y swamp road; and three miles
further (which place eschew), seven years ago, I heard the landlady's
voice chiding a little girl, who had been sent a quarter of a mile for a
jug of water. I heard the same voice again in action, and for the same
cause, and a very dirty urchin again brought some very dirty water. In
fact, whiskey was too plentiful and water too scarce.

From Nicoll's to Jeff's Corner is ten long and weary miles, five or six
of which are through the forest. Jeff's is not a tavern, so that you
must go to bait the horses to Des Hommes, about two miles further, where
there is no inducement to stay, it being kept by an old French Canadian,
who has a large family of half-breeds. Therefore, on to the village of
Penetanguishene, which is twenty miles from Bruce's, or some say
twenty-four. We started from Bruce's at half-past three in the morning,
and reached "The Village," as it is always called, at half-past twelve,
on the 30th of June, and the rain still continuing ever since we left
Toronto. Thus, with great expedition, it took the best portion of three
days for a transit of only 108 miles. This has been done in twenty-four
hours by another route, as I shall explain on my return.

Penetanguishene is a small village, which has not progressed in the same
ratio as the military road to it has done. It is peopled by French
Canadians, Indians, and half-breeds, and is very prettily situated at
the bottom of the harbour. Lieutenant-Colonel Phillpotts, of the Royal
Engineers, selected this site after the peace of 1815, when Drummond's
Island on Lake Huron was resigned to the Americans, for an asylum for
such of the Canadian French settled there as would not transfer their
allegiance. They migrated in a body.

This is the nearest point of Western Canada at which the traveller from
Europe can observe the unmixed Indian, the real wild man of the woods,
with medals hanging in his ears, as large as the bottom of a silver
saucepan, rings in his nose, the single tuft of hair on the scalp,
eagle's plumes, a row of human scalps about his neck, and the other
amiable etceteras of a painted and greased _sauvage_.

Here also you first see the half-breed, the offspring of the white and
red, who has all the bad qualities of both with very few of the good of
either, except in rare instances.

CHAPTER IV.

The French Canadian.

At Penetanguishene you see the original pioneer of the West, that
unmistakeable French Canad