chief place in the missionary Orders. To spread the Gospel to the glory of God, and to enlarge the possessions of the sovereign, left little chance for thought of self. The inevitable human rivalries between priest and adventurer or between priest and priest, do not cloud their character for work as we have to trace it; and the Humber shares in the general debt to their labours.

But in all these records the sentences anent the explorer with whom we are most concerned were for a long time apparently few and scattered; and Butterfield, the his- torian who felt that he had a commission to construct Brule's historical tree, had to dig deep to find the roots that had thrown out the few branches. Butterfield's book has simplified and condensed a vague knowledge of the discovery of the lake itself and our portion of the north shore in particular, and the amplified history of the unwitting explorer is a fascinating one.

II.

THE FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBER.

A CANADIAN historian has very properly put it that no one can know all the history of all his country or of all his Province; but an intelligent person will wish to know at least the tracings of beginnings.

With Cartier the reachings out after a vague wrest took a crystallized form. With him began the fever for the discovery of mines and the sources of the St. Lawrence. He was told of the river and large lakes beyond Hochelaga, and " then is found a fresh water sea, of which no one has seen the end ;" and by 1541 he had drawn a map showing " all the river of Canada," including the Great Lake. This map disappeared; but those of the Upper St. Lawrence until 1612 are based upon his narrative and possibly the knowledge of his map.

In March, '1603, Cartier's great successor, the founder of New France, sailed on the first of his several voyages to the country in which he was to play so great a part. In June he made a leisurely effort west on the river, from Tadoussac, his mind full of former travellers' tales and the stories lately given him by the Indians of the large waters beyond. A river, and lesser lakes, league on league, opened into a lake of indefinite size, meaning Lake Huron ; but the rapids checked this first effort, and in three weeks he was again in Tadoussac. This man, Samuel de Cham- plain, was the master mind in French exploration and colonization for thirty- two years, and to his qualifications as a captain in the Marine and Geographer to the King we owre his maps and his " unparalleled journals."

By the summer of 1610 he knew the full value of a European as an interpreter, and wisely entered into an agreement with the Indians to effect an exchange in young men, actually hostages. This, as a beginning, was success-

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4 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

ful, and Brule was an adept in learning the savage life. But the next young man deposited with the Indians is described by Champlain as the most impudent liar that has been seen for a long time. This Nicholas Vignau, instead of becoming an explorer or useful as an interpreter, was an unscrupulous deceiver. Of Hennepin in after years it was said that the Canadians gave him the name Le Grand Menteur, one who wrote of what he saw in places he never was ; but beside Vignau he was commonplace. Champlain resolved to find Cathay, the land of spicery ; and his morti- fying experiences in 1612 caused by the romancer Vignau were in part the reason of his cool reception of the result of Brule's travels in 1615.

The Indians repeated to him what Cartier had already recorded, but they varied the tale to suit the occasion of each day, and all the accounts became confused and incon- sistent, until the " Great Lake " was applied indiscrimin- ately to all the great waters of hearsay in the chain. When Brul6 came back in 1611 from his year with the Algonquin chief, Yroquet, he told Champlain of what he had seen and gave minute details of all that he had heard; and Cham- plain, absorbing statements and suppositions alike, has let the influences of the young man's first travels be seen in his maps.

One principal reason why so few historians before Butterfield have referred to Brule in his visits to unex- plored regions, is the very brief mention usually made of him by the early writers who have given him any place at all. When he is mentioned it is merely incidentally, and usually with a vagueness that has repelled attention. It is, therefore, not a matter of wonder to Butterfield that the three or four modern authors who have recorded any part of his life have expressed themselves with poverty and caution. That earnest historian claims originality for his narrative on the ground that, before it, Brule" had not, except in one instance, been credited with being the first to reach any of the countries, lakes or rivers of which he was the real discoverer or explorer. The man himself wrote nothing. Champlain, Sagard and Le Caron have

FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBEK 5

made use of, or set down, his verbal recitals ; but they have not done so in a manner to awaken at once the thought that they border on the marvellous.

Butterfield proves that his research has been exhaust- ive, and he presents his narrative in a lucid,- comprehensive form, supporting his statements by indisputable proof. Brute's early years among the " Good Iroquois," that mis- nomer for the Hurons of the Lake Huron and Georgian Bay district, are shown to be almost as interesting as his journey later towards the country of the real Iroquois. " What this daring Frenchman accomplished has not hitherto been given in detail by any historian. Even Parkman forgets the journey of Champlain's ' servant ' in his heading of Chapter XIII. of his ' Pioneers of France in the New World.' As Father Le Caron and his French escort preceded Champlain and his two white companions some days in reaching, in 1615, Lake Huron, the first- mentioned persons would be entitled to the honour of having been its discoverers, had they not been preceded themselves by Brule and another."

Lescarbot in writing of Cartier and Champlain deals many little thrusts at the latter, in revenge for slights — mostly fanciful it is true — but opening the question whether so great a man could have been capable of even a little jealousy towards the " young lad " who had done so great a labour. Champlain the large-hearted was also human. A pioneer of the St. Lawrence who had already seen the West Indies, Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and who had suggested the Panama Canal, could not push into prominence a youthful interpreter who had all unwittingly made a brilliant discovery, and who, moreover, had stolen his master's thunder by one small month. Champlain was original in the uses to which he put Brul6 and hoped to put Vignau and others; but the actual exchange had been anticipated in a sense one hundred years earlier, when a mariner from Dieppe brought home the first speci- mens of the American Indian.

Although Champlain avoids mention of him by name, calls him his servant or the young man, he describes fully

6 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

the proposal of exchange, Brule's alacrity in going with the Algonquin Captain Yroquet, and his own hope that the young man would learn the language so fully that he should also learn the country and be able to give in detail information of the inland seas and the great copper mine.

Brule, not Nicolet in 1634, first saw Lake Huron; no white man before Brule had seen Georgian Bay, the copper mines, or the Sault of Ste. Marie. He was the pioneer of the Ottawa and of our Province of Ontario and the coun- tries of the Hurons and the Neutrals; he was the first in time in the Upper St. Lawrence, and one of the first in I performance. It was he who destroyed Champlain's fondest expectation; for the hoped-for North Sea, Lake Superior, was fresh water. And in September, 1615,, " at the mouth of the Humber, Brule" first saw Ontario's broad expanse."

Two years in a century are but two drops in Time's bucket, and it is fitting enough to write now of the ter- centenary of the day the first white man brought his burden to the Humber.

Three centuries ago, August 12, 1615, Father Le Caron, the great Franciscan, held his first Mass in the Huron country almost directly above the Humber, and in his congregation was Champlain, with his interpreter, Brule". They had visited four of the Huron villages before reaching the town of Carhagouha — (in the present town- ship of Tiny) — a place fortified with a triple palisade of wood thirty-five feet in height. Here they found the missionary priest, who had preceded them by but a few days and who was full of joy and astonishment at their unexpected arrival. The good father, intent on his own work, formally erected a cross as the symbol of it, and celebrated the first Mass in what is now Ontario. The scene can easily be pictured, — the devout priest, the hand- some figure of Champlain and the lithe one of the young interpreter, the kneeling worshippers of their little band of soldiers and followers, and squatting near them the painted Hurons, silent, bewildered, and probably contemp- tuous. Two days later, Champlain and ten men began

FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBER 7

their journey towards Lake Ontario, via Lake Siracoe, Rice Lake and the Trent, reaching the Great Lake in October.

It had been decided by Champlain and his Indian allies to send Brule with twelve Indians to those tribes of the waters of the Susquehanna who were expected to give five hundred men in the war against the Iroquois. Brule's mission was to arrange for the junction of the forces, and it is the first portion of his trip that is our concern.

He set out on the eighth of September from the Narrows of Lake Simcoe, following the waters of Lake Simcoe until his gropings in the little watershed farther south dis- covered a small stream, now crossed by Yonge Street. A little farther on he could have found a swale or shallow morass. The stream was the infant Humber, while the morass was a feeder to the east branch of the Holland. It is at the head of the main stream of the Holland, lying to the west, that the most striking advance between the waters of the two rivers is to be seen.

In the time of La Salle we hear much of missions and routes ; but it is believed that earlier still the course along the north shore to the mouth of the Humber was a well- travelled one. The Humber, Holland, Lake Simcoe, then down the Severn to Georgian Bay was an early track ; but Indians, and little-known fur traders who perhaps had never heard of the lake now Simcoe, went by the Humber to Nottawasaga.

Brule's tortures at the hands of the tribes he set forth to seek by the Susquehanna and the scarred appearance he presented on his return, have led some writers to sug- gest that his name was derived from the result of his life ; but there is reason to suppose that it was originally Brule. Any adventurer in those days might easily have earned such a surname. This journey south from the country of the Hurons by the Holland and Humber was an important one in subsequent historical and carto- graphical mention; but Parknian dismisses it with a few words on the mere fact that the party, crossing Lake

8 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEK

Ontario, pushed forward with all speed, and gives no hint as to how they reached the Lake before crossing it.

Our highway was an easy one and well known to the Hurons. A little later it was frequently travelled in the journey to the St. Lawrence, covering but ten days, and there are written records as early as 1632 that the Hurons told the French it was but a ten days' journey by that route to the carrying-place on the St. Lawrence.

BruM and his twelve braves felt their way towards the head of the great lake instead of going towards its outlet, for two good reasons; one, that they thought they would save time; and the second, that they wished to avoid a difficult and very dangerous route through the heart of the Iroquois country. Coasting along the Lake, the party reached the mouth of the Niagara ; and from there onward until he reached the Susquehanna, and until he began his effort in April, 1616, to regain the St. Lawrence, his life was in his hand. Perils by land and water, torture, miraculous escapes from the Carantouannais (Andastes) to whom he had carried Champlain's message, he counted as nothing ; nor was he daunted by his master's cool recep- tion of his faithfulness.

Brule's usefulness is receiving a tardy recognition, and his truthfulness has been proved by sifted evidence. Brebeuf and Sagard speak well of " poor Brule," and the views of others of their kind may be accepted rather than those of the French of the time, who accepted the Huron statement that because he had left his own nation and gone over to the English his murder was justified.

The invective indulged in in Champlain's edition of 1632 was written, not by Champlain himself, but by the alien hand that compiled that book. The interpreter- explorer's historian proves by all authorities who bear investigation that Brule's tale is to be believed; and that " It is quite inconceivable that by selling himself to the English in 1629 it could affect his narrative, as to its reliability, in 1618."

No Frenchman of any age, surrounded by the romantic unknown, can be commonplace; and Brul6 was a half-

FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBER 9

naturalized Indian with, possibly, some of his tribe's power of flowers of speech and imagery. He must have stopped at the point for long enough to listen to the waves that out of a great deep came stealing forth in a quiet hour; or he watched the long lake before him lengthen out its hoary line. ; To bear messages and thus explore was his profession; seeking adventure was his choice. But with that Mer Douce before him and the little river at his back, he, a Frenchman, surely felt the quickenings of the poet of rivers and lakes. The great and the terrible are easily found in Canada, and there are word painters to give them to us ; but the reaches of the Humber are still looking for their Wordsworth.

In the exordium of the Bookseller to the Reader of La Salle's successes and trials, are sentences that may apply to both these explorers of the Humber. " In acknowledgment therefore of the Service done us by these Illustrious Adventurers, and to make them sort of Amends for their Sufferings, let us transmit their Names to Posterity in our Writings; let us applaud their Actions when we read them, and let us commend their Relations. This, here, most certainly deserves to be read and com- mended, for it is Curious, Extraordinary, and Tragical. It is also ingaging at this Conjuncture, when there is a design of making Settlements in those Countries, the Con- sequence whereof may be most Honourable and Advan- tageous to the Nation."

Brule's appetite for aboriginal life was unappeasable; and through it, his chief incentive during his life, came his discoveries and also his end. He journeyed much; but he could not keep away from the Hurons. He was with them again in 1627, and returned for the last time in 1632. He had piloted the English to Quebec in 1629 and served them during the occupation of Canada, as a common man earning a livelihood, not as a soldier. But this over- turn earned him scepticism as to his narrative, in the years immediately following; and, by indirect reasoning, was the cause of his death. " Le pauvre Brule devait 6tre rebrule pour la derniere fois, vers 1634, chez leg Hurons."

10 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

Clubbed, and eaten, by the treacherous Hurons at their village Toanche, near Penetanguishene, his end was as wild as his life; but in the Indian way his spirit was avenged. Several years after his death, when the Huron country was half depopulated by an epidemic, the fright- ened Indians believed that revenge was being taken by the French, and one of their sorcerers declared that a sister of the murdered man had been seen flying over their country, breathing pestilence and death.

The date of the discovery of the Humber as the path- way to the Great Lake is not only of respectable antiquity, but it is worthy of finding a place in the list of great events of its time. " Brule" arrived in the valley of the St. Lawrence the next year after the English first gained a foothold in North America; and he started upon his jour- ney with the savages which resulted in the first expedition ever made westward of the Great Eiver of Canada, and in the discovery of Lake Huron, ten years before the landing of the Plymouth Pilgrims; and six years after Hudson first saw the river that bears his name, Brule stood on the beach at the mouth of the Huinber, ' the first civilized man to gaze out upon that broad expanse of waters.' "

III.

•

' OF CARTOGRAPHY.

LAHONTAN gives a summary dismissal to those stay-at- home geographers who parcel out the Earth according to their fancy; but without those geographers the study of cartography would lose much of its interest.

A man very wise for two hundred years ago, who fore- saw Canada as a nation, is wrise enough for to-day. He considers that errors of haste befall, perhaps to the reader, perhaps to the writer; and his own opinion is, one should be content to repeat the errors of the original authors, whom one must needs follow, without going aside to mat- ters not found in them and wandering beyond the bounds of what they have written ; especially when such wandering serves no good purpose.

Small as is the Humber nowadays, one must wander somewhat to find its cartographical beginnings; and such wandering is to excellent purpose.

Cartier was the first European to gain any actual knowledge of Lake Ontario; and by the hearsay dating from him it was first cartographically sketched in the Molineux map of 1600, where it is spoken of as the Lacke of Tadenac, the bounds whereof are unknown, — merged, however, into a great inland sea, the prototype of the Great Lakes.

By Cartier's time the westward route to Cathay was an absorbing topic to mariners, and Yerrazano in 1524 made an expedition under the French Government for ttye discovery of the east by the west. A map preserved in the Bodleian Library, of date 1536, shows a dotted line from Europe to Cathay through an open strait north of Newfoundland. We are infinitely beholden to that per- petual day dream, and through it Cartier made his attempts up the great river. His map, showing "all the river of

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12 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

Canada," disappeared; but succeeding maps until 1612 are based upon the foundations of the lost one. When Champlain first heard the tale of the great inland sea, the confusing accounts sometimes made out a lake beyond Ontario, or it might be an outlet into the South Sea, or it might be salt water itself. The natives made their answers to suit his eagerness, and placed the salt water in various lakes. Map makers half a century afterwards puzzled later explorers by giving the name Sea Water Lake to Lake St. Clair; and the Algonquin narrator told Champlain of a river route to the Northern Algonquins and to the Nation of the Hurons.

In Champlain's map of 1612 was the first attempt to outline the country now known as Ontario. In his smaller map, 1613, Lake Ontario receives its name, Lac St. Louis. The map of 1632 was the first attempt to indicate any part of Ontario from actual knowledge, and it may be called the map of Ontario in embryo.

The French fur-traders who preceded the Kecollet priest, Joseph Le Caron, to the country of the Hurons had possibly discovered more than one of the four routes that best led into it. But their interest was in peltry, not in missions or geography ; and gradually they sold their pack impartially in Albany or Montreal, keeping most of their geographical knowledge to themselves.

In 1639-41 Bre"beuf and Chaumonot made an extended exploration, in the course of which they probably saw the western end of Lake Ontario; and in 1640 Gamier and Jogues established their missions. Eagueneau sent to his Father Superior a map showing the entire Huron-Iroquois country; and, although that map has disappeared, it is supposed to have furnished material for Sanson.

Sanson's is the first elaborate map of the whole country of the Great Lakes; and in his of 1650 we find tracings of our river, as one of the important discoveries of the French. Although supposedly based on the Relations of the Jesuits, his work may have had inspiration from the fur-traders who had been seeking peltries for some years previous to those records. He shows a familiaritv with the canoe

OF CARTOGRAPHY 13

routes via Lac St. Louis, and the guesswork that goes to the making of the maps is peculiar in its accuracy. He names Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence for the first time, and the accuracy of his two maps is striking when compared with the work of some of his successors. Du Creux in 1660 follows him in general, but where he varies from Sanson the changes are for the worse.

Du Creux represents the region of Lake Simcoe as laid down in 1660, its name Lacus Ouentaronius, which may be read elsewhere as Ouen-tarontus. Scadding upholds Du Creux in his Ouentaronius, and thinks it may be the original of Ontario. Leading up to Du Creux, we are referred to Brodhead's History, where Lake Ontario appears in 1615 as Lac des Entouhonorons, a name used by Champlain. Bressani says that Lake Eri6 empties by a cascade " dans un troisieme lac encore plus grand et plus magnifique, nomm6 lac Ontario ou beau lac; nous 1'avons appele lac St. Louis." Further we have " lac Ontario ou Lac des Entouhonoronons ;" and, " D'apres Hennepin les Iroquois 1'appelaient Kanadario, beau lac. . . . Vander- donk Pappelle Lac des Iroquois," and again we find that others have called it from its eastern end, Lake Cata- rackoui. The spelling of the last was a stumbling-block, and in 1751 John Bartram is still giving it as Cadarakin, in whose bay " the famous and unfortunate Mr. de la Sale had two barks, which remain sunk there to this day."

In 1671 Courcelles derives the Great Lake from the Huron, as iontara, lake, and io, great; and at the same period there is, apart from Bressani, the Iroquois Skan- nandario. Descriptive words were caught up by the French as proper names, and hence many of the contro- versies of later date. The description of the portage of the Humber is one of these argued questions.

In maps succeeding, after Du Creux's efforts in 1660, we might look for physical changes. The great earthquake of 1663 wrought havoc in many parts of Canada, and in the east whole rivers disappeared and others altered their courses. Apparently the Humber was not affected, for in 1679 we find Franquelin leaving it where Sanson had

14 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

placed it. In the years immediately following Du Creux, map-making moved slowly. The peace between the Iro- quois and the French made the north shore valuable enough to be added to the map of the Great Lakes. Galinee shows the south shore and the country as he knew it, and it is possible that F6nelon, in whose hands that map was left for some time, or Trouv6, supplemented it from their actual knowledge and marked the details of the north shore. Thus, to the Sulpitians, with their chain of mis- sions, is due the intelligible beginning of the north shore in detail, and by 1669 both banks of the lake had been explored by them and depicted on the first authoritative map.

A combination of mock modesty and grandiloquence leaves the descriptions of geography in the making amusing if sometimes difficult to follow. Richard Blome quaintly says, in 1673, that censorious persons may find some fault with his maps ; and Lescarbot, who " strives for language that is intelligible rather than exact," has never- theless something to do with the historical inaccuracies of which he and others complain.

