70 . ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
The hardships which many of the refugees underwent in Canada 
were severe. One of them, writing from Hamilton, Canada West, to 
Fred. Douglass, said: “ ‘Twenty-one years ago I stood on this spot, pen- 
niless, ragged, lonely, homeless, helpless, hungry and forlorn. 
Hamilton was a cold wilderness for the fugitive when I came there.” 
There were at first no schools, no churches and very little preaching 
and other consolations of religion to which the negroes had been accus- 
tomed. Their poverty, their ignorance, their fears, made their condi- 
tion very pitiable. “ Yet,” says Siebert, “it was brightened much by 
the compassionate interest of the Canadian people, who were so tolerant 
as to admit them to a share in the equal rights that could at that time be 
found in America only in the territory of a monarchical government.” 
Generous efforts were soon made to meet their religious needs. As 
early as 1838 a mission was begun among them. Schools were estab- 
lished and other means adopted for the betterment of their social con- 
dition. A manual labour institute was begun at Amherstburgh. They 
were visited by anti-slavery friends from the United States, John Brown, 
Levi Coffin and others. Mr. Coffin, describing their condition, said some 
of these former slaves “owned good farms, and were perhaps worth more 
than their former masters. . . . Many fugitives arrived weary and 
footsore, with their clothing in rags, having been torn by briers and 
bitten by dogs on their way, and when the precious boon of freedom was 
obtained, they found themselves possessed of little else, in a country 
unknown to them and a climate much colder than that to which they 
were accustomed.” Yet they soon earned an honest living, and not a 
few amassed considerable property. 
Mr. Clay remonstrated with the British Government for harbouring 
these refugees: “ They are generally,” he alleged, “ the most worthless of 
their class, and far, therefore, from being an acquisition which the 
British Government can be anxious to make. The sooner, we should 
think, they are gotten rid of the better for Canada.” “ But,” says Pro- 
fessor Siebert, “the Canadians did not at any time adopt this view.” 
The Government gave the exiles welcome and protection and land on 
easy terms. Under the benign influence of Lord Elgin, then Governor- 
General, the Elgin Association was formed for the purpose of settling 
the refugees on Clergy Reserve and Crown lands in the township of 
Raleigh. In the so-called Queen’s Bush, a vast region stretching 
towards Lake Huron, many fugitives hewed out for themselves homes in 
the wilderness. At Dawn, near Dresden, as early as 1842, a negro set- 
tlement was formed. The Revs. Hiram Wilson and Josiah Henson 
organized a training institute. Several hundred acres of land were 
secured on which in ten years there were five hundred settlers, with 
sixty pupils in the school. In other settlements adjacent, says Mr. Hen- 
