16 The Illumination of Joseph Keeler, Esq. 



Cataraqui with orders of importance to Commander Sheaffe 

 at Niagara. 



Returning at noon toward the village they beheld a veritable 

 rim of orchard-bloom on the hillslopes bordering the glistening 

 basin of the Bay, while the winds wafted the vernal fragrance 

 of the pink-white blossoms, to them a veritable intoxication. 

 At the hotel the old proprietor, noting the name on the register, 

 inquired of Mr. Keeler if he had ever had friends there, and 

 when he answered that it was there that his great-grandfather 

 had settled and he supposed had been buried, Sir Boniface 

 improved on his loquacity, and began to recite the transmitted 

 fame of old Captain Keeler and the old grandmother, whom he 

 had heard of as the great story-teller of the place. 



In the afternoon, Mr. Keeler and Ernest strolled to the cem- 

 etery surrounding the English Church, and there found head- 

 stones with family names of more recent generations of Keelers; 

 but none far enough in the past to locate the first Captain 

 Joseph Keeler and his wife. Still those names were enough 

 to recall forgotten references by his father to the early times 

 on the Bay; while the ample grounds, with their large old- 

 fashioned houses along the village street, were present memorials 

 of a period in the history of the settlement and development of 

 Upper Canada, which till now had been to him as a closed book. 



*Returning to the hotel Mr. Keeler questioned the proprietor 

 and learned the location of the old Keeler homestead; how it 

 was situated west of the village and that the present farmhouse 

 replaced that which had been burned. The grounds, however, 

 still showed the quality of the place, while on the sandy knoll 

 behind was located the old family burying ground still there. 

 Boniface gossiped on, but Mr. Keeler found that with all his talk- 

 ativeness, his information did not reach farther back in accuracy 

 than to those days when his father, who had kept the old road- 

 house in the coaching days, lamented the coming of the railway, 

 so destructive of the stage routes and the vessel trade at the 

 Carrying Place. The next day Mr. Keeler spent with the lad 

 deciphering the few legible headstones left in the family bury- 

 ing plot on the hill; but there were enough in the tangle of 



* Captain Weller actually did own the old road house and stage-coaches. 



