CHAPTER XXII. A JOURNEY TO TORONTO. To make my narrative intelligible to those who are not familiar with the times of which I am about to write, I must revert briefly to the year 1834. During that year I made my first business visit to Toronto, then newly erected into a city. As the journey may be taken as a fair specimen of our facilities for travelling in those days, I shall describe it. I left our shanty in Sunnidale in the bright early morning, equipped only with an umbrella and a blue bag, such as is usually carried by lawyers, containing some articles of clothing. The first three or four miles of the road lay over felled trees cut into logs, but not hauled out of the way. To step or jump over these logs every few feet may be amusing enough by way of sport, but it becomes not a little tiresome when repeated mile after mile, with scarcely any intermission, and without the stimulus of companionship. After getting into a better cleared road, the chief difficulty lay with the imperfectly "stubbed" underbrush and the frequency of cradle-holes--that is, hollows caused by up-turned roots--in roughly timbered land. This kind of travelling continued till mid-day, when I got a substantial dinner and a boisterous welcome from my old friend Root and his family. He had a pretty little daughter by this time. An hour's rest, and an easy walk of seven miles to Barrie, were pleasant enough, in spite of stumps and hollows. At Barrie I met with more friends, who would have had me remain there for the night; but time was too valuable. So on I trudged, skirting round the sandy beach of beautiful Kempenfeldt Bay, and into the thick dark woods of Innisfil, where the road was a mere brushed track, easily missed in the twilight, and very muddy from recent rains. Making all the expedition in my power, I sped on towards Clement's tavern, then the only hostelry between Barrie and Bradford, and situated close to the height of land whence arise, in a single field, the sources of various streams flowing into the Nottawasaga, the Holland, and the Credit Rivers. But rain came on, and the road became a succession of water-holes so deep that I all but lost my boots, and, moreover, it was so dark that it was impossible to walk along logs laid by the roadside, which was the local custom in daylight.