By 1669 the next great name after Champlain comes into the list of maps. The romance of exploration is for- ever connected with the name of La Salle, and in that year he and the Sulpitians, Dollier de Casson and Galinee, come into the annals of Lake Ontario. A fourth great man enters this group; for in September Jolliet was returning with a companion from his northern travels in search of the elusive copper mine, to the Lower St. Lawrence; and in the autumn, near the Head of the Lake, he met La Salle and his party who were seeking the route to the sea. It was then that Jolliet drew for La Salle a map of such of the upper country as he knew. His smaller map shows two rivers on Lac Frontenac, the western one where the Humber portage would lie; and his larger map (1674) shows an indentation directly south of Lake Simcoe, apparently the same water.

The Indian town of Otinawatawa, where Jolliet sketched his route for La Salle, was a species of Iroquois

OF CAKTOGKAPHY 15

colony a few miles north of the present city of Hamilton. Thus one more place in our neighbourhood was mapped. It was from here that some of the discontented ones in La Salle's party returned to Lachine, and from the Abb£ Faillon comes a story that La Chine then received its name, in derision of an adventurer's dream of a westward path to China.

In the Margry map showing the discoveries of La Salle in 1679-80-81-82, the one tracing in the northwest of Lake Ontario is evidently the Humber.

The Coronelli and Kaffeix maps of Lac Frontenac give the Humber portage. In the minds of all these early searchers the Great Lakes are merely enlargements of the Great Kiver. Lahontan is at a loss to find the head of the St. Lawrence, " for though we have traced it seven or eight hundred leagues up, yet we could never reach its source, the remotest place that the Coureurs de Bois go to being the Lake Lenemipigon, which disembogues into the Upper Lake, as the Upper Lake do's into the Lake of Hurons, the Lake of Hurons into that of Errie alias Conti, and that of Errie into that of Frontenac, which forms this last great river. . . ;" and as late as 1824 a traveller at Niagara Falls describes Lake Ontario as the Lake into which the St. Lawrence or Niagara empties itself.

-^ A map by Popple declares that in it the British Empire in America is " laid down more truly than any yet extant," according to a credential appended by Dr. Edmund Halley, the astronomer. Lake Ontario, or Fron- tenac, shows Tejajagon east of the river Tanaouate, the latter, with its two branches, making the connection to Lake Simcoe.

Dr. Scadding's description of the globe of 1690 is led up to by the story of the intermittent war and peace con- ducted by the Iroquois. The Hurons were allies of the French ; and the Iroquois, as allies of the English, wrought devastation in the Huron region. A well-marked route, by water and land, extended from the Great Lake to a point on the bay now called the Georgian ; and the French,

16

as allies of the Hurons, suffered from Iroquois resent- ment. The latter, by the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury, were sole masters of the Ontario peninsula, and the whole country became their hunting preserve. But it was a splendid isolation that was expensive, for by degrees they were cut off from the other fur-bearing portions of their world. Diplomacy made them wish to be middle- men for the French and English in the trade of the north- west, and thus the Lower Lakes became moderately safe for travel. Through strategical necessities the south shore was of value; but the north shore had for years been passed by. Except for a few enthusiasts, the lake shores possessed no value in the eyes of the French, who passed them by without any thought of exploring the interior.

Like buffalo traces, Indian paths were worn deep, some- times a foot, almost always six inches into the earth. The Iroquois trail across New York was called by the Jesuits the Beaten Koad ; and the Toronto portage was a highway of so many years in use that in appearance, as well as in geographical importance, it was worthy of a place upon the globe.

Also, a manuscript map in the Marine Archives of Paris has a direct bearing on the said globe. This map, by J. B. L. Franquelin, hydrographer to Louis XIV. and the predecessor of Louis Jolliet in that office, is inscribed, " drawn in 1688, by order of the Governor and Intendant of New France, from sixteen years' observation of the author." The map is described as five feet long and three feet wide, with Lakes Ontario and Erie and their adjacent country remarkably well delineated. On the map is marked a little bay, with the word " Teiaigon " on its east side ; a dotted line indicates the portage to the west branch of the river that empties into Lake Taronto.

Beaching the globe itself, " Mr. Barlow Cumberland furnished Dr. Scadding the curious information that in the Grand Salon of the Ducal Palace at Venice in 1872 there was a large terrestrial globe some four feet in diam- eter, made in 1690, on which, where the American Lakes are presented, the small lake north of Lake Ontario — •

OF CARTOGRAPHY 17

here called Frontenac — between it and Lake Huron, is styled Lake Taronto, and the track there called Portage is distinctly marked from the lesser lake to the larger one on the south, where its terminus is marked by the word Toiouegon. . . The oldest French maps give Toronto as it is spelled now; so La Salle gave it in 1680, and the maps used by Lahontan. . . That the Trail should have been so clearly marked with the word Portage on the globe is very interesting." There was a custom not uncommon in the early maps, that of leaving out the por- tages; and this distinctness in the Franquelin and in the globe is of double value. The word " portage " occurs first as an English noun in the translation of Hennepin of 1698, but its use as a verb does not seem to have begun until the nineteenth century.

In La Salle's time Teiaigon, at the mouth of the Hum- ber, was counted a day's journey from the Toronto Lake, our present Lake Simcoe. A river round whose head- waters was an Indian wintering-ground, and from which there was an easy portage continuing a chief chain, could not be omitted even if the custom was to give little import- ance to the markings of portages ; hence the use of the word Teiaigon, in some one of its variations, in maps where merely the end of the portage is indicated.

Lahontan more than once describes the Tanaouate, leading from Lake Ontario to a land carriage to the river of Toronto, into the country of the Hurons. Apparently by only one historian has this Tanaouate been referred to as the Don and not as the equivalent of the Humber. A confusion as to meanings led to the wanderings of place names, and "Toronto "• has wandered farther than from Georgian Bay and the River Trent to the old landing. When Sir Richard Bonnycastle wrote of the Italian officer, Tarento, who had laid out the place, he did not seem to be aware of any definite source of the name, nor of the fact that no engineer officer called Tarento had ever been heard of here. When the Mississaga Tract was secured and laid out, one of the new townships was named Toronto. A narrow triangle was called the Gore of Toronto; a

18 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEK

village in the township of Hope was first given its name as Toronto before it settled into Port Hope; and Robert Gourlay in his curious map gave the name of Toronto in 1822 to what was to be the chief city of the Province. The innumerable variants of the word Mississaga gradu- ally resolved themselves into that used in Dr. Scadding's text and adopted here; and the Lamabinicon of Augustus Jones' time has varied its position and its name suffi- ciently to remove it from the neighbourhood of Burlington Bay to the Mabemico, or Mimico. The Credit appears as Credai, Credit, la Credit, and other interchanges, and as " aucredie " in one of the most interesting maps of ante- provincial times. In this map, drawn by Pouchot and later engraved for his book on the war that cost him Niagara, the present island of Toronto is Presqu'isle, in shape like a baby's sock; two unnamed rivers in the posi- tion of the Don and the Humber have Toronto between them; west of Toronto is R. aucredie; west of it, R. aux Atokas. A narrow littoral is backed by a crenated bar- rier of high mountains; and west of R. aucredie these mountains crumple down into hills on the lake shore. Pouchot had a true idea of the watershed, but we lack something of the littoral mountains with which he cred- ited us ; and our fort that provided some of the important moments in his life appears in one copy of a Pownall map of 1755 as Fort Tronto.

Another of 1755 is from a section of one marked with continuing notes " as used by the Commissioners under the Treaty of Utrecht, now in the British Museum. A section appears as used by the Commissioners in 1821. The same map is in the Colonial Office of America, as used by the Commissioners in 1842."

Before leaving the delineations that express so much of the history of this one of the Great Lakes, I do not wish to omit a paragraph taken from a book that appeared in 1909 called " The Story of the Great Lakes," by two Ameri- cans. " For three hundred years the Great Lakes have been the centre of an immensely varied and intensely inter- esting history. They were originally the home of savages ;

OF CARTOGRAPHY 19

they were discovered and explored by Frenchmen; they became the scene of a century-long struggle for possession by Indians of many tribes and white men of three nations ; and they have been finally occupied and developed by Americans." A worthier quotation can be made from the Honourable A. C. Flagg, sometime Comptroller of the State of New York, who said that the battle for the trade of the West must be fought on the lakes or those untaxed waters with which no other communication can compete.

IV.

LA 8ALLE.

SINGLE-HANDED poaching in any circumstances gets but short shrift, and in 1640 poaching on a large scale was meditated by an Englishman whose spirit was not inferior to that of the man in possession. A curious account is quoted from Paul le Jeune, Superior of the Jesuit Missions in Canada, in a letter dated September 10, 1640, of an attempt made by an Englishman " accompanied by a single servant and a party of Abenaki Indians, to cross the Ameri- can continent in search of a northwest passage to the sea. He arrived at Quebec on the 24th of June, 1640. The Governor compelled him to return to England." Such attempts, nipped in their bud, left the field free for the coming of the greater man.

Western fever existed in a highly-developed form from the earliest days of sailing the high seas; and by 1493 John Cabot had determined that the East could best be reached by sailing into the eye of the setting sun. His ensuing Patent from the English sovereign gave him and his sons the Royal permission to sail where they would, in the Eastern, the Western, and the Northern Seas.

By 1578 there were three hundred and seventy fishing vessels of five nationalities at Newfoundland; by 1599 Pontgrave was establishing his settlement at Tadoussac as the beginning of a fur trade that eventually was to penetrate so far west that St. John, two hundred years later, was deposited at the Toronto Landing as one of its results; and by 1669 La Salle was getting close to the trail by which Brule" had added a great lake to the map. Champlain had followed Cartier in his eagerness for the discovery of copper and Cathay; and La Salle's herculean efforts, and romance of the whole, led to what was liter- ally the first excursion on the Humber.

20

*;

fort Frontcnac JfFronle

i, * v» j~* f t i»

Lfj IrotjuctJ font tears 1 ecn<\r Jxrtf ..•"**** ****N

tou-f les Marais ou Estanas . out oorcfant* ,f »••*"* \

ce Lac-dou ilf tirent Ifur vrmctvaJe.,?*0' J"ejqua/wno, \ \

I Subsistence

E N

1689. THE CORONELLI AND RAFFEIX MAPS OF 1688 GIVE THE HUMBER PORTAGE.

LA SALLE 21

Rene Robert Cavelier, better known as La Salle, from the name of the family estate, was born in 1643 at Rouen. Although connected with the Jesuits at an early age, he soon gave up all idea of an ecclesiastical career, and turned his attention to New France, where his brother, a priest, was already established. With a slender fortune he arrived in 1666, and in the following two years he spent much of his time in mastering the Indian languages, particularly the dialects of the Iroquois and Algonquins. Thencefor- ward he had but one guiding motive. The earliest explorers were men of no common mould ; even Hennepin and Lahon- tan had earned some of the embroidery on their recitals. Champlain, Nicolet, the saintly Marquette, Jolliet, — these men and their companions in ideals had all a touch of the sublime upon them; their labours were prodigious, their sufferings heroic, and their perseverance indomitable. And second only to Champlain stands La Salle.

The Sieur de Mitchell, who "methodiz'd" Joutel's Jour- nal, says in his preface to it a few words that can yet thrill the student of the hero's life : " Notwithstanding the late Monsieur de la Sale's Voyage had a most unfortunate End, as to his own Person, yet that will not hinder posterity from ever allowing him the Title of a most renowned Traveller."

Of the many writers and translators who have followed his actions and traced the workings of his mind, there are few who stint their admiration. Doubtless he had the great faults of his great qualities; possibly it is true that he never looked far ahead of him for the results of any indiscretion; but from the western end of Lake Ontario alone there is the record of much that his devoted lieuten- ants claimed for him. There is no one of the pioneers of the continent whose achievements equal his. In his share of the " historical confusions " the most interesting sum- mary is made from Margry, who first contends that he reached the Ohio, and then the Mississippi via the Illinois, after he left Dollier de Casson and Galin6e ; then the con- tention wavers; and again there are many authorities in favour of the prior discovery by Jolliet and Marquette.

22 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

From the Senecas he learned of the Great River, as they called the Ohio, flowing into the sea; and his imagination leaped at the possibility of all the discoveries that lay between New France and a route to China. In 1669 he had already made one unsuccessful and comparatively short trip towards the west, under a divided interest that led to cross purposes and his own return after the meeting with Dollier and Galinee, who represented the Church as he did the spirit of adventurous exploration. Of this meeting, and apropos of the name of his seignory above Montreal, Suite says, " M. Dollier aimait a rire; je pense qu'il est Pauteur du terme satirique Lachine." The so- called satire appears again in 1792, when an anonymous writer gives an Englishman's superficial view of Canada in general, and of Lachine he says, " It received its name from a peculiar circumstance. A foreigner of distinction many years back arrived at Montreal, where he gave out that it was his intention to traverse the continent of America in that direction, so as finally to arrive at China. . . . The satirical French-Canadians in memory of this event gave the name of La Chine or China to the place where the boasting foreigner had terminated his tour."

A more dignified quotation can be made from the explorer himself. One of his letters to Count Frontenac received in 1673 expresses his disasters of 1672 with the simple directness of St. Paul, in perils often. Perils from savages and perils from navigating forty-two rapids gave place to a landing that promised to be safe. But the canoe was overset, and he writes, " I lost two men and my box, in sight of, at the door of, the first French settlements which I had left almost two years before."

The uncertainties of the years following the first failure, and his various voyages to France, bring us to two points : his co-operation with Count Frontenac in the fort named by the latter; and his arrival from France with Father Louis Hennepin in his party. To Hennepin more than to the single-minded explorer we owe the knowledge of the highway of the Humber in the years that succeeded the

<M,

IN LA SALLE'S TIME TEIAIAGON, AT THE MOUTH OF THE HUMBER, AVAS COUNTED A DAY'S JOURNEY FROM LAC DE TARONTO.

1680. A second photo from a copy of the original in Quebec Seminary.

LA SALLE 23

arrival of the priest. He quotes, for his own assistance, " it is a common saying that Truth is the essence and soul of history," and of late there have been persistent efforts to restore his good name. Although a missionary of the saintly Order of the Recollets, he hated the other Orders, was jealous of La Salle, was a true mischief-maker in the 1079 expedition, and has left a picture so highly varnished that succeeding historians have used towards him a con- stantly recurring adjective, — mendacious. He says amongst other things of its kind, that his reticence in his former pub- lication was owing to his "fear of disobliging Mr. de la Sale with whom I began my Discovery. This Gentleman would alone have the Glory of having discovered the course of the Meschasipi;" but when he says that in his Humber trip they came pretty near to one of the villages called Taiaiagon, we have enough evidence to believe him. Sir Charles Lyell has no faith in his illustration of Niagara Falls in the Utrecht edition, 1697, for " the ship intro- duced is, I presume, a conventional sign for water, as at that period Lake Erie had only been navigated by canoes."

The building of this little ship brings the Humber into the story of La Salle. In the grand seignorial manner, he had established himself at Frontenac ; his village was self- sustaining, and he strengthened the fort. In Colonel Beyard's rare journal of 1693 the Five Nations are described as composed of the Mohaques, Oneydes, Onon- dages, Cayouges, and Sinnekes. These lived for the most part south of the Lake, although some lived to the north, and, from any part of the compass, his fort was a great check upon them.

Adventurous traders had preceded him; the jealousy of the Jesuits, conscious of their waning power in the Colonial regime, made all things difficult for him; even Galinee had penned sharp words concerning him; envious persons had urged on Jolliet to anticipate his discoveries ; small politics in the stations and the chance of rights being infringed in the wilds, all combined to delay, harass and hamper. Nevertheless, he lived in sufficient peace to enable him by 1677 to raise poultry and horned cattle, wheat,

24 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEE

pulse and pot herbs; there was good timber at hand for houses and ships, and he built for both land and water. By May, 1678, he received the coveted Patent, opening the way to unrestricted exploration. It was a comprehensive passport, granting him the country through which to all appearance " a way may be found to Mexico."

His Patent was necessary for despatch in things both small and great, for the Government was paternal. To check the poaching and the trade between the Indians and coureurs de bois, a decree had been issued by the King that no Frenchman should remain more than twenty-four hours in the woods without a license from the Governor. In 1670 obdurate bachelors had been forbidden to hunt, fish, or trade, an edict aimed against the young men who had taken to the woods and an Indian manner of life. Later that edict was strengthened by one ordering that whoever went to the woods without a licence was to be whipped for the first offence, and sent to the galleys for life for the second.

In 1678 he gathered his stores and men, preparatory to sending Hennepin and La Motte to build his fort and little ship above Niagara.

Thus his second exploration was virtually commenced by Father Hennepin and La Motte. They left Fort Fron- tenac on the 18th of November, in a brigantine of ten tons, keeping in the shelter of the north shore until the storm and winds should subside. The crew grew nervous in the savage northeaster, and the long, grey sweep of naked forests showed that winter was closing in. On the 26th they had gone as far as they dared, and after grounding three times, ran for safety into the mouth of the river, now proved to have been the Hurnber. Part of the ballast had to be thrown out and fourteen men landed before the vessel could be made to float. " The inhabitants of the village near-by, called Tai-ai-a-gon" were astonished at the appearance of their visitors, but were hospitable and supplied them with provisions. The brigantine narrowly escaped being frozen in for the winter, and had to be cut out with axes. They remained there until December 5,

LA SALLE 25

when the wind allowed them to reach the mouth of the. Niagara on the following day. In these few days at the mouth of the Humber, at Brule's Point, began the first commerce of the place, when La Motte's men bartered their commodities with the natives for the supply of corn the boat carried away with it.

When La Salle followed his captain and the missionary in January, 1679, he came by the south shore. He brought a " great bark " to supply his party with provisions, but that bark was cast away within two leagues of Niagara. He then returned on foot to Fort Frontenac, over the ice with two men and a dog, " dropping baggage by the way."

His little ship, the Griffon, was completed above the Falls of Niagara ; but difficulties beset him from the begin- ning, ending in the total loss of ship and cargo. Of the ship and its grave, Hennepin speaks simply : " It was never known what course they steered, nor howr they perished." By being as wise and vigilant a seaman as he was capable in all else he had got his ship of forty-five tons in safety as far as that haven of much desire, " Missilimackinak," and there he was to take one course, and his ship with its load of stores and peltries another. Desertion and robbery j ingratitude of his men, the approach of winter spoiling plans already delayed, an escape from the poison of his enemies, minor shipwrecks, hunger, danger from Indians, had all come in his day's work ; but in spite of thus again emulating St. Paul he reached the land of the Illinois in safety.

In the spring of 1680 La Salle completed his famous walk of five hundred leagues to Frontenac from his western fort, " the most toilsome journey that ever any French- man has undertaken in America." Then came his search for his deserters, and after small excursions to find them nearer home, he left Fort Frontenac once more for, the Illinois country. In August, 1680, is the record, " On the 15th he arrived at Teioiagon, an Iroquois village about sixty leagues from the Fort and'near the extremity of the north shore of Lake Frontenac. Here he remained until the 22nd, as it was necessary to transport the whole equip*

26 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEE

ment by land to Lake Toronto, the outlet to which is a river running westward into the eastern part of Lake Huron, and navigable only to canoes." He had grieved keenly over the loss of the Griffon, and " here he got certain news of the loss of his vessel from two deserters, whom he arrested, one of whom, Gabriel Minime, obtained per- mission to return with him, making complaint against those who had led him astray. The other, Grandmaison, fled, carrying off with him the peltries which M. de la Salle had seized and placed in the safe-keeping of a savage." On the 23rd of August he reached Lake Toronto, " upon which he embarked with all his men and descended the river which flows from the lake to an islanded bay into which it empties."

