On October 5th, 1792, Roger Conant crossed the Niagara River on a flat-bottomed scow ferry, and landed at Newark, then the capital of Upper Canada. Governor Simcoe, who had only been sworn in as Governor a few days previously, came to the wharfside [Illustration: GOVERNOR SIMCOE. (_From the tomb in Exeter Cathedral, England._) (By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.) ] to meet the incoming emigrant, who, with his wife and children, his waggons and his household stuff, had come to make his future home in Upper Canada. “Where do you wish to go?” said the Governor. “I think of following the north shore of the lake eastward till I find a suitable place to settle in, sir.” “But the land up there is not surveyed yet. Should you not prefer to go up to Lake Simcoe? That is where I would like to see you take up your abode.” But Roger Conant shook his head. He had made up his mind to go to the north shore of the lake, eastward, and there he ultimately went. When Governor Simcoe found that he was determined, he told him that when he had fixed on a location he was to blaze the limits of the farm on the lake shore he would like to have. When the survey was completed, he, the Governor, would see that he got his patents for the area so blazed. And in justice to the Governor, the author is pleased here to set down that he faithfully kept his word. The patents for the land blazed by Roger were duly and faithfully made out. But the author must express strong disapproval of his ancestor’s ultra modesty in not blazing at least a township in Durham County to compensate him and his heirs for the 13,000 acres which he had lost in Massachusetts. Roger blazed but some 800 acres. For one thing, blazing involved a large amount of very heavy work. The intervening trees of the unbroken forest had to be cut away. A straight line must be made out from blaze to blaze. Besides, the emigrant to those silent and pathless forests appears to have had small thought of any future value of the land thus acquired, and as he would have said, colloquially, he was not disposed to bother with blazing over eight hundred acres. Realizing the difficulty the incomer would have in getting across the fords at the head of Lake Ontario, between Niagara and Hamilton, Governor Simcoe sent his _aide-de-camp_ to pilot the cavalcade. No waggon road had been constructed along the shore. But the sand was the only obstruction, and after several days’ travel he arrived at Darlington, where was the unbroken forest, diversified only by the many streams and rivers of undulating central Canada. It was a fine landscape that lay around the emigrant, with the divine impress still upon it. The red man had not changed its original features. He had contented himself with the results of the chase among the sombre shades of the forest, or, floating upon the pure blue waters in his birch-bark canoe, he took of the myriads upon myriads of the finny tribe from the cool depths below.