href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@35026@[email protected]#Page_25" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">25

18. A Gaol Ward 26 19. Plan of Building 28 REFERENCES. District and County Records. Oxford Gazetteer, by Shenston. U. E. L. Settlement at Long Point, by Tasker.

INTRODUCTION.

THE PASSING CENTURY.

The Wonderful Century is before the bar of history. Its record shows everywhere progress, consolidation, expansion, improvement. Civilization has spread, barbarism has given away. Labor has been restored to its honorable station, and idleness is accounted dishonor. Privilege has been curtailed, liberty has widened its borders. Slavery has almost disappeared from the earth. The beneficent forces are stronger. The comforts and conveniences of life are increased and more evenly distributed. Disease and pain have been brought under control.

Life has been made more interesting. Travel is easier and cheaper, and mankind has become acquainted with the world it inhabits. The stars have been discovered. They have been weighed and analysed. The human mind has expanded with wider knowledge.

The railway, electricity and the Postal Union have gone far to blend the nations into one. Every day, all round the globe, men read the same news, think the same thoughts, are thrilled with the same tidings of heroism or suffering. Human sympathy is broadened and deepened. Mankind is more homogeneous in spirit. Statecraft, literature, society, have become democratic and cosmopolitan.

The spirit of union dominates the century. The forces of disunion and disintegration are everywhere routed. Mutual benevolence is organized for greater effectiveness. Universal education, equality of rights and responsibilities, are principles of government. Religion, emphasizing points of agreement and ignoring points of difference, manifests itself in its works as never before.

The century spans the years from Copenhagen to Paardeburg, from Nelson and Napoleon to Roberts and Kruger. As the battle of Copenhagen established the naval supremacy of Britain, so Paardeburg welded the empire, one and inseparable. In 1800 the principle of a United Empire was represented by the Loyalists of Upper Canada standing almost alone. In 1900, borne by their descendants to the distant plains of South Africa, it reached its full fruition in the final charge by the Canadians under Otter, on the banks of the Modder River. The principle includes the realization of all that the century stands for—union, equal rights, progress, justice, humanity.

It is my task to say a brief foreword on the progress of Canada and especially the county of Elgin. The beginning of the century found Ontario almost an unbroken wilderness. Rare and scanty were the clearings here and there along Lakes Erie and Ontario, and on the great rivers. The winter express from Detroit to York or Niagara, made its way along the lonely forest path. At long intervals only did he perceive the smoke rising in the crisp air, from the hospitable and welcome cabin. The frightened deer bounded across his path into the deeper woods. The bear hybernated in the hollow tree. The long howling of the wolves broke on the midnight air. The lynx and panther crouched among the branches, ready to spring on the unwary traveller. The only sign of human life was the Indian hunter following the trail of the turkey or wild beast.

It was in the first year of the century that a young man of twenty-nine, giving up brilliant prospects in the army, and turning his back on society, found his way to the township of Yarmouth and began a clearing at or near Port Stanley. With royal dukes for his advocates, he applied to the Imperial authorities for a large grant of land to form a settlement. Two years later he succeeded. Yarmouth had been appropriated to others, and Colonel Thomas Talbot began his actual settlement in Dunwich. In the middle of the century, or more accurately in the year 1853, he died. In the same year the separation of Elgin from Middlesex was completed, and Colonel Talbot's "capital," St. Thomas, was made the County Town.

Nearly another half century has passed since then, and it includes the history of the County of Elgin as a separate municipality.

The death of the eccentric founder of the settlement divides nearly equally the history of the county from the time when its only inhabitants were the bear, wolf and panther, to the end of the century, which finds the county well cleared and cultivated throughout its entire extent; intersected by splendid highways, including the lines of five railway companies; peopled with a numerous and enterprising community, God-fearing and law-abiding, industrious and prosperous. The thriving city of St. Thomas, the enterprising and flourishing town of Aylmer, and numerous promising villages, advancing with rapid strides in magnitude and importance, form centres of population, where a century ago the primeval silence was unbroken, save by the footfall of the Mississaga ranging the woods in pursuit of game.

It was during the first decades of the century that the pioneers came. From them the present population is largely sprung. Dunwich was the first to be settled. A few immigrants from the Eastern States settled near Port Talbot. Then the overflow of settlement from Long Point made itself felt in Southwold, Yarmouth, Malahide and Bayham. Before 1820 the Highland settlements began in Aldborough and Dunwich. The wanderings of the Kildonan settlers from Hudson's Bay to Red River, and thence eastward to Upper Canada and southward, to the settlements on Lake Erie, add a tragic episode to the story of the pioneers of West Elgin. Their hardships, sufferings and heroism can never be forgotten. Much later came the settlement of South Dorchester.

These were the men who felled the forest, let the sunlight into the wilderness, drained the swamps, cleared and fenced the bush, made the roads and bridged the fords, "drave out the beasts," and established schools and churches. They were the sifted grain of Canadian immigration. For the Colonel was determined to have none but the loyal, industrious and enterprising, and was discriminating in the choice of settlers for this County, among the numerous applicants for land.

Such were the pioneers of Elgin. We inherit the fruits of their strenuous toil and struggle. It was they who, with dauntless courage and unfaltering determination, braved all hardships, the loneliness, the privations, the sufferings of pioneer life, that we might enjoy the harvest of their labors. They slept on the bare ground in the forest shanty, and hewed with mighty toil the log huts, that