TORONTO OF OLD. 343 



XVII.— Kma STREET, FROM CAROLINE STREET TO BERKELEY STREET. 



Returning again to King Street : At^tlie corner of Caroline Street, diagonally across from the 

 Cawthra liomestead, was the abode, when ashore, of Capt. Oates, commander of the Duke of 

 Richmond sloop, the fashionable packet plying between Niagara and York. He was nearly 

 connected with the family of President Russell, but curiously obtained no share in the. broad 

 acres which were, in the early day, so plentifully distributed to all comers. By being unluckily 

 out of tlie way, too, at a critical moment subsequently, he missed a bequest at the hands of the 

 sole inheritor of the possessions of his relative. Capt. Oates was a man of dignified bearing, of 

 more than the ordinary height. He had seen service on the ocean as master and owner of a 

 merchantman. His portrait, which is still preserved in Toronto, somewhat resembles that of 

 George IV. — A spot passed, a few moments since, on King Street, is associated with a story 

 jn which the Richmond sloop comes up. It happened that the nuptials of a neighbouring mer- 

 chant had lately taken place. Some youths, employed in an adjoining warehouse or law-office, 

 took it into their heads that a. feu dejoie should be fired on the occasion. To carry out the idea 

 they proceed, under cover of the night, to the Richmond sloop, where she lay frozen in by the 

 Frederic Street wharf, and remove from her deck, without asking leave, a small piece of ord- 

 nance with which siie was provided. They convey it with some difficulty, carriage and all, up 

 into King Street, and place it in front of the bridegroom's house ; run it back, as we have un- 

 derstood, even into the recess underneath the double steps of the porch : when duly ensconced 

 there, as witliin the port of a man-of-war, they contrive to tire it off, decamping, however, im- 

 mediately after the exploit, and leaving behind them the source of the deafening explosion. On 

 the morrow tlie cannon is missed from the sloop, (she was being prepared for the spiring navi- 

 gation) : on instituting an inquiry, Capt. Oates is mysteriously informed tlie lost article is, by 



some means, up somewhere on the premises of Mr. , naming the gentleman who had been 



honoured with the salute, and that if he desired to recover his property he must despatch some 

 men thither to fetch it. — We shall have occasion to refer again to the Richmond, when we come 

 to speak of the early Marine of York Harbour. 



Passing on our way eastward we came immediately, on the north side, to one of the principal 

 hotels of York, a long, white, two-storey wooden building. It was called the Mansion House^ 

 an appropriate name for an inn, when we understand "Mansion" in its proper, but somewhat 

 forgotten sense, as indicating a temporary abode, a place which a man occupies and tlien relin- 

 quishes to a successor. The landlord here for a considerable time was Mr. DePorest. 



We'then arrived at the north-west angle of King and Princes streets, where a second public 

 well (we have already commemorated the first,) was sunk, and provided with a pump in 1824 — 

 for all which the sum of £36 17s. 6d. was paid to John James on the 19th of August in that 

 year. In the advertisements and contractiS connected with this now obliterated public con- 

 venience, Princes Street is correctly printed and written as it here meets tha eye, and not 

 " Princess Street," as the recent corruption is. Let not the record of our early water-works be 

 disdained. Those of the metropolis of the Empire were once on a humble scale. Thus Master 

 John Stow, in his Survey of London, Anno 159S, recordeth that "at the meeting of the corners 

 of the Old Jurie, Milke Street, Lad Lane and Aldermanburie, there was of old time a fair well 

 with two buckets ; of late years," he somewhat pathetically adds, "converted to a pump." 



Just across eastward from the pump was one of the first buildings put up on King Street : it 

 was erected by Mr. Smith, who was the first to take up a building lot, after the laying out or 

 the town-plot. On the opposite side, a few st-'ps further on, was Jordan's — the far-famed 

 "York Hotel" — the hotel 2Mr excellence of the ■■ lace, than which no better could be found at 

 the time in all Upper Canada. The whole edifice has now utterly disappeared. Its foundations 

 giving way, it for a while seemed to be sinking into the earth, and then it partially threatened 

 to topple over into the street. It was of antique style when compared with the Mansion 

 House. It was only a storey-and-a-half high. Along its roof was a row of dormer windows. 

 Specimens of this style of hotel may still be seen in the country -to wns of Lower Canada. When 

 looking in later times at the doorways and windows of the older buildings intended for public 

 and domestic purposes, as also the dimensions of rooms and the proximity of the ceilings to 

 the floors, we might be led for a moment to imagine that the generation of settlers passed away 

 must have been of 'smaller bulk and stature than their descendants. But points especially 



