TORONTO OF OLD. 105 



desolate. It had once been genteel and comfortable ; but was now going to decay. A vista 

 had been opened through the woods towards Lake Ontario ; but the riotous and dangling 

 undergrowth seemed threatening to retake possession from the Colonel, of all that had once 

 been cleared, which was of narrow compass. How could a solitary half-pay officer help him- 

 self," candidly asks Gourlay, "settled down upon a block of land, whose very extent barred 

 out the assistance and convenience of neighbours ? Not a living thing was to be seen around. 

 How different might it be, thought I, were a hundred industrious families compactly settled 

 here out of the redundant population of England ! The road was miserable," he continues ; " a 

 little way beyond the President's house it was lost on a bank of loose gravel flung uij between 

 the contending waters of the lake and the Etobicoke stream." He here went astray. '• It was 

 my anxious wish," he says, " to get through the woods before dusk; but the light was nearly 

 gone before the gravel bank was cleared. There seemed but one path, which took to the left. 

 It led me astray : I was lost : and there was nothing for it but to let my little horse take his 

 own way. Abundant time was affijrded for reflection on the wretched state of property flung 

 away on half-pay officers. Here was the head man of the Province, ' bom to blush unseen,' 

 without even a tolerable bridle-way between him and the capital city, after more than twenty 

 years' possession of his domain. The very gravel-bed which caused me such turmoil might 

 have made a turnpike, but what can be done by a single hand? The President could do little 

 with the axe or wheelbarrow himself; and half-pay could employ but few labourers at 3s. 6d. 

 per day with victuals and drink." He recovers the road at length and then concludes : "After 

 many a weary twist and turn I found myself," he says, " on the banks of the Humber, where 

 there was a house and a boat." In the Gazette and Oracle of Saturday, Oct. 26, 1779, published 

 at York, we have the record of Col. Smith's marriage. We give it as another specimen of the 

 quaint style occasionally adopted at thejeriod in such announcements : "Married last Monday, 

 by the Rev. Mr. Addison, Colonel Smith, of the Queen's Rangers, to the most agreeable and 

 accomplished Miss Mary Clarke." — Col. Smith did something in his day, to improve the breed 

 of liorses in Upper Canada. He exisended considerable sums of money in the importation of 

 choice animals of that species from the United States. 



The house which led us to this notice of President Smith is, as we have said, situated on 

 Richmond Street. On Adelaide Street, immediately south of this house, and also a little west 

 of the Maedonell block, was a residence of mark, erected at an early period by Mr. Hugh 

 Heward, and memorable as having been the abode for a time of the Naval Commissioner or 

 Commodore, Bouchette, who first took the soundings and eonstructod a map of the harbour of 

 York. His portrait is to be seen prefixed to his well-known "British Dominions in North 

 America." The same house was also once occupied by Dr. Stuart, afterwards Archdeacon of 

 Kingston ; and at a later period by Mrs. CaldweU, widow of Dr. Caldwell, connected with the 

 Naval establishment at Penetanguishene. Her sons, John and Leslie, two taU sociable youths, 

 now both deceased, were our classmates at school. We observe in the Oracle of Saturday, May 

 28, 1803, a notice of Mr. Hugh Howard's death in the following terms : " Died lately at Niagara, 

 on his way to Detroit, after a lingering illnass, Mr. Hugh Heward, formerly clerk in the Lieut. 

 Governor's office, and a respectable inhabitant of this town (York)." Just beyond was the 

 abode of Lieut. Col. Foster, long Adjutant General of Militia ; an officer of the antique Welling- 

 ton school, of a fine type, portly in figure, authoritative in air and voice ; in spirit and heart 

 warm and fiank. His son Colley, also we here name, as a congenial and attached schoolboy 

 friend, likewise now deceased, after a brief but not undistinguished career at the Bar. 



A few yards further on was the home of Mr. John Ross, whose ahnost prescriptive right it 

 gradually became, whenever a death occurred in one of the old families, to undertake the 

 funeral obsequies. Few were there of the ancient inhabitants who had not found themselves, 

 at one time or another, wending their way, on a sad errand, to Mr. Ross's doorstep. On his 

 sombre and very unpretending premises were put together the perishable shells in which the 

 mortal remains of a large proportion of the primitive householders of York and their families 

 are now reverting to their original dust. Almost up to the moment of his ovvti summons to 

 depart hence, he continued to ply his customary business, being favoured with an old age 

 unusually green and vigorous, like "the ferryman austere and stern," Charon ; to whom also 

 the "inculta canities" of a plentiful supply of hair and beard, along with a certain staidness. 

 taciturnity and rural homeliness of manner and attire, further suggested a resemblance. 



