"As a specimen of the sport," he says, "I will merely give a fact or two of, not unusual success; bearing, however, no proportion to the quantity of game. I have known Mr. Charles Heward, of York," he proceeds to state, "to have shot in one day thirty brace at Chippewa, close to the Falls of Niagara--and I myself," Mr. McGrath continues, "who am far from being a first-rate shot, have frequently brought home from twelve to fourteen brace, my brothers performing their part with equal success." But the younger Messrs. Heward had a field for the exercise of their sportsman skill nearer home than Chippewa. The Island, just across the Bay, where the black-heart plover were said always to arrive on a particular day, the 23rd of May, every year, and the marshes about Ashbridge's bay and York harbour itself, all abounded with wild fowl. Here, loons of a magnificent size used to be seen and heard; and vast flocks of wild geese, passing and re-passing, high in air, in their periodical migrations. The wild swan, too, was an occasional frequenter of the ponds of the Island. [Illustration] [Illustration] XV. KING STREET, FROM CAROLINE STREET TO BERKELEY STREET. Returning again to King Street: At the corner of Caroline Street, diagonally across from the Cawthra homestead, was the abode, when ashore, of Captain Oates, commander of the _Duke of Richmond_ sloop, the fashionable packet plying between Niagara and York. Mr. Oates was nearly connected with the family of President Russell, but curiously obtained no share in the broad acres which were, in the early day, so plentifully distributed to all comers. By being unluckily out of the way, too, at a critical moment, subsequently, he missed a bequest at the hands of the sole inheritor of the possessions of his relative. Capt. Oates was a man of dignified bearing, of more than the ordinary height. He had seen service on the ocean as master and owner of a merchantman. His portrait, which is still preserved in Toronto, somewhat resembles that of George IV.