Читать книгу Forest, Lake and Prairie. Twenty Years of Frontier Life in Western Canada—1842-62 онлайн

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Often since then I have seen a big Indian, with a big saddle and load of buffalo meat, all on the back of a small pony, and I have thought of my "mud-turtle" and my ride on its back.

Father did not remain very long at college. An opening came to him to go to Alderville and become the assistant of Elder Case, in the management of an industrial school situated at that place.

Father in turn opened the way for my guardian, Mr. Cathey, who became teacher at this institution, and accordingly we moved to Alderville.

This was a great trip for me—by steamboat from Owen Sound to Coldwater, by stage to Orillia, by steamboat to Holland Landing, by stage to Toronto, and by steamboat from Toronto to Cobourg. All this was an eye and mind opener—those wonderful steamboats, the stagecoach, the multitude of people, the great city of Toronto, for even in 1850 this was to me a wonderful place. To be with mother and father once more, what joy! New scenes, a new world, had opened to my boyish imagination. I felt pity for the people away there in Owen Sound, shut in by forests and rocks. I commiserated my little brother in thought, left as he was on the bush farm, under the limestone crags. What did he know? What could he see? Why, I was away up in experience and knowledge. In vain folks might call me "little Johnnie." I was not little in my own conceit, for I had travelled; I was somebody.