TORONTO 01' OLD, 431 



such English roads and their surroundings were wont to be, all snow-clad, at Christmas-tide, 

 from the top of the fast mail to Exeter, for example, in the old coaching days. 



Down tlie river, thus conveniently paved over, every day came a cavalcade of strong sleighs, 

 heavily laden, some with cordwood, some with sawn lumber, some with hay, a whole stack of 

 which at once, sometimes, would seem to be on the move. 



After a light fall of snow in the night, the surface of the frozen stream would be marked all 

 over witli foot-prints innumerable of animals, small and great, that had been early out a-forag- 

 ing : tracks of field-mice, minks and martens, of land-rats, water-rats and muskrats ; of the 

 wild-cat sometimes, and of the fox ; and sometimes of the wolf. Up this valley we have heard 

 at night the howling of the wolf ; and in the snow of the meadows that skirt the stream, we 

 have seen the blood-stained spots where sheep had been worried and killed by that ravenous 

 animal. — In one or two places where the bends of the river touched the inner high bank, and 

 Where diggings had abortively been made with a view to the erection of a factory of some kind 

 beautiful frozen gushes of water from springs in the hill-side were every winter to be seen, 

 looking, at a distance, like small motionless Niagaras. At one sheltered spot, we remember, 

 where a tannery was begun but never finished, solid ice was sometimes to be found far on in 

 the summer. 



In the spring and summer, a pull up the Don, while yet its banks were in their primaeval state , 

 was something to be enjoyed. After passing certain potasheries and distilleries that at an early 

 period were erected a sliort distance northward of the bridge, the meadow land at the base of 

 the hills began to widen out ; and numerous elm trees, very lofty, with gracefully-drooping 

 branches, made their appearance, with other very handsome trees, as tlie lime or basswood, and 

 the sycamore or button-wood. — At a very early period, we have been assured that brigades of 

 North-west Company boats, en route to Lake Huron, used to make their way up the Don as far 

 as the " Porks," by one of which tliey then passed westward towards the track now known as 

 Yonge-street : they there were taken ashore, and carried on trucks to the waters of the Holland 

 river. The help gained by utilizing tliis piece of water-way must have been slight, when the 

 difficulties to be overcome high up the stream are taken into account. We have conversed with 

 an early inhabitant who, at a more recent period, liad seen the North-west Company's boats 

 drawn on trucks by oxen Tip the line of modern Yonge-street, but, in his day, starting, mounted 

 in this manner, from the edge of the bay. In both cases they were shifted across from the Lake 

 into the harbour at the "Carrying-place" — the narrow neck of isthmus a little to the west of 

 the mouth of the Don proper, where the lake has now made a passage. 



We add one more of the spectacles which, in the olden time, gave animation to the scene 

 before us. Along the wmding stream, where in winter the sleighs were to be seen coming down, 

 very summer at night would be observed a succession of moving lights, each repeated in the 

 dark water below. These were the iron cressets, filled with unctuous pine knots all ablaze, 

 suspended from short poles at the bows of the fishermen's skiffs, out in quest of salmon and 

 such other large fish as might be deemed worth a thrust of the long-handled, sharply-barbed 

 trident used in such operations. Before the establishment of mills and factories, many hun- 

 dreds of salmon were annually taken in the Don, as in all the other streams emptying into Lake 

 Ontario. We have ourselves been out on a night-fishing excursion on the Don, when in the 

 course of an hour some twenty hea\'y salmon were speared ; and we have a distinct recollection 

 of the conspicuous appearance of the great fish, as seen by the aid of the blazing "jack" at the 

 bow, nozzling about at the bottom of the stream. 



XXIII.— FROM TYLER'S TO THE BIG BEND. 

 Not far from the spot where, at present, the Don-street bridge crosses the river, on the west 

 side and to the north, lived for a long time a hermit-squatter, named Joseph Tyler, an old New 

 Jersey man, of picturesque aspect. With his rather fine, sharp, shrewd features, set off by an 

 abundance of white hair and beard, he was the counterpart of an Italian artist's stock-model. 

 The mystery attendant on his choice of a life of complete solitude, his careful reserve, his 

 perfect self-resource in regard to domestic matters, and, at the same time, the evident wisdom 

 of liis contrivances and ways, and the propriety and sagacity of his few words, all helped to 

 render him a good specimen in actual life of a secular anchorite. He had been in fact a soldier 



