512 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



leather are turned out per annum. The bark used is hem- 

 lock, and costs two dollars a cord. This employs a great 

 many laborers, and is using up the supply so rapidly, the 

 proprietors contemplate the necessity of removal further 

 into the forest. The machinery of this yard is driven by 

 water, and is all upon the labor-saving principle. The 

 hides are mostly South American, purchased in New 

 York, and all made into good leather, for home consump- 

 tion, at twenty cents a pound. This importation is not 

 because hides cannot be grown in Canada, but because 

 they are not. It is not wonderful that agriculture is in 

 a languid condition here. 



It will give my readers some idea of Canada thistles, 

 if I state to them, that in loading grain in the field, I have 

 seen the blooms flying around the cart so thick, it was 

 difficult to distinguish the men at a few rods distance. 

 It fills the air like coarse flakes of snow. Grain can only 

 be bound by using leather mittens. It grows very short, 

 and is often mown and treated like hay. Corn is planted 

 in June, three feet apart, each way, four or five stalks 

 in the hill ; it grows three or four feet high, and ripens in 

 September, but is a very uncertain crop. Farm houses 

 generally look old and dilapidated, and their occupants 

 complain of inability to make a comfortable living, and 

 often sigh for the more fertile regions of the west. 



The village of Morristown is opposite Brockville. 

 Maitland, a cold looking Canada town, of stone houses, 

 is five miles below; the land around which has a more 

 promising appearance for farming, and shows some fine- 

 looking farms. Prescott, a few miles below, and oppo- 

 site Ogdensburg, bears a strong contrast to that improv- 

 ing place. Indeed, it is not a cheerful sight, to look upon 



of land and conducted a tannery and gristmill at Lyn for many 

 years. In 1853, Richard, the eldest of his ten children, was appar- 

 ently proprietor of the tannery, which is listed as "Coleman R., & 

 Co., sole leather manufacturers and millers, dealers in Spanish and 

 Western hides, &c." Leavitt, Thad W. H., History of Leeds and 

 Greenville, Ontario .... 100-1 (Brockville, Ontario, 1879) ; Mackay, 

 Robert W. Stuart, A Supplement to the Canada Directory, 115 

 (Montreal, 1863). 



