rained the streets
of the large towns of Canada of the miserable objects; but, such was the
improvidence of most of these settlers and such their broken
constitutions, that, on my present visit, I found but one old serjeant
left, and he was on the point of moving.

The commutation of pensions was an experiment of the most benevolent
intention. It was thought that the married pensioner would purchase
stock for a small farm, and set himself down to provide for his children
with a sum of money in hand which he could never have obtained in any
other way. Many did so, and are now independent; but the majority,
helpless in their habits, and giving way to drink, soon got cheated of
their dollars and became beggars; so that the government was actually
obliged at length to restore a small portion of the pension to keep them
from starvation. They died out, would not work at the Penetanguishene
settlement, and have vanished from the things that be. Poor fellows!
many a tale have they told me of flood and field, of being sabred by the
cuirassiers at Waterloo, of being impaled on a Polish lance, and of
their wanderings and sufferings.

The military settlement, however, of the Penetanguishene road is a
different affair. It was effected by pensioned non-commissioned officers
and soldiers, who had grants of a hundred acres and sometimes more; and
it will please the benevolent founder, should these pages meet his eye,
to know that many of them are now prosperous, and almost all well to do
in the world.

But we must retrace our steps, and waggon back again by their doors to
Barrie.

I left the village at half-past six in the morning, raining still, with
the wind in the south-east, and very cold. We arrived at the Widow
Marlow's, nineteen miles, at mid-day; the weather having changed to fine
and blowing hard--certainly not pleasant in the forest-road, on account
of the danger of falling trees, to which this pass is so liable that a
party of axemen have sometimes to go ahead to cut out a way for the
horses.

We passed through the twelve mile woods by a new road, which reduces the
extent of actual forest to five, and avoids altogether the Trees of the
Two Brothers, noted in Penetanguishene history for the fatal accident,
narrated in a former volume, by which one soldier died, and his brother
was, it is supposed, frightened to death, in the solemn depths of the
primeval and then endless woods.

Near the end of the five mile Bush, abo