Barrie and Big Trees--A new Capital of a new District--Nature's
Canal--The Devil's Elbow--Macadamization and Mud--Richmond Hill
without the Lass--The Rebellion and the Radicals--Blue Hill and
Bricks.
We reached Barrie safely that night, and slept at the Queen's Arms. Next
morning, I had an excellent opportunity of seeing this thriving village.
It is very well situated on the shore of Kempenfeldt Bay, on ground
rising gradually to a considerable height, and is neatly laid out,
containing already about five hundred people.
On the high ground overlooking the place are a church, a court-house,
and a jail, all standing at a small distance from each other, nearly on
a line, and adding very much indeed to the appearance of the place. The
deep woods now form a background, but are gradually disappearing. I went
about a mile into them, and saw several new clearances, with some nice
houses building or built; and particularly one by Bingham, our landlord,
a very comfortable, English-looking, large cottage, with outhouses and
an immense barn, round which the rascally ground squirrels were playing
at hide-and-seek very fearlessly.
The Court House contains the district school, which appears very
respectable, and is conducted by a young Irishman; it also contains all
the district offices, and is two stories high, massively and well built,
the lower story being of stone and the upper of brick, both from
materials on the spot.
The church is of wood, plain and neat. The jail is worth a visit, and
shows what may be done in the forest and in a brand-new district, as the
district of Simcoe is, although I believe about half the money it cost
would have been better employed on the roads; for it has never been
used, except as a place of confinement for an unfortunate lunatic.
It is formed in the castellated style, of a handsome octagonal tower, of
very white, shelly limestone, with a square turreted stone enclosure, on
the top of which is an iron _chevaux de frize_, and which enclosure is
subdivided into separate day-yards for prisoners. The entrance is under
a Gothic archway; and in the centre of the tower is an internal space,
open from top to bottom, and preventing all access to the stairs from
the cells, which are very neat, clean, and commodious, with a good
supply of water, and excellent ventilation. It is, in short, as pretty a
toy penitentiary as you could see anywhere, and looks more like an Isle
of Wight gentleman's fortress, copied after the most approved Wyattville
pattern of baronial mansion, with a little touch of the card-house. In
short, it is as fine as you can conceive, and sets off the village
wonderfully well.
The red pine, near Barrie and through all the Penetanguishene country,
grows to an enormous size. I measured one near Barrie no less than
twenty-six feet in girth, and this was merely a chance one by the
path-side. Its height, I think, must have been at least two hundred
feet, and it was vigorously healthy. What was its age? It would have
made a plank eight feet broad, after the bark was stripped off.
But the woods generally disappoint travellers, as they never penetrate
them; and the lumberers have cut down all available pines and oaks
within reach of the settlements, excepting where they were not worth the
expence of transport. The pines, moreover, take no deep root; and, as
soon as the underbrush or thicket is cleared, they fall before the
storm. Provident settlers, therefore, rarely leave large and lofty trees
near their dwellings for fear of accident.
The pine, in the Penetanguishene country, has a strange fancy to start
out of the earth in three, five, or more trunks, all joined at the base,
and each trunk an enormous tree. I have an idea that this has arisen
from the stony, loose soil they grow in, which has caused this strange
freak of Nature, by making it difficult for the young plant to rear its
head out of the ground. Whatever is the reason, however, all the masts
of some "great Amiral" might be truly provided out of a single
pine-tree.
But we must leave Barrie, after just mentioning Kempenfeldt, about a
mile or so distant, which was the original village; and, although at the
actual terminus of the land road, has never flourished, and still
consists of some half dozen houses. The newer Admiral superseded the
more ancient one; for Barrie did deeds of renown, which it suited the
Canadians to commemorate much more than the unfortunate Kempenfeldt and
his melancholy end.
If ever there was an infamous road between two villages so close
together, it is the road between these two places; I hope it will be
mended, for it is both dark and dangerous.
I always wondered not a little how it happened that Bingham of Barrie
kept such a good table, where fresh meat was as plentiful as at Toronto.
I looked for the market-place of the capital of Simcoe: there was none.
But the mystery was solved the moment I put my foot on board the Beaver
steamer to go back by the water road.
What will the reader think of Leadenhall Market being condensed and
floating? Such, however, was the case; there was a regular travelling
butcher's-shop, for the supply of the settlers around Lake Simcoe; and
meat, clean and enticing as at the finest stall in the market aforesaid,
where upon regular hooks were regularly displayed the fine roasting and
boiling joints of the season. And a very fair speculation no doubt it
is, this pedlar butchery.
On the 3rd of July, at half-past twelve, I left the capital of the
Simcoe district, and am particular as to dates and seasons, because it
tells the traveller for pleasure what are the times and the tides he
should choose.
