CHAPTER IV.

Wolves in Upper Canada--Adventure of Thomas Conant--A grabbing land-surveyor--Canadian graveyards beside the lake--Millerism in Upper Canada--Mormonism.

Turning to ordinary affairs, we find that at this date our Government helped the settler to exterminate wolves by paying a bounty of about $6 for each wolf head produced before a magistrate. In reference to these ferocious animals, once so plentiful in Canada, an anecdote of the author’s grandfather will be found both interesting and instructive, giving us a true glimpse of the county in 1806. Thomas Conant, whose portrait is found on opposite page, and who was assassinated during the Canadian Revolution on February 15th, 1838 (_vide_ “Upper Canada Sketches,” by the author), lived in Darlington, Durham County, Upper Canada. In the fall of 1806 he was “keeping company” with a young woman, who lived some three miles back from Lake Ontario, his home being on the shore of that great lake. Clearings or openings in the forest were at this time mostly along the lake shore. Consequently, to pay his respects to the young woman, he had to pass through some forest and clearings in succession. It was in November of that year. Snow had not yet fallen, but the ground

was frozen. Tarrying until midnight at the home of the object of his affections, he left, alone and unarmed, to walk the three intervening miles to his home. Getting over about one-half the distance, he heard the distant baying of wolves. Fear would, it may be supposed, lend speed to his feet, but thinking rightly that he could not outstrip the wolf on foot, he walked quietly along, watching for a convenient tree for climbing. In a very few minutes the wolves were upon him, in full cry, eyes protruding, tongues lolling, and ready to devour him. A near-by beech tree, which his arms could encircle, furnished him with the means of escape. He climbed, and climbed, while the wolves surrounded him and watched his every motion, never ceasing their dismal howls the live-long night. Thus he kept his lonely vigil. To lose his hold for a single second meant instant death. Great, however, as was the tension upon his strained muscles, they held on. Morn tardily came at last, and with its first peep the wolves left him and were seen no more. When they were really gone, he said he for the first time began looking about him, and found, with all his climbing, he had ascended a very few feet from the ground, and but just out of reach of the wolves’ jaws as they made frantic jumps to reach him. We may, however, be safe in assuming that the scare and involuntary vigil did not do him much harm, for in the March following (1807) he married the girl he went to visit that night, and made no complaints of having been maltreated by wolves.

In dismissing Thomas Conant at this time, the author digresses to say that he was born in the United States, and was only a small lad when Roger Conant, his father, brought him here. He was a generous, industrious citizen, and was always noted for being one of the best natured men in Canada, and possessed ability of a very high order. He was liked universally by all who knew him, and he pursued the ordinary avocations of life, such as Canadians then pursued, up to the time of his assassination (as before mentioned) during the Canadian Revolution, on February 15th, 1838. He went down to the grave from the stroke of a sword, wielded by a dragoon, and without any provocation other than accusing the dragoon of being drunk, as he was and had been many times previously when on duty as despatch bearer. But such was the state of affairs in Canada in 1837-8 that no investigation was held, nor was the murderer ever punished even in the mildest degree. The author asks the reader’s indulgence when he says he is very certain that only his grandfather’s (Thomas Conant) untimely death prevented him from leaving a name after him high up in Canadian annals, for he was a man of grand physique (6 feet 2 inches in height) and of commanding talents. He had a well-balanced mind and had wealth at his command.

Surveyors were now at work plotting out the townships, and settlers were coming very rapidly to occupy the lands which were surveyed. Readers will bear in mind that the Family Compact was still in full power. All grants for lands had to come through them. A story of a famous old land surveyor is in order in this place. He had been surveying for many seasons, and, about quarterly, came to York to make his reports and show the plots of the new townships laid out. It so happened that an uncle of the author’s was chain-bearer (whose office Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, has immortalized) to this long-winded surveyor. At the time of his service as chain-bearer this uncle was only a lusty young man, and was not supposed to know the very first elements of surveying. Among other things it was his duty to erect the tent for the nightly bivouac, and make a fire at the tent mouth. Before the dancing, fitful flames, lights and shadows in the forest primeval, he nightly sat with the lordly surveyor, and saw him prepare rude maps of the past day’s work. And, without any sort of knowledge of surveying, he saw him just touch a parallelogram here and there (which would represent 100 acres) with the point of his red pencil; but ever so light was the touch. Night after night he saw dots go down on the parallelograms, and when the quiver was full of sheets of survey, to York he went with the surveyor, to report at the Crown Lands office. He said that in the office he noticed the officials in charge scanning very intently for the red but faint dots. We all now know the result: friends of the government officials had secured hundreds and hundreds of acres of the best lands in the region surveyed, while the surveyor became a mighty land-owner of most choice lands, and died a very, very wealthy man. As may be surmised, he had marked the choicest 100-acre lots with faint red dots, and he and the officials grabbed the very choicest lands in that surveyor’s district. Should a would-be purchaser ask for any certain lot, he was put off for a day in order that they might see in the surveyor’s map if it really was a choice one, as they surmised, since he asked to buy it, in which case some friend immediately entered for it, and consequently that choice lot the settler could not purchase. Using a fictitious name to illustrate, it is said, and truly, too, that Peter Russell, Governor, deeded to Peter Russell, Esquire, many choice lots of 100 acres each of the public domain in Canada, in the days of the Family Compact. But here one can justly remark that the eternal fitness of things comes pretty nearly correct after all, for, although that surveyor was fabulously wealthy, none of the property to-day is in any of his descendants’ possession, nor are there offspring of any of the Family Compact with enough pelf to-day, severally or collectively, to cause any comment. “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small,” in Canada just as they did in Greece and Rome in days of yore.

