32 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
heaped in primitive fashion.” The walls of the living room were formed 
of naked logs. In front of a capacious chimney stood a long wooden 
table, flanked with two wooden chairs cut from the forest close by. No 
fauteuil, spring-cushioned, extended its comfortable arms, for the owner 
held all such luxuries in contempt. The interior of the house con- 
tained “several comfortable lodging rooms and one really handsome, 
the dining room.” There was a large kitchen with a tremendously hos- 
pitable chimney, and underground were the cellars for storing wine, 
milk, and provisions. “Around the house stood a vast variety of out- 
buildings, of all imaginable shapes and sizes, and disposed without the 
least regard to order or symmetry.” Behind the house lay “an open 
tract of land, prettily broken and varied, where large flocks of sheep and 
cattle were feeding—the whole inclosed by a beautiful and luxuriant 
woods, through which-ran a little river.’ Near the chateau was an 
orchard ground of the common European fruits in abundance, and a 
garden abounding in roses of different kinds. This owner of a lovely 
estate had neither wife nor children to cheer him in this picturesque 
home of the West, but he was not without abundant company. Mrs. 
Jameson was used “to find groups of strange figures around the door, 
ragged, black-bearded, gaunt, travel-worn, and toil-worn emigrants, 
Irish, Scotch and American who had come to offer themselves as settlers. 
....Qurious and characteristic, and dramatic beyond description were the 
scenes which used to take place between the grand bashaw of the wilder- 
ness and his hungry, importunate clients and petitioners.” Such homes 
as Colonel Talbot’s were common enough in the country. Some of the 
higher class of immigrants, however, made efforts to surround them- 
selves with some of the luxuries of the old world. Mrs. Jameson tells 
us of an old admiral, who had settled in the London district—now the 
most prosperous agricultural part of Ontario—and had the best of society 
in his neighbourhood; “several gentlemen of family, superior education, 
and large capital (among them the brother of an English and the son of 
an Irish peer, a colonel and major in the army) whose estates were in a 
flourishing state.” The Admiral’s residence resembled an “ African 
village, a sort of Timbuctoo,” from the outside, and “a man-of-war’s 
cabin” in the inside. He had begun by erecting a log house, while the 
woods were clearing, and added from time to time a number of others of 
all shapes and sizes, full of a seaman’s contrivances—odd galleries, pas- 
sages, porticos, corridors, saloons, cabins, and cupboards.” The draw- 
ing-room, which occupied an entire building, was “ really a noble room 
with a chimney in which they piled twenty oak logs at once.” The Ad- 
miral’s sister, an accomplished woman, had “recently brought from 
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