It is by no means to be ascribed to the rude ignorance of our New World settlers that such marvels reappear from time to time. It is, on the contrary, because curiosity is already awakened, and education is pervading the masses of the people, that a reason is asked for the traces of extinct precursors alike of the European and the Red Indian, on the prairies and in the great river-valleys of the west. Knowledge is no longer confined to an exclusive cast. It is, indeed, very superficial as yet; and no doubt the shallow drafts do at times intoxicate the brain. But it is widely difused. The wonder which belongs to the stage of intelligent childhood, is accompanied by its large, uncritical faith. One among its curious phases, is the eagerness for grand telescopes, and the discovery of new asteroids, comets, and other celestial wonders. An astronomical observatory is one of the first demands of a Western University, and funds are forthcoming without difficulty for purchasing the requisite instruments; not, indeed, to be employed in such work as absorbs the patient labours of many an observatory staff in the Old World: accumulating data, the full results of which are to reward future generations; but to bring "the wonders of the heavens" within reach of the people. If the institution is to prosper, it is bound to discover a comet or two per annum; anticipate European observatories in the finding of the last asteroid; or, at the least, beat them all in the number of its solar spots, or November meteors. For ordinary work its course is equally well defined. The nebulæ, double stars, mensurations dealing with the vague immensities of space, the supposed central sun of the visible universe, and the like themes of fanciful speculation, have a marvellous fascination for the popular mind, just awaking to the charms of knowing,-and not yet conscious of how little it knows. And so it is with this dream of antique races, and an extinct civilization coeval with the Pharaohs, or Solomon, the Norse Thorfinn, the Welsh Madoc, or any other impersonation that seems like a tangible reality of the past.

But, after all, perhaps the most interesting aspect in which the view this persistent tendency to counterfeit antiques, and palm off on the American of the nineteenth century, Punic, Hebrew, Runic, and primeval inscriptions of all sorts, is its manifest reproduction among the young communities of the New World of that very same phase of uncritical but zealous devotion to archaic research, which, a century ago in the Mother Country, heralded the development of sound historical and literary criticism, with all the valuable fruits which have resulted from it.

149

CANADIAN LOCAL HISTORY.

[The following "Collections and Recollections" were not designed for the pages of the Canadian Journal; but a desire having been expressed in several quarters that they should appear there, ("reserving all rights," as the English publishing phrase is, we insert them); still fearing that the matters which form their staple will be deemed scarcely worthy of so notable a record. Their perusal, however, may have the effect of suggesting to some of our readers the proprietythe prudence, even-of entrusting to the care of the Editing Committee documents more valuable, that may be in their possession, and narratives of more force, of which they are the depositories, illustrative of the early history of the country, displaying traits in the character of individual worthies, or affording glimpses of society in different localities, while yet our settlements were in their infancy. In that case we shall not regret the publication in these pages of our own trivial notes and reminiscences, as it may lead to the setting apart, permanently, of a few pages in each number of the Journal for the reception and preservation of much peculiar matter which, to the historical investigator hereafter, will be of interest, and occasionally of importance.-ED. CAN. JOUR.]

TORONTO OF OLD:

A SERIES OF COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS.

BY

THE REV. DR.

SCADDING.

I.-PALACE STREET TO THE MARKET-PLACE

In Rome, at the present day, the parts that are the most attractive to the tourist of archæological tastes, are those that are the most desolate; those that, apart from their associations, are the most uninviting. It is the same with many another venerable town of the world beyond the Atlantic, of far less note than the old Imperial capital; with Avignon, for example, with Nismes, and Vienne, in France; with Paris itself, also, to some extent; with Chester, and York, and St. Albans, the Verulam of the Roman period, in England. It is the same with our American towns, wherever any relics of their brief past are extant. Detroit, we remember, had once a quaint, dilapidated, primæval quarter. It is the same with our own Toronto. He that would examine the vestiges of the original settlement, out of which the actual town has grown, must betake himself. in the first instance, to localities deserted now by the footsteps of fashion, and be content to contemplate objects that, to the indifferent eye, will seem commonplace and insignificant. To invest such places and things with any degree of interest will appear difficult. An attempt in that direction may even be pronounced visionary. Nevertheless it is a duty which we owe to our forefathers to take what note we can of the labours of their hands; to forbid, so far as we may, the utter oblivion of their early efforts, and deeds, and sayings, the outcome of their ideas, of their humours and anxieties; to forbid even, so far as we may, the utter oblivion of the form and fashion of their persons. The excavations which they made in the construction of their dwellings, and in their engineering operations, civil and military, were neither deep nor extensive; the materials which they employed were, for the most part, soft and perishable. In a few years all the original edifices of York, the infant Toronto, together with all the primitive delvings and cuttings, will, of necessity, have vanished. Natural decay

