THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES 0-' fc '' The Valley of the Humber THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER 1615 - 1913 By K. M. LIZARS Joint Author with R. Lizars of "In the Days of the Canada Company, " Humours of '37," " Committed to His Charge," etc. TORONTO : WILLIAM BRIGGS 1913 Copyright, Canada, 1913, by K. M. L.IZARS F 105*1 PREFACE ONE hundred and eight years ago Mr. D'Arcy Boulton put into print his opinion that no period in the history of our own country can be considered uninteresting. Now that the wash of haste and the sponge of materialism are wiping many lines off our first pages, it behooves us to dig, and to dig quickly. Miss Marjory MacMurchy pertinently asks, in one of her reviews, " Why make a little book if you do not take a few hours to do it?" In preparing a little book of condensation a great many hours can be consumed; and in this sketch of a small tract which has hitherto been not much suspected of owning enough warp or woof out of which one could weave a fabric, a chief hope is that the future historian may find some portions of his work made easier. To gather, condense, and again sift, to reconsider translations and intermediate synopses, is a delightful occupation known to the initiated; there is a pleasant field waiting for the worker who has ability to develop it; and an earnest cartographer might even make a valuable history that would be unburdened by para- graphs. Mr. Peter Kalm, a learned Gentleman of Sweden who 'visited Canada in 1750, asks to be excused if no extrava- gant wonders are related by him; he could not make nature otherwise than he found it, and he chose that in time to come his readers would say he related things as they were and that all was found to agree with his descrip- tions, not esteeming him a false relater. So also it is my business to repeat or copy, not to edit ; and to those of my readers who possess the historic sense it will appear fitting that certain orthography is retained according to the time and the whim of my principals, and that it is not censored out of existence. in iv PREFACE George Sand apologizes for subscribing to the patri- archal fashion of prefaces; and one of the wittiest of modern tramps pokes gentle fun at that fashion in Rabe- laisian diction. No notes of thanks for help received, from him ; the helper does not want them, and the reader doesn't care. But I cannot emulate my betters; I must give thanks. Of a certain French village that delightful tramp says that when the land-folk cannot discover folk-lore they enrich their beloved homes by inventing it. The kind folk who have helped me with many inventions come first in my list, and to them I give thanks. The maps which accompany this letter-press are in part provided by the courtesy of the Crown Lands Department and the heads of the Surveys Branch for Ontario; some I owe to Dr. Fraser, Provincial Archivist ; and some, with many other debts, to Mr. Pardoe, Parliamentary Librarian. The unrestricted use allowed me by Professor Watson Bain of his father's rare library was a continuation of Dr. James Bain's kindness extending over many years; and some of my copies, with the Jameson sketches, come from that collection. But the largest proportion, either used herein or provided for my reference portfolio, have come to me through the kindness of Dr. Doughty, Dominion Archivist. To him, and to Mr. H. E. Holmden, who spared me many hours of expert help, I am in large debt; and I have to thank Mr. Parker, the head of the Manuscript Room, for the use of a number of valuable documents. The ladies of our Public Reference Library have made my research there pleasant; and to Miss Staton I am again obliged, as in the old days under Dr. Bain. Through the permission obtained for me by the lib- rarian-in-charge at the Canadian Institute I have had the advantage of reading papers of great use to me in my search; and in the lists of authorities given for the state- ments contained in each section those Papers and Trans- actions and the copies of the Institute Journal lent me by friends have been acknowledged. PREFACE v Mr. H. Phillips, of the Lambton General Stores, has been kind enough to lend me the beautiful photograph of the channel above the Lambtou mill, facing page 112. My sketch owes much originally to Dr. A. H. U. Col- quhoun, and afterwards to Dr. Burwash, Dr. J. H. Coyne, Dr. G. H. Needier, and Dr. A. Cosens ; and a patient, long- tried man, Mr. E. S. Caswell, has again come to my assist- ance. Other aid is acknowledged in the body of the book. I do not mean that these names conclude the list of men and women who have put me in the way of acquiring bits of history, and to each and all I offer my sincere apprecia- tion. This little tract by Brule's pathway to the Lake, this Humber of St. John, must have somewhere, perhaps in boxes of letters in garrets, much material for a better his- tory than an outsider can hint at concerning later days; and perhaps an insider will yet write all that should be written. The first step has been taken in the saving of some part of the beauty. When indiscriminate building was imminent and the manufacturer went a-site-seeing, there arose a small band of enthusiasts who mingled their money with their faith, who contrived to buy and to plan, and who had strength in sitting still. A peculiar admix- ture of romance with their grasp of facts and potentialities made the little Company of Associates a target for many shots; but the immediate development and the apparently inevitable future of their area are proofs that these men have given Toronto a suburb of which Ontario must needs be proud. To the unthinking, to the underdone, to the ignorant in general, a compilation is dull reading, a thing of shreds of paper and patches of paste, snippets only. I don't mean that this compilation will not be read by some such people. But always there are others; and to those others I would appeal. The parts contain the whole; and the gathering of material for any compilation, however so humble, teaches one that the parts are sometimes few or sometimes not accepted seriously and that the history of Ontario may vi PREFACE never be a whole. This generation is passing; and the coming one will have to dig deeper still to find all that may yet be written of our beginnings. Dig, chorograph; monograph, paragraph; compile, compile, and again com- pile. Paragraph your findings, monograph your district; and in the future other searchers will arise and bless your industry. TORONTO, September 9, 1913. CONTENTS PREFACE iii I. DISCOVERY 1 II. THE FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBER . . 