TORONTO OP OLD. 361 



The characters in the dramatic jeu d' esprit, from whicli these lines are taken, are the prin. 

 cipal personages of the defeated party, under thinly disguised names, Mr. Justice Clearliead, 

 Mr. John Scott, William Welland, Judge Brock, Christopher, Samuel, Sheriff 'William, as above, 

 and Thomas, &c. — Eosedale is a name of pleasant sound. We are reminded thereby of another 

 of the same genus, but of more recent application in these parts— Hazeldean — the pretty title 

 given by Chief Justice Draper to his rural cottage, which overhangs and looks down upon the 

 same ravine as Rosedale, but on the opposite side. 



The perils and horrors encountered every spring and autumn by travellers and others in their 

 ascent and descent of the precipitous sides of the Rosedale ravine, at the point where the 

 primitive Yonge Street crossed it, were a local proverb and by-word : perils and horro) s rank- 

 ing for enormity with those associated witli the passage of the Rouge, the Credit, the Sixteen, 

 and a long list of other deeply ploughed watercourses intersected of necessity by the two 

 great highways of Upper Canada. The ascent and descent of the gorge here were spoken of 

 collectively as the "Blue Hill." Certain strata of a bluish clay had been remarked at the 

 summit on both sides. The waggon-track passed down and up by two long wearisome and 

 difficult slopes cut in the soil of the steep sides of the lofty banks. After the autumnal rains 

 and during the thaws at the close of winter, the condition of the route here was indescribably 

 bad. At the period referred to, however, the same thing, for many a year, was to be said of 

 every rood of Yonge Street throughout its thirty miles of length. Nor was Yonge Street 

 singular in this respect. All our roads were equally bad at certain seasons every year. We 

 fear we conveyed an impression unfavorable to emigration many years ago, when walking with 

 two or tJiree young English friends across some flat clayey fields between Cambridge and the 

 Gogmagogs. It chanced that the driftways for the farmers' carts — the holls as they are locally 

 called, if we remember rightly — at the sides of the ploughed land were mire from end to end. 

 Under the impulse of the moment, pleased in fact with a reminder of home far-distant, we 

 gXclaimed, " Here are Canadian roads !" The comparison was altogether too graphic ; and 

 our companions could never afterwards be got to entertain satisfactory notions of Canadian 

 civilization. But English roads were not much better a century ago. We made a note once of 

 John Moody's account of Lady Townley's journey with her coach and four and large household 

 to London, from the veritable old-country York, in Sir John Vanbrugh's comedy of the 

 Provoked Husband, so perfect a parallel did it furnish to the traveller's experience here on 

 Touge Street on his way from the Canadian York to the Landing in stage-coach or farmer's 

 ■waggon in the olden time. "Some impish trick or other," said John Moody, " plagued us all 

 the day long. Crack goes one thing : bounce goes another : Woa, says Roger — then sotvse ! we 

 are all set fast in a slough. Wliaw, cries Jliss : scream go the maids : and bawl just as thof 

 they were stuck : and so, mercy on us ! this was the trade from morning to night." The mode 

 of extricating a vehicle from a slough or mudhole when once in, may be gathered from a 

 passage in McTaggart's "Three Years in Canada," ii., 205. The time referred to is 1829: 

 " There are few roads," McTaggart says, " and these are generally excessively bad, and full of 

 mudholes in which if a carriage fall, there is great trouble to get it out again. The mail-coaches 

 or waggons are often in this predicament, when the passengers instantly jump off, and having 

 stripped rails off the fence, they lift it up by sheer force. Coming up brows they sometimes 

 get in ; the horses are then taken out, and yoked to the stern instead of the front ; and it is 

 drawn out backwards." 



The country between York and Lake Huron was, as we have already seen, first explored by 

 Governor Simcoe in person, in 1793. It was also immediately surveyed, and in some measure 

 occupied ; and so early as 1794, we read in a Gazette the following notice : " Surveyor-General's 

 Office, Upper Canada, 15th July, 1794. Notice is hereby given that all persons, who have 

 obtained assignments for land on Dundas Street, leading from the head of Burlington Bay to 

 the upper forks of the River Thames, and on Yonge Street leading from York to Lake Simcoe, 

 that unless a dwelling-house shall be built on every lot under certificate of location, and the 

 same occupied within one year from the date of their respective assignments, such lots will be 

 forfeited on the said Roads. D. W. Smith, Acting Surveyor General." All the conditions 

 required to be fulfilled by the first settlers were these : " They must within the term of two 

 years, clear fit for cultivation and fence, ten acres of the lot obtained ; build a house 16 by 20 

 feet of logs or frame, with a shiugle roof; also cut down all the timber in front of and thg 

 whole width of, the lot (\Yliich ia 20 chains, 133 feet wide), 33 feet of which must bs cleared 



