PAUL KANE, THE CANADIAN ARTIST. 67 



Nevertheless, Mr. Kane remarks, in the preface to Ms Travels, -when 

 referring to his resolution to devote himself to painting a series of 

 studies of North American scenery and Indian life : " The subject 

 was one in which I felt a deep interest in my boyhood. I had been 

 accustomed to see hundreds of Indians about my native village : then 

 Little York, muddy and dirty, just struggling into existence, now 

 the City of Toronto, bursting forth in all its energy and commercial 

 strength." 



The youth of the future artist and traveller was passed amid all the 

 disadvantages pertaining to the infancy of the embryo city. What 

 little education he had was mainly received at the District G-rammar 

 School. There also he obtained whatever instruction he received in 

 the art to which he was to devote his life, from Mr. Drury, a clever 

 but eccentric teacher of drawing. But his early manifestations of an 

 artistic bias were regarded as the mere purposeless amusements of a 

 boy; and his disinclination for the ordinary trading pursuits, which 

 ■alone promised profitable occupation in the young settlement, seemed 

 to unappreciative seniors only a further proof of his distaste for the 

 restraints of steady industry. The circumstances of the community 

 were indeed too frequently inimical to the fostering of settled habits 

 among its youth. Dr. Scadding has remarked, when describing the 

 first years of the District Grammar School, that "during the time 

 of the early settlements in this country, the sons of even the most 

 respectable families were brought into contact with semi-barbarous 

 characters. A sporting ramble through the woods, a fishing excursion 

 on the waters, could not be undertaken without communication with 

 Indians and Half-breeds, and bad specimens of the French voyageur. 

 It was from such sources that a certain idea was derived, which, as we 

 remember, was in great vogue among the more fractious of the lads 

 at the school at York. The proposition circulated about, whenever 

 anything went counter to their notions, always was to run away to the 

 Nor' West ! What that process really involved, or what the Nor' West 

 precisely was, were things vaguely realised. A sort of savage land 

 of Cocagne, a region of perfect freedom among the Indians, was 

 imagined; and to reach it. Lakes Huron and Superior were to be 

 traversed." In this way young Kane's mind was early familiarised 

 with the idea of that expedition across the continent, to ocean shores 

 beyond the Eoeky Mountains, of which he has left so many memorials 

 by means of his facile pencil and pen. 



