1890-91.] LIEUT. -GOVERNOR SIMCOE's ADMINISTRATION. 293 



During the summer, surveys of the river Thames and the harbours 

 of Toronto and Long Point were completed. Simcoe still intended to 

 fix the capital at the place on which he had bestowed the name of New 

 London and to remove the naval stations from Detroit and Kingston to 

 those new ports as soon as possible. He also settled all doubts as to 

 the ownership of the lands bordering on Lake Erie by a new treaty with 

 the Mississauga Indians. He then urged that the regiments stationed 

 in the barrier forts should be at once completed to their full strength to 

 enable him to occupy all three points with a sufficient garrison, but Lord 

 Dorchester peremptorily declined to comply with this request. 



The road from the head of Lake Ontario to Oxford where boat 

 navigation of the Thames began had been got well under way by the 

 Queen's Rangers and the headquarters of the battalion, owing to the 

 unhealthy state of the cantonments at Queenston, was removed to 

 Toronto where a barracks and blockhouse were commenced. 



In October Simcoe personally explored the trail from Lake Ontario to 

 Lake Huron and visited the newly discovered harbor of Penetanguishene 

 with which he was delighted. 



The prevalence of sickness in the Genesee country checked immigra- 

 tion into the province from the United States, although numbers still 

 continued to come in, and the Governor recorded with pleasure the 

 arrival of a party of loyalists from North Carolina who first learned 

 that the King still had possessions in North America after reaching the 

 Genesee. 



Seemingly interminable negotiations with the United States and the 

 Western Indians consumed much of his time, and a singular and 

 embarrassing divergence of opinion on almost every conceivable subject 

 became apparent in his correspondence with Lord Dorchester, who still 

 exercised supreme authority in military affairs and all matters connected 

 with the Indian department. 



In a despatch dated in February, 1794, Simcoe briefly described the 

 condition of the western part of his province. On the Bay of Quinte, 

 there was a flourishing and populous settlement of Loyalists. Thence 

 westward to Toronto, the north shore of Lake Ontario had scarcely 

 begun to be inhabited and a strip of thirty-six miles of Indian lands 

 separated the small new colony at York from Burlington Bay when the 

 Niagara settlement began. The latter he styled the " bulwark of Upper 

 Canada." As yet no lands had been granted west of Fort Erie as he 

 thought it prudent to occupy Long Point with troops before extend- 

 ing the settlement in. that direction. At Detroit the principal settle- 



