" At the time my little history commences, this now highly
cultivated spot was an unbroken wilderness,--all tut two small farms, where
dwelt the only occupiers of the soil,--which owned no other possessors than
the wandering hunting tribes of wild Indians, to whom the right of the
hunting grounds north of Rice Lake appertained, according to their forest
laws.
To those who travel over beaten roads, now partially planted, among
cultivated fields and flowery orchards, and see cleared farms and herds of
cattle and flocks of sheep, the change would be a striking one. I speak of
the time when the neat and flourishing town of Cobourg, now an important
port on the Ontario, was but a village in embryo--if it contained even
a log-house or a block-house it was all that it did, and the wild and
picturesque ground upon which the fast increasing village of Port Hope is
situated, had not yielded one forest tree to the axe of the settler. No
gallant vessel spread her sails to waft the abundant produce of grain and
Canadian stores along the waters of that noble sheet of water; no steamer
had then furrowed its bosom with her iron wheels, bearing the stream of
emigration towards the wilds of our Northern and Western forests, there to
render a lonely trackless desert a fruitful garden.
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