will have destroyed some. Winds, fires and floods will have removed others. The rest will be deliberately taken out of the way, or obliterated in the execution of modern improvements, the obsolete and fragile giving way before the commodious and more enduring. At St. Petersburg, we believe, the original log-hut of Peter the Great is preserved to the present day in a casing of stone, with a kind of religious reverence. And in Rome of old, through the influence of a similar sacred regard for the past, the lowly cottage of Romulus was long protected in a similar manner. There are probably no material relics of our founders and forefathers which we should care to invest with a like forced and artificial permanence. But the memory of those relics, and of such associations as may here and there be found to cluster around them, we may think it worth our while to collect and cherish.

Overlooking the harbour, far down in the east, there stands, at the present day, a large structure of gray cut-stone. Its radiating wings, the turret placed at a central point aloft, evidently for the ready oversight of the surrounding premises; the unornamented blank walls, pierced high up in each storey with a row of circular-headed openings, suggestive of shadowy corridors and cells within, all help to give to this pile an unmistakeable prison-aspect.

It was very nearly on the site of this rather hard-featured building that the first Houses of Parliament of Upper Canada were placed-humble but commodious structures of wood, built before the close of the eighteenth century, and destroyed by the incendiary torch of the invader in 1813. "They consisted," as a public letter addressed by the Rev. Dr. Strachan to ex-President Jefferson sets forth, "of two elegant Halls, with convenient offices, for the accommodation of the Legislature and of the Courts of Justice."-"The library and all the papers and records belonging to these institutions were consumed "--the same document continues-" and, at the same time, the Church was robbed, and the Town Library totally pillaged."-The injuries thus inflicted were a few months afterwards avenged by the destruction of the Public Buildings at Washington, by a British force. "We consider "-says an Address of the Legislative Council of Lower Canada to Sir George Provost in 1815-"we consider the destruction of the Public Buildings at Washington as a just retribution for the outrages committed by an American force at the Seat of Government of Upper Canada."

On the same site, succeeded the more conspicuous and more capacious, but still plain and simply cubical brick block erected for Legislative purposes in 1818, and accidentally burned in 1824. The conflagration on this occasion entailed a loss of £2,000, which the Canadian Review of the period, published at Montreal, observes, "in the present state of the finances and debt of the Province, cannot be considered as a trifling affair." The buildings were not ensured. Because they were isolated, and their external walls of incombustible material, it was imagined that the risk from fire was small, overlooking the numerous chances of ignition from within.

It was manifestly expected that hereabout was to be the Westminster of the new capital. It is not improbable that the position at the head, rather than at the entrance of the harbour, was considered eligible as being at once commanding and secure. The appearance of the spot in its primæval condition was doubtless more prepossessing than we can now conceive it ever to have been. Fine groves of forest trees may have given it a sheltered look, and, at the same time, have screened off from the view the adjoining swamps. The language of the early Provincial Gazetteer, published by authority, is as follows: "The Don empties itself into the harbour a little above the Town, running through a marsh, which, when drained, will afford most beautiful and fruitful meadows." In the early Plans, the same sanguine opinion is recorded, in regard to the morasses in this locality. On one, of 1810, now before us, we have the inscription: "Natural Meadow which may be mown.' On another the legend runs "Large Marsh, and will in time make good Meadows." On a third it is "Large Marsh, and Good Grass."—At all events, hereabout it was that York, capital of Upper Canada, began to rise. To the west and north of the site of the Houses of Parliament, the officials of the Government, with merchants and tradesmen, in the usual variety, began to select lots and put up convenient dwellings; whilst close by, at Berkeley Street, or Parliament Street as the southern portion of Berkeley Street was then named, the chief thoroughfare of the Town had its commencing-point. Growing slowly westward from here, King Street developed in its course, in the customary American way, its hotel, its tavern, its boarding-house, its waggon factory, its tin-smith's shop, its bakery, its general stores, its lawyer's offices, its printing office, its places of worship.