3 III. OF CARTOGRAPHY 11 IV. LA SALLE 20 V. MISSION, FORT AND LOG HOUSE .... 28 VI. THE HUMBER OF ST. JOHN .... 36 VII. THE LAKE SHORE EOAD 49 VIII. OF MILLSEATS, MILLS AND MILLERS ... 67 IX. FROM SCARLETT PLAINS TO A MODERN CLUB . 83 X. CARIOLING 89 XI. OF INDIANS 94 XII. OF SALMON; AND FISH STORIES, MOSTLY TRUE 113 XIII. FORMATION, FAUNA, FLORA .... 127 XIV. THE CHURCH ON THE HILL .... 143 XV. OF TRANSITIONS AND ENTHUSIASTS . . . 147 % AUTHORITIES CITED 16a PAGE BY BRUL: LAKE ONTARIO WAS DISCOVERED; AND BY HIM THE HTJMBEB WAS USED AS His PATHWAY TO REACH IT 9 THE CORONELLI AND RAFFEIX MAPS GlVE THE HUMBER PORTAGE . 20 IN LA SALLE'S TIME TEIAIAGON, AT THE MOUTH OF THE HUMBER, WAS COUNTED A DAY'S JOURNEY FROM LAC DE TARONTO ... 23 THE SECOND BEND IN THE RIVER, ON THE WAY FROM TOIOIAGON TO MlSSILIMACKINAK 26 THE WORD TORONTO FINALLY RESTED AT THE LANDING AND THE MOUTH OF THE HUMBER 38 THE CARRYING-PLACE MENTIONED BY BENJAMIN FROBISHER IN 1785 43 IN THE EARLY FIELD BOOKS AND DIARIES ST. JOHN is THE HOST OF ALL PARTIES AS THEY LEAVE FOR OR RETURN FROM THE NORTH 45 " THE TORONTO RIVER, SOMETIMES CALLED ST. JOHN'S CREEK, NOW THE HUMBER" 48 ST. JOHN'S WAS THE STARTING-POINT FOR A TOUR OF EXPLOBATION . 50 WHERE THE TORONTO RIVER AND ST. JOHN'S CREEK ARE THE HUMBER, AND WHERE THE KINGSWAY AND THE OLD MILL ARE FORE- SHADOWED 55 HUMBER BAY AND MRS. JAMESON IN JANUARY, 1837 . . . .61 WHILE MRS. JAMESON WAS FORETELLING THE NEED OF A WALL, SHE WAS ALSO SKETCHING THE WEAK PARAPET AT THE MOUTH OF THE HUMBER 64 EXTRACT FROM A COPY IN THE DOMINION ARCHIVES OF A D. W. SMYTH MAP PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK IN 1813 .... 70 " THAT VOICE OF UNPRETENDING HARMONY " . . 73 THE LAND THAT WAS CALLED THE GARDEN OF EDEN .... 76 THE PRESENT ASPECT OF " THE NEAT WHITE FRAME MANSION " OF 1840 . . . . . .80 HOWLAND AND ELLIOTT'S, THE MILL THAT IN WHEAT-TEAMING DAYS WAS SPOKEN OF AS " THE HUMBER " 83 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE FROM A MAP INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL OF HALIFAX AND THE OTHER RIGHT HONORABLE. THE LORDS COM- MISSIONERS FOR TRADE AND PLANTATIONS 90 AN EXTRACT FROM AN UNSIGNED MAP MADE FROM SURVEYS BETWEEN THE YEARS 1784-1790 . 101 " YOUR RED CHILDREN ONLY ASK You TO CAUSK LAWS TO BE MADE TO KEEP THESE BAD MEN AWAY FROM OUR FISHERY " . . 104 WHEN THE MILLS AT LAMBTON WERE YOUNG, INDIANS WOULD SHOOT THE DAM ON THEIR WAY DOWN TO SPEAR SALMON . . . 112 SECTION AT HUMBER BAY 131 NOT ONLY DID MRS. CHAMBERLIN FIND BY THE HUMBER MOST OF THE ORIGINALS FOR HER PAINTINGS, BUT THE GREATER NUMBER CAME FROM BABY POINT 138 FROM " THE MAP THAT WAS PURELY IDEAL," BY GOTHER MANN; WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF THE HARBOUR SHORE ADDED FROM A COLLINS PLAN . . . 149 A RAILWAY BRIDGE THAT DOES NOT DEFACE . 152 The Valley of the Humber The Valley of the Humber i. DISCOVERY. WITHIN the last few years the Ancient and Royal Game has brought the land called Humber Flats within the reach of a large membership. The beauty of the place is known to many men and women who have been guests from remote countries or from our own Provinces; below the sharp slope from the Club verandah, in the bottom of the cup, the links stretch into distance ; and in the leafy month the little river and Black Creek sing their quiet tune. On one still day a guest stood looking at the view, with eyes fresh from the glories of the Fraser and the Thompson. There was a world of disappointment in the tone : " And that is the Humber !" Its quiet reaches, its gently cut lines of former banks, its English beauty, gave no hint of the story it could tell. For in the story of the Humber is the discovery of Lake Ontario. For the historical birthday of our river, and the romance and tragedy of an explorer's life, we must look to that pioneer of pioneers, the interpreter Etienne Brule, the youth who combined French enthusiasm, flawless cour- age and Indian tenacity with apparently a total absence of self-seeking in all his motives. By him Lake Ontario was discovered; and by him the Humber was used as his pathway to reach it. The northern shore was not the most interesting to French explorers. For years the ordinary reader accepted the bare statement that Ontario was the second great lake to be seen by the French, and that Champlain had caught sight of its eastern end in the autumn of 1615. But Cham- 1 2 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER plain had arrived there by the arduous route of the north- ern water-chains, and mention of his young interpreter is incidental. Eecords of absorbing interest on the explora- tion of the country have been left by those who took a greater or lesser part in it, and each year brings out some new discovery in direct or collateral evidence. To the French this country owes two supreme debts: one, for the single purpose of their explorers, whether from motives of good or ill; the other, for the maps and narratives left by the missionaries, whose labours and actions and selfless motive will be their monument for- ever. The conventional Jesuit is a familiar figure, repel- lent to the Protestant mind; but in missionary work and self-sacrifice, history can hardly show his peer. It is diffi- cult to know to which of the three, Franciscan, Sulpitian or Jesuit, belongs the chief place in the missionary Orders. To spread the Gospel to the glory of God, and to enlarge the possessions of the sovereign, left little chance for thought of self. The inevitable human rivalries between priest and adventurer or between priest and priest, do not cloud their character for work as we have to trace it; and the Humber shares in the general debt to their labours. But in all these records the sentences anent the explorer with whom we are most concerned were for a long time apparently few and scattered; and Butterfield, the his- torian who felt that he had a commission to construct Brule's historical tree, had to dig deep to find the roots that had thrown out the few branches. Butterfield's book has simplified and condensed a vague knowledge of the discovery of the lake itself and our portion of the north shore in particular, and the amplified history of the unwitting explorer is a fascinating one. II. THE FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBER. A CANADIAN historian has very properly put it that no one can know all the history of all his country