His further adventures do not concern us until May, 1681, when he found he would have again to return to Fort Frontenac, " which he reached by the way of Lake Toronto." In August of that year he prepared for his great journey, resolving to trust to no lieutenant but to lead his men with their outfit in person, and to succeed or die in the attempt. His great efforts and accurate pre- parations were made, " hoping thus to bring his under- taking to a happy conclusion." Early in August he reached the mouth of the Humber, the village this time spelled Teyoyagon, where a fortnight was spent in the transpor- tation of his equipment to the shore of Lake Toronto, on which he embarked at the end of the same month. The official narrative says, simply, " The result will be known at the close of the present year, 1682."

Historical confusions abound, and the delay in the Humber portage as expressed by Parkman was not an inevitable delay. In the letter written by La Salle con- cerning the deserters, he says, " To take up again the course of my journey, I set off last year from Teiaiagon on the 22nd of August and reached the shores of Lake Toronto on the 23rd, where I arrested two of my deserters." And thus, too, one may hope that the deserters had not actually penetrated the Humber region.

GQ

LA SALLE 27

In his passings and repassings " by the shorter way," and his use of B rule's trail, we get the second paragraph in the Humber's early chapter of romance. From Margry and the official narrative comes a story that is consecutive and minutely local to our subject ; but in all the renderings and transcriptions of the life of such a man it is inevit- able that confusions creep in, with additions from the bias of enthusiasm in translators and annotators. But the thread of the Humber story runs clearly, connecting some of the high lights and extraordinary events of a life that is reckoned by both contemporaries and succeeding historians as fascinating, heroic, romantic, or incredible. As to one of his great incentives, the Mississippi, old Carver offers bland criticism of Hennepin, Charlevoix and Lahon- tan and omits La Salle. He says that it has never been explored higher up than the Eiver St. Francis, " and only by Father Hennepin and myself thus far." Hennepin named the St. Francis, " and this was the extent of his travels, as well as mine, towards the northwest."

Honourable recitals, such as those of Joutel and Tonty, show the man as he was and the deeds that he accom- plished ; men like Hennepin, le grand menteur, and Lahon- tan convey, through the jealousies of their own natures, a better idea of his difficulties. Chateaubriand says of Lahontan that he was an ignorant man and a liar; and others aver that his entertaining apocrypha was written by a man who was probably not a baron and who possibly was the renegade monk Guedreville. But the baron and the priest alike have painted for us a picture of a great man, a great figure that stands out between the day of Brul6 and the day of that shadowy first settler, St. John. His Canadian travels ceased; and he passed by no more this way.

V.

MISSION, FORT AND LOO HOUSE.

PONTGRAVE of St. Malo was an 'experienced fur-trader by 1600; and the unrecorded traders who used the trails long before explorers or missionaries left their narratives, must have found the Humber-Nottawasaga route earlier even than when Brule hurried through his Holland- Humber discovery. A well-established and jealously- guarded highway would have had its villages near by ; the western end of Lake Ontario was probably found by the priests between 1626 and 1641; and the presence of a priest involved a Mass. But we have no guide to an actual mission until the intermittent work done along the north shore by the Quinte" Fathers. The naive French Book- seller who addresses his reader on behalf of Joutel, says that many discoveries had been made to the northward before Monsieur de la Sale's time, because of there being plenty of very good furs, discoveries made by means of the adventurers called woodmen, but none had advanced far beyond Fort Frontenac.

The founder of the Fort, Count Frontenac, who died In 1698 at an advanced age, had been at feud with the Jesuits and Sulpitians, while he upheld and helped the Recollets ; but in spite of troubles from within and dangers without, the missions had been steadily prosecuted.

When Hennepin came to the country with Bishop Laval he was full of ambition and a spurious zeal. His gifts as a recorder earned him a name for unscrupulous- ness, and his faculty of appropriating some of the honours that belonged to others made him one of that school of writers who state the truth by accident and a lie by inclina- tion. The honest-minded Joutel scores the Flemish Recol- let for his sycophantic dedications to William, Prince of Orange, and asks, " Would the Hugonots, being enemies to

28

MISSION, FORT AND LOG HOUSE 29

the Roman Church, employ Recolets to go preach up Popery, as they call it, in Canada? . . . Can Father Hennepin be excusable in this point?" But the true Recol- let needs no excuse in his missionary work in Canada.

Some modern readings of the early toll of blood and work paid by the Church tell of the Jesuits, labouring most earnestly and effecting most ; the Sulpitians ranking next ; then the Priests of the Foreign Missions ; and the Recollets. The last, a reformed branch of the Franciscans, were full of the Order's original zeal and spirit, and they and the self-glorifying Hennepin could have had little in common.

The Iroquois had turned whatever country they touched into a desert, and even after a peace their tigerish thirst began the slaughter again. Missionaries and all others in their path were swept away. The French exerted them- selves, sent a sufficient force to subdue them, and in 1667 the missionaries, Fr6min among them, began again. The Hurons had been extirpated by the " invincible Philis- tines " in 1649, and thus the north shore was coming gradu- ally into the field. As at other points the missionary had preceded the recognized trader, so now the priest was following him. Originally the common route was the Ottawa River; but valuable peltries were to be secured near the north shore, and also the Otonabee and the Hum- ber were found equally useful, — the latter, La Salle's "shorter way" of reaching the general goal, Michilli- mackinak.

Soon there were a number of Fathers in the Quinte Mission, and the whole north shore was to feel the influence of the brother of the great Archbishop of Cambrai, Fene- lon. All roads led to Michillimackinak ; and after the destruction of the Hurons and the closing of the Ottawa route by the Iroquois, the Humber route had an added importance to missionary as well as to trader.

The fort of 1749 had its inspiration from the designs of 1686, when Denonville writes to La Durantaye : " . . . cependant, il est absolument necessaire pour le service du Roy et de la colonie que vous reteniez aupres de vous le plus de Francois que vous pourrez, parce que je pretends

30 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

faire occuper deux postes, Fun au destroit du lac Erie, et Fautre au portage de Toronto." This suggested fort, designed for the Lake Huron end of the pass, was intended to be part trading-post and chiefly fort, so that the hated English trespassers might have somebody to speak to. Lahontan describes it as a bar against the English and a bulwark against the Iroquois on the Bay of Toronto at Lake Huron. At the same period no variation of the name is applied to any part of Lake Ontario. Later it appears on the Humber line of communication as Toronto Kiver, while the route eastward from Lake Simcoe by the Otonabee and Trent is marked the same. The Toronto nations in Lahon- tan's time were the Torontogueronons, the same as the later Hurons or Wyandots. After the dispersal of the latter by the Iroquois, the Toronto nations worked south- ward, bringing some of their designation with them; and by evolution and elimination the word Toronto finally rested at the Landing and the mouth of the Humber.

The Governor of New France sent a colony to Detroit and established a garrison there, following it up with other forts in a chain that included Toronto. This, built a short distance east of the mouth of the river, was intended to protect the traders and their route from possible English and to intercept trade with the Indians. Rich stores of peltries passed out by this route, and it was worth while to give the trading-post enough of a garrison to style it a Fort. Its official name was Fort Rouille, but a small settlement of Mississagas near the mouth of the river had already the old name, and soon Rouill6 was exchanged, except in official correspondence, for Toronto. Built in 1749, its short life had a dramatic ending ; but in the years that it served its purpose its stockaded wooden storehouse was well found in comforts, and the good red wine of France was housed there.

According to the Sulpitian Picquet, in 1752, who had been refreshed there after very ill fare elsewhere, the Mis- sissagas had aspirations beyond the spiritual services pre- viously offered them, and they expressed their sorrow that the French had established only a canteen there and not

MISSION, FORT AND LOG HOUSE 31

a church. They welcomed him on his visit to the Port, and begged him to persuade the French King to be as good to them as he hail been to the Iroqnois.

At every mention of the word Toronto a new discussion arises as to its derivation. The vexed question began as long ago as 1632 and 1636, when the Franciscan mission- ary, Gabriel Sagard, gives in his dictionary of the Huron language, "Toronto," much or plenty, applied to persons or to things ; and his knowledge of his subject was gathered in the neighbourhood of Lake Simcoe.

Many baseless and unhistorical, sometimes silly, deri- vations have been put forth by hasty writers of books of travel, some even hazarding " Ronde d'eau, from the cir- cular bay upon whose margin the town is built." Bonny- castle, who we assume ought to know better, in 1841 will have it to be the name of the Italian officer of engineers who built the fort. Karonta, in Mohawk " tree," opens the far- fetched derivation of " trees in water," a meaning conclu- sively proved wrong by Dr. Scadding. Lossing's Field Book of the War of 1812 accepts the ignorant guess of a Mohawk interpreter, a guess that was an afterthought of later times, based on Indian words imperfectly understood by inter- preters and others. Even Peter Jones accepts the Mohawk " looming of trees."

When Lahontan speaks of the Bay of Toronto he includes Matchedash Bay, going on to tell us that from the source of the Holland River " one can go into Lake Fron- tenac in making a portage as far as the River Tanaouate, which empties itself there." Matchedash is also Toronto in Moll's map of 1720.

The recurrence of the word teiaiagon in different locali- ties is traceable to the Mississagas, who applied it to a landing or portage leading to some other important water route. Thus Toronto and its landing-place were long established by the time Gother Mann's map of 1788 was drawn. The old trail of the portage is designated as " part of the road towards Lake la Clie," the latter a corruption of Lac aux Claies, the Lake Toronto of La Salle's time.

32 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEE

As the Iroquois bear so directly on both mission and fort it is not amiss to give the explanation of Hirocois as offered by their historians. It is derived from two words meaning " a perfect house," in allusion to their well com- pacted confederacy. As early as 1654 the pride of appli- cation of this name was illustrated by a Mohawk chief who complained in a speech to the Governor of Canada that the embassy which the Jesuit Le Moyne had just under- taken to the Onondagas had not first visited the Mohawks, the portion of the house of superior position. " Is it not by the door of a house that you should enter? It is not by the chimney or the roof!" a forestalling of the disclaimer of an honest Canadian statesman who entered by the open door and not by some other way.

The Toronto Teiaiagon was in its season a gay bazaar. In 1754 there were only five soldiers, one officer, two ser- geants and a storekeeper, but a thriving trade was driven with the Mississagas and the bands from the north. At bartering time a village was quickly set up, and the Indians were tricked out in all the European gewgaws that made the principal exchange for their peltries. Father Picquet gives economic reasons why the maintenance of such a post was not desirable, as thereby the traffic at other posts on Lake Ontario would be diminished; but it throve until the misfortunes of war closed it. As a Eoyal Post, its trade was for the benefit of the King's Exchequer; but despite the benefits of trade, the pleasures of rum made the storekeeper at Toronto run a daily risk. In 1752 he was informed by some trustworthy Indians that a branch of the Mississagas had dispersed themselves round the head of the Lake, with evil design in thus surrounding the fort. As M. de Longueuil Avrote to his Minister at Versailles, " there is no doubt but it is the English who are inducing the Indians to destroy the French;" and a few years later there was a further example. Indians of different tribes had made comparisons between English milk and French milk, and their love of the beverage led them into constant mischief. Ninety Mississagas heard that the English had overcome the French, and decided to pillage the fort as

MISSION, FOKT AND LOG HOUSE 33

they passed it, even if it did belong to Mends. Prompt action by the Commandant at Niagara saved both the fort and the rum, as told elsewhere.

Captain Pouchot, the last French Commandant at Niagara, thus describes Toronto : " The fort at the end of the bay, on the side which is quite elevated, is covered ( pro- tected) by flat rock, so that vessels cannot approach within cannon shot. . . . This post was a square of about thirty toises on a side externally, with flanks of fifteen feet. The curtains formed the buildings of the fort. It was very well built, piece upon piece, but was only useful for trade. » . . A league west of the fort is the Toronto river, which is of considerable size. This river communicates with Lake Huron by a portage of fifteen leagues, and is fre- quented by the Indians who come from the north,"

At the date of the destruction of the fort a writer in the Gentlemen's Magazine says England should restore Canada to France, that the French may, by means of their Indians, as they have done in the past ten years even in times of peace, carry on a constant scalping war against the Colonies and thereby stunt their growth, for otherwise the children might be as tall as their mother.

The fort was burned by order from Niagara on ap- proach of the English, so that the latter found on their arrival nothing but five charred heaps. Gother Mann's plan of December, 1788, of the " Proposed Toronto Har- bour " indicates the five buildings within the stockade. He outlined the ruins, then distinct; and the pits and irregularities of the soil were visible until 1878, although by that time a good deal of the space enclosed had fallen into the lake. The extinction of Fort Rouill£, Toronto, marked the end of a long period during which Canada was the shuttlecock between the battledores of France and Eng- land.

Following 1759 our Huinber Bay was sometimes Toronto Bay, and the comparatively cleared triangular space round the French Fort described by Major Rogers in 1760 was Toronto; but in the Prevot copy of Holland's map, 1784, the Humber is Torento River, and the land

34 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

between it and the Fort is Toreuto. The harbour is Torento Bay. At that time the peninsula in front of the site afterwards chosen for the town of York was Presqu'isle, or Presqu'ile, Toronto.

A second stage in the Humber picnics conies between the destruction of the fort and the settling of St. John, an enforced picnic, but definitely described.

La Verendrye and his sons were the most adventurous of all the fur traders, and between 1731 and 1748 had estab- lished a series of posts extending from the Grand Portage to the Forks of the Saskatchewan. After 1759 the whole character of the trade was altered, and until the country had settled down after the Conquest but few licenses were issued. Soon the trade was free from all governmental influence, and Alexander Henry was among the first to obtain a permit. News and authority travelled slowly ; he found the Indians not yet ready to recognize the change of government, and his disguise as a Frenchman was some- times necessary for safety's sake. His address, fortitude and nimble wit preserved him in a long life of extraordin- ary adventure. By the Indians and at the Court of France he was known as " the handsome Englishman," and when at last he settled in Montreal he made himself as prom- inent in public life as he had been in the other.

But before his Montreal days he knew St. John's coun- try too well for his personal comfort. His escape from death at Mackinac and his captivity were followed by his journey south by the Humber route in June, 1764, when the Indians agreed to take him to Sir William Johnson at Niagara. His party of sixteen Indians, otherwise his cap- tors, brought him from Matchedash Bay to Lake aux Claies, which they crossed on the 18th of June. At the farther end of the lake they reached " the carrying-place of Toranto (or Toronto), the name of a French trading house on Lake Ontario, built near the site of the present town of York." At the carrying-place the Indians forced him to bear a heavy load on a narrow path through swamp and trees, at a quick pace beyond even his training. Next morning at ten they reached the shores of Lake Ontario,

MISSION, FOKT AND LOG HOUSE 35

stayed there two days and made canoes out of the bark of elm trees, and on June 21st " embarked at Toranto, and encamped in the evening four miles short of Fort Niagara."

On this first occasion Henry was an involuntary visi- tor; but a member of his family voluntarily brings the name into the history of the County of York two genera- tions later, when Murray of a Canadian Blair Athol mar- ried the traveller's grand-daughter.

By the time St. John's log house was built " on the Toronto river, by some called St. John's, now the Humber," and his cherry trees were in bloom, a few settlers began to know of Toronto. After the peace, disbanded troops were allotted lands, and by 1795 orchards were in " great for- wardness." Peaches, cherries and currants were there in plenty, and in 1791, when settled government was about to begin, the hospitable log house with its orchard of cherry trees was ready to receive the earliest British guests.

VI.

THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN.

THE Chief Factor of Toronto, the pioneer of nursery- men, the first Laird of the Humber, are some of the titles that belong to St. John.

The mythical beginnings of such men as he may date from adventurers like Groseilliers or clerks like J. J. Astor. Under the French regime furs had been the chief article of commerce; and in spite of governmental restrictions the enterprising traders had gradually extended their routes to Michillimackinac from the original St. Lawrence neigh- bourhood. The failure and mismanagement of the great French fur companies left the way open to those whom Masson calls " the Coureurs des Bois, those heroes of the prairie and the forest, regular mixture of good and evil, who for long furnished the heroes of the modern romances, extravagant by nature, at the same time grave and gay, cruel and compassionate, as credulous as superstitious." Two of these, Radisson and Groseilliers, after being driven into the hands of the English in the seventeenth century, were instrumental in establishing the Hudson's Bay Com- pany; and later, the French-Canadians, who were the best canoemen and bushmen in the world, were consistently made use of by companies and single owners alike. Alex- ander Henry, who succeeded in prominence the adventurers of 1730, gradually deputed the active part of his trade to younger men, training them at his headquarters in Mont- real. J. J. Astor was one of the youths whose name we know; but the training of St. John is dim in the haze of conjecture.

Pouchot speaks of the place as important, with its river of considerable size and its passing trade. Such a spot would easily commend itself to a Frenchman wrho wished to give up the hard work of constant journeyings; and

36

THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN 37

with a view of great beauty, fertile soil and good timber, a constant barter in peltries, abundance of fish and game at his door, St. John is self-established as the Chief Factor of the Toronto.

The narrative of Major Robert Rogers gives his opinion of the place as a site for a factory, when he passed it on his way to Detroit in 1760, ten years before St. John made himself Factor. By 1761 the name had a definite meaning in the minds of some writers of despatches, for it was then used as the designation of the settlement alone. Sir William Johnson's official report in 1767 to the Earl of Shelburne stated that experienced traders would willingly have given one thousand pounds for the monopoly of the trade with the Indians at Fort Toronto for one season. But little trade of a licensed kind was carried on after the Conquest. Sir William reported the presence of unlicensed traders, and the place was afterwards supposedly abandoned.

But St. John knew better. Occasionally, for legal pur- poses, he is called Jean Baptiste Rousseau, and on very few occasions he uses that name in his signature. His ordinary custom was to keep to the simple name St. Jean. Thus we find it in 1770, in his trader's licence. The licence was granted for one year to St. Jean Rousseau, to pass unmolested with one canoe and six men, from Montreal to Toronto, with liberty to dispose of his goods and effects as he should occasionally find a market for in his passage. The merchandise itemized in the document was: eighty gallons of rum and brandy, sixteen gallons of wine, four fusils, three hundred pounds of gunpowder, six hundred- weight of shot and balls, in all amounting to three hun- dred pounds of lawful money of the said Province or there- abouts ; signed upon the oath of St. Jean, and given under the hand and seal of the President of His Majesty's Coun- cil, the Honourable Hector Cramahe, at Quebec, September 13, 1770.

In the Oath of Allegiance attached was a promise not to stir up strife or mischief among the Indians, "but as much as in me lies to promote Peace and Union amongst His Majesty's Old and New Subjects and the Savage Nations."

