1890-91.] LIEUT. -GOVERNOR SIMCOe's ADMINISTRATION. 285 



king's ships upon the lakes. The battalion raised for this service was to 

 consist of four companies of one hundred rank and file each, with the 

 usual staff and an auxiliary detachment of military artificers. The 

 officers were selected without exception from the half-pay list of Simcoe's 

 disbanded corps, the Queen's Rangers, or ist American Regiment, so 

 justly celebrated during the revolution. A subsistence state for 1792 

 shows that the actual strength of the battalion at the date of its 

 arrival in Canada was fifteen officers and 416 N. C. O. and privates. 



The Reverend Samuel Peters, a distinguished loyalist exile, and the 

 author of a quaint history of Connecticut, well worth reading even now, 

 was recommended for the episcopate of the new Province, and it was 

 suggested that his influence might be used to attract many colonists 

 from the former scene of his labors, which was thought to be overpopu- 

 lated. 



Five subjects were designated by Simcoe as deserving the special 

 attention of the settlers. These were the cultivation of flax and hemp ; 

 supplying the Indians with rum distilled from parsnips ; discovering the 

 best situation for iron forges ; the manufacture of salt from the salt 

 springs ; and lastly, that in founding villages, they should select sites 

 capable of defence by a few men against numbers, particularly in places 

 where they were exposed to "an attack by Indians or North Americans." 



The new Lieutenant-Governor arrived at Quebec early in November, 

 1791, but in consequence of a legal opinion delivered by Chief Justice 

 Smith, that the presence of a majority of his executive council would be 

 necessary to enable him to lawfully assume the administration of the 

 Province, he determined to await the arrival from England of Chief 

 Justice Osgoode and Mr. Peter Russell before proceeding to Upper 

 Canada. Although they were daily expected, he was actually detained 

 in this manner until the following June, when they finally reached 

 Quebec and accompanied him westward. He employed these months 

 of enforced inaction in making himself familiar, as far as lay in his power, 

 with the geography and resources of his government, about which very 

 little was known even there, except what could be gathered from the 

 mouths of hunters or traders. The letters written by him during this 

 period contain a variety of interesting information. A recent survey of 

 the Thames led him to anticipate that that river would furnish an easy 

 route from the head of Lake Ontario to Lake Huron, which would 

 supersede for all military purposes, the ordinary channel by way of the 

 Niagara and Lake Erie. Even then he foretold the future commercial 

 greatness of Toronto. The discovery of an unimportant salt-spring on 

 the river Trent filled him with hopes that the manufacture of salt might 