Eastward of Berkeley Street, King Street became the Kingston Road, trending slightly to the north, and then proceeding in a straight line to a bridge over the Don. This divergency in the highway caused a number of the lots adjacent on the northern side to be awkwardly bounded at their southern ends by lines that formed, with the sides, alternately obtuse and acute angles, productive of corresponding inconveniences in the shape of buildings afterwards erected, and in the position of some of them, which appeared as if they had disagreed and separated at minute angles, or been jostled slightly out of place by an earthquake-shock.

At the Bridge, the lower Kingston Road, if produced westward in a right line, would have been Queen Street, or Lot Street, as that route would have been named, from the Park-lots projected at an early period on its northern side, had it been deemed proper to clear a passage in that direction through the forest. But some way westward on this line, a ravine was encountered lengthwise, which was held to present great engineering difficulties. A road cut diagonally from the Bridge to the opening of King Street at once avoided this natural impediment, and also led to a point where an easy connection was made with the track for wheels that ran along the shore of the harbour to the Garson. But for the ravine referred to, which now appears to the south of Moss Park, Lot Street, or, which is the same thing, Queen Street, would at an early period have begun to dispute with King Street its claim to be the chief thoroughfare of York.

But to come back to our original unpromising stand-point. Objectionable as the first site of the Legislative Buildings at York may appear to ourselves, and alienated as it now is to lower uses, we cannot but gaze upon it with a certain degree of emotion when we remember that here it was that the first skirmishes took place in the great war of principles which afterwards with such determination and effect was fought out in Canada. Here it was that first loomed up before the minds of our early lawmakers the ecclesiastical question, the educational question, the constitutional question. Here it was that first was heard the open discussion, infantile, indeed, and vague, but pregnant with very weighty results, of topics, social and national, which, at the time, even in the parent state itself, were mastered but by few. Here it was, during a period of twenty-seven years (1797-1824), at each opening and closing of the annual session, amidst the firing of cannon and the commotion of a crowd, the cavalcade drew up that is wont, from the banks of the Thames to the remotest colony of England, to mark the solemn progress of the sovereign or the sovereign's representative, to and from the other Estates assembled in Parliament. Here, amidst such fitting surroundings of state, as the circumstances of the times and the place admitted, came and went personages of eminence, whose names are now familiar in Canadian story: never, indeed, the founder and organizer of Upper Canada, Governor Simcoe himself, in this formal and ceremonious manner; although often must he have visited the spot otherwise, in his personal examinations of every portion of his young capital and its environs. Here, immediately after him, came and went repeatedly, in due succession, President Russell, Governor Hunter, Governor Gore, General Brock, General Sheaffe, Sir Gordon Drummond, Sir Peregrine Maitland. And, while contemplating the scene of our earliest political conflicts; the scene of our earliest known state pageants in these parts, with their modest appliances and accommodations, our minds intuitively recur to a period farther removed still, when under more primitive conditions the Parliament of Upper Canada assembled at Newark, across the Lake. We picture to ourselves the group of seven crown-appointed Councillors and five representatives of the commons, assembled there, with the first Speaker, McDonell of Glengarry; all plain, unassuming, prosaic men, listening, at their first session, to the opening speech of their frank and honoured Governor. We see them adjourning to the open air from their straitened chamber at Navy Hill, and conducting the business of the young Province under the shade of a spreading tree, introducing the English Code and Trial by Jury, decreeing Roads, and prohibiting the spread of Slavery; while a boulder of the drift, lifting itself through the natural turf, serves as a desk for the recording clerk. Below them, in the magnificent estuary of the river Niagara, the waters of all the Upper Lakes are swirling by, not yet recovered from the agonies of the long gorge above, and the leap at Table Rock.-Even here, at the opening and close of this primeval Legislature, some of the decent ceremonial was observed with which, as we have seen, the sadly-inferior site of the west bank of the river Don became afterwards familiar. We learn this from the narrative of the French duke de Liancourt, who affords us