or of all his Province; but an intelligent person will wish to know at least the tracings of beginnings. With Cartier the reachings out after a vague w r est took a crystallized form. With him began the fever for the discovery of mines and the sources of the St. Lawrence. He was told of the river and large lakes beyond Hochelaga, and " then is found a fresh water sea, of which no one has seen the end ;" and by 1541 he had drawn a map showing " all the river of Canada," including the Great Lake. This map disappeared; but those of the Upper St. Lawrence until 1612 are based upon his narrative and possibly the knowledge of his map. In March, '1603, Cartier's great successor, the founder of New France, sailed on the first of his several voyages to the country in which he was to play so great a part. In June he made a leisurely effort west on the river, from Tadoussac, his mind full of former travellers' tales and the stories lately given him by the Indians of the large waters beyond. A river, and lesser lakes, league on league, opened into a lake of indefinite size, meaning Lake Huron ; but the rapids checked this first effort, and in three weeks he was again in Tadoussac. This man, Samuel de Cham- plain, was the master mind in French exploration and colonization for thirty- two years, and to his qualifications as a captain in the Marine and Geographer to the King we ow r e his maps and his " unparalleled journals." By the summer of 1610 he knew the full value of a European as an interpreter, and wisely entered into an agreement with the Indians to effect an exchange in young men, actually hostages. This, as a beginning, was success- 3 4 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER ful, and Brule was an adept in learning the savage life. But the next young man deposited with the Indians is described by Champlain as the most impudent liar that has been seen for a long time. This Nicholas Vignau, instead of becoming an explorer or useful as an interpreter, was an unscrupulous deceiver. Of Hennepin in after years it was said that the Canadians gave him the name Le Grand Menteur, one who wrote of what he saw in places he never was ; but beside Vignau he was commonplace. Champlain resolved to find Cathay, the land of spicery ; and his morti- fying experiences in 1612 caused by the romancer Vignau were in part the reason of his cool reception of the result of Brule's travels in 1615. The Indians repeated to him what Cartier had already recorded, but they varied the tale to suit the occasion of each day, and all the accounts became confused and incon- sistent, until the " Great Lake " was applied indiscrimin- ately to all the great waters of hearsay in the chain. When Brul6 came back in 1611 from his year with the Algonquin chief, Yroquet, he told Champlain of what he had seen and gave minute details of all that he had heard; and Cham- plain, absorbing statements and suppositions alike, has let the influences of the young man's first travels be seen in his maps. One principal reason why so few historians before Butterfield have referred to Brule in his visits to unex- plored regions, is the very brief mention usually made of him by the early writers who have given him any place at all. When he is mentioned it is merely incidentally, and usually with a vagueness that has repelled attention. It is, therefore, not a matter of wonder to Butterfield that the three or four modern authors who have recorded any part of his life have expressed themselves with poverty and caution. That earnest historian claims originality for his narrative on the ground that, before it, Brule" had not, except in one instance, been credited with being the first to reach any of the countries, lakes or rivers of which he was the real discoverer or explorer. The man himself wrote nothing. Champlain, Sagard and Le Caron have FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBEK 5 made use of, or set down, his verbal recitals ; but they have not done so in a manner to awaken at once the thought that they border on the marvellous. Butterfield proves that his research has been exhaust- ive, and he presents his narrative in a lucid,- comprehensive form, supporting his statements by indisputable proof. Brute's early years among the " Good Iroquois," that mis- nomer for the Hurons of the Lake Huron and Georgian Bay district, are shown to be almost as interesting as his journey later towards the country of the real Iroquois. " What this daring Frenchman accomplished has not hitherto been given in detail by any historian. Even Parkman forgets the journey of Champlain's ' servant ' in his heading of Chapter XIII. of his ' Pioneers of France in the New World.' As Father Le Caron and his French escort preceded Champlain and his two white companions some days in reaching, in 1615, Lake Huron, the first- mentioned persons would be entitled to the honour of having been its discoverers, had they not been preceded themselves by Brule and another." Lescarbot in writing of Cartier and Champlain deals many little thrusts at the latter, in revenge for slights mostly fanciful it is true but opening the question whether so great a man could have been capable of even a little jealousy towards the " young lad " who had done so great a labour. Champlain the large-hearted was also human. A pioneer of the St. Lawrence who had already seen the West Indies, Vera Cruz, the City of Mexico, and who had suggested the Panama Canal, could not push into prominence a youthful interpreter who had all unwittingly made a brilliant discovery, and who, moreover, had stolen his master's thunder by one small month. Champlain was original in the uses to which he put Brul6 and hoped to put Vignau and others; but the actual exchange had been anticipated in a sense one hundred years earlier, when a mariner from Dieppe brought home the first speci- mens of the American Indian. Although Champlain avoids mention of him by name, calls him his servant or the young man, he describes fully 6 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER the proposal of exchange, Brule's alacrity in going with the Algonquin Captain Yroquet, and his own hope that the young man would learn the language so fully that he should also learn the country and be able to give in detail information of the inland seas and the great copper mine. Brule, not Nicolet in 1634, first saw Lake Huron; no white man before Brule had seen Georgian Bay, the copper mines, or the Sault of Ste. Marie. He was the pioneer of the Ottawa and of our Province