We had selected, on the advice of our guide, a tolerably good hard-wood lot in the centre of the Township of Sunnidale, part of which is now the site of the village of New Lowell, on the Northern Railway. To engage a young Scotch axeman from the County of Lanark, on the Ottawa river; to try our virgin axes upon the splendid maples and beeches which it seemed almost a profanation to destroy; to fell half an acre of trees; to build a bark wigwam for our night's lodging; and in time to put up a substantial log shanty, roofed with wooden troughs and "chinked" with slats and moss--these things were to us more than mortal felicity. Our mansion was twenty-five feet long and eighteen wide. At one end an open fire-place, at the other sumptuous beds laid on flatted logs, cushioned with soft hemlock twigs, redolent of turpentine and health. For our provisions, cakes made of flour; salt pork of the best; tea and coffee without milk; with the occasional luxury of a few partridges and pigeons, and even a haunch of venison of our own shooting; also some potatoes. We wanted no more. There were few other settlers within many miles, and those as raw as ourselves; so we mended our own clothes, did our own cooking, and washed our own linen.

Owing to the tedious length of our sea voyage, there was no time for getting in crops that year; not even fall wheat; so we had plenty of leisure to make ourselves comfortable for the winter. And we were by no means without visitors. Sometimes a surveyor's party sought shelter for the night on their way to the strangely-named townships of Alta and Zero--now Collingwood and St. Vincent. Among these were Charles Rankin, surveyor, now of London; his brother, Arthur Rankin, since M.P. for Essex; a young gentleman from England, now Dr. Barrett, late of Upper Canada College. By-and-by came some Chippawa Indians, en route to or from the Christian Islands of Lake Huron; we were great friends with them. I had made a sort of harp or zittern, and they were charmed with its simple music. Their mode of counting money on their fingers was highly comical--"one cop, one cop, one cop, three cop!" and so on up to twenty, which was the largest sum they could accomplish. At night, they wrapped their blankets round them, lay down on the bare earthen floor near the fire, and slept quietly till day-break, when they would start on their way with many smiles and hand-shakings. In fact, our shanty, being the only comfortable shelter between Barrie and the Georgian Bay, became a sort of half-way house, at which travellers looked for a night's lodging; and we were not sorry when the opening of a log-tavern, a mile off, by an old Scotchwoman, called Mother McNeil, enabled us to select our visitors. This tavern was a curiosity in its way, built of the roughest logs, with no artificial floor, but the soil being swaley or wet--a mud-hole yawned just inside the door, where bullfrogs not unfrequently saluted the wayfarer with their deepest diapason notes.

I must record my own experiences with their congeners, the toads. We were annoyed by flies, and I noticed an old toad creep stealthily from under the house logs, wait patiently near a patch of sunshine on the floor, and as soon as two or three flies, attracted by the sun's warmth, drew near its post, dart out its long slender tongue, and so catch them all one after another. Improving upon the hint, we afterwards regularly scattered a few grains of sugar, to attract more flies within the old fellow's reach, and thus kept the shanty comparatively clear of those winged nuisances, and secured quiet repose for ourselves in the early mornings. Another toad soon joined the first one, and they became so much at home as to allow us to scratch their backs gently with a stick, when they would heave up their puffed sides to be scrubbed. These toads swallow mice and young ducks, and in their turn fall victims to garter and other snakes.

During the following year, 1834, the Government opened up a settlement on the Sunnidale road, employing the new immigrants in road making, chopping and clearing, and putting up log shanties; and gave them the land so cleared to live on, but without power of sale. In this way, two or three hundred settlers, English, Irish and Highland Scotch, chiefly the latter, were located in Sunnidale. A Scottish gentleman, a Mr. H. C. Young, was appointed local immigrant agent, and spent some time with us. Eventually it was found that the laud was too aguish for settlement, being close to a large cedar swamp extending several miles to the Nottawasaga River; and on the representation of the agent, it was in 1835 determined to transfer operations to the adjoining township of Nottawasaga, in which the town of Collingwood is now situated.

It was about this time that the prospect of a railway from Toronto to the Georgian Bay was first mooted, the mouth of the Nottawasaga River being the expected terminus. A talented Toronto engineer whose name I think was Lynn, published a pamphlet containing an outline route for the railroad, which was extended through to the North-West. To him, doubtless, is due the first practical suggestion of a Canadian Pacific Railway. We, in Sunnidale, were confidently assured that the line would pass directly through our own land, and many a weary sigh at hope deferred did the delusion cost us.