href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@35225@[email protected]#SECT_XXVII" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">"  XXVII.           "            From Bond's Lake to the Holland Landing, with Digressions to Newmarket and Sharon,

INTRODUCTORY.

n French colonial documents of a very respectable antiquity, we meet with the name Toronto again and again. It is given as an appellation that is well-known, and its form in the greater number of instances is exactly that which it has now permanently assumed, but here and there its orthography varies by a letter or two, as is usually the case with strange terms when taken down by ear. In a Memoir on the state of affairs in Canada, transmitted to France in 1686, by the Governor in Chief of the day, the Marquis de Denonville, the familiar word appears. Addressing the Minister de Seignelay, the Marquis says: "The letters I wrote to Sieurs du Lhu and de la Durantaye, of which I sent you copies, will inform you of my orders to them to fortify the two passages leading to Michilimaquina. Sieur du Lhu is at that of the Detroit of Lake Erie, and Sieur de la Durantaye at that of the portage of Toronto. These two posts" the marquis observes, "will block the passage against the English, if they undertake to go again to Michilimaquina, and will serve as retreats to the savages our allies either while hunting or marching against the Iroquois."

Again, further on in the same Despatch, Denonville says: "I have heard that Sieur du Lhu is arrived at the post of the Detroit of Lake Erie, with fifty good men well-armed, with munitions of war and provisions and all other necessaries sufficient to guarantee them against the severe cold, and to render them comfortable during the whole winter on the spot where they will entrench themselves. M. de la Durantaye is collecting people to entrench himself at Michilimaquina and to occupy the other pass which the English may take by Toronto, the other entrance to lake Huron. In this way" the marquis assures de Seignelay, "our Englishmen will have somebody to speak to. All this, however," he reminds the minister, "cannot be accomplished without considerable expense, but still" he adds, "we must maintain our honour and our prosperity."

Du Lhu and de la Durantaye here named were the French agents or superintendents in what was then the Far West. Du Lhu is the same person whose name, under the form of Duluth, has become in recent times so well known, as appertaining to a town near the head of Lake Superior, destined in the future to be one of the great Railway Junctions of the continent, like Buffalo or Chicago.

The Englishmen for whom M. de Denonville desired an instructive reception to be prepared were some of the people of Governor Dongan of the province of New York. Governor Dongan either could not or would not restrain his people from poaching for furs on the French King's domain. When Denonville wrote his despatch in 1686 some of these illicit traders had been recently seen in the direction of Michilimackinac, having passed up by the way of Lake Erie. To intercept them on their return, the Marquis reports that he has stationed "a bark, some canoes and twenty good men" at the river communicating from Lake Erie with that of Ontario near Niagara, by which place the English who ascended Lake Erie must of necessity pass on their return home with their peltries. "I regard, Monseigneur," continues Denonville to the minister, "as of primary importance the prohibition of this trade to the English, who, without doubt, would entirely ruin ours both by the cheaper bargains they could give the Indians, and by attracting to them the Frenchmen of our colony who are accustomed to go into the woods." Governor Dongan was also always holding communications with the Iroquois and spiriting them on to resist French encroachments. He even audaciously asserted that his own sovereign—it soon became doubtful who that was, whether James II. or William of Orange—was the rightful supreme lord of the Iroquois territory.

As to the particular spot intended when Denonville says M. de la Durantaye is about to occupy "the pass which the English may take by Toronto," there may seem at first to be some ambiguity.

In 1686 the vicinage of Lake Simcoe, especially the district between Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron, appears to have been commonly known as the Toronto region. We deduce this from the old contemporary maps, on one or other of which Matchedash bay is the Bay of Toronto; the river Severn is the Toronto river; Lake Simcoe itself is Toronto Lake; the chain of Lakes passing south-eastward from the neighbourhood of Lake Simcoe and issuing by the Trent in the Bay of Quinté is also the Toronto river or lake-chain, and again, the Humber, running southwesterly from the vicinity of Lake Simcoe into Lake Ontario, is likewise occasionally the Toronto river; the explanation of all which phraseology is to be found in the supposition that the Severn, the Trent chain of lakes, and the Humber, were, each of them, a commonly-frequented line of water-communication with a Toronto region—a well-peopled district—"a place of meeting," the haunt of numerous allied families and friendly bands. (That such is the most probable interpretation of the term Toronto, we shall hereafter see at large.)

The