of Ontario and the coun- tries of the Hurons and the Neutrals; he was the first in time in the Upper St. Lawrence, and one of the first in I performance. It was he who destroyed Champlain's fondest expectation; for the hoped-for North Sea, Lake Superior, was fresh water. And in September, 1615,, " at the mouth of the Humber, Brule" first saw Ontario's broad expanse." Two years in a century are but two drops in Time's bucket, and it is fitting enough to write now of the ter- centenary of the day the first white man brought his burden to the Humber. Three centuries ago, August 12, 1615, Father Le Caron, the great Franciscan, held his first Mass in the Huron country almost directly above the Humber, and in his congregation was Champlain, with his interpreter, Brule". They had visited four of the Huron villages before reaching the town of Carhagouha (in the present town- ship of Tiny) a place fortified with a triple palisade of wood thirty-five feet in height. Here they found the missionary priest, who had preceded them by but a few days and who was full of joy and astonishment at their unexpected arrival. The good father, intent on his own work, formally erected a cross as the symbol of it, and celebrated the first Mass in what is now Ontario. The scene can easily be pictured, the devout priest, the hand- some figure of Champlain and the lithe one of the young interpreter, the kneeling worshippers of their little band of soldiers and followers, and squatting near them the painted Hurons, silent, bewildered, and probably contemp- tuous. Two days later, Champlain and ten men began FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBER 7 their journey towards Lake Ontario, via Lake Siracoe, Rice Lake and the Trent, reaching the Great Lake in October. It had been decided by Champlain and his Indian allies to send Brule with twelve Indians to those tribes of the waters of the Susquehanna who were expected to give five hundred men in the war against the Iroquois. Brule's mission was to arrange for the junction of the forces, and it is the first portion of his trip that is our concern. He set out on the eighth of September from the Narrows of Lake Simcoe, following the waters of Lake Simcoe until his gropings in the little watershed farther south dis- covered a small stream, now crossed by Yonge Street. A little farther on he could have found a swale or shallow morass. The stream was the infant Humber, while the morass was a feeder to the east branch of the Holland. It is at the head of the main stream of the Holland, lying to the west, that the most striking advance between the waters of the two rivers is to be seen. In the time of La Salle we hear much of missions and routes ; but it is believed that earlier still the course along the north shore to the mouth of the Humber was a well- travelled one. The Humber, Holland, Lake Simcoe, then down the Severn to Georgian Bay was an early track ; but Indians, and little-known fur traders who perhaps had never heard of the lake now Simcoe, went by the Humber to Nottawasaga. Brule's tortures at the hands of the tribes he set forth to seek by the Susquehanna and the scarred appearance he presented on his return, have led some writers to sug- gest that his name was derived from the result of his life ; but there is reason to suppose that it was originally Brule. Any adventurer in those days might easily have earned such a surname. This journey south from the country of the Hurons by the Holland and Humber was an important one in subsequent historical and carto- graphical mention; but Parknian dismisses it with a few words on the mere fact that the party, crossing Lake 8 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEK Ontario, pushed forward with all speed, and gives no hint as to how they reached the Lake before crossing it. Our highway was an easy one and well known to the Hurons. A little later it was frequently travelled in the journey to the St. Lawrence, covering but ten days, and there are written records as early as 1632 that the Hurons told the French it was but a ten days' journey by that route to the carrying-place on the St. Lawrence. BruM and his twelve braves felt their way towards the head of the great lake instead of going towards its outlet, for two good reasons; one, that they thought they would save time; and the second, that they wished to avoid a difficult and very dangerous route through the heart of the Iroquois country. Coasting along the Lake, the party reached the mouth of the Niagara ; and from there onward until he reached the Susquehanna, and until he began his effort in April, 1616, to regain the St. Lawrence, his life was in his hand. Perils by land and water, torture, miraculous escapes from the Carantouannais (Andastes) to whom he had carried Champlain's message, he counted as nothing ; nor was he daunted by his master's cool recep- tion of his faithfulness. Brule's usefulness is receiving a tardy recognition, and his truthfulness has been proved by sifted evidence. Brebeuf and Sagard speak well of " poor Brule," and the views of others of their kind may be accepted rather than those of the French of the time, who accepted the Huron statement that because he had left his own nation and gone over to the English his murder was justified. The invective indulged in in Champlain's edition of 1632 was written, not by Champlain himself, but by the alien hand that compiled that book. The interpreter- explorer's historian proves by all authorities who bear investigation that Brule's tale is to be believed; and that " It is quite inconceivable that by selling himself to the English in 1629 it could affect his narrative, as to its reliability, in 1618." No Frenchman of any age, surrounded by the romantic unknown, can be commonplace; and Brul6 was a half- FIRST WHITE MAN ON THE HUMBER 9 naturalized Indian with, possibly, some of his tribe's power of flowers of speech and imagery. He must have stopped at the point for long enough to listen to the waves that out of a great deep came stealing forth in a quiet hour; or he watched the long lake before him lengthen out its hoary line. ; To bear messages and thus explore was his profession; seeking adventure was his choice. But with that Mer Douce before him and the little river at his back, he, a Frenchman, surely felt the quickenings of the poet of rivers and lakes. The great and the terrible are easily found in Canada, and there are word painters to give them to us ; but the reaches of the Humber are still looking for their