38 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

His bond declared that he, St. Jean Rousseau, of the City of Montreal, Merchant, was bound in the full sum of six hundred pounds for his licence to trade with the Indian Nations living under His Majesty's Protection at Toronto, and from thence to any markets or parts which he should find most advantageous for the sale of his merchandise. If the said St. Jean Rousseau well and truly conformed to and performed the several conditions recited in the Licence the obligation should be void.

He is spoken of as interpreter to the Indian Superin- tendent, Daniel Glaus; and despite his continued trading, kept up his work of interpreter between Montreal and the Head of the Lake. A message sent by Colonel Claus in August, 1772, to the Indians above Carillon bears his name. But the message was delayed by so humble a thing as measles, for Colonel Claus writes to the Governor (Haldi- mand) that the message which was intended to be sent on receipt of the Governor's instructions was delayed because the interpreter was unexpectedly seized with measles, "which laid him up for some days, and last Monday, find- ing him able to go with said Message I despatched him accordingly."

About this time his Toronto neighbours were recog- nized by map. In the Guy Johnson map of 1771 the coun- try of the Six Nations is bounded by Lake Ontario on the north ; and on the north side of the lake, properly placed for the Hnmber, is a river without name ; by it is a place- name, Toronto, and a small tract on the shore by the river is marked " Missisagas."

At this settlement by the shore the elm canoes were made, described by Pouchot and Henry. The bark was removed in one piece, the roughest parts were shaved, " of which they make the inside of the canoe;" and after an elaborate process the last touch was chewing gum crowded in with a hot coal, to cover the sewing.

Before 1860, school books credited Upper Canada with twenty-two principal rivers, irrespective of the large bound- ary streams. On the banks of one of the twenty-two the first orchard was set; and it is the carrying-place men-

THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN 39

tioned in 1785 by Benjamin Frobisher when he describes his meetings with several persons who have travelled from Montreal to Lake Huron.

For services rendered between the date of the planting of the cherry trees and the passing by of Frobisher's ac- quaintances, St. John had tried to turn himself from a squatter into an inhabitant householder. His services as interpreter were not recognized by land at this end of the Province. A petition designating him as having been In- dian Interpreter in 1775 and 1776 states that he considers himself entitled to one thousand acres, and that ,he has received only five hundred. He therefore prays that he may take five hundred between Lake Simcoe and York, and one thousand on some unlocated lands of the Crown. The simple endorsation in June, 1794, is " Order the Petition dismissed."

Disappointment was entailed in such a dismissal; for he had already been recommended for lot 34 in the 1st con- cession. He continues in prominence as an interpreter, for his signature appears on the Toronto Purchase in 1787, and again on its completion in 1805. In the interval he evidently had friends who wished to see his settlement and services rewarded, for " the Committee beg leave to lay before your Excellency a Schedule of the persons to whom farm lots have been ordered and to recommend by con- firmation of deed those to whom they find assignments have issued, and those who not under assignments they find either settled in the Vicinage of York or making some advance toward an improvement in their respective lots. — Schedule as under, Sept. 2, 1793, J. B. Rousseau," — for a certain part of lot 34 of the first concession of York. " Recommended."

By 1793 the surveyors have discovered his domicile, and his name comes into the Surveyor General's records. In that year, and not far east of the river, the new Governor and his Rangers encamped and prepared huts for the winter. Also in that year Aitken and Jones surveyed the front line of the township of Yoj*k, from Scarboro till the line " strikes the Toronto River whereon St. John is 4

40 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEE

settled/' the concessions of one hundred chains deep and one chain between each concession, to the extent of twelve miles. Jones had been the surveyor before his Excellency's arrival, and, after they had met in Council, went with him to look at the situation of the town of York. His field notes show Sept. 5th rainy; on the 6th at eight o'clock set out from camp at York; stopped at Mr. St. John's on the Humber to take in provisions and went to the Kiver Credit. On the 10th the men baked their bread and ground their axes, when a beginning was made at opening the Eoad.

On the water-colour plan of 1798 the only house is marked " St. John's ;" and in the early field books and diaries he is the host of all parties as they leave for or return from the north. In 1791 Augustus Jones essayed the survey of the whole of the north shore ; and in the next year when he began again behind Humber Bay, he noted that he came upon " an Indian footpath leading to Lake La Clie, near a pond of St. John's."

After these various surveys, St. John began to be of service to the Governor and his lady, and to the Queen's Eangers from time to time. Although prominence is usually given only to the advantages of the bay in front of York and the geographical position of the arsenal, it is also supposed that Simcoe's shrewd eye saw the advantage of the Pass at Toronto. It is true that his interests were given to road-making ; but it is also true that it was in his time the idea of a Georgian Bay canal had its birth.

The trader's intercourse with the Queen's Eangers was useful, for in addition to his possession of supplies he was host of the river and in general a man of knowledge, and the township on the opposite bank, " Etobicocke," was selected for the settlement of the corps " after they shall be disbanded." In the abstract of Contingent Disburse- ments in the Surveyor General's Department from 10th October, 1792, to 10th April, 1793, is an item, " To D. W. Smith, what paid J. B. Eousseau for a party in April near Toronto, by order of the Lieutenant-Governor, £7.10.0." Much money was paid to him throughout these years by Augustus Jones, C. Bobinson, the surveyors, and all others

THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN 41

whose account sheets show any connection with the river or trail, even up to sums of £100. The seven pounds ten at five shillings in the dollar, paid for a party in April, 1703, were followed by other sums and parties until, in the autumn, St. John's was the starting-point for a tour of exploration. An occasional picnic made by the Governor's lady gives way before the serious expedition of the Governor on a possible canal route to the upper waters. The diary of one of the members has been made public in a pamphlet, and is too valuable to be offered in a fully condensed form.

On September 24, 1793, Lieutenants Pilkington, Dar- ling and Givens, and W. Aitken, D.P.S., " with two Lake La Claie and two Matchetache Indians embarked on a batteau, and went that night to Mr. St. John's, on the River Humber." They were joined on the 25th by His Excellency Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, from York. " We shortly afterwards were ready, and entered the wroods, keeping our course about N.N.W. ; crossed a long pine ridge. About one o'clock dined upon a small river which empties itself into the Humber, and to make the loads lighter took the bones out of the pork. After dinner re- loaded our horses and pursued our way. About four o'clock, it beginning to rain, we encamped on the side of the Humber, at the west extremity of the third concession. We here got some wild grapes, and a quantity of crawfish. " 26th. At eight o'clock we continued our journey. In the early part of the day we went over a pine ridge; but from ten till six in the evening, when we encamped, went through excellent land for grain or grass, the trees un- commonly large and tall, especially the pine. Crossed two small creeks which emptied themselves into the Humber, on one of which, Drunken Creek, we dined, and encamped on the second. The land through which we passed is chiefly wooded with maple, bass, beech, pine and cedar. During this day's march we passed the encampment of an Indian trader, who was on his way to his wintering ground on Lake La Claie.

" 27th. Proceeded on early in the morning. Shortly after leaving our fires went through a ridge of very fine

42 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

pine, which' appeared to be bounded by a deep ravine to the north. After crossing in an oblique direction the pine ridge, went over excellent land, black rich mould; timber, maple, beech, black birch and bass. Crossed a ravine and ascended a small eminence of indifferent land. This height terminated in a point, and a gradual descent to the Eiver Humber, which we crossed. We dined here and remained two hours to refresh ourselves and horses. While at dinner, two men with two horses, who left the end of the carrying place in the morning, met us. They were going to bring forward the trader which we passed the preceding day, and his goods. After dinner, we proceeded on. Went over very uneven ground, the soil in some places indifferent, but in general not bad land. Saw some very fine yellow pine and black birch. About six o'clock came to the end of the carrying place and encamped. Here found Mr. Cuth- bertson, Indian trader and owner of hut we passed the day before, encamped."

After they had crossed the Humber on the 27th we could very well leave them until their return to the lower end of the carrying-place, if it were not for their meeting with Great Tail, one of the early Lairds of Humberside.

"28th. After breakfast, Messrs. Givens and Aitken, with two Indians and two white men, went up the river for three canoes which had been previously provided for the Governor, and I went with three rangers to erect a stage near the river to put the pork on. . . Having accom- plished this, upon our return we cut a few trees to make a bridge upon a bad pass in the swamp. Returned to camp about two o'clock and shortly afterwards to the stage with seven of the rangers, all with packs, which we put upon the stage. We here met Messrs. Givens and Aitken, having returned with the canoes. The whole then returned to camp, only me, who remained to take care of the baggage. In about two hours the whole camp came down, and we immediately embarked in five canoes, viz., the Governor. Mr. Aitken, an Indian and two rangers in one; Messrs. Pilkington and Darling with their two servants in a third ; an Indian with two rangers with me in the fourth; and

Jl 10

THE CARRYING-PLACE MENTIONED BY BENJAMIN FROBISHER IN 1785.

From a Plan of the New Settlements, 1769.

THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN 43

Mr. Aitken's surveying party in the fifth. We dragged our canoes till we came to the river, over a part of the swamp where it would be impossible to walk without their support, it being a quagmire, the skin or surface of which was very thin. Proceeded about a mile and a half or two miles along the river, which in this short distance has several turns. Went about a quarter of a mile up a smaller river which empties itself into the former, and encamped. Soon after making our fire the Great Tail and his family (Mess- essagues), who were encamped further up the river, came to visit their Great Father, the Governor, to whom they presented a pair of ducks, some beaver's meat, and a beaver's tail. His Excellency gave them some rum and tobacco.

" 29th. Embarked in our canoes in the same manner as in the preceding day, paddled down the river, which is a dead water, bordered on each side with quagmires similar to the one we hauled our canoes over. . . At twenty minutes after one we entered Lake La Claie, now Lake Simcoe, so called in memory of Captain Simcoe, R.N."

From then until the 6th of October the entries describe the balance of the trip to Matchetache Bay, and " a fine view of Lake Huron." On the 6th they set out on the home- ward journey, and on the 12th reached the encampment they had made on September 28th. " Saw many ducks, but so wild that we could not get within shot of them ; only killed one mud hen."

On the day before, " His Excellency, finding that John Vincall, the man who had cut his toe on the 2nd, could not walk, desired Mr. Givens, his servant and me to remain with him, and that upon his arrival at York h6 would send a horse to meet us at the old carrying place, for the man to ride; therefore after dividing our little stock of provision and dining together, we parted ; the Governor and the rest of the party going to York by a new route, Givens, Mc- Ewen, Vincall and myself remaining. It beginning to rain, we encamped there that night."

Short rations and illness delayed this party ; and Great Tail and his family on their way to their wintering ground

44

were again useful. On the 17th " we soon reached the stage which we had erected on the 28th, and in two trips carried everything up to our old encampment. When we returned to the stage the second time we there met two of Great Tail's sons, who came to bring three more ducks and to bring back the canoe we had borrowed. We gave the boys a few yards of ribbon each, and had given their father at parting in the morning all the powder and shot that we could spare. They were satisfied and we were pleased. Soon after encamping and putting on the fire a kettle full of Indian corn and a few ducks for our supper, Sergeant Mailey and another man of the Eangers, guided by one of the three Indians who went with His Excellency ( the other two remained behind them a short distance), arrived from York with a horse for the lame man. The Governor was pleased to send us by them brandy, wine, tea, sugar, pork and bread. We made a hearty supper, and concluding the evening with a can of grog to his health, went to bed/'

On the 18th they packed everything up, caught the strayed horse, parted with the Indians, and " at eleven o'clock marched on. At four o'clock we arrived at the Humber, crossed it and encamped, the horse being too fatigued to proceed, having had a forced march the day before.

" 19th. Though it rained all the night before, set out by daylight. At twelve o'clock halted at the creek where we met the trader's tent on the 26th, and breakfasted. At one o'clock continued our journey, and at three came to the spot where we had encamped on the 25th, stopped for about a quarter of an hour, then pushed on, and arrived at St. John's a little past four in the evening, and slept there that night.

" 20th. Left St. John's after breakfast, and arrived at the camp at York at ten o'clock, having been absent twenty- seven days, without any accident happening, except Vincall cutting his toe."

The wigwams that were found near the mouth of the river were outshone by the Governor's famous canvas house, Captain Cook's tent, probably first set up at the

IN THE EARLY FIELD BOOKS AND DIARIES, ST. JOHN is THE HOST OF ALL PARTIES AS THEY LEAVE FOR OR RETURN FROM THE NORTH.

THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN 45

Toronto Landing, a little eastward of the wigwams, on arrival of the Mississaga with the Governor from Newark. This large tent had been especially constructed for Captain Cook, to be taken with him for his own use on his voyages of discovery, and when his effects were sold in London it was bought by Sirncoe.

In it, as in their later house, Mrs. Simcoe helped her husband in both social and engineering work. She was his best private secretary, and a dependable draftsman and map-maker. Very young when she married Colonel Simcoe in 1782, her interest had already been stirred in Canada through her father's connection with Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham, and she entered with spirit into all the details of life in the new province. Her rides and power of map- ping the land as she knew it, her delight in the scenery and her gift in describing it in sketch or paragraph, have a large place in the records of the Humber. One of her formal maps once suffered an almost irretrievable disaster, when her hound, " Trojan, was left in my room while I went to dinner, and he tore to pieces my best map of Canada and the United States, which I had taken the greatest pains to draw. I must paste it together again." The French Count who visited the Governor in Newark and received much kindness from his hosts, describes Mrs. Simcoe as thirty-six, bashful and speaking little; a woman of sense, handsome and amiable, " and fulfils all the duties of wife and mother with the most scrupulous exactness." A visitor of some distinction and occasional absurdity writes in 1792 that " she is a lady of manners, highly interesting, equally distant from hauteur or levity; accustomed to fashionable life, she submits with cheerfulness to the in- evitable inconvenience of an infant colony ; her conduct is perfectly exemplary, and admirably conformed to that cor- rect model which ought to be placed before a people whom a high pattern of dissipation would mislead, of extrav- agance would ruin." Whether twenty-six or thirty-six, Mrs. Simcoe charmed these men alike. The impediment of speech which rendered conversation irksome, mentioned by a less agreeable but equally admiring writer, was not a

46

matter of great moment in the lasting impression she conveyed.

She was an untiring horsewoman, and loved the paths where brook and road were sometimes fellow travellers. A portion of the trail in use in her time was the bold zig-zag noted with a double row of dotted lines towards the mouth of the river, and inscribed " part of the road towards Lake La die," by Gother Mann. She searched out all the bridle paths or passable cleared spots, and a favourite ride was a ridge of land that she insists extended " near a mile beyond St. John's House, three hundred feet high and not more than three feet wide," the bank towards the river of smooth turf. She explored the place by foot-path, too, and once the fatigues of a walk through the woods near the French fort made her decline an expedition to see a mill at St. John's Creek, whence " the Governor brought me some very good cakes. The miller's wife is from the United States, where the women excel in making cakes and bread."

Her husband's prophecies for his Province were but a continuation of those of the historian Lescarbot when he made Moses speak for the land of Champlain, — ' " a good land, a land of brooks and water, of fountains and depths, a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it."

Simcoe was of Eton and Merton ; then an ensign in the 35th Foot; wounded at the Brandy wine in 1777, then appointed by Sir William Howe to the command, with the rank of major, of the celebrated provincial regiment the Queen's Rangers ; was taken prisoner and released in 1779, and returned to England from his brilliant share in the American war in 1781. He was elected to Parliament in 1790; and then, happily, was sent out as Lieu tenant- Governor of the new Province of Upper Canada. He sailed from Weymouth in 1791 in the Triton, with his wife and two children, accompanied by a young man who. years afterwards, was to leave a lasting memorial to his own name in Canada, Lieutenant Talbot.

The Governor's reign in the country was all too short. Recalled to England, he left from Quebec in September,

THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN 47

1796, and foreign appointments and illness were followed by his return to England, where he died in October, 1806. From the moment of his appointment to Canada, and before sailing for it, he showed his intense interest in and knowledge of the country, as proved in his letters in May, 1791, to the man in whose Gazetteer is the first description of the province, David William Smyth — afterwards Smith.

Unfortunately the Governor disliked the aboriginal name sufficiently to make him call it outlandish, and Toronto gave way to York. The north of England names began to be in use, and the Humber, with perhaps some influence added from that Humber near his Devonshire estate, displaced the Toronto and St. John's Creek. But map-makers were slower, and in 1814 an elaborate book on the country contained a map especially engraved for it, in which there were four tracings on the north shore of the Lake, viz., Kingston ; the water chain to Lake Huron almost directly westward from the bay that represents Quinte; York ; and a river with " Fort " at its mouth, which, by the scale, is a long way from York.

The shipyard on the Humber was important in the eyes of the Governor, and ships' carpenters were imported for the work that was intended to be serious, men who lived in the United States and returned to their homes for the winter. It was proposed to build gunboats to add to the fleet on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie ; and had his plans been carried out and the naval yards on the Humber en- larged, Ontario, and especially Toronto, would have had a better tale to tell of 1812.

The yardg under Joseph Dennis were responsible for the building of the Toronto Yacht in 1799. The Gazette of September 14th of that year, says, in magnificent periods perhaps penned by a landsman, that she was one of the handsomest vessels that ever swam upon Lake Ontario, and reflected great credit upon her master-builder. In 1805 the Gazette shows the Toronto Yacht to the rescue of a boat from the Credit, — " a boat containing four persons overset near the Garrison;" and although aid from the Yacht was promptly sent, only three persons were rescued.

48 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

The Governor's name remained for long on the river bank. Statesman, scholar, and honest soldier, he was averse to all speculation in land, and was always per- sonally disinterested. Of his successor it was said he was more anxious to acquire lands than to make roads, and we still have the quotation, " I, Peter Eussell, convey to you, Peter Kussell." The early years of that century show sev- eral Acts by which it was made easy for persons to hold property who for various reasons could not produce a patent ; but the earliest arrival had neither patent granted nor permanent possession allowed; and the name St. John drifts out of the ken of the Humber.

The white man came with his mills and industrial life ; the trading-post turns into Mr. St. John's House where we breakfasted, or perhaps supped, and so to bed ; the orchard and the cherry trees in bloom are no more mentioned ; and at last, in the twentieth century, we read merely of the east bank whereon the English had found a French trader settled.

VII.

THE LAKE SHORE ROAD, \

FROM the hour when he first spied out the land, the projection of great roads was never absent from the Gov- ernor's mind.

An expert article in the University Magazine con- denses the history of roads in general in a manner that is important to the present sketch of the Humber roads in particular. The writer says : " When classified according to their mode of construction, the early roads of Canada fall into five different clauses, the bridle roads, the winter roads, the corduroy roads, the common or graded roads, and the turnpikes. ... In the more settled parts of Canada the construction of the turnpike with its artificial roadbed began with the opening of the nineteenth century. . . . In Upper Canada the turnpikes were controlled by joint stock companies in the main, and were kept in miserable condition. . . . The second great road of Canada before the war of 1812 followed the route taken later by the Grand Trunk and Great Western Railways, running from Quebec to Montreal, Coteau du Lac and Cornwall to Kingston and York. From York it ran to Michilimackinac by Fort Erie and Detroit, a total dis- tance of 1,107 miles." The far-seeing policy of Governor Simcoe, in the making of those two great arteries named in honour of his friends, has its justification.

