ates of some of their best blood, it laid the
foundation of the settlement and the institutions of the country which
has since become the great, free, and prosperous Dominion of Canada.

Upper Canada was then unknown, or known only as a region of dense
wilderness and swamps; of venomous reptiles and beasts of prey; of
numerous and fierce Indian tribes; of intense cold in winter; and with
no redeeming feature except abundance of game and fish.

After the war of Independence, many Loyalists went to Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick and settled there. The British Commander of New York,
having found out that Upper Canada was capable of supporting a numerous
population along the great river and the lakes, undertook to send
colonies of Loyalists there.

Five vessels were procured and furnished to convey the first colony from
New York. They sailed round the coasts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,
and up the St. Lawrence to Sorel, where they arrived in October, 1783.
Here they wintered, having built themselves huts, or shanties, and in
May, 1784, they continued their voyage in boats, and reached their
destination, Cataraqui, afterwards Kingston, in the month of July.

Other bands of Loyalists came by land over the military highway to Lower
Canada, as far as Plattsburg, and then northward to Cornwall and up the
St. Lawrence, along the north side of which many of them settled.

But the most common route was by way of the Hudson and the Mohawk
Rivers, through Oneida Lake and down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario.
Flat-bottomed boats, specially built or purchased for the purpose by the
Loyalists, were used in this journey. The portages, over which the boats
had to be hauled and all their contents carried, are said to have been
thirty miles long.

On reaching Oswego, some of the Loyalists coasted along the eastern
shore of Lake Ontario to Kingston, and thence up the Bay of Quinte;
others went westward along the south shore of the lake to Niagara and
Queenston. Some conveyed their boats over the portage of ten or twelve
miles to Chippewa, thence up the river and into Lake Erie, settling
chiefly in what was called "Long Point Country," now the County of
Norfolk.

This journey of hardship, privation, and exposure occupied from two to
three months. The obstacles encountered may readily be imagined in a
country where the primeval forest covered the earth, and where the only
path was the river or the lake. The parents and family of th