the country in the present day
can only form a very poor idea of the hardships endured by the early
pioneers of the forest, or the feelings which their isolated situation
drew forth. Education and station seemed to be lost sight of in the one
general wish to be useful to each other, to make roads and improve the
country.

"I think it was in 1802 that I first saw Colonel Talbot, a distinguished
settler, who had a grant of lands seventy miles further up the lake, at
a place afterwards called Port Talbot, where he had commenced building
mills. People were full of conjecture as to the cause that could induce
a young gentleman of his family (the Talbots of Malahide) and rank in
the army to bury himself in Canada.

"He and Sir Arthur Wellesley had been at the same time on the staff of
the Duke of Buckingham, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and it was said
the field of glory was equally open to both. Colonel Talbot afterwards
came to this country, and was on the staff of General Simcoe when he
made a tour through the Upper Province. At that time he selected his
future home. Some said that he left the army in disgust at not getting
an appointment that he felt himself entitled to; others, again, said
that neither Mars nor Venus presided at his birth. But one thing was
certain: he had chosen a life of privation and toil, and right manfully
he bore the lot he had chosen. When in the army, he was looked upon as a
dandy; but my first impressions would place him in a very different
light. He had come to Port Ryerse with a boat-load of grain to be ground
at my father's mill. The men slept in the boat, with an awning over it,
and had a fire on shore. In front of this fire, Colonel Talbot was
mixing bread in a pail, to be baked in the ashes for the men. I had
never seen a man so employed, and it made a lasting impression upon my
childish memory. My next recollection of him was his picking a wild
goose, which my father had shot, for my mother to dress for dinner. Thus
commenced an acquaintance which lasted until his death in 1853.

"My father, on his arrival at Long Point, promised my mother that if she
would remain contented for six years at Port Ryerse, and give the
country a fair trial, if she then disliked it, and wished to return to
New York, he would go back with her--that party feeling would by that
time have greatly subsided. My mother now claimed my father's promise.
He at once acquiesced, and left it to her to decide when th