The Indian Express, our Mississaga postmen, served the Governor well, equally when he was stationary or on his exploring tours, a safe and swift method of sending documents and news, and in use even up to the time of the much loved Peter Jones.

Thus the Lake Shore Road in embryo preceded Simcoe. The Mississaga trail beaten deep, and the succeeding roads of early maps, are obliterated in the new land made at

49

50

Exhibition Park, the harsh modern name for the neigh- bourhood of the French Fort. Close by the infant Lake Shore Road was placed Captain Cook's tent, and in it the first hospitalities of the new Province were dispensed, on the thoroughfare of the day as used by St. John and his trading Indians.

The surveyor, Augustus Jones, was at work in 1791, and after the Governor's arrival surveys were continuous. State papers and private correspondence at the end of the eighteenth century show a care in expenditure creditable to the head offices, but daily hampering to the men who carried out the work. Jones writes to the Honourable D. W. Smith in August 1798, asking for a larger allow- ance in his work near the Humber Mills : " In opening the1 road that I am now at, I find it is actually necessary to have two yoke of oxen for hauling the timbers for the bridges, as the men cannot move timber of a sufficient size. A plough will also be of great use in levelling off the small hills. Should it be in your power to procure the above mentioned, you will much forward the work."

In the proposals of November of that year for the building of the bridges over the Humber and Credit, one man offers to build and find all the stuff for seven hundred and fifty dollars, the document an illiterate one and no indication given in it as to the price being for one or both. A proposal from Abner Miles in August had been endorsed as read in Council and referred for further consideration ; it engages to build good and sufficient frame bridges for the sum of six hundred dollars each, to warrant them good for four years, and to have them completed on or before the first of January following.

When the track on the shore in front of the town began its small changes, Lot Street (Queen), then the northern limit, in a right line westwards merged into the Lake Shore Koad, the immemorial trail. After passing the steep descent to the sands, it skirted the curve of Humber Bay, and then followed the irregular line of the shore all the way to the head of the Lake. The Lake was the body from which all lesser things took their reckoning, and the

ST. JOHN'S WAS THE STARTING-POINT FOR A TOUR OF EXPLORATION.

THE LAKE SHORE ROAD 51

detours north, shown in the early maps, were not counted as important deviations in the " road by the lake."

An intersection of the Old Road is Dufferin Street, one of the lines laid out in the original survey by Augustus Jones between every fifth two-hundred acre lot in the range extending from the Humber to the Scarboro line. At the foot of Dufferin Street is the keynote of the mod- ern scale. The Trading-Post set the date for the restric- tions of the pathway, widening the trail between it and the mouth of the river; the Toronto Landing was the spot at which the new Governor stepped from the Mississaga; and the Dufferin Street jetty, even if on made land, per- petuates the memory of a Governor who would have rejoiced at the laying out of the Kingsway in the west and at the making of the Harbour Board map of the margins of the bay. In the Bonnycastle map of the portion " of the Military Reserve to be sold and the dams in the Garrison Creek to be flooded in case of war or danger," is also the " Road to Niagara by the Beach," marked at the junction with the " concession road not opened " as 1,600 yards from the lake.

A public advertisement in August, 1804, asked for pro- posals from persons who desired to contract for opening and repairing the road and building bridges between the town of York and the head of Burlington Bay. The ten- derer was to enumerate " at what price per mile such person will open and clear out such part of the road lead- ing from Lot Street, adjoining the town of York (begin- ning at Peter Street) to the mouth of the Humber, of the width of 33 feet, as shall not be found to stand in need of any causeway. With the price also per rod at which such party will engage to open, clear out, and cause- way, such other part of the same road as shall require to be causewayed, and the last mentioned price to include as well the opening and clearing out, as the causewaying such road. The causewaying to be 18 feet wide; as also the price at which any person will engage to build bridges upon the said road of the width of 18 feet."

The road was not on a permanent bed, and its condi-

52 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

tion on any bed remained bad. It had many advocates, but few powerful friends, for the petitions were numerous, and most of them were dropped. For years before 1836 there was an almost continuous effort to secure improve- ment and turnpiking; but, such as it was, the road was a thoroughfare. In 1825 Chaunsey Beadle, undeterred by its condition, petitioned for the exclusive rights in a line of stage coaches between York and Niagara ; and ten years later its terrors were braved by William Weller of the Telegraph Line, who contracted to take passengers through by daylight in winter to Hamilton.

Before and during these attempts at stage-coaching, the York press made merry on the defences of the town and its impregnable position from east and west. In 1824 the decayed bridges over the marshes and current of the Humber and the Don, similar structures, were sometimes impassable at the same moment. A long wooden viaduct, about twenty-five feet above the marsh, was built on a series of ten trestles of hewn timber supporting a road- way of plank, which had lasted since 1809. In 1810 the Humber was crossed also by a ferry, with charges exorbi- tant. In that year the inhabitants of Etobicoke complained to the magistrates in session at York of the excessive toll, with the result that a new scale was struck — for each foot passenger, 2i^d. ; for every hog, Id.; for every sheep, the same; for horned cattle, 2^d. each; for every horse and rider, 5d. ; for every carriage drawn by two horses, Is. 3d., which included the driver; for every carriage with one horse, Is.

In 1815, McLean's Inn at the mouth of the river was the only rest for travellers for many miles. Between the day of the Scotchman's ferry and the erection of the Eoyal Oak on the opposite bank, the hostesses were Mrs. McLean and Mrs. Creighton; but the building was destroyed with the advent of the Great Western Eailway. The map shows the swing bridge and range of inn buildings on the east side, with the reservation near by for the Scottish Kirk. The Royal Oak of later date, on the west, built on a clay knoll set in marsh-land, was aptly named from the tree that

THE LAKE SHORE ROAD 53

a wise owner considered too desirable to sacrifice; the verandah was made to enclose it without injury, and the proprietor took his ease beneath the shadow of his own roof tree.

The roads proposed, and the roads proposed to be closed, were many. The Lake Shore and Dundas Street counted their usefulness from Niagara and Detroit, and the study of maps grows more interesting as time obliter- ates landmarks. The Senior Officer of the Western Dis- trict in 1833 signs one map entitled A Plan of the Town and Harbour of York and Military Reserve. In it Lot Street is continued from its north-west boundary of the Military Reserve as " Road to Niagara." The space between the Reserve's western boundary and the beach line until the joining of that road and the beach, is in its eastern two- thirds "commonly called Brock's Land and now clearing;" and the western third, in the bend of the bay, is yet in forest. By the junction of the shore line and road is a sudden descent; and at the beginning of the junction as it goes westward is " sand beach of Humber Bay ;" and again, " sand," as the sweep indicates the route to the river, a mile and a half to the bridge at the mouth. A little west of the joining of road and shore is written " On this side of the narrow belt of sand is a series of ponds and marshes separated by lofty hummocks and ridges of sand, covered by a pine forest." On Lot Street, at the west of Garrison Creek ravine, is the licence indication of Farr's Brewery; and west of that is the plot, 8 4-10 acres, bounded on the north by Lot Street, marked " licence of occupation to Lt.-Col. Givins, Supt. of Indian Affairs." By the Givins north-west corner and between blocks 24 and 25 the Upper Road to Niagara takes off.

That gay little historian, Sir Francis Bond Head, loved his daily ride, and one of his small adventures had to do with the " sand " of that map. As he reached the shore he found a group of men engaged in raising an enormous land tortoise which had burrowed deep; a hatful of eggs about the size of canister shot, and the mother roasted, and that was the end of that adventure. Many of his rides

54 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEK

were westward, and he gives full space to the Lake Shore, especially to the turtle and the lunatic. Soon after he had left the former and her captors he came upon two men holding a weak-looking middle-aged person who offered no resistance, and who, they declared, was insane. He was determined to drown himself in the Lake or in the Grena- diers' Pond. " Now, the beautiful blue lake, covered with a healthy ripple and extending as far as the eye could reach, was close to us; and on the other side, within fifty yards of us, there was hidden in the forest a horrid miry little spot, called the Grenadiers' Pond, because a party of English soldiers in endeavouring during the war to cross it in a boat, had been upset, and after floundering in the mud had sunk, and were there still." The lunatic was taken to Toronto, escaped, was seen near the pond, and then disappeared. " If he had gone into the lake his body in due course would have been washed on shore; but as this did not happen, well knowing where he was, I often rode to the Grenadiers' Pond to indulge for a few moments in feelings

" Sacred

" To the memory of

" A Poor Lunatic."

Bond Head's beautiful blue lake with its healthy ripple provides the Humber with a shallow and treacherous bay that demands what protection is possible; and from Hennepin and La Motte, to the loss near by in 1780 of the Ontario with her crew and thirty men of the 34th, to J. G. Howard's picture of the schooner Pacific in 1861, on to the weekly register of canoe upsets of to-day, the bay and its neighbouring waters have been paid a long toll. There are not always men at hand like Hicks, Duck or Nurse, able and willing in the work of rescue; and the marshes have contributed their share of tragedy. The wel- come comic is sometimes found, as in the fat years when water-fowl could be raised in clouds. Duck were plenty and one sportsman over-eager, and he had the ill luck to send the contents of his gun through the bottom of the canoe. So

1799-1811.

.A* 5CWJ- C<>*~t *-,

WHERE THE TORONTO RIVER AND ST. JOHN'S CREEK ARE THE HUMBER, AND WHERE THE KINGSWAY AND THE OLD MILL ARE FORESHADOWED.

55

he tore off his coat, folded it over the orifice, sat down firmly and paddled for dear life to shore, which he reached with the water up to his hips.

A disagreeable disposition domiciled here in the 'twen- ties writes of the low marshy land of Toronto as a site better fitted for a frog pond than a city. But there is a degree of truth in his statement that the inhabitants were then afflicted with ague and intermittent fevers, " about five-sevenths of the people annually suffering from these diseases." The malady called lake fever baffled all know- ledge, and pioneers of the Humber within the influence of its bay paid their dues to it. A writer with much good work and many interesting pages to his credit says that lake fever proceeds from a kind of putrefaction that takes place along the shores in the hot season, and that new- comers, fresh from the salt of the ocean, were more prone to it. Sometimes but not generally fatal, the fever and ague of Canada differed from that of other countries, baffling the faculty. In the summer of 1828 sickness raged like a plague, nothing but lake fevers all along the shores. A strange oily brown substance, called lake oil, was found floating in warm weather, which, although not analyzed, was thought to be an antidote ; but Mr. D'Arcy Boulton of 1805 says frankly that lake fevers originated in general from indiscretion.

The bogs near York, or indeed into the later days of Toronto, held many monsters, chief of which was a frog as large as a Cheshire cat. Other timid ones saw frogs as large as chickens; and Mrs. Simcoe, who is not to be doubted, came upon one a foot long seated on the end of a plank, eyes like saucers and with a double bass voice. She shook her parasol at him and he plunged to the bot- tom. In the half-opened tracks called roads the Taxus Canadensis stretched its trailers, some of them twenty feet in length and as heavy and strong as cart-ropes. Pic- ture the feelings of a newcomer as in the dusk his horse's hoofs were caught in the arms of a land-devilfish and a Cheshire-cat frog made a mighty leap close by.

56 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

The word corduroy with its memories was anathema. In 1827 a visitor at the Mississaga settlement " chose to follow the Credit until it fell into Lake Ontario, after which we put our heads to the eastward and continued along the shore nearly to York. This road, being formed of the trunks of trees laid crosswise, without any coating of earth or stones, was more abominably jolty than any- thing a European imagination can conceive. Over these horrible wooden causeways, technically called corduroy roads, it would be misery to travel in any kind of car- riage." His honest cheerfulness confesses that the mis- eries of his journey by the Lake were more than atoned for on his arrival at York by the hospitality of people he had never seen before.

According to his own temper, to the condition of his equipage, or the wisdom of his horse, did the traveller from abroad judge the roads.

The original corduroy of the horrible causeways is no doubt lost under the extinct first road which lies in the Lake. But of another, to us apparently the original, some pieces were cut out in the third week in January, 1913, during the laying of pipe. One of the Statutes passed in the fifth session of our sixth Parliament was an Act to con- tinue and amend one entituled An Act to prevent damage to Travellers on Highways. The battered condition of travellers kept the Act constantly in mind, and in the succeeding years there were efforts to have it as constantly amended.

Bridges and roads were necessarily always in mind. Gourlay's wrongheadedness and spirit of retaliation did not always cloud his judgment, and he emphatically stated that the duties of absentee landholders were no more than begun when they were made to contribute to the iinprove- ment of roads.

Representation had been made to the Governor that there were no funds out of which to build the new bridges desired by the magistrates of York; and in August, 1829, the following letter was sent by the Secretary at Govern- ment House to the Receiver-General:

THE LAKE SHOEE ROAD 57

" Sir, the magistrates of York having represented to me that they have no means of constructing the bridges over the Kivers Humber and Don; and the great road of communication of the Province being interrupted by the dangerous state in which the old bridges now remain; the Lieutenant-Governor directs me to acquaint you that he has authorised the magistrates to enter into a con- tract for the construction of two bridges across these rivers; and he begs that you will have the goodness to advance such sums as may be necessary to complete the same, when the magistrates have exhausted their funds; and His Excellency desires that his own salary may be considered chargeable with the amount till he is authorised to issue a warrant for the amount advanced."

The Committee's Report in February, 1830, scathingly rebukes the rejection of the former Bill and describes the dilapidated condition of the bridges, which but for His Excellency's public spirit would have been left unchanged indefinitely. In July, 1829, the Governor's Secretary had sent a letter to Alex. McDonell, Esq., Chairman of Quarter Sessions, representing the dangerous condition of the bridges ; and in the correspondence between the Secre- tary, the Clerk of the Peace, and the Commissioners appointed to contract for and superintend the work, it appears that £550 was expended for the Humber bridge and approach to it. Of this, £50 was to be defrayed by the magistrates of the District.

At the time of her arrival in Canada, Mrs. Jameson, that " intellectual enchantress," was known in England and on the Continent as a brilliant mind and keen observer; but her domestic circumstances here were suffi- ciently unhappy to make her realize that she must either grow moody or seek a sharp distraction. To do the unheard of did not seem to her an astonishing thing; and the necessity for distraction and her appreciation of winter beauty left to us a lively description of the Lake Shore Road. In her unconventional drive in Janu- ary she chose a coachman to her own liking; but no indi- vidual preparation could improve the road, even in its soft covering of snow.

58 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEK

Simcoe's spirit continued to work; and following him Mrs. Jameson showed -the long sight of a statesman. Inter alia she says that a wide space between the building lots and Lake Ontario has been reserved very properly as a road or esplanade, but that even this will not be wide enough ; and she sees into the future's needs. In 1893 the acreage of the Lake Shore was added to the city; and by 1909 the project of a sea wall was taking definite form in the minds of the hundreds who once a week made use of the inadequate boards as a promenade. In the play- grounds movement no one was seized of the value of the Humber Beach until The Globe suggested that an im- proved and protected beach was worth a score of baths and playgrounds. At last the corner-stone of the wall was laid, in November, 1909, by a man who had well and truly laid his project many years before, and the criti- casters who derided Ward's Wall and the shores as they would be treated by the Harbour Commissioners will soon have their memory covered by the " dry earth that may be deposited here." A questioning article in an evening paper asked for a complete and comprehensive sea-wall plan that could stand criticism, and for a statement that should not be a chaos of generalities. The hastily-asked questions were receiving their answers in facts; and the men whose prevision was doing so much in the mapping out of a greater Toronto had the force to hasten slowly. The Harbour Board map, backed by the action of Council and Government, is an answer for all time, and is part of the memorial to the first road-builder.

While Mrs. Jameson was foretelling the need of a wall she was also sketching the weak parapet at the mouth of the Humber. That bridge was evidently considered near the end of its usefulness. Dated at Toronto, October 10, 1837, a notice appears that "Application will be made to the Legislature at its next session for a grant of money for the purpose of erecting a bridge across the Humber from Miller's Mills to Haines' Hill; also for building a pier at the mouth of the same Kiver and altering the existing bridge." Apart from the shifting caused by the waters

THE LAKE SHOBE KOAD 59

and the redisposition of varied attempts at bridges, there was little change apparent at the shore, and the Kankin map of March, 1841, shows the Lake Koad approaching and leaving the river mouth on its accustomed curves, continued across the first line from Toronto Bay until it joins the Kingston Koad.

A true settler regarded a tree as his natural enemy, as something to be annihilated; and the surrounding forest that Mrs. Jameson had at first considered so gloomy is presently looked upon as something to be dealt with in wisdom. Trees that the Druids would have cherished are summarily disposed of by the settler. But the roadways were more slowly considered; and in her favourite path westward, " Dundas Street was very rough for a carriage, but a most delightful ride. You are almost immediately in a pine forest, which extends with little interruption for about fifty miles to Hamilton."

Three years later, the roads were still slight and few, so slight that an officer on his way from the Detroit Eiver to Quebec could find none to dignify by the name. To him the three principal clearings through the forest were Dundas Street, King Street, and Yonge Street; but he was struck with the appearance of the broad esplanade, from which the piers branched off.

In another two years came N. P. Willis, illustrating his book with a map of things in Ontario in 1842 that he deemed most important. One of his seven tracings is the Lake Shore Eoad, from Newark (Niagara) to Kingston, and thence on to Montreal. Before his time, a contributor to an Edinburgh journal says that the roads of Upper Canada, except when turning the head of a lake or the bend of a river, are uniformly straight lines, and by legal allowance of twenty-two yards width; that their actual travelling state varied with the nature of the soil and the seasons of the year ; that where clay prevailed, and during the autumn and breaking up of spring, they were really execrable ; but, like a fair-minded Scot, " the remaining nine months afford on the old lines of road very fair

60 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

travelling. I have frequently ridden fifty miles for two days consecutively on the same horse, without the animal suffering the least distress or refusing food."

The extraordinary rise of the Great Lakes in 1853 was an important consideration in the boundaries of properties, in navigation, and in the upkeep of roads and bridges. Before that date, the disappearance of several beach roads had been traced. The Lake Shore had in parts been washed away, the Old Eoad of 1853 having had another just below it, as late as 1846, a little west of the Humber. The shore is flat at the place alluded to by the old resident who writes one description, and he considered that the destruction of the first and second roads might be attrib- uted to the effects of south-easterly winds upon a high level of the waters. The safety of the plank road, called the New Eoad in 1853, was feared in storms from the south-east. At that date the annual march of the waters inland was reckoned a curious item in the physical history of the Great Lakes, an average of one yard each year being a moderate allowance.

The important railway bridge had an admiring article written on it by a Chief Engineer of another railway, in 1855. " The first illustration of [the substantial] standard of any moment is to be found in the Humber Viaduct, eight and one-half miles from Toronto, over the river and valley of that name. At the point of crossing, this valley, extremely picturesque in character, is 1,500 feet wide, between bold and precipitous banks, giving an elevation of 68'0 to grade line above the stream. . . It would be difficult to imagine a more simple or satis- factory system of construction than this. . . Much as one is gratified on a first view of the Humber Viaduct, on seeing that at the Credit one is tempted to regret the necessity existing there [Humber] for the use of brick."

