the party proceeded to Toronto, where those who went to 

 Wisconsin separated from it and went on west. 



The idea of the party was to form an Icelandic settle- 

 ment, and as there was a large area of "free grant" or home- 

 stead land available in the Muskoka district — some 150 miles 

 north of Toronto — it was decided to locate there. Conse- 

 quently the party left Toronto on Aug. 29th, arriving at Rous- 

 seau — a small village on Lake Rousseau, in the Muskoka dis- 

 trict — on the evening of August 30th. Then men were sent 

 to examine the country to the north, but they were not satis- 

 fied with the locality which they had been specially directed to. 



In the meantime two men of the party examined the land 

 up the Rousseau River, and liked that section much better. 

 They bought two improved farms there, about six miles from 

 Rousseau, and it was decided to form a settlement in that 

 neighborhood. But as it was late in the season when a road 

 had been cut to the locality, only those two who had bought 

 farms moved on their land that fall. The majority of the 

 party not possessing much money, and being disappointed in 

 obtaining steady employment during the winter in the neigh- 

 borhood, some began to scatter to different places to the south 

 to obtain work, and did not come back to go on farms in the 

 settlement selected, quite a few going to Wisconsin the next 

 summer. The consequence was that only about a dozen fam- 

 ilies went on farms in this first Icelandic settlement in Can- 

 ada the next spring, and it never came to much, although a 

 few settlers were added in later years. More have all the 

 time gone away, so at the present there remain only five Ice- 

 landic settlers in the colony, who, however, have done well on 

 their Ontario bush farms. 



Early in the spring of 1874 the writer paid a visit to his 

 countrymen in the vicinity of Rousseau. He induced three 

 of those in Rousseau to go with him to explore the country to 

 the north more thoroughly than they had done. They went 

 first to Parry Sound, then a small town on the Georgian Bay 

 (about 25 miles west from Rousseau), and then they struck 

 north beyond the settlements in the Parry Sound district. 

 Then they went east some 30 miles, through an entirely un- 



