be seen, but usually the rude cabin and small clearing marked the spot where a newly arrived fugitive had begun his home, which in due course was to pass through successive stages until it should become a well-cleared farm, with good buildings and a large stock of animals and tools.[661] [661] _The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West_, pp. 65, 66. See also Drew, _A North-Side View of Slavery_, p. 368. A fact deplored by some friends of the refugees was the inclination to congregate in towns and cities.[662] A committee of investigation appointed by the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada reported in 1852 that, although many fugitives were scattered through the various districts, the larger number was massing in certain localities, those named being Elgin, Dawn and Colchester village settlements, Sandwich, Queen's Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton and St. Catherines, together with the Niagara district and Toronto.[663] According to Josiah Henson the towns about which these people were gathering were Chatham, Riley, Sandwich, Anderton (probably Anderson), Malden, Colchester, Gonfield (doubtless Gosfield), London, Hamilton and the colonies at Dawn and Wilberforce.[664] Other centres undoubtedly existed, though no exhaustive list of such places could be made from the meagre accounts left us. [662] Mitchell, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 128. [663] _First Annual Report of the Society_, pp. 16, 17. [664] _The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself_, p. 100. The movement to the towns was natural, for friends and employment were more easily to be found there than elsewhere. Certain parts or quarters of the towns rapidly filled up with the negroes, and the bonds of race and sympathy came into full play, causing constant accretions of new settlers. This was especially true of Fort Malden or Amherstburg, for years the principal port of entry for fugitives landing from the Michigan and Ohio borders. The result in this and similar cases was unsatisfactory; the people seemed not to do as well as in other places.[665] In Hamilton and Toronto, we are told, the dwellings of the blacks were scattered among those of the whites, instead of being crowded together in a single suburban locality more or less distinct from the city of which it formed a part.[666] However, local conditions existing in Toronto, such as rent charges, tended to confine the colored people to the northwest section of the city.[667]