PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



41 



Colonel Mahlon Burwell, Land Surveyor, By Archibald Blue, Di- 

 rector OF the Bureau of Mines, Toronto. 



(Read April 22nd, 1899). 



I have read all the letters and journals of JIahlou Burwell to be found on the 

 shelves and in the vaults of the Surveys office of the Crown Lands Department, 

 and if in the use of them I were to follow the example of Carlyle in his Oliver- 

 Cromwell I would make a large book. But Burwell has been dead only a little 

 more than fifty years, and his journals and letters have not yet attained a richness 



of age, not even those of ninety years ago. 

 The paper is but slightly yellowed,' the ink is 

 but fointly faded, and the penmanship is neat 

 and flowing. I was going to say that they are 

 as legible as if written yesterday, but that 

 would be an odious comparison in view of the 

 fact that in our time and in our own city 

 good writing, like spelling and reading, has 

 gone out of fashion, if it has not become a lost 

 art. By the end of the twentieth century 

 the old records of the Crown Lands Depart- 

 ment will begin to have value, and if the 

 Burwell papers are preserved until then some 

 writer on Canada in the Nineteenth Century 

 will find them out and make them live again 

 in history. But will they be preserved? 

 A few of the letters and more than one-half 

 of the journals are already missing from their 

 place, as a consequence, I have no doubt, of 

 a lack of motive to keep the records of the 

 office complete, and of the frequent movings 

 of the seat of Government during the years 

 of the ITuion of Upper and Lower Canada — to 

 Kingston, to Montreal, to Toronto, to Quebee 

 and to Ottawa. 



I am to write of ^Mahlon Bur\\ell as a 

 Land Surveyor, and thei'efore I shall say 

 little upon other mattei's in which as a man 

 active in affairs he took some part. The letters and journals indeed deal closely with 

 the business he had in hand, and only at rare intervals is there a gleam of personal 

 or human interest to lighten up the official soberness. I shall make two or three 

 lengthy quotations from the official instructions and from the jounuils. to illustrate 

 the methods of ninety years ago, and how difficulties were faced, and how work was 

 done as the methods required. Those were days of military ideas in Canada, and 

 men of the Civil Service, outside as well as inside, discharged their duties with the 

 courage and i^recision begotten of military discipline. They were not all exemi>lary 

 men in the highest ranks. Some took advantage of their opi)ortunities. seeking 

 especially to enrich themselves by securing valuable tracts of the i)ublic lauds cither 

 as gifts from the Crown's representative whose favorites they were, or by paying for 

 them at a nominal price ; and the Crown's representative himself was not always a 

 man above suspicion. But in the case of Mahlon Burwell I have not discovered the 

 suggestion of an improper act. He appears throughout all tiie papers and lettei-s 

 as a modest, fiiithful servant, and as a dignifu'd and iiighminded man. 



It has been said of Queen Victoria that she reigns but does not govern. This 

 could not be said of the (Joveruors of Canada in the days before responsible 

 government, when George the Third was King. Francis Gore, who was Governor 



Mahlon Burwell. 

 (From an Oil Painting). 