We embarked on board the good ship Beaver, a large steam-vessel, for the
Holland Landing, distant twenty-eight miles--twenty-one of them by the
lake, and seven by the river. The vessel stops by the way at several
settlements, where half-pay officers generally have pitched their tents;
and twice a week she makes the grand tour of the whole lake, at an
altitude of upwards of seven hundred and fifty feet above Lake Ontario,
and not forty miles from it.
This navigation of the Holland river is very well worth seeing, as it is
a natural canal flowing through a vast marsh, and very narrow, with most
serpentine convolutions, often doubling upon itself.--Conceive the
difficulty of steering a large steamboat in such a course; yet it is
done every day in summer and autumn, by means of long poles, slackening
the steam, backing, &c., though very rarely without running a little way
into the soft mud of the swamp. The motion of the paddles has, however,
in the course of years, widened the channel and prevented the growth of
flags and weeds.
There is one place called the Devil's Elbow, a common name in Canada for
a difficult river pass, where the sluggish water fairly makes a double,
and great care is necessary. Here the enterprising owner and master of
the vessel tried to cut a channel; but, after getting a straight course
through the mud for two-thirds of the way, he found it too expensive to
proceed, but declares that he will persevere. Why does not the Board of
Works, which has literally the expenditure of more than a million, take
the business in hand, and complete it? One or two hundred pounds would
finish the affair. But perhaps it is too trifling, and, like the cut at
the Long Point, Lake Erie, to which we shall come presently, is
overlooked in the magnitude of greater things.
Of all the unformed, unfinished public establishments in Canada, it has
always appeared to me that the Crown Lands department, and the Board of
Works, are pre-eminent. One costs more to manage the funds it raises
than the funds amount to; and the other was for several years a mere
political job. No very eminent civil engineer could have afforded to
devote his time and talents to it, as he must have been constantly
exposed to be turned out of office by caprice or cupidity. I do not
know how it is now managed, but the political jobbing is, I believe, at
an end, as the same person presides over the office who held it when it
was in very bad odour. This gentleman must, however, be quite adequate
to the office, as some of the public works are magnificent; but I cannot
go so far as to say that one must approve of all. The St. Lawrence Canal
has cost the best part of a million, is useless in time of war, and a
mere foil at all times to the Rideau navigation, which the British
government constructed free of any provincial funds. The timber slides
on the Trent are so much money put into the timber-merchants' pockets,
to the extreme detriment of the neighbouring settlers, whose lands have
been swept of every available stick by the lawless hordes of woodcutters
engaged to furnish this work; and who, living in the forest, were beyond
the reach of justice or of reason, destroying more trees than they could
carry away, and defying, gun and axe in hand, the peaceable
proprietors.
It was intended, before the rebellion broke out, to render the river
Trent navigable by a splendid canal, which would have opened the finest
lands in Canada for hundreds of miles, and eventually to have connected
Lake Huron with Lake Ontario. A large sum of money was expended on it
before the Board of Works was constituted, and an experienced clerk of
works, fresh from the Rideau Canal, was chosen to superintend; but the
troubles commenced, and the money was wanted elsewhere.
When money became again plentiful, and the country so loudly demanded
the Trent Canal, why was it not finished? I shall give by and by an
account of a recent excursion to the Trent, and then we shall perhaps
learn more about it, and why perishing timber slides were substituted
for a magnificent canal.
But the Devil's Elbow should be straightened by the Board of Works at
all events, otherwise it may stick in the mud, and then nobody can help
it; for the marsh is very extensive, and there would be no Jupiter to
cry out to.
Well, however, in spite of all obstacles, Captain Laughton piloted us
safe to Ague and Fever Landing, where, depend upon it, we did not stay a
moment longer than sufficed to jump into a coloured gentleman's waggon,
which was in waiting, and in which we were driven off as a coloured
gentleman always drives, that is to say, in a hand-gallop, to Winch's
tavern, our old accustomed inn at St. Alban's, where we arrived in due
time, and there hired another Jehu, who was an American Irishman (a sad
compound), to take us as far towards Yonge Street as practicable. We
reached Richmond Hill, seventeen miles from the Landing, at about eight
o'clock, having made a better day's journey than is usually accomplished
on a road which will be macadamized some fine day; for the Board of
Works have a Polish engineer hard at work surveying it--of course no
Canadian was to be found equal to this intricate piece of
engineering--and I saw a variety of sticks stuck up, but what they meant
I cannot guess at. I suppose they were going to _grade_ it, which is the
favourite American term--a term, by the by, by no manner or method
meaning gradus ad Parnassum, or even laying it out in steps and stairs,
like the Scotch military road near Loch Ness; but which, as far as my
limited information in Webster's Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon tongue
goes, signifies levelling. I may, however, be mistaken; and this puts me
in mind of another tale to beguile the way.