Wordsworth. In the exordium of the Bookseller to the Reader of La Salle's successes and trials, are sentences that may apply to both these explorers of the Humber. " In acknowledgment therefore of the Service done us by these Illustrious Adventurers, and to make them sort of Amends for their Sufferings, let us transmit their Names to Posterity in our Writings; let us applaud their Actions when we read them, and let us commend their Relations. This, here, most certainly deserves to be read and com- mended, for it is Curious, Extraordinary, and Tragical. It is also ingaging at this Conjuncture, when there is a design of making Settlements in those Countries, the Con- sequence whereof may be most Honourable and Advan- tageous to the Nation." Brule's appetite for aboriginal life was unappeasable; and through it, his chief incentive during his life, came his discoveries and also his end. He journeyed much; but he could not keep away from the Hurons. He was with them again in 1627, and returned for the last time in 1632. He had piloted the English to Quebec in 1629 and served them during the occupation of Canada, as a common man earning a livelihood, not as a soldier. But this over- turn earned him scepticism as to his narrative, in the years immediately following; and, by indirect reasoning, was the cause of his death. " Le pauvre Brule devait 6tre rebrule pour la derniere fois, vers 1634, chez leg Hurons." 10 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER Clubbed, and eaten, by the treacherous Hurons at their village Toanche, near Penetanguishene, his end was as wild as his life; but in the Indian way his spirit was avenged. Several years after his death, when the Huron country was half depopulated by an epidemic, the fright- ened Indians believed that revenge was being taken by the French, and one of their sorcerers declared that a sister of the murdered man had been seen flying over their country, breathing pestilence and death. The date of the discovery of the Humber as the path- way to the Great Lake is not only of respectable antiquity, but it is worthy of finding a place in the list of great events of its time. " Brule" arrived in the valley of the St. Lawrence the next year after the English first gained a foothold in North America; and he started upon his jour- ney with the savages which resulted in the first expedition ever made westward of the Great Eiver of Canada, and in the discovery of Lake Huron, ten years before the landing of the Plymouth Pilgrims; and six years after Hudson first saw the river that bears his name, Brule stood on the beach at the mouth of the Huinber, ' the first civilized man to gaze out upon that broad expanse of waters.' " III. ' OF CARTOGRAPHY. LAHONTAN gives a summary dismissal to those stay-at- home geographers who parcel out the Earth according to their fancy; but without those geographers the study of cartography would lose much of its interest. A man very wise for two hundred years ago, who fore- saw Canada as a nation, is w r ise enough for to-day. He considers that errors of haste befall, perhaps to the reader, perhaps to the writer; and his own opinion is, one should be content to repeat the errors of the original authors, whom one must needs follow, without going aside to mat- ters not found in them and wandering beyond the bounds of what they have written ; especially when such wandering serves no good purpose. Small as is the Humber nowadays, one must wander somewhat to find its cartographical beginnings; and such wandering is to excellent purpose. Cartier was the first European to gain any actual knowledge of Lake Ontario; and by the hearsay dating from him it was first cartographically sketched in the Molineux map of 1600, where it is spoken of as the Lacke of Tadenac, the bounds whereof are unknown, merged, however, into a great inland sea, the prototype of the Great Lakes. By Cartier's time the westward route to Cathay was an absorbing topic to mariners, and Yerrazano in 1524 made an expedition under the French Government for ttye discovery of the east by the west. A map preserved in the Bodleian Library, of date 1536, shows a dotted line from Europe to Cathay through an open strait north of Newfoundland. We are infinitely beholden to that per- petual day dream, and through it Cartier made his attempts up the great river. His map, showing "all the river of 11 12 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER Canada," disappeared; but succeeding maps until 1612 are based upon the foundations of the lost one. When Champlain first heard the tale of the great inland sea, the confusing accounts sometimes made out a lake beyond Ontario, or it might be an outlet into the South Sea, or it might be salt water itself. The natives made their answers to suit his eagerness, and placed the salt water in various lakes. Map makers half a century afterwards puzzled later explorers by giving the name Sea Water Lake to Lake St. Clair; and the Algonquin narrator told Champlain of a river route to the Northern Algonquins and to the Nation of the Hurons. In Champlain's map of 1612 was the first attempt to outline the country now known as Ontario. In his smaller map, 1613, Lake Ontario receives its name, Lac St. Louis. The map of 1632 was the first attempt to indicate any part of Ontario from actual knowledge, and it may be called the map of Ontario in embryo. The French fur-traders who preceded the Kecollet priest, Joseph Le Caron, to the country of the Hurons had possibly discovered more than one of the four routes that best led into it. But their interest was in peltry, not in missions or geography ; and gradually they sold their pack impartially in Albany or Montreal, keeping most of their geographical knowledge to themselves. In 1639-41 Bre"beuf and Chaumonot made an extended exploration, in the course of which they probably saw the western end of Lake Ontario; and in 1640 Gamier and Jogues established their missions. Eagueneau sent to his Father Superior a map showing the entire Huron-Iroquois country; and, although that map has disappeared, it is supposed to have furnished material for Sanson. Sanson's is the first elaborate map of the whole country of the Great Lakes; and in his of 1650 we find tracings of our river, as one of the important discoveries of the French. Although supposedly based on the Relations of the Jesuits, his work may have had inspiration from the fur-traders who had been seeking peltries for some years previous to those records. He shows a familiaritv with the canoe OF