In the summer of 1857 occurred the great business panic, which spread ruin and calamity throughout Canada West, caused by the cessation of the vast railway expenditure of preceding years, and by the simultaneous occurrence of a business pressure in the United States. The great house of Duncan Sherman & Co., of New York, through which Mr. Cameron was in the habit of transacting a large exchange business with England, broke down suddenly and unexpectedly. Drafts on London were dishonoured, and Mr. Cameron's bankers there, to protect themselves, sold without notice the securities he had placed in their hands, at a loss to him personally of over a hundred thousand pounds sterling. Mr. Cameron was for a time prostrated by this reverse, but soon rallied his energies. Friends advised him to offer a compromise to his creditors, which would have been gladly accepted; but he refused to do so, saying, he would either pay twenty shillings in the pound or die in the effort. He made the most extraordinary exertions, refusing the highest seats on the judicial bench to work the harder at his profession; toiling day and night to retrieve his fortunes; insuring his life for heavy sums by way of security to his creditors; and felt confident of final success, when in October, 1876, while attending the assize at Orillia, he imprudently refreshed himself after a night's labour in court, by bathing in the cold waters of the Narrows of Lake Couchiching, and contracted a severe cold which laid him on a sick bed, which he never quitted alive. I saw him a day or two before his death, when he spoke of a heavy draft becoming due, for which he had made provision. In this he was disappointed. He tried to leave his bed to rectify the error, but fell back from exhaustion, and died in the struggle--as his friends think--from a broken heart. CHAPTER LX. TORONTO ATHENÆUM.