A character set out from England to try his fortune in Canada. He was
conversing about prospects in that country, on board the vessel, with a
person who knew him, but whom he knew not. "I have not quite made up my
mind," said the character, "as to what pursuit I shall follow in Canada;
but that which brings most grist to the mill will answer best; and I
hear a man may turn his hand to anything there, without the folly of an
apprenticeship being necessary; for, if he has only brains, bread will
come--now, what do you think would be the best business for my market?"
"Why," said the gentleman, after pondering a little, "I should advise
you to try civil engineering; for they are getting up a Board of Works
there, and want that branch of industry very much, for they won't take
natives; nothing but foreigners or strangers will go down."
"What is a civil engineer?" said the character.
"A man always measuring and calculating," responded his adviser, "and
that will just suit you."
"So it will," rejoined Character; and a civil engineer he became
accordingly, and a very good one into the bargain; for he had brains,
and had used a yard measure all his lifetime.
I was told this story by a person of veracity, who heard the
conversation, but it is by no means a wonderful one; for such is the
versatility of talent which the climate of Northern America engenders,
that I knew a leading member of parliament provincial, who was a
preacher, a shopkeeper, a doctor, a lawyer, a banker, a militia colonel,
and who undertook to build a suspension bridge across the cataracted
river Niagara, to connect the United States with Canada for L8,000,
lawful money of the colony; an undertaking which Rennie would perchance
have valued at about L100,000; but _n'importe_, the bill was passed, and
a banking shop set up instead of a bridge, which answered every purpose,
for the notes passed freely on both sides until they were worn out.
Behold us, however, at Richmond Hill, having safely passed the Slough of
Despond, which the vaunted Yonge Street mud road presents, between the
celebrated hamlet of St. Alban's and the aforesaid hill, one of the
greatest curiosities of which road, near St. Alban's, is the vicinity of
a sort of Mormon establishment, where a fellow of the name of David
Wilson, commonly called David, has set up a Temple of the Davidites,
with Virgins of the Sun, dressed in white, and all the tomfooleries of a
long beard and exclusive sanctity. But America is a fine country for
such knavery. Another curiosity is less pitiable and more natural. It
is Bond Lake, a large narrow sheet of water, on the summit between Lake
Simcoe and Lake Ontario, which has no visible outlet or inlet, and is
therefore, like David Wilson, mysterious, although common sense soon
lays the mystery in both cases bare; one is a freak of Nature concealing
the source and exitus, the other a fraud of man.
The oak ridges, and the stair-like descents of plateau after plateau to
Ontario, are also remarkable enough, showing even to the most
thoughtless that here ancient shores of ancient seas once bounded the
forest, gradually becoming lower and lower as the water subsided. Lyell
visited these with the late Mr. Roy, a person little appreciated and
less understood by the great ones of the earth at Toronto, who made an
excellent geological survey of this part of the province, and whose
widow had infinite difficulty in obtaining a paltry recompense for his
labours in developing the resources of the country. The honey which this
industrious bee manufactured was sucked by drones, and no one has done
him even a shadow of justice, but Mr. Lyell, who, having no colonial
dependence, had no fears in so doing.
But of Richmond Hill, why so called I never could discover, for it is
neither very highly picturesque, nor very highly poetical, although
Dolby's Tavern is a most comfortable resting-place for a wearied
traveller, at which prose writer or poetaster may find a haven.
Attention, good fare, and neatness prevail. It is English.
I have observed two things in journeying through Upper Canada. If you
find neatness at an hostel, it is kept by old-country people. If you
meet with indifference and greasy meats, they are Americans. If you see
the best parlour hung round with bad prints of presidents, looking like
Mormon preachers, they are radicals of the worst leaven. If prints from
the New York Albion, neatly framed and glazed, hang on each side of a
wooden clock, over a sideboard in the centre of the room, opposite to
the windows, the said prints representing Queen Victoria, Lord Nelson,
Windsor Castle, or the New Houses of Parliament, be assured that loyalty
and John Bullism reign there; and, although you meet with no servility,
you will not be disgusted with vulgar assumption, such as cocking up
dirty legs in dirty boots on a dirty stove, wearing the hat, and not
deigning to answer a civil question.
Personally, no man cares less for the mode of reception, when I take
mine ease at mine inn, than I do, for old soldiers are not very
fastidious, and old travellers still less so; but give me sturdy John
Bull, with his blunt plainness and true independence, before the silly
insolence of a fellow, who thinks he shows his equality, by lowering the
character of a man to that of a brute, in coarse exhibitions of assumed
importance, which his vocation of extracting money from his unwilling
guests renders only more hateful.