CARTOGRAPHY 13 routes via Lac St. Louis, and the guesswork that goes to the making of the maps is peculiar in its accuracy. He names Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence for the first time, and the accuracy of his two maps is striking when compared with the work of some of his successors. Du Creux in 1660 follows him in general, but where he varies from Sanson the changes are for the worse. Du Creux represents the region of Lake Simcoe as laid down in 1660, its name Lacus Ouentaronius, which may be read elsewhere as Ouen-tarontus. Scadding upholds Du Creux in his Ouentaronius, and thinks it may be the original of Ontario. Leading up to Du Creux, we are referred to Brodhead's History, where Lake Ontario appears in 1615 as Lac des Entouhonorons, a name used by Champlain. Bressani says that Lake Eri6 empties by a cascade " dans un troisieme lac encore plus grand et plus magnifique, nomm6 lac Ontario ou beau lac; nous 1'avons appele lac St. Louis." Further we have " lac Ontario ou Lac des Entouhonoronons ;" and, " D'apres Hennepin les Iroquois 1'appelaient Kanadario, beau lac. . . . Vander- donk Pappelle Lac des Iroquois," and again we find that others have called it from its eastern end, Lake Cata- rackoui. The spelling of the last was a stumbling-block, and in 1751 John Bartram is still giving it as Cadarakin, in whose bay " the famous and unfortunate Mr. de la Sale had two barks, which remain sunk there to this day." In 1671 Courcelles derives the Great Lake from the Huron, as iontara, lake, and io, great; and at the same period there is, apart from Bressani, the Iroquois Skan- nandario. Descriptive words were caught up by the French as proper names, and hence many of the contro- versies of later date. The description of the portage of the Humber is one of these argued questions. In maps succeeding, after Du Creux's efforts in 1660, we might look for physical changes. The great earthquake of 1663 wrought havoc in many parts of Canada, and in the east whole rivers disappeared and others altered their courses. Apparently the Humber was not affected, for in 1679 we find Franquelin leaving it where Sanson had 14 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER placed it. In the years immediately following Du Creux, map-making moved slowly. The peace between the Iro- quois and the French made the north shore valuable enough to be added to the map of the Great Lakes. Galinee shows the south shore and the country as he knew it, and it is possible that F6nelon, in whose hands that map was left for some time, or Trouv6, supplemented it from their actual knowledge and marked the details of the north shore. Thus, to the Sulpitians, with their chain of mis- sions, is due the intelligible beginning of the north shore in detail, and by 1669 both banks of the lake had been explored by them and depicted on the first authoritative map. A combination of mock modesty and grandiloquence leaves the descriptions of geography in the making amusing if sometimes difficult to follow. Richard Blome quaintly says, in 1673, that censorious persons may find some fault with his maps ; and Lescarbot, who " strives for language that is intelligible rather than exact," has never- theless something to do with the historical inaccuracies of which he and others complain. By 1669 the next great name after Champlain comes into the list of maps. The romance of exploration is for- ever connected with the name of La Salle, and in that year he and the Sulpitians, Dollier de Casson and Galinee, come into the annals of Lake Ontario. A fourth great man enters this group; for in September Jolliet was returning with a companion from his northern travels in search of the elusive copper mine, to the Lower St. Lawrence; and in the autumn, near the Head of the Lake, he met La Salle and his party who were seeking the route to the sea. It was then that Jolliet drew for La Salle a map of such of the upper country as he knew. His smaller map shows two rivers on Lac Frontenac, the western one where the Humber portage would lie; and his larger map (1674) shows an indentation directly south of Lake Simcoe, apparently the same water. The Indian town of Otinawatawa, where Jolliet sketched his route for La Salle, was a species of Iroquois OF CAKTOGKAPHY 15 colony a few miles north of the present city of Hamilton. Thus one more place in our neighbourhood was mapped. It was from here that some of the discontented ones in La Salle's party returned to Lachine, and from the Abb Faillon comes a story that La Chine then received its name, in derision of an adventurer's dream of a westward path to China. In the Margry map showing the discoveries of La Salle in 1679-80-81-82, the one tracing in the northwest of Lake Ontario is evidently the Humber. The Coronelli and Kaffeix maps of Lac Frontenac give the Humber portage. In the minds of all these early searchers the Great Lakes are merely enlargements of the Great Kiver. Lahontan is at a loss to find the head of the St. Lawrence, " for though we have traced it seven or eight hundred leagues up, yet we could never reach its source, the remotest place that the Coureurs de Bois go to being the Lake Lenemipigon, which disembogues into the Upper Lake, as the Upper Lake do's into the Lake of Hurons, the Lake of Hurons into that of Errie alias Conti, and that of Errie into that of Frontenac, which forms this last great river. . . ;" and as late as 1824 a traveller at Niagara Falls describes Lake Ontario as the Lake into which the St. Lawrence or Niagara empties itself. -^ A map by Popple declares that in it the British Empire in America is " laid down more truly than any yet extant," according to a credential appended by Dr. Edmund Halley, the astronomer. Lake Ontario, or Fron- tenac, shows Tejajagon east of the river Tanaouate, the latter, with its two branches, making the connection to Lake Simcoe. Dr. Scadding's description of the globe of 1690 is led up to by the story of the intermittent war and peace con- ducted by the Iroquois. The Hurons were allies of the French ; and the Iroquois, as allies of the English, wrought devastation in the Huron region. A well-marked route, by water and land, extended from the Great Lake to a point on the bay now called the Georgian ; and the French, 16 as allies of the Hurons, suffered from Iroquois resent- ment. The latter, by the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury, were sole masters of the Ontario peninsula, and the whole country became their hunting preserve. But it was a splendid