The Engineer J. C. Howard called- the attention of Council to the unsafe condition of the first Great Western crossing, and in 1872 we infer that the inhabitants consid- ered all the bridges but temporary constructions. In that year Francis Baby and others petitioned for a draw-bridge

n i«

a-

THE LAKE SHORE EOAD 61

at the mouth, praying that the piles of previous bridges be withdrawn from the bed. To this the Council replied, " Declined. River not considered navigable." Ten years later both railway and general traffic bridges were aban- doned, improved ones took their place until 1888, and after that year the railway began a series which culmin- ated in 1913 in a steel bridge of two spans, four tracks, and the centre pier that played so large a part in the fore- bodings of owners of low-lying lands. The general traffic bridge of steel and timber was succeeded twelve years ago by the present span, and Bruit's Point now echoes to the roar of passing trains, the hum of motors, and the jolly sounds of youth on pleasure bent. It is a far cry from the careless citizenship in the bridge building of 1829 to the stone abutments of to-day. The way of a freshet has long been tested, and when the centre pier was suggested by the railway, resisted by the people, referred to the Rail- way Board and at last decided upon, damage all the way up stream was confidently expected. Owners with riparian rights strove without ceasing, Members of Parliament questioned, the railway work lay idle, writs were filed, onlookers gave much advice, and historians of the Lake Shore were pained. But the inevitable compromise suc- ceeded. Wordsworth's struggling rill crossed ever and anon by plank and arch now empties as a. useful stream into the Lake, despite the dreaded centre pier; and the clear waters must pursue their race as best they may.

The last word in the Mississaga trail will some day be a paved highway to the Head of the Lake, a Canadian Promenade des Anglais.

As the earliest of our local trails, the Lake Shore's branches are interwoven with Dundas Street; and part of its history embraces that of its spurs and parallels. The French Fort in its short life up to 1759, and the English who preceded Colonel Sirncoe, had alike been served by Indian Express, by shore or inland; and in April, 1793, the Governor writes to Major-General Clarke, at Quebec, that he hopes by the autumn of that year to open a safe and expeditious communication to La Tranche (the

62 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

Thames), a communication that would connect the arsenal at Toronto with the Thames and Detroit. He had got his knowledge in February and March, when he made, partly on foot and partly by sleigh, his famous exploratory tour through the woods from Niagara to Detroit and back.

Although N. P. Willis illustrates his book with a map that shows a lake shore road, the track beginning by Montreal is actually Dundas Street as intended in its east end. In the 'sixties there are records of the York Roads commonly so called, and individually known as the Yonge Street Road, the Lake Shore Road, Dundas Street Road, and the Kingston Road. The last-named takes us back almost to the place of beginning. Mapped eastward in the Simcoe plans, Dundas Street brings into history the name of Asa Danforth, a practical man who arose at the right moment. He contracted to open a road from Kingston to Ancaster, "which road he completed," and in 1799 his Danforth Road wras finished from York to Hope township, a distance of sixty miles. The Gazette of December, 1799, says of Dundas Street east to the Bay of Quinte, contracted for and finished by him, that sleighs, waggons, etc., may travel it with safety for sixty miles. But it was not until 1817, over the packed snow of Janu- ary, that the first stage plied between Kingston and York. In 1832 the Journals of the House of Assembly contain a reference to the proposed improvement of Dundas Street east of Toronto ; and again in 1836 a petition of one hun- dred and seventy persons from the Home District prays that Dundas Street east of Toronto may be improved and not the road commonly called Cornell's Road.

Westward, the street was cut out and improved by the Governor's men, the Rangers. It leaves Queen Street by a sharp angle to the north, its name given on maps long before Queen Street was of any importance either in fact or in name. One year after Asa Danforth's work on Dundas Street in the east, the fate of Queen, then Lot, trembled in the balance; the opening of the main roads made the powers regard Lot, short and leading west, as

THE LAKE SHORE ROAD 63

unnecessary, and it was proposed to close it. Many years elapsed before the Military Road was made passable for general traffic, and in 1808 it had not been begun through the woods to the Credit, either by Statute Labour or by tender. In August the Gazette and Oracle advertises for tenders "also to bridge and causeway (in aid to Statute Labour) such other parts of such road passing through the Home District, when such works are necessary, and for the performance of which the said Statute Labour is not sufficient."

In the cutting through of Dundas Street from the Gar- rison Common to the King's Mills, the troubles of 1812 played a large part. The story of it is that Denison, of the York Volunteers, did the work with sixty men, the road being necessary to enable communication between York and the Mills to be carried on without interruption from the hostile fleet on the lake. The first method of opening a roadway, by regulars under an officer of Eoyal Engineers, was to fell each tree close to the ground and smooth the stump by adze. It was a slow process, and the result was bad. The G. T. Denison of that day offered to set some of his men to eradicate the trees bodily, an offer that was at first received with doubt ; but he persisted, and a broad track was soon ready for the day of plank or macadam.

A plan of Etobicoke in 1811 marks a road to York opened by Government, and in Concessions 2 and 3 appears " the Rangers' old improvement." In the fourth conces- sion, northerly, is " Old Road to York," and the north of the plan is marked " New Improvements." The Rangers' Old Road thus indicated is a portion of Dundas Street.

The maps given in illustration of this sketch elucidate a succession of roads that without them seems a tangle, read of in the early wording. One of the earliest of D. W. Smith's is the subject of a paper read before the York Pioneer Society in 1893, describing " the route marked out leading obliquely in a northwesterly direction from the road to Castle Frank, and this road is curiously marked

64 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER ,

1 New Eoad to Niagara.' This evidently shows that a track had been opened towards the head of Parliament Street, as we should now say, to Yonge Street, where the Daven- port Eoad enters that street from the west. This Daven- port Eoad was the new road to Niagara, running along the foot of the Davenport rise of land as far as the village of Oarlton, where it crosses the road leading to Weston and passes on over the Humber Plains directly to the bridge on Dundas Street. It is called the New Eoad in contradistinction to the old route to and from Niagara by the lake shore, still travelled and popularly known as the Lake Shore Eoad, crossing the Humber at its mouth." In 1830 a gatherer of statistics gets home to York from Hamilton by the Dundas Street Eoad, where he found clayey and tenacious soil, the grain not so fine as in the Yonge Street district, but the grass excellent; the soil is the kind that in the spring, when the frost is going out, mellows almost to decomposition and is easily worn away by surface water. The delights of his journey are summed up in one sentence, — that he saw gullies from fifty to sixty feet deep, worn away by the long-continued action of the streams, and unsafe to go down in carriages. An emigrant of the same period wrote the inevitable remini- scences and took comfort from his family legend, — Delib- erate, Decide, Dare. It is of this Dundas Street that Joseph Bouchette writes in 1832, as the road by which the mail passes between York and Dundas. Those mail coaches were washed apparently but once in their lives; they were little better at a later date, but the horses were usually good ones. For years the Canadian coaches were used as the subject of many pages, when ill seasons of road were varied by blessed oases of plank. One truthful Scot writes that " the best thoroughfares of all are the plank roads, which I had never heard of till I reached Canada." Another says that a corduroy road should have been included by Dante as the proper highway to Pande- monium, for none can be more decidedly infernal. Stages had been in commission between York and Niagara since

THE LAKE SHORE ROAD 65

1816, but at the end of thirty years from then their repu- tation has suffered no land-change. In 1827 DeRoos writes that all the vehicular conveyances are without springs, and the mail coach in Mrs. Jameson's time was like its successor and its predecessor. " The heavy wooden edifice resembled an old-fashioned lord-mayor's coach," in winter on runners about a foot above the snow, the whole painted bright red, and with icicles hanging from the roof.

In the long-drawn-out process of improvement, the Bill of 1832 provided little aid; it was designed for the three roads in the vicinity of York, and of Dundas Street from Yonge Street it covered only two miles westward.

The /' mighty heavy clumsy inconveniency," hung on leather bands and looking as if an elephant alone could stir it, eventually moved with fewer plunges, and travel- lers began to extol the results of that " admirable measure designated the Statute Labour Act." The expenditure for Toronto and the County of York up to 1849 was £157,664, on roads made by the public ; and two years later, travel- lers of a cheerful disposition tell us that the main roads running through almost the entire length of Western Canada are substantially macadamized or planked, and that many of the chief branch roads have received the same attention. These branch roads had existed since the beginning of the settlement; and a quaint writer in illus- tration of the equally quaint maps of his time, says in 1814 that "two miles from York, on the road which leads to Simcoe, called Younge's Street, another road leads out, extending to the head of the lake, called Dundas Street, which is completely straight for 260 miles to the River Thames, near Detroit. . . . Where it is not opened, there are other roads near by, which lead the same way."

A captain of commerce has trod in the steps of the Rangers' Colonel. A portion of what was begun as a military road and a road to Cooper's Mills has been com- pleted by a prince of trade; and to-day the bed of the Islington road, the continuation of the old street beyond

66 THE VALLEY OF THE H UMBER

Cooper's, is a permanent one of the first quality. Of Simcoe and his wisdom, Dr. Seadding could not forbear to quote,

" Thorough mooris, hills and valleys He made brigs and causeways, Highe street for common passage, Brigs over water did he stage."

The memory of the great road-builder will ever be green, and a Canadian poet of to-day pays him tribute, in that "the achievements of peace are saner than those of war, and no statesman bases his monument upon a deeper foundation than when, by his enactments, he consults and ensures the welfare of his people."

VIII.

OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLERS.

IT is an easy transition from the picnics of La Salle on the Humber, — La Salle, the first shipbuilder of Upper Canada, with his bark of ten tons coasting by the Humber — to the King's Mill and the shipbuilding encouraged by Simcoe, the fatherly Governor. Fifty years before, " a good englishman " had written of being not without hopes that these great lakes would one day become accustomed to Eng- lish navigation ; and he forecasts Rowland Burr's Humber canal, its necessity proved by the different portages by bark canoes at the barrier of Niagara, and by waggons at the strait that is unnavigable by the Saute of Sainte Marie, into Huron or Quatoghie Lake.

Before York were Nassau and Dublin; but all desig- nations or allocations were made null by the appointment of the new Governor, who dealt on the basis of York alone. At a meeting of the Land Board for the District in 1792, applications were read from certain persons on the north shore, one of which specified a millseat. The decision was, that " by reference to their instructions, find they are restrained from granting Mill Seats, and are of opinion that the creeks falling into that part are valuable for fish- ing,' etc. ; and therefore direct that they shall not become private property, whereby the natural advantage might be destroyed." And then, in 1793, we first got into the hands of the experts, whose pioneer was William Kitchin, an investigator who received £7.4.0 by order of His Excellency for services at Toronto, examining millseats.

During the season, life at the King's Mill was stirring. Boards from it were used in the first Governmental build- ings in York, and probably at the Government House at the Credit, a house built by the Governor's orders for the entertainment of all respectable wayfarers. In Lord Dor-

67

68 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

chesters scheme of outlay surveyors were constantly har- ried as to economy, and were sent minute directions as to the spending of money, " that they pay very strict atten- tion to oeconomy in the whole service." But the King's Mill Reserve was the subject of many surveys, and from that of Augustus Jones down to 1834 the notes are inter- esting. In the latter year William Hawkins left Toronto in July, walked down the banks of the Hurnber as far as Mr. Fisher's sawmill, had a conversation with Mr. Fisher regarding his land on the reserve, and assisted by Messrs. Fisher and Cooper he traced the northern limit of the reserve, having crossed the broken front fronting the river. At the river he discovered a maple tree squared on four sides, which, in the opinion of those assisting him, was the termination of the reserve at that part of the river. Also he chained along the west side of the reserve on the concession line, in all ten lots. In August he finished his calculations and handed them in ; whereupon it was recom- mended that he should return and produce the road between Mr. Gamble's land and the reserve (lots 1 and 2) until it would pass through No. G. in the reserve. He went back to survey the required road, and the sections of maps used in illustration show the sequence from the month just described back to the surveys made under Simcoe.

Closely associated with the earliest days of this earliest mill is the name of Dennis, the original Dennis of U.E.L. trials having been recompensed by a grant on the Humber. We have the name in 1792, and the Humber Dennis, who was a practical shipbuilder, built the Toronto Yacht in 1799 — afterwards one of the many wrecks.

In August, 1796, the Honourable Peter Russell writes from Niagara to D. W. Smith that " Mr. John Dennis having made it appear to me by the evidence of Abraham Devins that Mr. Willson knew of his application to His Excellency for Lot No. 5 on the Humber and the condi- tional promise made to him to keep it open for him for one year, I feel myself interested for him and wish to com- pensate his disappointment. Therefore, as Mr. Dennis is desirous of having No. 11 (which is a reserved lot) in

OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLERS 69

lieu of the number he has lost, I request you will assigu No. 11 to him and remove the Reserve from thence to some contiguous number. Both which Will, of course, be con- firmed by the Council at their first meeting. Mr. Dennis being likewise desirous of having about twenty acres of land where Mr. St. John lived on the Humber, I am much inclined to comply with his request, either by Grant or Lease, if it may not interfere with any previous promise to Mr. St. John, and you know of no objection to the con- trary." In October, the twenty acres are described as near Mr. St. John's old house on the Humber; and three years later Mr. J. Small writes from the Council Office to D. W. Smith, asking to be told the quantity of acres in lot No. 34, first concession of York, formerly appropriated to J. B. Rousseau. Smith endorses his answer on the letter, — " No. 34 = 160 acres."

The importation of flour gave way to the importation of wheat to be ground at home, until presently native wheat, and corn in general, supplied the mills. Grist mills received attention at the earliest moment possible; for at Niagara in 1792 the first Provincial Parliament regulated the toll to be taken at mills, " not more than one-twelfth for grinding and bolting." Originally the assessment laws set a statutory valuation on all assessable property, and the work of an assessor was mere enumeration. But by 1793 a species of sliding scale was provided; and by the time tenders for millseats came to be made, the proposers were almost sure of their ground.

The year 1794 brought the first land boom. The quantity of good timber and the demand for boards made the owners of saw-mills find their investment a good one ; stones were scarce, bricks were beginning to be used, but carpenters and masons were few. The industries fostered by Simcoe included the two gunboats spoken of in Liancourt's Journal in 1795; and in the same year, Liancourt draws attention to the difficulty in building any portion of a fleet with fresh-cut timber. At the best, such timber could last only from six to eight years, and the timbers of the Hississaga, then three years old, were already almost rotten.

70

THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

After the recall of the Governor a different spirit entered into Governmental ownership, and soon the King's Saw Mill was considered useless for the new conditions^ Proposals were asked for; and of the few referred for consideration, that from John Willson was the only one to receive definite support.

His application in the autumn of 1797 is followed by a Report from the Superintendent of Sawmill Accounts.

His letter, without date, addressed to the Honourable John McGill, is endorsed, " 9th Nov., 1797. Mr. John Will- son, proffering to purchase the Government Sawmill, if the same is to be disposed of."

Willson states that the sawmills are much out of repair, and have been ever since his occupation, " although my obligation in lease obliges me to keep them in the same repare I received them in, but finding with much more Expense that there might be emprovements made so that they might make more speedy performance therefore wishes to observe to your Honour, that if it would be the wish of government to dispose of them on reasonable terms, it would be my wish to purchase them and would be under the same obligations as I am at present, that is to say I will let government have the refusal of all Lumber cut or such part as they shall wish and likewise to fulfill all Bills of Lumber whatever to me Delivered with all expedi- tion. From your Very Humble Servant, John Willson."

" Government Sawmill, annual income for four years ending the 31st December, 1797" (endorsed on the docu- ment).

" Annual Income arising from the Government Saw- mill on the Huniber, commencing May, 1794, and ending 31st December, 1797 :

Period.	Year.	Government ! Share.	Annual Income.	Total.
May to Dec. 31	1794 1795 1796 1796	One-half One-fourth One-fourth One-fourth	77 52 42 49	8 10 16 13	9i 9 4 10|	£229 9 9|
Jan. 31 Oct. 26
1795, Oct. 27, Dec. 31.. Jan. , Dec. 31

EXTRACT

^H. V

IACT FKOM A COPY IN THE DOMINION ARCHIVES OF A D. W. SMYTH MAP PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK IN 1813. ITS CHIEF INTEREST HERE is IN THE TRACING OF DUNDAS STREET.

OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLERS 71

" Lumber of various descriptions has been received and expended within the abovementioned period, for Public services at York, equal in value to the different sums speci- fied. No estimate can be made of this year's Income untill the season for sawing is at an end. Had the Sawmill been in the occupation of an Industrious Person, I am confi- dent that Double the Quantity of Lumber might have annually been Cut, with the utmost facility. " York, 23rd October, 1798.

" JOHN McGiLL,

" Superintendent, Sawmill Accounts. " The Honorable the Executive Council, " Upper Canada."

Thomas Davis in March, 1798, makes a humble offer and hopes that it will be received, as he was arranging his business with a view to remove there; and after his date the Willson correspondence is renewed.

William Bates writes from Queenston, July 22, 1798:

" Sir, I have with difficulty at last settled my business, and disposed of my Horse, I shall set out tomorrow for Home. I hope to return to this Province some time in October; it will of course be late to make any repairs to the House. Be so kind as to send some bricks and lime that Willson may rope out the chimney. I have spoke to Willson in regard to staying until my return. I received a letter last week from my Brother which confirms me in the certainty of my great misfortune; as I depend on moving into the Government House I hope your Honor will not forget me."

The above is endorsed,

"Received 27th September, 1798 (a true copy).

" JOHN McGiLL."

A letter, marked duplicate, addressed to His Honor the President, from John McGill, is dated 26th August, 1798:

" Sir, I have the honor to state for your Honor's infor- mation that I am informed Corporal Willson intends removing to his lands, and unless Mr. Bates returns with

his family from the States this Fall to inhabit the Govern- 6

72 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

ment House at the Head of the Lake, it will be left without anyone to take care of it.

" The Lease of the King's Sawmill on the Humber now in the occupation of Mr. Willson will expire on the 31st December next — as both are reserves of the Crown, the Leases must of course come through the same channel as those of the Crown reserves."

The endorsement on this letter, signed by Peter Russell, says,

"Sawmills &c. The subject of this letter recom- mended most thoroughly to the consideration of the Execu- tive Council, and the President requests that they may at the same time take into their deliberations the propriety of leasing the Scite for a Grist Mill at the Humber to the same person who shall take the saw mill."

A second endorsement reads,

" Nov. 9th, 1798. Recomd. that an advertisement be inserted in the Gazette calling on the public for proposals to be delivered into this office for a lease of the two mill seats including the buildings now standing thereon for a term of 21 yrs. at a corn rent. The advertisement to be submitted to this Board before it is inserted in the Gazette."

The third endorsement is,

" Confirmed in Council. The Grist mill to pay in flour and the Saw mill in Boards, or the current value in each.

"P. R."

Archibald Thomson and William Forfar sent in an offer in December, 1798, which is endorsed merely " Proposals." They make offer with suitable bonds for the reserved land and Government Mills, on terms very good for themselves, condemning the existing Log Hutt of a dwelling-house and the risque to the enfeebled frame from spring floods. They would have to build a comfortable dwelling-house at once, and rebuild the mill within two or three years.

