TORONTO OP OLD. 447 



without taking vengeance for the numerous cruelties ; and thus begin, having made use of 

 Captain Huddy as the first object to present to your view ; and further determine to hang man 

 for man while there is a Refugee existing. Up goes Huddy for Philip White !" When the sur- 

 render of Capt. Lippincott was refused by the Royalist authorities, Washington ordered the 

 execution of one officer of equal rank to be selected by lot out of the prisoners in his hands. 

 The lot fell on Capt. Charles Asgill of the Guards, aged only nineteen. He was respited how- 

 ever until the issue of a court-martial, promised to be held on Capt. Lippincott, should be 

 known. The court acquitted ; and Captain Asgill only narrowly escaped the fate of Andre, 

 through prompt intervention on the part of the French Government. Tlie French minister in 

 London, the Count de Vergennes, to whom there had been time for Lady Asgill, the captain's 

 mother, to appeal — received directions to ask his release in the conjoint names of the King and 

 Queen as " a tribute to humanity." Washington thought proper to accede to this request ; but 

 it was not until the following year, when the revolutionary struggle ended, that Asgill and 

 Lippincott were set at liberty. The former lived to succeed to his father's baronetcy and to 

 become a General officer. Colonel O'Hara, of Toronto, remembered dining at a table where a 

 General Sir Charles Asgill was pointed out to him as having been, during the American revolu- 

 tionary war, for a year under sentence of death, condemned by General Washington to be 

 hanged in the place of another person. 



Capt. Lippincott received from the Crown three thousand acres in Upper Canada. He sur- 

 vived until the year IS'26, when, aged 81, and after enjoying half-pay for a period of forty-three 

 years, he expired at the house of his son-in-law in York, Colonel George Taylor Denison, who 

 gave to his own eldest son, Richard Lippincott Denison, Captain Lippincott's name. 



In connexion with Richmond HUl, which now partially covers the fnmts of Captain Cozens' 

 and Captain Lippincott's lots, we subjoin what Captain Bonnycastle said of the condition of 

 Tonge Street hereabout in 1846, in his " Canada and the Canadians." " Behold us at Richmond 

 Hill," he exclaims, " having safely passed the Slough of Despond which the vaunted Tonge 

 Street mud road presents between the celebrated hamlet of St. Albans and the aforesaid hill." 

 And again : "We reached Richmond Hill, seventeen miles from the Landing, at about 8 o'clock 

 {svM. aq moving southward) having made a better day's journey than is usually accomplished 

 on a road wliich will be macadamized some fine day ; — for the Board of Works," he proceeds to 

 inform the reader, "have a Polish engineer hard at work surveying it ; of course, no Canadian 

 was to be found equal to this intricate piece of engineering ; and I saw a variety of sticks stuck 

 up ; but what they meant I cannot guess at. I suppose they were going to grade it, which is 

 the favourite American term." The prejudices of the Englishman and Royal Engineer routinier 

 here betray themselves. The Polish engineer, who was commencing operations on this subdivision 

 of Yonge Street, was Mr. Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski, whose subsequent Canadian career renders 

 it probable that in setting up " the variety of sticks," the meaning of which Capt. Bonnycastle 

 does after all guess at, he understood his business. We are assured that this portion of Yonge 

 Street was in fact conspicuous for the superior excellenee of its finish. Captain Bonnycastle 

 indulges in a further little fling at civilians who presume to undertake engineering duties, in a 

 story which serves to fill a page or two of his book, immediately after the above 

 remarks on Yonge Street, about Richmond Hill. He narrates an incident of his voyage out : — 

 "A Character," he says, " set out from England to try his fortune in Canada. He was convers- 

 ing about prospects in that country, on board the vessel, with a person who knew him, but 

 whom he knew not. ' I have not quite made up my mind,' said the character, ' as to what pur- 

 suit I shall follow in Canada ; but that which brings most grist to the mill will answer best ; 

 and I hear a man may turn his hand to anything there, without the folly of an apprenticeship 

 being necessary ; for if he have only brains, bread will come ; now what do you think would be 

 the best business for my market ?' 'Why,' said the gentleman, after pondering a little, 'I 

 should advise you to try civil engineering ; for they are getting up a Board of Works there, 

 and want that branch of industry very much, for they won't take natives : nothing but foreign- 

 ers and strangers will go down.' 'What is a civil engineer?' said the Character. 'A man 

 always measuring and calculating,' responded his adviser, ' and that will just suit you.' ' So it 

 will,' rejoined Character, and a civil engineer he became accordingly, and a very good one into 

 the bargain, for he had brains, and had used a yard measure all his lifetime." Who "the 

 Character " was, we do not for certain know. 