isolation that was expensive, for by degrees they were cut off from the other fur-bearing portions of their world. Diplomacy made them wish to be middle- men for the French and English in the trade of the north- west, and thus the Lower Lakes became moderately safe for travel. Through strategical necessities the south shore was of value; but the north shore had for years been passed by. Except for a few enthusiasts, the lake shores possessed no value in the eyes of the French, who passed them by without any thought of exploring the interior. Like buffalo traces, Indian paths were worn deep, some- times a foot, almost always six inches into the earth. The Iroquois trail across New York was called by the Jesuits the Beaten Koad ; and the Toronto portage was a highway of so many years in use that in appearance, as well as in geographical importance, it was worthy of a place upon the globe. Also, a manuscript map in the Marine Archives of Paris has a direct bearing on the said globe. This map, by J. B. L. Franquelin, hydrographer to Louis XIV. and the predecessor of Louis Jolliet in that office, is inscribed, " drawn in 1688, by order of the Governor and Intendant of New France, from sixteen years' observation of the author." The map is described as five feet long and three feet wide, with Lakes Ontario and Erie and their adjacent country remarkably well delineated. On the map is marked a little bay, with the word " Teiaigon " on its east side ; a dotted line indicates the portage to the west branch of the river that empties into Lake Taronto. Beaching the globe itself, " Mr. Barlow Cumberland furnished Dr. Scadding the curious information that in the Grand Salon of the Ducal Palace at Venice in 1872 there was a large terrestrial globe some four feet in diam- eter, made in 1690, on which, where the American Lakes are presented, the small lake north of Lake Ontario OF CARTOGRAPHY 17 here called Frontenac between it and Lake Huron, is styled Lake Taronto, and the track there called Portage is distinctly marked from the lesser lake to the larger one on the south, where its terminus is marked by the word Toiouegon. . . The oldest French maps give Toronto as it is spelled now; so La Salle gave it in 1680, and the maps used by Lahontan. . . That the Trail should have been so clearly marked with the word Portage on the globe is very interesting." There was a custom not uncommon in the early maps, that of leaving out the por- tages; and this distinctness in the Franquelin and in the globe is of double value. The word " portage " occurs first as an English noun in the translation of Hennepin of 1698, but its use as a verb does not seem to have begun until the nineteenth century. In La Salle's time Teiaigon, at the mouth of the Hum- ber, was counted a day's journey from the Toronto Lake, our present Lake Simcoe. A river round whose head- waters was an Indian wintering-ground, and from which there was an easy portage continuing a chief chain, could not be omitted even if the custom was to give little import- ance to the markings of portages ; hence the use of the word Teiaigon, in some one of its variations, in maps where merely the end of the portage is indicated. Lahontan more than once describes the Tanaouate, leading from Lake Ontario to a land carriage to the river of Toronto, into the country of the Hurons. Apparently by only one historian has this Tanaouate been referred to as the Don and not as the equivalent of the Humber. A confusion as to meanings led to the wanderings of place names, and "Toronto " has wandered farther than from Georgian Bay and the River Trent to the old landing. When Sir Richard Bonnycastle wrote of the Italian officer, Tarento, who had laid out the place, he did not seem to be aware of any definite source of the name, nor of the fact that no engineer officer called Tarento had ever been heard of here. When the Mississaga Tract was secured and laid out, one of the new townships was named Toronto. A narrow triangle was called the Gore of Toronto; a 18 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBEK village in the township of Hope was first given its name as Toronto before it settled into Port Hope; and Robert Gourlay in his curious map gave the name of Toronto in 1822 to what was to be the chief city of the Province. The innumerable variants of the word Mississaga gradu- ally resolved themselves into that used in Dr. Scadding's text and adopted here; and the Lamabinicon of Augustus Jones' time has varied its position and its name suffi- ciently to remove it from the neighbourhood of Burlington Bay to the Mabemico, or Mimico. The Credit appears as Credai, Credit, la Credit, and other interchanges, and as " aucredie " in one of the most interesting maps of ante- provincial times. In this map, drawn by Pouchot and later engraved for his book on the war that cost him Niagara, the present island of Toronto is Presqu'isle, in shape like a baby's sock; two unnamed rivers in the posi- tion of the Don and the Humber have Toronto between them; west of Toronto is R. aucredie; west of it, R. aux Atokas. A narrow littoral is backed by a crenated bar- rier of high mountains; and west of R. aucredie these mountains crumple down into hills on the lake shore. Pouchot had a true idea of the watershed, but we lack something of the littoral mountains with which he cred- ited us ; and our fort that provided some of the important moments in his life appears in one copy of a Pownall map of 1755 as Fort Tronto. Another of 1755 is from a section of one marked with continuing notes " as used by the Commissioners under the Treaty of Utrecht, now in the British Museum. A section appears as used by the Commissioners in 1821. The same map is in the Colonial Office of America, as used by the Commissioners in 1842." Before leaving the delineations that express so much of the history of this one of the Great Lakes, I do not wish to omit a paragraph taken from a book that appeared in 1909 called " The Story of the Great Lakes," by two Ameri- cans. " For three hundred years the Great Lakes have been the centre of an immensely varied and intensely inter- esting history. They were originally the home of savages ; OF CARTOGRAPHY 19 they were discovered and explored by Frenchmen; they became the scene of a century-long struggle for possession by Indians of many tribes and white men of three nations ; and they have been finally occupied and developed by Americans." A worthier quotation can be made from the Honourable A. C. Flagg, sometime Comptroller of the