Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
History
Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2
Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
Canada -- Description and travel; Ontario -- Description and travel
I shall not now enter into any further recapitulation of the journey
from the Falls of Niagara to Toronto, or from Toronto to Kingston,
save to say that some very intelligent citizens of the United States
from Philadelphia were my companions on board the splendid British
mail-packet, City of Toronto. The ex-Mayor of Philadelphia and his two
amiable daughters were of the party, and I much question whether we
could have had a more pleasant voyage than that which terminated on
the seventeenth day of July. I omitted to observe, that voyage from
Buffalo to Toronto was performed in eight hours and a quarter, as
follows: Buffalo to Chippewa, by Emerald steamer, one hour and a half;
Chippewa, by horse-car railway, to Queenston, one hour and a quarter;
Queenston, by Transit steamer, to Toronto, four hours and a half,
including all stoppages and detentions, among which was that of
upwards of an hour at Queenston, waiting for the boat. The distance is
about seventy miles; and the actual rate of going, for none of the
conveyances are very rapid ones, is about ten miles an hour.
Kingston is one hundred and eighty-nine miles from Toronto by land,
and one hundred and eighty by water; and the journey is performed in
the mail-packets, which stop at several places occasionally, in
eighteen hours, or about ten miles an hour, with detention for taking
in wood, the speed averaging eleven.
CHAPTER XVII.
Equipage for a Canadian Gentleman Farmer--Superiority of certain iron
tools made in the United States to English--Prices of Farming
Implements and Stock--Prices of Produce--Local and Municipal
Administration--Courts of Law--Excursion to the River Trent--Bay of
Quint--Prince Edward's Island--Belleville--Political Parsons--A
Democratic Bible needed--Arrogance of American politicians--Trent
Port--Brighton--Murray Canal in embryo--Trent River--Percy and Percy
Landing--Forest Road--A Neck or nothing Leap--Another perilous leap,
and advice about leaping--Life in the Bush exemplified in the History
of a Settler--Seymour West--Prices of Land near the Trent--System of
Barter--Crow Bay--Wild Rice--Healy's Falls--Forsaken Dwellings.
"A truant disposition" took me into another district on my return to
Kingston, as I was thoroughly determined to see a thoroughly new
Canadian settlement, and therefore prepared, by purchasing a new
waggon and a new pair of horses, to start for Seymour West, in the
Newcastle district, some 120 miles north-west, and upwards of twenty
miles in the Bush from the main stream of settlement, where a young
friend was beginning life, for whom the horses, waggon, and sundry
conveniences for farming and a few little luxuries were intended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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