This travesty of the conveying of public lands was one very just cause of complaint on behalf of the people, and the refusal of the authorities to correct it helped materially to cause the Canadian Revolution of 1837-38.

The settlements in central Canada were at this time for the most part close to the edge of the lake. Many very worthy, hard-working, law-abiding men and women of Canada found their last resting places in places of sepulture, as they had found their homes, beside the waters of Lake Ontario. Most pathetically all such graveyards appeal to the tender side of any Canadian who loves his country and his fellows. When we stop to consider all the hardships they had gone through, with unremitting days, weeks, months and years of the hardest and most strenuous muscle-aching toil, and remember, too, that they fought and conquered the forests of Canada, it would not be human to pass by the memory of such a noble race. Their fight had not the spur of excitement to keep up their courage, as in war, but it was a fight, nevertheless--silent, monotonous, trackless, soundless and alone, in forests greater than which earth presents few examples if any.

Noble men and women, pioneers of Canada, who gave us our birthright, you merit our regard and ungrudgingly you shall have it! On earth is no greater or more glittering example of a better, more prudent, loyal, law-abiding, religious and industrious people than were those now asleep in the soil of Canada, and from whom we sprang.

Old Ontario generally is placid and beautiful, ultra-marine blue, and shimmering. But he is not always so. When rude Boreas awakes the slumbering giant, he frets, and froths, and spumes, and roars. As he is in his might he becomes awful to look upon, and doubly so if one ventures upon his bosom. And while he is spurring and warring, his waves continually come upon the shore, each time a little higher and higher, searching each nook, cranny and fissure along the bank of the water’s edge. Many such storms, you can easily understand, you who live distant from navigable and great waters, tend to undermine the foundations of the banks, which after a few more beatings fall with a plunge, a roar, and a cloud of densest dust, into the waters below. In this manner does old Ontario encroach at points upon the land. The sequel may be readily seen. Those in their graves must give them up, while their bones whiten the shingle for many a sunshiny day. This is no fanciful picture. With a fowling-piece upon his shoulder the author has passed along the foot of the bank, where a graveyard is, and seen skulls, long hair, ribs, femurs and other larger bones of the human body bestrewing the beach. And he has seen also where the bank has fallen away, only one-half the length of the grave, and where only one-half of the skeleton went down with the submerged bank, while the other half remained in the grave, and the point of severance of the bones was plainly observable on the bank above the beholder’s head. Flesh, of course, there is none. Time has long since decayed and changed that.

Noble men and women, the pioneers of Canada, you deserve better graves, and cushions to lie on of the softest and most enduring velvet!

Pursuing this subject a little further, the author may observe that he personally owns a graveyard on a large farm which has been used by whites since 1798 and by red men before that on Lake Ontario

shore, where the waves produce a perpetual lullaby and a requiem to the sainted memories of the dead.

In this case there is no particular danger of the graves being washed into the lake, but it seems hardly meet that any private owner should have absolute control of the remains of the forefathers of so many now dwelling in Canada. During his life no one shall be allowed by him to meddle with the spot, but to save it for all time he has made a standing proposition to deed it to any properly organized church that would receive it and look after it. No such body has yet been found to receive the gift in trust, but the author hopes that his only son, Gordon, may keep it and hand it down to his son, and his son, in order that it may never be disturbed.