a glimpse of the scene at Newark on the occasion of a Parliament there in 1795. "The whole retinue of the Governor," he says, "consisted in a guard of fifty men of the garrison of the fort. Draped in silk, he entered the Hall with his hat on his head, attended by his adjutant and two secretaries. The two members of the Legislative Council gave, by their speaker, notice of it to the Assembly. Five members of the latter having appeared at the bar, the Governor delivered a speech, modelled after that of the King, on the political affairs of Europe, on the treaty concluded with the United States [the treaty of 1794], which he mentioned in expressions very favourable to the Union; and on the peculiar concerns of Canada" (Travels, i. 258). By the Quebec Act, passed in 1791, it was enacted that the Legislative Council for Upper Canada should consist of not fewer than seven members, and the Assembly of not less than sixteen members, who were to be called together at least once in every year. To account for the smallness of the attendance on the occasion just described, the duke explains that the Governor had deferred the session "on account of the expected arrival of a Chief Justice, who was to come from England; and from a hope that he should be able to acquaint the members with the particulars of the Treaty with the United States. But the harvest had now begun, which, in a higher degree than elsewhere, engages in Canada the public attention, far beyond what state affairs can do. Two members of the Legislative Council were present, instead of seven; no Chief Justice appeared, who was to act as Speaker; instead of sixteen members of the Assembly, five only attended; and this was the whole number that could be collected at this time. The law required a greater number of members for each house, to discuss and determine upon any business; but within two days a year would have expired since the last session. The Governor, therefore, thought it right to open the session, reserving, however, to either house the right of proroguing the sitting, from one day to another, in expectation that the ships from Detroit and Kingston would either bring the members who were yet wanting, or certain intelligence of their not being able to attend."

But again to return to the Houses of Parliament at York.-Extending from the Grounds which surrounded the Buildings, in the east, all the way to the fort at the entrance of the harbour, in the west, there was a succession of fine forest trees, especially oaks; underneath and by the side of which the upper surface of the precipitous but nowhere very elevated cliff was carpeted with thick green-sward, such as is still to be seen between the old and new Garrisons, or at Mississaga Point at Niagara. A fragment, happily preserved, of the ancient bank, is to be seen in the ornamental piece of ground known as the Fair-green; a strip of land first protected by a fence and planted with shrubbery at the instance of Mr. George Monro, when Mayor, who also, in front of his property some distance further on, long guarded from harm a solitary survivor of the primeval grove that once fringed the harbour.

On our first visit to Southampton, many years ago, we remember observing a resemblance between the walk to the river Itchen, shaded by trees and commanding a wide water-view on the south, and the margin of the harbour of York.

In the interval between the points where now Princes Street and Caroline Street descend to the water's edge, was a favorite landing-place for the small craft of the bay-a wide and clean gravelly beach, with a convenient ascent to the cliff above. Here on fine mornings, at the proper seasons, skiffs and canoes, log and birch-bark, were to be seen putting in, weighed heavily down with fish, speared or otherwise taken during the preceding night, in the lake, bay, or neighboring river. Occasionally a huge sturgeon would be landed, one struggle of which might suffice to upset a small boat. Here were to be purchased, in quantities, salmon, pickerell, masquelongue, whitefish and herrings; with the smaller fry of perch, bass and sunfish. Here, too, would be displayed unsightly catfish, suckers, lampreys, and other eels; and sometimes lizards, young alligators for size. Specimens, also, of the curious steel-clad, inflexible, viciouslooking pipe-fish were not uncommon. About the submerged timbers of the wharves this creature was often to be seen,-at one moment stationary and still, like the dragon-fly, or hummingbird poised on the wing, then, like those nervous denizens of the air, giving a sudden dart off to the right or left, without curving its body.

Across the bay, from this landing-place, a little to the eastward, was the narrowest part of the peninsula, a neck of sand destitute of trees, known as the portage or carrying-place, where canoes and small boats were quickly passed to and from the lake.