THE COUNTRY OF THE NEUTRALS. (continued 2)

COLONEL TALBOT.

The Honorable Thomas Talbot received his company and his majority in the same year, 1793. He was Colonel of the Fifth Regiment in 1795, at the early age of twenty-five. After eight years of military service on the Continent, partly in Flanders and partly at Gibraltar, he was still in 1803 a young man with every prospect that is usually considered alluring to ambition. Suddenly, to the amazement of his friends and the public, he abandoned the brilliant career upon which he had entered under so favorable auspices, cut himself loose from civilization itself, and buried himself in the recesses of the Canadian forest. He determined to settle on the north shore of Lake Erie, where he had previously selected a location on one of his journeyings with Governor Simcoe. Talbot had formed plans for diverting the stream of immigration from the United States, or rather for continuing its current as far as Upper Canada. He would attract settlers from New York, Pennsylvania and New England, who were dissatisfied with republican institutions or allured by the fertility of the Lake Erie region, and would build up a loyal British community, under the laws and institutions of the mother land.

It was a memorable event in the history of the County of Elgin, when on the 21st day of May, 1803, landing at Port Talbot, he took an axe and chopped down the first tree, thus inaugurating what has since been known as the Talbot Settlement. Henceforward, Colonel Talbot, Port Talbot, the Talbot Road, and the Talbot Settlement, are names inseparably connected with the history of the making of Upper Canada.

At that time the nearest settlement on Lake Erie was near Turkey Point, 60 miles away. In 1802 there was but one settled minister west of Niagara, Father Marchand, of Sandwich, a Roman Catholic priest. There were but seven clergymen settled in the whole Province. The record[24] states, however, that "Besides, there are several missionaries of the Methodistical order, whose residence is not fixed." Even at that early day the circuit-rider threaded the maze of forest between the Long Point clearings and those near the mouth of the Thames, and made his way down the Detroit River to the Essex shore of Lake Erie, where there was a fringe of settlement. But, generally speaking, the country north of Lake Erie to the borders of Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay was still a wilderness of continuous unbroken forest.

Footnotes

1 (Return) Mr. J. H. Scott, of St. Thomas, has made a number of photographs of the mounds at the instance of an American lady, who, it is understood, will reproduce them in a work about to be published by her.

2 (Return) Alexis corresponds with the actual position of the Southwold Earthwork, and the stream with that of Kettle Creek.

3 (Return) The principal "bourg" was Ehwae, surnamed S. Pierre et S. Paul. If S. Pierre on Sanson's map is the same place, this most have been near the southern end of the county of Bruce. The other village or mission shown on the map is S. Simon et S. Iude.

4 (Return) In another place it is stated that there were 40 villages of the Neutrals in all.

5 (Return) This is the most probable inference from the facts stated by Galinee.

6 (Return) Galinee's map is reproduced in Faillon's Histoire de la Colonie Francaise.

7 (Return) Evidently the Rondeau.

8 (Return) This was Point Pelee.

9 (Return) General John S. Clarke, of Auburn, N. Y., in correspondence with the present writer, dwells upon the importance of the Kettle Creek portage route in the seventeenth century. He is a recognized authority upon the subject of Indian trade routes.

10 (Return) History of Middlesex County, p. 17.

11 (Return) "Peter Jones and the Ojebway Indians," p. 113.

12 (Return) The north shore of Lake Erie appears to have been so little known to the officials, that Kettle Creek and Cat Fish Creek were continually confused and taken as being one or different streams as chance would have it. The Land-board considered that a surrender of the lands west of Kettle Creek gave the Crown all the territory not previously ceded. The Indians at Detroit who made the cession were the Ojibways, Hurons, Ottawas and Pottawatamies.

13 (Return) This river is what is now known as "Big Creek" and, answers this description at the present day. It enters the lake a little above Fort Rowan.

14 (Return) This charming country is evidently, the greater part of it, the County of Elgin, as the portage is not more than thirteen miles from the boundary line of Bayham. In passing up the lake one would meet with a great variety of landscape as the sand-hills in Houghton and the mouths of the Otter, Catfish and other creeks would be passed. The lofty pines and chestnuts and oaks along this coast, in their original state no doubt appeared like the "finest forest in the world."

15 (Return) Kettle and Catfish Creeks.

16 (Return) Record book of the Land Board at Detroit, now in the Crown Lands Department at Toronto.

17 (Return) Dr. Scadding's notes to his reprint of Littlehales' Journal.

18 (Return) This was no doubt where London now is.

19 (Return) Afterwards referred to by the diarist as the high bank.

20 (Return) Note Peter Jones' statement as quoted on page 28.

21 (Return) Now the city of London.

22 (Return) This disposes of the story told by Colonel Talbot to Mrs. Jamieson in 1837. He informed her that the name originated from his men having lost a kettle in the creek. But the creek was called Riviere a la Chaudiere or Kettle River by the French, and that is one of the names given to it in D. W. Smith's Gazetteer, of Upper Canada published in 1799.

23 (Return) The writer has not been able to see Mr. McNiff's report upon this survey.

24 (Return) Tiffany's Upper Canada Almanac, Niagara, 1802.