---- You shall
Go forth upon your arduous task alone,
None shall assist you, none partake your toil,
None share your triumph! still you must retain
Some one to trust your glory to--to share
Your rapture with. Browning's Paracelsus.
Port Talbot, July 10.
"Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope. He has no other possession
but hope. This world of his is emphatically the place of hope:"[12] and
more emphatically than of any other spot on the face of the globe, it is
true of this new world of ours, in which I am now a traveller and a
sojourner. This is the land of hope, of faith, aye, and of charity, for
a man who hath not all three had better not come here:--with them he
may, by strength of his own right hand and trusting heart, achieve
miracles: witness Colonel Talbot.
Of the four days in which I have gone wandering and wondering up and
down, let me now tell you something--_all_ I cannot tell you; for the
information I have gained, and the reflections and feelings which have
passed through my mind would fill a volume--and I have little time for
scribbling.
And first of Colonel Talbot himself. This remarkable man is now about
sixty-five, perhaps more, but he does not look so much. In spite of his
rustic dress, his good-humoured, jovial, weather-beaten face, and the
primitive simplicity, not to say rudeness, of his dwelling, he has in
his features, air, and deportment, that _something_ which stamps him
gentleman. And that _something_ which thirty-four years of solitude has
not effaced, he derives, I suppose, from blood and birth, things of more
consequence, when philosophically and philanthropically considered, than
we are apt to allow.
He came out to Upper Canada as aide-de-camp to Governor Simcoe in 1793,
and accompanied the governor on the first expedition he made to survey
the western district, in search (as it was said) of an eligible site for
the new capital he was then projecting. At this time the whole of the
beautiful and fertile region situated between the lakes was a vast
wilderness. It contained not one white settler, except along the
borders, and on the coast opposite to Detroit: a few wandering tribes of
Hurons and Chippewas, and the Six Nations settled on Grand River, were
its only inhabitants.
It was then that the idea of founding a colony took possession of
Colonel Talbot's mind, and became the ruling passion and sole interest
of his future life. I had always heard and read of him, as the
"eccentric" Colonel Talbot. Of his eccentricity I heard much more than
of his benevolence, his invincible courage, his enthusiasm, his
perseverance; but, perhaps, according to the wordly nomenclature, these
qualities come under the general head of "eccentricity," when devotion
to a favourite object cannot possibly be referred to self-interest.
On his return to England, he asked and obtained a grant of 100,000 acres
of land along the shores of Lake Erie, on condition of placing a settler
on every two hundred acres. He came out again in 1802, and took
possession of his domain, in the heart of the wilderness. Of the life he
led for the first sixteen years, and the difficulties and obstacles he
encountered, he drew, in his discourse with me, a strong, I might say a
_terrible_ picture: and observe that it was not a life of wild,
wandering freedom--the life of an Indian hunter, which is said to be so
fascinating that "no man who has ever followed it for any length of
time, _ever_ voluntarily returns to civilised society!"[13] Colonel
Talbot's life has been one of persevering, heroic self-devotion to the
completion of a magnificent plan, laid down in the first instance, and
followed up with unflinching tenacity of purpose. For sixteen years he
saw scarce a human being, except the few boors and blacks employed in
clearing and logging his land: he himself assumed the blanket-coat and
axe, slept upon the bare earth, cooked three meals a day for twenty
woodsmen, cleaned his own boots, washed his own linen, milked his cows,
churned the butter, and made and baked the bread. In this latter branch
of household economy he became very expert, and still piques himself on
it.
To all these heterogeneous functions of sowing and reaping, felling and
planting, frying, boiling, washing and wringing, brewing and baking, he
added another, even more extraordinary;--for many years he solemnised
all the marriages in his district!