About the year 1833 Millerism found a lodgment in Canada from the New England States, where one Miller, by his preaching, proved very clearly, to some minds, that on a night in February of that year the earth would pass away. Now, quite as great a proportion of the people in Canada embraced this doctrine as did those of the United States, when populations are compared. These persons had not the slightest doubt that the world would really burn up on the date announced. Hence there were many who during that winter, up to the time, failed to provide themselves with wood for heating their houses. The old Virginia snake fences being all about, they proceeded to take rails from off the fences and burn them in their own houses, for they surely would have enough from this source to last until the 15th February of that winter. But even though they were to die so soon they could not well do without food, and they had failed to provide any. John B. Warren at that time kept a large general store in Oshawa, and was noted for his wide dealings. And we accordingly find that good Millerite farmers came to him with their sleighs and offered him their own notes, endorsed by good neighbors, for as much as $300 per barrel for flour, which they would take home in their sleighs. It was then worth generally $5 per barrel. John B. Warren, to his honor be it said, always refused to trade with them on such terribly unequal terms, but explained to them that they could have the flour and could pay for it if they found themselves alive after 15th February. Warren, it will be understood, did not become a Millerite. Again, it is related that a husband who had for his second wife, Jane, lived near the graveyard in which slumbered his first wife, Elizabeth. As the hands of the long “grandfather’s clock” of those days got around to midnight, this husband said to his wife, “Jane, put on your things and let’s go over to the burying-ground, for I want to die beside my first wife, Elizabeth, so as to meet her the very first one after the great fire.” Jane’s faith, it seems, was not so strong, and she flashed fire at his manifest preference for her predecessor in her husband’s affections, and replied, “If that’s your game, you may go, and I won’t live with you any longer.” And it is added that she did not live under his roof again for several months after the great fire that was to be. Several different dates have been assigned since that first dread day, and no doubt some earnestly looked-for date is regarded as now approaching by this small but earnest body of people.

One Hoover believed the Millerite doctrine so very strongly that he gradually fancied himself more than human, and not amenable to nature’s laws. He announced that one day in the fall of 1832 he would walk on the water from Port Hoover, across Scugog Lake, seven miles to the mainland. The faithful gathered, and hundreds besides from curiosity. Hoover entered the water, slowly waded from the shore, and sought refuge behind an old pile of the dock, where he remained a few minutes. There were boxes like big boots upon his feet. Soon the crowd called vociferously for him to come out. When he did emerge from behind the pile he turned his face shoreward and gained solid land. The boys began to hoot and laugh at the would-be miracle-worker. Then Hoover made an explanation nearly in these words:

“My friends, a cloud rose before my eyes and I cannot see. I cannot walk upon the water to-day while this cloud is before my eyes. Soon it will be announced when the cloud has been removed, and I will do it.”

The crowd went away, never again to assemble at Hoover’s bidding. Millerite farmers who were usually good husbandmen, as the day approached, failed to turn their stock out of their pens, or to feed their animals, and actually nearly starved them. To-day all that is past, and in almost every instance those who embraced Millerism, and those who then opposed it, have gone to the great silent majority. Millerism is not now known in Canada.

One other sect now, so far as I know, is extinct in central Ontario; it may be worth mention. I say extinct, but I am not quite so certain of that, as there yet may be some isolated persons of that faith here and there in Ontario. I refer to the Mormons. During the summer of 1842 Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter-Day Saints, came to central Ontario and spoke at open-air meetings, camp-meeting-like, as well as in houses. He even attempted to perform miracles by curing sick persons. I get it from persons on the stage of action this day, who heard Joseph Smith in Upper Canada in 1842, and they say he was a good talker and had a very insinuating manner, and they naively add that it is almost beyond belief that any one could fall in with him. It is only fair, however, to say in favor of the sincerity of those who joined him, that polygamy was not then announced. We ought, I think, to make this admission to let off those who did join as easily as possible; and from central Ontario there were Seeleys, McGahans, Lamoreaux and others, with their families, who sold their farms and gave the money to Joseph Smith, and went off to Nauvoo, Ill. It is a little singular, too, that these people were never again heard of directly from their new Mormon homes at Salt Lake, where they no doubt removed after the break up at Nauvoo. All these Mormon converts vanished from their neighbors with Joseph Smith, and never again sent any word to their friends and relatives left behind. I was at Salt Lake City for a short sojourn in 1879, and upon passing a stonecutter who was at work upon a square building stone for the new great Mormon tabernacle, asked the workman, “Do you know any one called McGahan about these parts?” Instantly the stonecutter dropped his tools and looked me very intently in the eye and replied, “Yes, I do. What do you know about them?” I explained that they came from Ontario, their former home, when the stonecutter urged me to go and see them; said they lived only fifteen miles down the valley south from Salt Lake, were wealthy, and would be pleased to see me, and most earnestly urged me to go. But my faith in Mormon integrity in those days was too low, and I dared not leave Camp Douglas and the protection of United States soldiers as far as fifteen miles away. Never since has any kind of trace been heard of our Mormon converts or their descendants.