Isaiah Skinner makes a proposal in 1799 for the King's Saw Mill and site of the grist mill on the Humber, "offer- ing to build a new saw and grist mill with two run of stones at his own expences, which will not cost a sijm less than from 1,500 to £2,000 NYC," the Government to fur: nish him with millstones and irons and nails, "and a set

OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLEKS 73

of Good Saws with the Irons now belonging to the saw mill." He engages to leave the whole in good repair at the end of twenty years. He asks the free use of the Crown timber and the usual quantity of meadow, for all of which he offers a rental of two thousand dollars, a sum that he deems ample when added to his outlay for building. He condemns the dwelling-house on the premises, and in a postscript to his Proposal says he would build a good and comfortable house at his own expense, the whole to be erected within the space of two years.

An offer of December, 1798, in a 'flourish of hand- writing and noble terms, is withdrawn in equally fine language in the following January, as the writer cannot compete in any way with the Proposal sent in by Skinner.

Plenty of water and scarcity of labour made this style of mill multiply rapidly. A " Letter " published in Lon- don in 1795 describes an Englishman's surprise at seeing SL saw-mill with a water-wheel when he came upon it at the Falls of Niagara, called also Mr. Birch's, " where he first saw that very useful piece of machinery, a saw mill worked by water. In such a country, the advantage of a machine that saves so much bodily labour is inestimable."

When Major Holland mapped the river which bears his name, he reached it by the general path, viz., the Humber, the third of the tracks used by the Iroquois from the south in their raids on the Huron region. Holland was an offi- cer under Wolfe at Quebec, who settled in the country after the War of the Kevolution and became Surveyor- General of Lower Canada. That office was afterwards filled by his nephew, Joseph Bouchette, and the maps of both men appear in any study of the Humber. Such map- makers were closely followed by Eowland Burr, a Penn- sylvanian who came here in 1803, and a man of engineering foresight in advance of his times. He not only advocated a canal between Georgian Bay and Lake Ontario via Lake Simcoe and the valley of the Humber, in the spirit of the " good englishman " of 1751, but at his own expense he caused the route to be minutely examined, and published a report on it. Four years earlier the expectation had

74 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

been that the Kouge and not either the Humber or the Don would one day be connected with the Holland by canal. Rowland Burr's acumen and his several mill build- ings, bring his name into constant connection with the times and buildings of Fisher and Gamble.

The next mills were of enough importance to cause the inscription " road to Cooper's Mills." Thomas Cooper, an Englishman, built his mill on the east side of the stream a few feet north of Dundas Street, in 1801. Like other owners in early times, he changed his mind, and the pro- perty was sold to another Cooper; and the mills on the south side of the " Street," themselves important enough in their day to have been given a place on a map, are a con- tinuation of the old-time Cooper's Mills. Some decayed timbers, bare remnants, to be seen close to the Howland and Elliott stores, are all that is left of the first things of Lambton.

The King's Mill Reserve had a sleepy life between the War of 1812 and the building of Fisher's Milton House in 1834. The man, Thomas Fisher, is an interesting figure as settler and miller. He began life as the junior member of a cotton firm in Leeds, and his keen mind suggested a visit of investigation to their branch house in New York. The senior partners resented the impertinence of youth, but he came, nevertheless, with the determination that he retained in his Canadian life. He investigated the New York branch, found his fears justified, returned to Leeds and made his report, was scoffed at by his seniors, in indig- nation withdrew his money and retired, went to New York and intended to settle there. But his Yorkshire blood could not stand the anti-British feeling of those days. He heard of a Canadian county, York, came to the country, found a little York, and, after a short stay elsewhere, settled hard by. His wife, a Sykes of Yorkshire, proved her share of the Yorkshire spirit in the journey up the St. Lawrence by bateau, when with her two young children she followed Thomas Fisher.

Some of Bouchette's broad and beautiful meadows of the township of York were in the King's Mill Reserve,

OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLERS 75

little changed when Fisher built the Milton House and his first saw-mill on the river. But he sold his property, and " Fisher's " moved farther up the stream. There, at Millwood, his first mill shared the usual fate by fire; but its successor was of solid stone that reached to the third storey, where it was met by heavy hewn timber. Brick was abhorrent to the miller, and the red remains of the woollen mill that succeeded his grist mill are a blot in the picture made by his grey ruins, the fallen willow, and the sunk path of the old head race. To serve his large property Fisher had his private road, and Fisher Lane keeps up his memory. Some of his shrubs, too, are there; and the hickory trees on Fisher Flats are of his planting.

Upper Canada's first Gazetteer, compiled when its scope was limited, says that " on the Humber are excellent mills," and by 1827 there are estimates of cost that differ materially from those of Skinner and John Willson. In lists designed for the help and direction of intending emi- grants, it appears that grist and saw-mills " cost from £180 to £600 in erecting," according to the expense in making the dam and the manner in which the mill is finished. " A single saw, with plenty of water, will cut from 800 to 2,000 feet per day, according to the waterpower and kind of wood, which sells at the mills at from 20s. to 35s. per 1,000 feet superficial measure."

But the winter of the publication of that list was open and dry, mills could not grind for lack of water, and a cold, wet spring followed. In the early proposition to connect the Humber and the Holland in the Simcoe-Ontario canal route, Lake Simcoe would have been lowered two, or even three, feet, thus draining the land of the upper country and giving more water to the Humber.

By 1831 prices had again changed. In that decade travellers were fond of collecting reports on specific sub- jects, to be compiled into Emigrants' Guides, and in one is a letter from the Mr. W. K. Wadsworth of that time. In October, 1831, he says that the value of land in his neighbourhood is high, from its vicinity to York ; that the cost of building a mill depends upon what sort of a mill

76 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

you build; that a common grist mill, with one run of stones, would cost about £200 to £250; a good merchant's mill could not be built for less than £800 to £1,000; that their value greatly depends on their situation for supply of water and their distance from market. A saw- mill upon the then simple mode of building could be erected for £100, " and would readily lease for the same sum per annum." The machinery was simple, but there were few streams with a sufficiency of water to carry one ; " and to earn its rent a saw-mill must work the season through."

With Fisher's sale to William Gamble began the Milton Settlement, a beautiful hamlet in the eyes of one who remembers its later life. The house, dating from 1834, was followed by all the industries. Eowland Burr's saw- mill on the east side was acquired and converted to another use, and by the middle of the century Gamble's name appears in a directory as " miller, merchant, postmaster, woollen manufacturer, lumber merchant, etc." The etcetera covered oatmeal, nails, bone fertilizer, dry kiln, slaughter house, blacksmith, cooper and waggon shop, inn, and dwell- ings for his men. The saw-mill, on the east side, was some distance, perhaps one hundred and fifty feet, above the present bridge. A plank road led from the village to the settlement. Before the advent of Fisher and Gamble the American saw-mill dam had been introduced, an ingenious contrivance of round logs notched into each other, in shape the long wedge. The arrangement of tiers, and the outer slope laid at an angle of thirty degrees to the rapid, made it able to withstand many floods. But no original con- trivance or succeeding invention saved either Gamble or Fisher from anxiety and loss.

Those were the days of hope and happiness, and of time for delight in the beauty that surrounded the hamlet. One old settler gives an affectionate description of " the Lamb- ton valley — ah, that was called the Garden of Eden ; every- thing was beautiful, and we were all happy. If you had only six hillof-potatoes and your neighbour had none, you shared. We were all friends, and we all loved the valley."

OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLEKS. 77

MacTaggart, the engineer, did much good work in Canada; but bridges and road-making and his achieve- ment at the Falls of the Chaudi6re did not occupy all his thoughts. His book on Canada contains some conclusions possibly incorrect; but at the same time it gives a clear- ness of outline and detail on the condition of the country not to be found in many other writers of the period. His description of a settler of eminence as the head of a clachan and the owner of a millseat stands for William Gamble and others of fifteen years later. His pen is light and sometimes contemptuous. " But mills alone by no means complete the finished establishment. A distillery is quite indispensable, so that raw grain whiskey may be produced at a couple of shillings per gallon, the flavour of which is qualified by frosty potatoes and yellow pumpkins. . . . A tannery is also an appendage, while a store may finish the list."

A bona fide picture of Milton follows that imaginary sketch. .

An English officer who had shared in the Battle of Windsor and in some other chief events of Kebellion times, devotes several pages of his diary to the Humber. From Toronto, in May 1840, he visited two country mansions, one in another direction, and the second belonging to a Mr. Blank, " the proprietor of a large corn mill. This mill is on the right bank of the Humber about three miles from the lake, in a small circular valley bounded partly by abrupt banks and partly by round knolls. At the upper end the highlands approach one another, forming a narrow gorge clothed with the heavy masses of the original forests. The basin of the gorge is completely filled by the river, which issues from it a narrow stream, flowing musically over a stoney channel; but below the mill the water becomes deep and quiet and deviates into two branches to embrace a small wooded island. Close to the water edge is a large mill surrounded by a number of small cottages, over the chimnies of which rose the masts of flour barges ; and on the bank above, in the midst of a green lawn bounded by the forest, is the neat, white frame mansion

78 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

of Mr. , commanding a fine view of this pretty spot,

and of the large and prosperous establishment of which he is the proprietor. He is a member of the Provincial Parliament, and I believe a bit of a radical. He was very civil to Kerby, who knew his wife, and to myself, giving us a very good dinner and showing us over the mill, which is on a very large scale. About one hundred people, accord- ing to the account of the proprietor, derive employment from it. It is supplied with corn for the most part from the United States. It is driven by two large breast wheels, but I forgot to enquire their diameter."

That mill was burned in 1847 and rebuilt, the Old Mill of to-day, in 1848. The remains of its wharf can be found hard by the site of the storehouse, not far below the Old Mill; and the depression near the ruins, shaded and not easy to see, is the cellar of the oatmeal mill.

With the decrease of imports in general of foreign wheat came returns sent in to the Board of Trade, and that from Milton Mills in 1846 shows the wheat westward much shrunk, in some places a total failure, northward good, but the yield light. One-half the potato crop was lost. " Flour is the principal manufacture in this district, and is yearly increasing from wheat grown from the district." Thus Gamble's scow, a feature of note in its day, was an important factor in the settlement. Later there was a wharf at the river mouth, with pier and storehouse, with better facilities for loading or lightering; and the chief work of local import and export was done by the scow. The latter was a source of pride to the dwellers in the Gar- den of Eden, but its old age was a dishonoured one, swamped in the lower river and its deck carried away for firewood by chance comers. When the time came for the end of life there for the warehouse it still did Hot leave the Lake Shore, and in a changed form it exists near the Credit as a farm barn. From a short distance below Milton the water was for years navig- able for vessels of a draught not named, but " even pro- pellers ascended." Before the adoption by England of free trade in breadstuff s, export trade was large, 84,000

OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLERS 79

barrels in some seasons, and to that might be added half a million feet of lumber. The old trade in spars had by then dwindled to a very slight one. The survivor of the Garden of Eden tells with pride of his share in turning out 300 barrels in twenty-four hours, and he dwells on the busy life of the river with its great scow and schooners near by, all fed from the small scows that were pike-poled to and from the mill. But drownings occurred even in the Garden of Eden, and the small scows contributed at least two.

In 1840 William Gamble and seventy others petitioned for the incorporation of a company to construct a harbour at the mouth of the river, with little result. It was referred to a Select Committee to be reported on by Bill or other- wise ; on January 25th the Humber Bill received its second reading, and the Index states " not proceeded in." Ten years afterwards Gamble built his pier; and the ensuing transactions with the railway did away with the draw- bridge, which for some time had been the only crossing at the mouth. The last refreshment in York and the first in Etobicoke belonged to this bridge, with a hotel at either end. References to Gamble's substantial wharf are fre- quently come upon, and its usefulness continued after his departure. For several years after 1858-9 it was made use of by the Montreal propellers for a midwinter landing for passengers and freight, and the scene that ensued upon such a decanting was lively in the extreme. The Lake Shore Road then showed an eastward procession of dash- ing cab-sleighs with prancing horses and jingling bells, their fares muffled in furs, and it is not impossible that there was a frequent upset. 'Sufficient smuggling was car- ried on between Brule's Point and the other side of the lake to make night work periodically interesting, and one wonders what portion of the spirit found its way into the Garden of Eden.

In 1854 the 610 grist mills of Upper Canada received a large proportion from the Humber; of the 1,618 saw- mills of the Province, 1,449 were water-wheels. But the great flood of 1850 had carried away nearlv every dam

7

80 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

upon the river ; at Lambton the water overflowed the road, carried away a portion of the bridge, and as the river was almost twenty feet above the ordinary level, the road was for a time impassable. Robert Stephenson says in his report on the Victoria Bridge that the width of openings is frequently influenced, and sometimes absolutely governed, by peculiarities of site. The form and life of the early bridges over the Humber were absolutely governed by the untamable freshet. Modern dams availed the millers nothing, and the freshet of 1878 that washed out most mills was the deathblow of Fisher's. Fisher leased his mill to Howland in 1844, and Millwood's subsequent changes and conversions, absorption by mer- ger and destruction by fire, led to the purchase of the whole property by one man who resold it to three, the highlands to one purchaser, the house of Millwood to another, and the river lots to the company who fain would preserve the beauty of the land and the memory of the man who first appreciated it. Thomas Fisher has almost a double claim to that recognition. The land on each side of the river from the mouth upwards to the extent of three thousand acres, was the original reserve; and close by the site of the King's Mill and shipyard, Fisher had made his first stand against the freshet.

Leaving Toronto by the road to Cooper's Mills, one passed the Peacock on the way to that excellent mill stream of the early directories, the inn that marked the fork from Dundas Street. Where the river and street cross, the village is halved in the two townships; and as it had the doubtful advantage of two proprietors, it was given two names, Milton on the west, and, later, Lambton on the east. The Humber, in its deep and beautiful valley, showed banks that were studded with mills; and the importance of mill owners' names, and the fact of the post-office being called Etobicoke, united in a peculiar confusion of address. The general store and post-office bearing the name William Gamble over its door seemed far from his Milton settlement, until the reason was sought in Howland's and Fisher's mills. On the Lambton side were the Howland properties, built on the site of the

OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLERS 81

second Cooper mill; and in the days of teaming, most of the wheat came from the west. Hence Gamble's position on the hill, so far west that the farmers might be inter- cepted before their loads should be seen by rival millers, and sometimes his string of teams headed towards the mill was more than a quarter of a mile in length. Gamble's departure in 1859, and the cessation one by one of the other mills, left the last comer in possession. As Cooper's Mill was the beginning of Howland's, so was the little store on the flats the forerunner of the large establishment with its imposing flight of steps from the street. Settle- ments follow trails, and distilleries follow settlements; thus the Indian zig-zag still to be seen on the flats and behind the general store was the pathway for Cooper's still and a small gathering of houses before 1850, to be succeeded by the distillery at Howland's mill. Howland's of the Humber, Gamble of Fisher's Mills, Etobicoke, con- founded confusion, and an Etobicoke directory of 1837 fed the trouble even before the advent of the Howlands. Letters intended for Lambton Mills were sent to Gamble's at Etobicoke, and letters for the township of Etobicoke wandered far afield.

William P. Howland, afterwards a lieutenant-governor of Ontario and a knight, completed his mill by 1845, and except for the addition of a storehouse the original building is untouched. The three Howlands, singly or in partner- ship, continued until 1886, when store and mill became Howland and Elliott's, the name that in wheat-teaming days was spoken of as " the Humber."

Not only did post-offices become confused, but the laud itself was sometimes in the township of Etobicoke and again in York. Once, on the bank nearly opposite the Old Mill, there was a piece of soil that gave sport to freshets until it -was removed entirely, and the ownership is still a disputed point, in conversation if not in law. Streams have provided an unbelievable amount of litigation, and streams plus saw logs were once beloved of attorneys. In 1849 an Act was passed in the Legislature of Old Canada making all streams that could float saw logs in the spring, summer, and autumn freshets, public property,

82 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEK • J

and by process of temper and time the celebrated McLaren- Caldwell case led to the Elvers and Streams Act of 1881. The pranks of the freshet and the alteration of the cur- rent have not yet reached their limit, and in 1913 the Court of Revision had to amend its ratings to suit the sport of the river.

The post-office settled into the store on the Lambton side, and the mills that led to the many names are dwindling out of life. The stone mill, after its gristing days, was used as a foundry, as was the Gamble old woollen mill, now totally extinct, at the south-west end of the Dundas Street bridge. The newer name of Williams is not far from the bridge; the Scarlett Mill, on the east side, a mile above Lambton, was soon removed to the oppo- site bank for the sake of greater water power, and its successor is supposed to be the tall chimney now seen from the Club verandah ; and as the river is followed northward the old name of Dennis is met. For them all, the river's hymn was ancient and modern, — a busy noise by day, a quiet sound in silent nights.

There was an old contention in Canada, that a man should not do two things at a time, — be a farmer and miller, and many other combinations, or have too many irons in the fire. The millers and makers of Lambton refused that rule; and the long survival of the Lambton Mills and the honourable old age of their general stores refute the doctrine.

The bridge mill, from its position, is a link in the long chain from the times of Indian trail, explorer's pathway, pioneer's holdings, route of clergy with saddle bag or by canoe, ox-cart, waggon and stage, down to the hourly cloud of dust from motor-cycle and car.

After Simcoe's time, a great portion of the lands granted to the favourites of successive administrations was practically closed against settlement, a condition that obtained in a lesser degree in the neighbourhood of Lamb- ton. There the land gradually resolved itself into small estates, and some of their names are wisely retained by the Toronto Land Company of to-day.

IX. FROM SCARLETT PLAINS TO A MODERN CLUB.

WITH inspiration from Government and compara- tively easy access to a principal settlement, those early settlers of the Humber Valley, English, Irish and Scottish, knew little if anything of the breaking life of their con- temporaries whose lot took them inland to a heart-breaking loneliness. To this day, the stray briars of Lambton tell a tale of English settlers. In the 'thirties, visitors condemned the way in which the pioneers had built each man his house or cottage according to his fancy, and said that it was not a difficult thing in passing through the country to tell the nationality of the builder. Remnants of cottages, roots of briars, gnarly bits of hedges, are all there, and tell us more than the callous historian thought possible.

At first a complement of land was given gratis to each settler, on certain conditions of settlement ; but by 1833 all lands were sold on terms of easy payment, except to officers and discharged soldiers, who were continued in the old way. With no date, but in his own handwriting, Sir D. W. Smith, who had been the Honourable D. W. Smyth and a holder of many offices before 1821, leaves a memoran- dum on taxes in Upper Canada. This district was once called the taxpayers' paradise, but he shows how that might all be changed. Grantees like Scarlett would give him no sympathy. On 5,000 acres he shows arrears, present amount due, and, if not paid within such and such time " the assessment from five years to the eight years is in- creased to l%d., and after eight years it is then double,— say 2d. per pound for ever." By 1847 the taxation was so heavy that it was unbelievable there had ever been a taxpayers' paradise. The value of the earth or the quality of the timber was often determined by the viewer's business or bias, and we have Bouchette saying that the land of the

83

84 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEE

townships near is in a high state of cultivation, so that the market of the town is always well supplied. Twenty years later a visitor declares that the land near Toronto is of moderate quality, weak and sandy, not well adapted to agricultural pursuits; but the subsoil is principally clay, of excellent quality.