We departed from Richmond Hill at half-past five, and waggoned on to
Finch's Inn, seven miles, where we breakfasted. This is another
excellent resting-place, and the country between the two is thickly
settled. I forgot to mention that we have now been travelling through
scenes celebrated in the rebellion of Mackenzie. About five miles from
Holland Landing is the Blacksmith's Shop, which was the head-quarters of
Lount, the smith, who, like Jack Cade, set himself up to reform abuses,
and suffered the penalty of the outraged laws.
Lount was a misled person, who, imbued with strong republican feelings,
and forgetting the favours of the government he lived under, which had
made him what he was, took up arms at Mackenzie's instigation, and
thought he had a call--a call to be a great general. He passed to his
account, so '_requiescas in pace_,' Lount! for many a villain yet lives,
to whose vile advices you owed your untimely end, and who ought to have
met with your fate instead of you. Lount had the mind of an honest man
in some things, for it is well known that his counsels curbed the bloody
and incendiary spirit of Mackenzie in many instances. The government
has not sequestered his property, although his sons were equally guilty
with himself.
We also pass, in going to Toronto, two other remarkable places. Finch's
Tavern, where we breakfasted at seven o'clock, was formerly the Old
Stand, as it was so called, of the notorious Montgomery, another
general, a tavern general of Mackenzie's, who moved to a place about
four miles from the city, where the rebels were attacked in 1837 by Sir
Francis Head, and near which the battle of Gallows Hill was fought.
Montgomery was taken prisoner, sent to Kingston, and escaped by
connivance, with several others, from the fortress there on a dark
night, fell into a ditch, broke his leg, and afterwards was hauled by
his comrades over a high wall, and got across the St. Lawrence into the
United States, where he was run over afterwards by a waggon and much
injured. His tavern was burnt to the ground by the militia during the
action, on account of the barbarous murder there of Colonel Moodie, a
very old retired officer, who was killed by Mackenzie's orders in cold
blood. It is now rebuilt on a very extensive scale; and he is again
there, having been permitted to return, and his property, which was
confiscated, has been restored to his creditors.
Such were Mackenzie's intended government and the tools he was to govern
by! Such is the British government! The Upper Canadians wisely preferred
the latter.
Next to Richmond Hill is Thornhill, all on the macadamized portion of
the road to Toronto. Thornhill is a very pretty place, with a neat
church and a dell, in which a river must formerly have meandered, but
where now a streamlet runs to join Lake Ontario. Here are extensive
mills, owned by Mr. Thorne, a wealthy merchant, who exports flour
largely, the Yonge Street settlement being a grain country of vast
extent, which not only supplies his mills, but the Red Mills, near
Holland Landing, and many others.
From Montgomery's Tavern to Toronto is almost a continued series for
four miles of gentlemen's seats and cottages, and, being a straight
road, you see the great lake for miles before its shores are reached.
Large sums have been expended on this road, which is carried through a
brick-clay soil, in which the Don has cut deep ravines, so that immense
embankments and deep excavations for the level have been requisite.
Near Toronto, at Blue Hill, large brick yards are in operation, and here
white brick is now made, of which a handsome specimen of church
architecture has been lately erected in the west end of the city. Tiles,
elsewhere not seen in Canada, are also manufactured near Blue Hill; but
they are not extensively used, the snow and high winds being
unfavourable to their adoption, shingles or split wood being cheaper,
and tinned iron plates more durable and less liable to accident.
In most parts of Upper Canada, near the shores of the great lakes, you
can build a house either of stone or brick, as it suits your fancy, for
both these materials are plentiful, particularly clay; but at Toronto
there is no suitable building-stone; plenty of clay, however, is found,
for there you may build your house out of the very excavations for your
cellars; and I confess that I prefer a brick house in Canada to one of
limestone, for the latter material imbibes moisture; and if a brick
house has a good projecting roof, it lasts very long, and is always
warm.
It is surprising to observe the effects of the climate on buildings in
this country. A good stone house, not ten years old, carefully built,
and pointed between the joints of the masonry with the best cement,
requires a total repair after that period, and often before. The
window-sills and lintels of limestone break and crack, and the chimneys
soon become disjointed and unsafe. Although it may seem paradoxical, yet
it is true that the woodwork of a house lasts good much longer than the
stone, or rather the cement, which joins the stone; but wood decays
also very rapidly. A bridge becomes rotten in ten years, and a shingled
roof lasts only fifteen; but then wood is never seasoned in America; it
would not pay.