The fact that there were large tracts of good land in the portion of Canada accessible to the fugitive was a fortunate circumstance, for the desire to possess and cultivate their own land was wide-spread among the escaped slaves. This eagerness drew many of them into the Canadian wilderness, there to cut out little farms for themselves, and live the life of pioneers. The extensive tract known as the Queen's Bush, lying southwest of Toronto and stretching away to Lake Huron, was early penetrated by refugees. William Jackson, one of the first colored settlers in this region, says that he entered it in 1846, when scarcely any one was to be found there, that other fugitive slaves soon followed in considerable numbers and cleared the land, and that in less than two years as many as fifty families had located there. The land proved to be good, was well timbered with hard wood, and farms of from fifty to a hundred acres in extent were soon put in cultivation.[598] In some other parts of Canada the same tendency to spread into the outlying districts and secure small holdings appeared among the colored people. Mr. Peter Wright, the reeve of the town of Colchester, noted this fact, and attributed the clearance of much land for cultivation to fugitive slaves.[599] That such land did not always remain in the possession of this class of pioneers was due to their ignorance of the forms of conveyancing, and doubtless sometimes to the sharp practices of unscrupulous whites.[600] [598] Drew, _A North-Side View of Slavery_, p. 190. [599] _Ibid._, p. 367. [600] _Ibid._, pp. 367, 369; Austin Steward, _Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman_, p. 272. [Illustration: REV. THEODORE PARKER, A LEADING MEMBER OF THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE OF BOSTON.] [Illustration: COL. T. W. HIGGINSON, ONE OF THE PRIME MOVERS IN THE ATTEMPTED RESCUE OF BURNS.] [Illustration: DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE, who made a valuable report on the life of fugitive settlers in Canada in behalf of the United States Freedman's Inquiry Commission in 1863.] [Illustration: BENJAMIN DREW, who studied the condition of the colored refugees in Canada in 1855, and wrote an interesting book on the subject.] Encouragement was not lacking to induce refugees to take up land; several fugitive aid societies were organized for this purpose, and procured tracts of land and founded colonies upon them. The most important of the colonies thus formed were the Dawn Settlement at Dresden, the Elgin Settlement at Buxton and the Refugees' Home near Windsor.[601] These three communities deserve special consideration, inasmuch as they illustrate an interesting movement in which benevolent persons in Canada, England and the United States coöperated to improve the condition of the refugees. [601] Howe, _Refugees from Slavery in Canada West_, pp. 68, 69.