State of New York, who said that the battle for the trade of the West must be fought on the lakes or those untaxed waters with which no other communication can compete. IV. LA 8ALLE. SINGLE-HANDED poaching in any circumstances gets but short shrift, and in 1640 poaching on a large scale was meditated by an Englishman whose spirit was not inferior to that of the man in possession. A curious account is quoted from Paul le Jeune, Superior of the Jesuit Missions in Canada, in a letter dated September 10, 1640, of an attempt made by an Englishman " accompanied by a single servant and a party of Abenaki Indians, to cross the Ameri- can continent in search of a northwest passage to the sea. He arrived at Quebec on the 24th of June, 1640. The Governor compelled him to return to England." Such attempts, nipped in their bud, left the field free for the coming of the greater man. Western fever existed in a highly-developed form from the earliest days of sailing the high seas; and by 1493 John Cabot had determined that the East could best be reached by sailing into the eye of the setting sun. His ensuing Patent from the English sovereign gave him and his sons the Royal permission to sail where they would, in the Eastern, the Western, and the Northern Seas. By 1578 there were three hundred and seventy fishing vessels of five nationalities at Newfoundland; by 1599 Pontgrave was establishing his settlement at Tadoussac as the beginning of a fur trade that eventually was to penetrate so far west that St. John, two hundred years later, was deposited at the Toronto Landing as one of its results; and by 1669 La Salle was getting close to the trail by which Brule" had added a great lake to the map. Champlain had followed Cartier in his eagerness for the discovery of copper and Cathay; and La Salle's herculean efforts, and romance of the whole, led to what was liter- ally the first excursion on the Humber. 20 *; fort Frontcnac JfFronle i, * v j~* f t i Lfj IrotjuctJ font tears 1 ecn<\r Jxrtf .."**** ****N tou-f les Marais ou Estanas . out oorcfant* , f *"* \ ce Lac-dou ilf tirent Ifur vrmctvaJe.,?* ' J"ejqua/wno, \ \ I Subsistence E N 1689. THE CORONELLI AND RAFFEIX MAPS OF 1688 GIVE THE HUMBER PORTAGE. LA SALLE 21 Rene Robert Cavelier, better known as La Salle, from the name of the family estate, was born in 1643 at Rouen. Although connected with the Jesuits at an early age, he soon gave up all idea of an ecclesiastical career, and turned his attention to New France, where his brother, a priest, was already established. With a slender fortune he arrived in 1666, and in the following two years he spent much of his time in mastering the Indian languages, particularly the dialects of the Iroquois and Algonquins. Thencefor- ward he had but one guiding motive. The earliest explorers were men of no common mould ; even Hennepin and Lahon- tan had earned some of the embroidery on their recitals. Champlain, Nicolet, the saintly Marquette, Jolliet, these men and their companions in ideals had all a touch of the sublime upon them; their labours were prodigious, their sufferings heroic, and their perseverance indomitable. And second only to Champlain stands La Salle. The Sieur de Mitchell, who "methodiz'd" Joutel's Jour- nal, says in his preface to it a few words that can yet thrill the student of the hero's life : " Notwithstanding the late Monsieur de la Sale's Voyage had a most unfortunate End, as to his own Person, yet that will not hinder posterity from ever allowing him the Title of a most renowned Traveller." Of the many writers and translators who have followed his actions and traced the workings of his mind, there are few who stint their admiration. Doubtless he had the great faults of his great qualities; possibly it is true that he never looked far ahead of him for the results of any indiscretion; but from the western end of Lake Ontario alone there is the record of much that his devoted lieuten- ants claimed for him. There is no one of the pioneers of the continent whose achievements equal his. In his share of the " historical confusions " the most interesting sum- mary is made from Margry, who first contends that he reached the Ohio, and then the Mississippi via the Illinois, after he left Dollier de Casson and Galin6e ; then the con- tention wavers; and again there are many authorities in favour of the prior discovery by Jolliet and Marquette. 22 THE VALLEY OF THE HUMBER From the Senecas he learned of the Great River, as they called the Ohio, flowing into the sea; and his imagination leaped at the possibility of all the discoveries that lay between New France and a route to China. In 1669 he had already made one unsuccessful and comparatively short trip towards the west, under a divided interest that led to cross purposes and his own return after the meeting with Dollier and Galinee, who represented the Church as he did the spirit of adventurous exploration. Of this meeting, and apropos of the name of his seignory above Montreal, Suite says, " M. Dollier aimait a rire; je pense qu'il est Pauteur du terme satirique Lachine." The so- called satire appears again in 1792, when an anonymous writer gives an Englishman's superficial view of Canada in general, and of Lachine he says, " It received its name from a peculiar circumstance. A foreigner of distinction many years back arrived at Montreal, where he gave out that it was his intention to traverse the continent of America in that direction, so as finally to arrive at China. . . . The satirical French-Canadians in memory of this event gave the name of La Chine or China to the place where the boasting foreigner had terminated his tour." A more dignified quotation can be made from the explorer himself. One of his letters to Count Frontenac received in 1673 expresses his disasters of 1672 with the simple directness of St. Paul, in perils often. Perils from savages and perils from navigating forty-two rapids gave place to a landing that promised to be safe. But the canoe was overset, and he writes, " I lost two men and my box, in sight of, at the door of, the first French settlements which I had left almost two years before." The uncertainties of the years following the first failure, and his various voyages to France, bring us to two points : his co-operation with Count Frontenac in the fort named by the latter; and his arrival from France with Father Louis Hennepin in his party. To Hennepin more than to the single-minded explorer we owe the knowledge of the highway of the Humber in the years that succeeded the