TORONTO OF OLD. 573 



flowing past the modem Bradford and Lloydtown. It is at the head of the main stream that 

 the most strildug approximation of the waters of the Humber and Holland rivers is to he seen. 



We arri\'e now at the Upper Landing, the ancient canoe-landing, and we pause for a moment. 

 Here it was the war-parties and hunting-parties emharlced and disembarked, while yet these 

 waters were unploughed by the hea\-y boats of the white man. 



The Iroquois from tlie south-side of Lake Ontario penetrated the well-peopled region of the 

 Hurons by several routes, as we have already intimated : by the great bay of Quintfi highway ; 

 by the trails whose termini on Lake Ontario were near respectively the modern Bowmanville 

 and Port Hope ; and thirdly by a track which we have virtually been following in tliis our long 

 ramble from York ; virtually, we say, for it was to the west of Yoiige Street that the trail ran, 

 following first the valley of the Humber and then that of the main stream of the Holland 

 river. The route which Mr. Holland took when lie penetrated from Toronto Bay to the head 

 vraters of the river which now bears his name, is marked in the great MS, map which he con- 

 structed in 1791. He passed up evidently along the water-course of the Humber, 



"You can pass from Lake Frontenac, i. e., Ontario," Lahontan says (ii. 23), "into Lake 

 Huron by the river Tan-a-ou-at& (the Humber), by a portage of about twenty-four mDls to Lake 

 Toronto, which by a river of the same name empties into Lake Huron," by the Eiver Severn i. e., 

 as we should now speak 



In the pre-historic period, then, hunting-parties or war-parties taking to the water here at 

 the Upper Landing would probably be just about to penetrate the almost insular district, of ' 

 which we have spoken, westward of Lake Simcoe, the Toronto region, the place of concourse, 

 the well-peopled region. But some of them might perhaps be making for the Lake Huron 

 country and North-west generally, by the established trail having its terminus at or near Orillia 

 (to use the modern name). 



In the days of the white man, the old Indian place of embarkation and debarkation on the 

 Holland river, acquired the name of the Upper Canoe-landing ; and hither the smaller craft 

 continued to proceed. 



Vessels of deeper draught lay at the Lower Landing, to which we now move on, about a mile 

 and a half further down the stream. Here the river was about twenty-five yards wide, the 

 banks low and bordered by a woody marsh, in which the tamarac or larch was a conspicuous 

 tree. 



In a cleared space on the right, at the point where Yonge Street struck the stream, there 

 were some long low buildings of log with strong shutters on the windows, usually closed. 

 These were the Government depositories of naval and military stores, and Indian presents, on 

 their way to PeuetanguLshene. The cluster of buildings here was once known as Fort 

 Gwillimbury. Thus we have it written in the old Gazetteer of 1799 : "It is thirty miles from 

 York to Holland river, at the Pine Fort called Gwillimbury, where the road ends. " 



Gait, in his Autobiography, speaks of this sj.iot. He travelled from York to Newmarket in 

 one day. This was in 1827. " Then next morning," he says, " we went forward to a place on 

 the Holland river, called Holland's Landing, an open space which the Indians and fur-traders 

 were in the habit of frequenting. It presented to me," he adds, "something of a Scottish 

 aspect in the style, of the cottages ; but instead of mountains the environs were covered with 

 trees. We embarked at this place." He was on his way to Goderich at the time, via, Penetan- 

 gulshene. 



The liver Holland, at which we have so long been labouring to arrive, had its name from a 

 former surveyor-general of the Province of Quebec, prior to the setting-oflf of the Province of 

 Upper Canada — Major S. Holland. In the Upper Canada Gazette of Feb. 13, 1S02, we have an 

 obituary notice of this official personage. His histoiy also, it will be observed, was mixed up 

 with that of General Wolfe. " Died," the obituary says, " on the 2Sth instant (that is, on the 

 28th of December, 1801, the article being copied from the Quehec Gazette of the 31st of the 

 preceding December), of a lingering illness, which he bore for many years with Christian 

 jiatience and resignation, Major S. Holland. He had been in his time," the brief memoir 

 proceeds to say, " an intrepid, active, and intelligent officer, never making difficulties, however 

 arduous the duty he was employed in. He was an excellent field-engineer, in which capacity 

 he was employed in the year 1758 at the seige of Louisliourg in the detachment of tlic array 

 under General Wolfe, who after by his silencing the batteries that opposed our entrance into 



