Canadians to-day, who are so very generally dependent upon railways, fail to realize what a great service those important and vituperative steamboat captains and their steamers did for us as a people. They honestly deserve pleasant memories at our hands. Any instance of a captain upon Lake Ontario abusing or insulting any female passenger on his ship is yet to be chronicled. Although only two steamers are singled out and mentioned, the list could be well extended to the _Passport_, _Highland Chief_, _America_, and _Princess Royal_. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in those days (previous to the sixties) was a terrible trial for the poor emigrant seeking his fortune in this new Canada of ours. Being confined to such close quarters, and crowded for so many days, it is not at all singular that many diseases followed the emigrants even after leaving the ocean a long way behind. Deadly typhus fever luxuriated amid such surroundings, while cholera was no stranger to the poor voyagers. One midsummer day Captain Kerr came into Port Oshawa, about 1855, at 9 o’clock in the morning, with a boatload of Highland Scotchmen as passengers. At this port 150 of them landed, and their goods and baggage were placed in the general storehouse upon the wharf. In the presence of Mr. Wood, the port wharfinger, and Mr. Mothersill, a gentleman who was looking on, many of these packages, for the first time since leaving the ocean ship, were opened out in the storehouse. In a very few hours from the time when they saw these goods unpacked, strange to relate, both these gentlemen died, while the landed emigrants started to walk northward from Port Oshawa to get to the homes of their relatives in Mariposa in the county of Victoria. To rest over night they entered a large cooper shop then standing on the south side of Oshawa, and remained for the night. Next morning early they left, and the cooper on coming into the shop was horrified to find a dead man lying upon his shavings. During the night the poor fellow, after braving an Atlantic passage of those days, and now near his goal, died and was deserted by his friends. It is only fair to add, however, that his friends were afraid of the contagion. It is said that the peculiar stuffy smell from these emigrants did not leave the storehouse or the cooper shop that whole summer, and only ceased when frosts came in the autumn. Of such sterling stock our Canadian people came. Perhaps no sadder instance can be given than the poor Scotchman lying, without nursing or medical attendance on a heap of cooper’s shavings, among strangers in a strange land, where every one was afraid of him, and shunned him to avoid the fever that raged in his veins. CHAPTER IX. Maple sugar making--The Indian method--“Sugaring-off”--The toothsome “wax”--A yearly season of pleasure.