564 CAJTADIA15- LOCAL HIS'fOEY: 



Not that we are to suppose the Hurons employed tlie word Toronto as a proper name. Wd 

 know the aborigines used, for the most part, no proper names of places in our sense of tlic 

 term. Their names of places were simply descriijtions, or allusions to incidents. But the 

 vocable Toronto was ohserved by the white men to be emphatically uttered Ijy their red com' 

 panions, when pointing to the region round Lake Simeoe or when speeding on towards it ; and 

 that vocable was accordingly caught up and linally made use of as a proper local name in the 

 European sense ; just as already the word Canada had been ; from its sound having been 

 continually hoard on the lips of the red men in the Lower St. Lawrence as they pointed in the 

 direction of their huts or villages on the shore, the word Canada meaning simply " huts." 



We may now see how it happened, as the old Gazetteer states and the early French maps 

 shew, that Lake Simeoe was once called Toronto Lake, It was a notable sheet of water in the 

 well-peopled region. We may also see how the Trent communication Was sometimes called the 

 Toronto river. It was a notable water highway from the south-east to the well-peopled region, 

 And for a similar reason the Huniber was likewise called by some the Toronto river. Its valley 

 contained a travelled trail from the south to the same well-peopled region. It may be added 

 that besides the waters and streams stated by the old Gazetteer to have once borne the name of 

 Toronto, old maps and old French books of travel shew that Matchedash bay or Sturgeon bay, 

 as we now call it, was once known as the Bay of Toronto ; and the Severn, as one more Toronto 

 river, these constituting, as is manifest by a glance at the map, a grand line of approach to the 

 well-peopled region trom the North^West. 



And finally, it may now be seen hov/ it happened that the spot on which stands tlie modern 

 capital of Ontario came to acquire the name which It possesses, the sole use of which it has 

 almost monopolized. 



The mouth of the Huniber, or rather a point towards the eastern side of the indentation 

 known as Humber ba3', was the landing-place of hunting-parties, trading»parties, war-parties, 

 on their way to the north — on their way to the well-peopled region in the vicinity of Lake 

 Simeoe. Tliey disembarked here for the tramp to Toronto. It was the Toronto landing-place : 

 the landing-place for Avayfarers bound to Toronto. And graduall5r the starting-place took the 

 name of the goal : the style and title of the terminus ad quem were usurped by the terminus 

 a quo. 



Thus it happened at length also that the stockaded trading-port in the course of time estab- 

 lished here, near the indentation of Humber bay, came to be popularly known as Fort Toronto, 

 although its actual name in the French official records was Fort Eouille — a designation given 

 it in compliment to Antoiile Louis Eouille, Count deJouy, home colonial minister from 1749-54. 



As to the signification which has been assigned to the word Toronto, of " trees rising out of 

 the water " — we think the interpretation has arisen from a misunderstanding of language used 

 by the Indian canoe-men. The Indian canoe^men, in coastmg along the shore of Lake Ontario 

 from the east or west would, we may conceive, point to "trees rising out of the water," 

 the black poplars and pines of the Toronto island or peninsula, as a familiar landmark, 

 shewing the place where they were to disembark for the populous region to the north. The 

 white men, mixing together the facts indicated by the canoe-men's words, made of the exiDres- 

 Sions "trees rising out of the water " and " Toronto," equivalent terms, which they were not 

 and were not inteiided so to be taken. As to the idea to which Capt. Bonnyeastle gave some 

 currency, by recording it in one of his books on Canada— that Toronto or Torento was perhaps 

 tlie name of an Italian engineer concerned in the construction of the Fort^it is sufficient to 

 reply that we happen to know what the official name of the Fort was : it was Fort Eouille, as 

 has just been stated. Sorel, We believe, and Chambly and Schlosser, and possibly other places, 

 derived their names from officers in the French service. But Capt. Bonnycastle's derivation 

 for Toronto has no foundation whatever in the early annals of Canada. It was probably a mere 

 after-dinner conversational conjecture. We meet with the name Toronto rmder several differ- 

 ent forms in the French and English documents, but the variety has evidently arisen from the 

 attempts of Frenchmen and Englishmen to represent, eacli as he best could, a native vocable 

 which had previously not been reduced to writing. The same variety, and from the same 

 cause, occurs in a multitude of other aboriginal terms. 



It did not chance to enter into the poet Longfellow's plan to lay the scene of any portion of 

 bis song of Hiawatha in the Lake Simeoe region» The legends gathered by him 