Seventy years ago the road to the Humber through the Plains held many dangers. The trees were almost un- touched for miles and small game abounded, but so also did bears in the unbroken forest on the south of Dundas Street. The approach led by the primitive dwellings of Colonel Shank, the Honourable ^Eneas Shaw and Colonel Givins, and after passing the limits of their properties the land was literally a howling wilderness, for wolves were plentiful. But the approach had its charm; for the beaten track, a mere bridle path that branched off from the Pea- cock, led into oak woods that were beautiful, although the trees were of no great size. The sandy soil, that by 1805 was deemed so good for crops and that a rival of Bouchette in 1832 called extremely barren, sent up a gnarled and con- torted growth that was fascinating to the sketcher, but that added to the alarms of the nervous traveller in the dusk. It was the fashion of those times also to deride the powers that be, and Scarlett's oaks, small though they were, were fitted for a certain portion of the defence of their country. Fire touched timber is so hard to the blade that a sugges- tion was made to season the timber of the forest with fire, and thus the endless groves of oak on the banks of the Lakes might be ignited and the British Navy secured against the Dry Rot.

The birch bush, the oak plains, Humber plains, and the individual terms of the tract from 1791 to the end of the first quarter of the next century, were condensed into Scarlett Plains. The farmers by 1794 raised much pork, and with little expense but some Indian corn for a few weeks before killing. As the Plains became a thorough- fare, 'twas honest folk who crossed them; nor did they grudge a newspaper advertisement. In December, 1803, a notice appeared that " on the 26th ult. the subscriber found

SCARLETT PLAINS TO A MODERN CLUB 85

one half of a fat Hog on the Humber Plains, which he sup- poses to be fraudulently killed, and the half taken away. The part which he found he carried home and dressed, and requests the owner to call, pay expenses, and take it away. John Clark, Humber Mills, Dec. 2, 1803."

Dennis, Scarlett and Foxwell are names that belong to the Plains; and the estates comprised in or adjoining the tract are of enough importance to be mapped from time to time in the progress of the settlement.

John Scarlet, Simcoe Grange, Humber, is the form of Scarlett's address in an almanac, in a list of inhabitant householders. William Stamford, near Peacock, is all that is vouchsafed to a neighbour. John Scarlett, an English- man, built a Swiss-like structure of hewn logs for his house, with two tiers of balconies on each of its sides, and that, like many first houses, was destroyed by fire. The man was a powerful factor in the settlement, one of the first large employers of labour, well connected and well read, of fine personal appearance, a shrewd observer and a keen horse- man. He owned the inevitable sawmill and the almost in- evitable distillery. On the west bank of the river, far up beyond the links, was one of these places of combined in- dustries; but the site is indicated only vaguely, unless by those who have searched the early maps. He was a man of affairs, a promoter of a bank, a militia captain and a licensed distiller, and there was a building with a legal name as the Scarlett Distillery. But the illicit was part of the period ; and some one, not John Scarlett, had a still in the shrubberies near where the Black Creek enters the Flats on its way to the links.

The race course laid out on the Garrison Common be- tween the old and new forts remained open only a few years, and the chief interest in 1837 was in the Scarlett Course, or, as it was also called, the Simcoe Chase Course. Although owner of the Plains and founder of the Chase Course, Scarlett did not own a race horse and possibly never made a bet ; but it is certain that he was a hard rider up to his eightieth year. In the May meeting of 1838, the Mayor heads a list of stewards that includes Major Deni-

86 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

son and Major Magrath. The Course lay on the north side of Dundas Street, behind the hotel once called Woolf s, at the top of the hill. The land came into the way of this transitory life, and when the plough preceded the railway, coins and other tokens were turned up, relics of the care- lessness of racegoers.

One Scarlett was a man of stern manner abroad, but adored in his Home. Withal he was a wag. The broad acres of the Plains had their own roads, and this owner contended that the roads were his also. Cricketers at a match near by saw a funeral procession halt ; there was a slight confusion, what appeared to be a transfer took place, and a cricketer called out, " Boys, lie's taking toll!"

But the end of that funeral journey was one of the beautiful spots on the Humber, a little God's Acre that once nestled each grave under its trees and shrubs. Now its tenants have been placed elsewhere, and it lies bare on the crest of the hill above Black Creek. By 1820 the sweet briar was so much a part of the native growth that it was accepted as indigenous, and strangely enough, written of as a better kind than that of Britain. Why it was superior the writer does not tell us, but that wind-swept graveyard shows that it is tenacious. A few poor bits of broken stone, a few stunted perfumed stems, look over the edge, now cleared of trees, to the spot almost below where the activities of the still once were carried on. But a stunted growth of gnarled oaks did not supply the whole attraction of these Plains, and dwarf cherry, sassafras and flowering shrubs rose from a ground covered with strawberry and a profusion of flowers. All descrip- tions of the tract speak of the startling orange lily and the masses of perennial lupine. The gnarled oak had a useful neighbour in the birch. The Admiralty tests of Canadian black birch versus oak proved the former to be of greater specific gravity than English oak, and therefore better fitted for ship's flooring, for which purpose and in kindred ways it began to be extensively used. But almost too late for the Plains, as most of the birch of any kind had by that time gone. There was plenty of pine in the neighbourhood,

SCAKLETT PLAINS TO A MODERN CLUB 87

and Goldie the naturalist speaks of the pine barrens; but it appears that the chief use the wood was put to was fuel for steam.

About half way between Weston and Dundas Street is the small stream called Black Creek, draining a pleasant valley whose levels make good meadows. It is in the view of the Scarlett burial plot, and it comes in the route of the noble boulevard that will one day take in forty miles of beauty. Furthermore, it comes into the history of indus- tries in the beginning of things ; for it is recorded that the owner of its brick clay, a potter of generations, received £100 for making the first draining tile in the Province. On one side, the little resting-place of former Scarletts has at its foot the Black Creek as it enters the valley on its way to join the Humber; and on the other begin the broad meadows of the Flats, " those fair meads where idle shep- herds pipe and count the holes." On the Etobicoke side, near the links, is a spring that once upon a time was a brook and full of speckled trout. Standing in the burial ground on the rim of the cup and looking down, or turning one's gaze back across the table-land, the influence of John Scarlett alone is felt. Necessary modern development will not march easily with sentiment, rational or otherwise, and railways have threatened the usefulness and actual life of Scarlett's Road; but the counsel of sentiment prevailed, and John Scarlett's track has been preserved.

The inn where the road forked towards Scarlett's and the Baby Yale was the well-known Peacock, that " respect- able wayside Hostelry of the olden time," where a peacock on a background that measured about three by four feet, preened itself as its frame swung in the breeze. It took its name from the owner and landlord, John Peacock, and there are still left to us some settlers who remember the place and the man. From the inn by the usual track, or by naturalists' way by boat, the Baby estate was reached, a property of double interest. It derives its name from a family of honourable place in Canadian history, and it gives a portion of the scenery that is of great value to the city's park. From the time of James Baby, a statesman

88

and a magistrate of the Home District in 1796, the name often appears in the line of Ontario in its making. This piece of table-land was once destined by Government for the new barracks ; but its diversion to its present purpose largely helps in the preservation of the Humber. It is, moreover, stored with Indian tradition, of burying-grounds and of meetings that may have supplied the inexplicable Indian Wedding of the sketch. Its banks inspired the first Humber Wordsworth to say,

" In Indian summer's dreamy haze The number's banks we'll oft explore,"

and its riches by land and water more than half filled Mrs. Chamberlin's portfolio. The Ancient and Koyal Game provides the end-all of its existence to the lovely plain of Lambton; but in plains, on bluff, or on banks, the land breathes Wordsworth, and the original outlines, as far as may be possible, have been preserved.

X.

CARIOLING.

WHEN good military men die they go to Canada. In the day when that aphorism was coined, a discontented trav- eller returned to England saying that he could not but wonder why England retained so unprofitable an append- age. A wiser traveller in 1769 had decided au contraire, stating that, in a word, by proper application to the single article of agriculture, Canada could be made within the compass of a few years to reimburse to Great Britain all the Blood and Treasure expended on the Conquest of it.

Great Britain's care of the colony in the early years of the nineteenth century required but a modest expenditure in treasure;, and happily little in blood; the retention meant the stationing of troops; and in each depot, local society felt itself the gainer. There are some valuable coloured prints of the steeple-chasing, fox-hunting officers stationed in London; but there is no proof that members of the Toronto Tandem Club belonged to the group called the sporting folk in Toronto who used the ice in the bays, har- bour and Humber, for fox chasing. The carted deer in Ireland, the bagged fox of the Humber; choose your game. The fox was carried out in a bag, headed west, given a run and given his coup — speak it low, sometimes shot.

Horse racing, card playing, and the like unprofitable and sinful diversions are very seldom performed in Canada, says the godly Moses Smith ; but horse racing was not un- known on the ice of Humber Bay. Winter scenes were varied; sleighing, Indians lying on stomach and spearing fish, men sawing blocks of bluish ice from water clear as crystal; the speeding cariole; and later, ice boating.

In December, 1796, Mr. Russell, Governor Simcoe's tem- porary successor, writes from Niagara that he hopes the ladies are enjoying carioling to the Humber amongst other

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90 THE VALLEY OP THE HUMBER

places. About the same date the word slay began to be used; sledge badly expressed the French traineau or cari- ole, sled soon belonged solely to the plaything of boys, and slay, resolving into sleigh, became the recognized term.

On its arrival its derivation was undetermined, and Dr. ' Scadding suggests that it may have come from a surname, as did Brougham, Buggy and Stanhope. A few years be- fore the date of Mr. Russell's letter, an Englishman making a tour of more or less observation says that the carioling of Quebec differs from the sleighing of Upper Canada in this, that in the former one horse is used, in the latter two, and that the velocity with which these carriages move is surprising.

The sports of eastern Canada naturally travelled west- ward, and the dog-slay was often met. An old water- colour sketch shows a Newfoundland dog-slay as a cradle- shaped affair, with two dogs tandem. This dog-slay was an immediate successor of the extraordinary devices in use at the end of the previous century. The carioles then were fashioned to imitate birds and beasts, " with the difference that the common people had theirs close upon the ice or snow, while those of their superiors are raised upon what are called runners, which elevate them about two feet. They paint them of many fantastical colours; many of them as a contrast to this season of the year are coloured in imitation of thunder and lightning."

The winter traveller, following still in the example set by the east, was enveloped in clothing, — the usual number of coats and waistcoats, then a double cloak, a large fur cap and a fur tippet, and sometimes even a large muff. Men did not disdain to bury their faces occasionally in their muffs, " for the cariole was an open carriage and afforded no defence from the cold."

Presently the Upper Canadian sleigh-cutter succeeded the Lower Canadian cariole, described as a simple but elegant carriage, without wheels, embellished with buffalo skins which hang over the sides, lined with cloth of various dazzling hues. The great emporium of 1804 and after was Quetton St. George's, a general store of the early colonial

A b^

1755.

FROM A MAP IXSCRIBKD TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL OF

HALIFAX AND THE OTHER RIGHT HONORABLE THE LORDS

COMMISSIONERS FOR TRADE AND PLANTATIONS.

CARIOLING 91

kind, where all the necessities for carioling and ox-driv- ing, including slay-whips, were kept. On the days devoted to bargaining and buying and selling, the ox-drawn sleighs going to market in Toronto were "as wildly picturesque as the grape waggons of Italy."

After the sleigh-cutter caine simply sleigh, a most popu- lar vehicle in the days of the Tandem Club. The mem- bership of that club was chiefly drawn from the officers of the various detachments stationed in Toronto. Osgoode Hall, then in use as barracks we are told, saw the gay departures and an occasional dilapidated return. A winter club chiefly, the meets were to take place as often as military duties and weather for sleighing allowed. After each, the members dined together, recounting in verse the events of the preceding drive.

The first took place in December, 1839. Their rhyming Transactions hold many allusions too veiled to be under- stood by this generation ; but Etobicoke will for long keep its interest in the names of Major Magrath and James Magrath, contributors in 1840 and 1841. The excursions, east or west, are full of events, and the favourite inns are sometimes houses of refuge.

" Safely we reached a house that's called the Bell, But here arose a scene of rack and ruin . . .

* * * * * * *

" The gaudy Peacock next we passed, At least all did but one — "

The gay dinners celebrating each meet sometimes developed a muse with a broken back or a lame knee, but never with a halting tongue.

The recital in February, 1841, gives a strange picture of a Canadian wrinter.

" Turned to the right we sought the sylvan shade, The startled wood nymphs hiding as we passed.

" The envious satyrs strove our path to clog So that the trot at times became an amble,

They interposed full *many a stump and log, Hoping, sly rogues, to profit in the scramble,

If haply either we upset or smashed. . . .

92 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER

" Logs, stumps and satyrs, we escaped them all,

Safe through these dangers fearlessly we dashed, And our sweet burthens brought again to Osgood Hall."

The grave, grey pile of to-day would blush at those depar- tures and returns. Whips were merry and leaders gay, wheelers kicked over the traces, and a drive intended to- wards the Don has often finished at the Peacock Inn.

In the heart of the forest, at a corner of vantage on the way between York, the Humber, and the track to Weston, was the famous Peacock. It could have quoted truth- fully, rest for man and beast, as its sign. With its exten- sive outbuildings, it made the most important stopping- place in a large radius; but the encroaching railway ended the long first chapter of its life.

The Tandem Club's drives were not unduly protracted between rescue points. On their way to the Humber came Sanford's and the Blue Bell, before the ancient Peacock. At the turn northwards out of the line of Lot Street, on the east side, was Sanford's, a watering-place for teams and provided accordingly with the colonial pump and trough, the latter a section of a large pine tree hollowed like a dug-out. Not far off was the Blue Bell, with its sign in kind, on top of a lofty pole by the door, swinging to and fro within a frame. The Peacock of Tandem days had begun life in the woods in a humbler form than the present hotel. Although the word inn was frequently applied to it, the sign that swung above the door announced that it was The Old Peacock Tavern. The variations of progress in decay and railway-making demolished the first buildings ; but the name has been wisely retained.

To " keep tavern " did not mean in the old days that a man kept a mere drinking-house by the roadside. The tavern was often the place of assembly for Town Meetings, and the tavern-keeper was as often a man of weight and substance. The chief tavern of a neighbourhood was alike the hall of justice and the district club. Moreover, the sign of a tavern as it swung before the hospitable door, sometimes on a tall pole near the trough dug-out, often

CAEIOLING 93

expressed the temper of politics and religion of its owners or its frequenters, or even of its country. One worthy of long remembrance swung in Toronto, at The Four Alls. First came the King, who owned all. Next the parson, who prayed for all. Then a soldier, with chest well out, who fought for all. And lastly, the backbone of Canada then as now, the farmer with his plough, who paid all.

XI.

OF INDIANS.

A FOOLISH statement in a modern gazetteer is to the effect that as so little of the history of this county is known, and as that little is so slightly authenticated, all that is essential for us in these days to know on the subject is that no portion of the county was the fixed abode of any civil- ized human being until about the middle of the eighteenth century, and, that the Indians have left very perceptible traces behind them.

When Joseph Bouchette published his edition of 1832 he said he distinctly remembered the untamed aspect which the country exhibited when first he entered the beautiful basin. It fell to his lot, as he phrases it, to make the first survey of York Harbour in 1793. Dense and trackless forests lined the margin of the lake, reflected on the glassy surface; the wandering savage had there constructed his ephemeral habitation, and the dwellers consisted only of two families of Messassagas. Among the Indians at the east end of the lake were some straggling Messessawgers, Who lived near Detroit, and one hundred years earlier the Mississague were one of the people who went annually to Sault Ste. Marie to fish, gradually drifting southward, and apparently aimless. Spell the name as they might, and come upon the bands where they might, all their historians unite in the word straggling. The Mississagas in 1750 were comparatively few in number and scattered along the north side of the Lake, and beyond the Humber as far as Matche- dash. They were a branch of the Chippewas or Otchip- ways, and one history of the. county states so unmixedly were they found along the north shore at the time of the Conquest that they were treated by the British authorities as the sole owners of the soil thereabouts, whose rights must be extinguished before the Crown could lawfully take

94

OF INDIANS 95

possession. The specific name Mississaga was employed by the French because the tribes first fallen in with hailed from the neighbourhood of the river of that name, an im- portant stream emptying into Lake Huron. Those who were found encamped on the site of Toronto in 1793 were of the Algonquin race or speech. Heriot calls the Lake Huron Mississagas Estiaghics, and Alexander Henry says " all the Indians inhabiting the north side of Lake Huron are called Mississakies. Michi or Missi signifies a great many, while saki or saga conveys the idea of the mouth or outlet of a river," and by degrees the name came simply to mean River Indians.

James Adair of old, for long a trader amongst the tribes south of the Great Lakes, is mightily pleased with his own learning and gives reams of proof that the Indian Ameri- cans are li-neally descended from the Israelites, either while they were a maritime power or soon after the general captivity, the latter most probable. Historians are often derided, each man by his successor, even if Hennepin, le grand menteur, is now undergoing some process of white- wash ; but Lescarbot, " that man of sense and learning," although a little addicted to the marvellous, leans towards the idea of the North Americans being Canaanites. The unfortunate Mississagas were more nearly Ishmaelites, and their sorrows multiplied upon them until the day of Peter Jones and the Methodists.

Strangely enough, the Misslsakes of Pouchot's time were considered more dangerous than the Iroquois, because they lived by the chase alone. In 1757 those who were to go down to Montreal assembled to the number of ninety at Toronto. Only ten men made the garrison, although there was a large supply of goods under the trader Varrin. The Indians intended to murder the garrison and pillage the fort. A French servant notified DeNoyelle, the officer in command, of the Indian plans in detail, whereupon a canoe with two men was despatched to Niagara for help. Pou- chot, the commandant, replied with two officers and sixty- one men, a swivel gun in each bateau. They reached To- ronto at foiiT in the afternoon the next day, and by Pou-

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96 THE VALLEY OP THE HUMBER

chot's directions the Indians received a salute from artil- lery and muskets. They were then told to assemble, a crest- fallen gathering, as they had not suspected that their presence or their plot could be known. They confessed freely, and said they had no courage, adding that some one had given them bad news, — that the French troops were coming to kill them, that the French had made peace with their enemies the Flatheads, that the English had overcome the French, and many other disquieting bits of informa- tion. The facts were merely that the Indians felt them- selves to be in force and desired to get brandy for nothing. Untrustworthy, they had still served the French well in the war, and after this misadventure they departed peaceably for Montreal. Their nation was much chagrined over the event, and disowned the warriors concerned.

Two years later the colonial captain who then com- manded at Toronto waited only to hear the cannonade at Niagara. He felt sure that that fort was taken, and "cleared out from his post, which, having set on fire, he left for Montreal, so that they could not catch .him. The Fort could only be defended against Indians, and had a garrison of only ten or twelve men."

The forts at both places had fallen, but the Mississaga town remained. In that August of 1759 at Niagara, Sir William Johnson exhorted the Chippeway Chief Tequaka- reigh, in strong terms designed for the guidance of that un- trustworthy Indian. In return the Chief desired that Sir William would send some person to the Mississaga town near where Toronto stood, to hear what he should say to their nation and to see that he would deliver the belts and message honestly.