barns--compelled, most probably, by
the failure of their winter-store. Great numbers are then destroyed by
the cats. Their fur is of little value, and their flesh uneatable.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE REBEL, VON-EGMOND, THE FIRST AGRICULTURAL SETTLER ON THE HURON. --
CUTTING THE FIRST SHEAF.

THE celebrated Anthony J.W.G. Von Egmond, who commanded the rebels at
Gallows Hill during Mackenzie's rebellion, was the first agricultural
settler on the Huron tract. He had formerly been a Colonel in the old
Imperial Army; and after Buonaparte's abdication and retirement to
Elba, he joined the Allies, and held the rank of an officer in one of
the Belgian regiments at Waterloo.

He was a pushing, clever sort of man; and had he but been contented,
and stuck to his last, instead of troubling his head about politics, he
would, in all probability, have become one of the richest and most
independent farmers in the Huron tract.

Within the short period of twenty months, Von Egmond had chopped and
cleared, fit for a crop, nearly a hundred acres of land, fifty of which
were sown wheat. As this was the first field ripe in the tract, the old
man determined to celebrate the event by asking some of the gentlemen
connected with the Canada Company to dinner, and to witness the cutting
of the first sheaf.

Thomas Mercer Jones, Esq., one of the Company's Commissioners, Dr.
Dunlop, Mr. Prior, the Professor, and myself, composed the party on
this important occasion. As the distance was little short of eighteen
miles through the Bush, and we had no way of getting there--except by
walking--it was arranged that we should start the day previous, and
sleep all night at Von Egmond's.

Accordingly, we left Goderich about eleven o'clock, A.M., by the newly
cut-out road, through the forest. I wonder what our English friends
would think of walking in their shirt-sleeves, with their coats and
neckcloths thrown over their arms, eighteen miles to a dinner-party,
with the thermometer ranging something like 90 degrees in the shade.

The day was hot, though not unpleasantly so; for the leafy screen above
our heads effectually protected us from the scorching rays of a July
sun, which would otherwise have been very oppressive.

The musquitoes were particularly civil--indeed the reign of these
gentlemen was nearly over for the season. They begin to be troublesome
in the middle of May. From the 1st of June to the middle of July, they
are in the very height of