Dr. Canniff has been a busy author,* and an active member of various associations.

In 1867 he received an invitation from the Medical Faculty of Paris to attend, as a delegate, the first International Medical Congress. He read a Paper on this occasion upon the " Indians of Canada," in connection with the subject of "Tuberculosis." In October of the same year, he busied himself, with others, in the organization of the Canadian Medical Association at Quebec, and was appointed the first secretary for the Province of Ontario. In 1868 he returned to Toronto, and resumed the Chair of Surgery in Victoria Medical College.

At a

We have been kept very near Kingston for some time. very early date, the King's township must have been surveyed and settled, for Dr. Canniff tells us, Collins, the surveyor, used the name in 1788. During French rule, a settlement was begun at Kingston, under De Courcelles, as early as 1672, and called Cataraqui. A fort was erected, and named after a distinguished French count, Fort Frontenac, a fort which was made much use of by the French and the Indians, until it was destroyed in 1758 by the expedition commanded by Colonel Bradstreet. The place fell into the hands of the British in 1782. The King's township was mainly settled by U. E. Loyalists, some of whom, as their names indicate, were Irish. According to Cooper, the town was laid out in 1793. It was then confined to the eastern portion, and the log hut kept its neighbour, the Indian wigwam, in counteIn its early, as in its later, days, the Irishman was well

nance.

represented. Our business is not with antique bric-à-brac. We may, however, record that there is at present a pewter dish in existence which a person addicted to making bulls would declare to be entitled to the dignity of being ranked as an Irish settler, with a Palatinate ancestry. Barbara Monk, who was born in Ireland, married one Gasper Hover, who settled in Adolphustown. The ancestors of Barbara had carried this dish with them from the Palatinate to Ireland; one of their descendants carried it to New

Among Dr. Canniff's works are "Principles of Surgery," and "Settlement of Upper Canada."

IRISH STAMINA. LOVE OF JUSTICE.

95

York, whence it was brought by Barbara with the company of Major Van Alstine.

In that company were several persons with more claim to the name of Irishman than the pewter plate. Amongst them, preeminent in years, was John Fitzgerald, who died in 1806, at the ripe age of 101. In the same company was William Casey, who, with Willet Casey, mentioned above, represented fourteen souls. All the men, who came from Ireland in those early days, must have been men of fine stamina. If we travel into another township, we find William Anderson, who was alive in 1869, aged eighty-eight, having come to Canada in 1803. Three years afterwards he settled at Mississauga Point, having meanwhile married a Miss Way, a descendant of U. E. Loyalists. Those men brought with them from Ireland that sturdy love of justice for which Sir John Davies, in his day, declared the Irish to be remarkable. Once Judge Cartwright, holding his court at a tavern at Ernestown, convicted and sentenced to be hanged a man accused of stealing a watch, the only evidence against him being that the watch was found on him. The accused declared that he had bought the time-piece of a pedler. Nevertheless, the judge would not re-consider his verdict. Dr. Connor, of Ernestown, stood up in open court, and appealed against the monstrous injustice of taking a man's life on such evidence. In those early days, that dignified demeanour which distinguishes our courts, did not exist. He was hissed down, and the man was hanged. Subsequently the pedler turned up, and justified the unfortunate man.

Dr. John Gamble was born near Enniskillen in 1755. Having studied medicine and surgery at Edinburgh, he emigrated, in 1779, to New York, where he at once entered the King's service as assistant-surgeon to the General Hospital. He was subsequently attached to the Old Queen's Rangers. After the peace, he went to New Brunswick. In 1784, he married and practised his profession at St. John. He subsequently joined the Queen's Rangers as assistant-surgeon. In 1802 he settled down to practise in Kingston, where he died in 1811, leaving behind him his wife and thirteen children. His wife removed to Toronto with her nine daughters and four sons, in 1820. The descendants of the pair

already exceed by a good many, two hundred. Mrs. Gamble, who had been a Miss Clarke, was the daughter of a U. E. Loyalist, and was ninety-two years old at the date of her death. Mr. Clarke Gamble is one of the descendants. J. W. Gamble, who died a few years ago, was the eldest son of Dr. John Gamble. He was born at the garrison, York, in 1798; was elected for the South Riding of York in 1838, and re-elected for the same riding in 1851, by a majority of 600. In 1854 he was again re-elected, and indeed a large portion of his life was passed in the discharge of public duties.

Some ten years prior to the revolutionary war, Dennis Carroll, a native of the County Down, crossed the Atlantic, with his wife, and settled in Maryland. He had several sons, all of whom, with the exception of Joseph, adhered to the revolutionary side. Joseph joined the British army. He drew land in Nova Scotia. After suffering shipwreck, of which he was one of the few survivors, he arrived in St. John. Having lost his property by endorsement, he, in 1809, set out with his wife and a family of eight sons, to renew his search after fortune in the wilds of Upper Canada. He was living on an Indian farm, near where Brantford now stands, when the war of 1812-15 broke out. He and his three eldest sons joined the army. The close of the war found the family, a Presbyterian one, notwithstanding the name, at York. One of his sons became a successful physician; another, a well-to-do commercial mán, One of his descendants is well known as a Methodist minister, the Rev. John Carroll, D.D., a man of distinguished piety, who has written much and well.

The greatest factor in civilization is religion. When an emigration settles down in a new country, its success, its progress, and its happiness will greatly depend on the character of the fauna of that country. If injurious animals abound, population may be kept down, and civilization retarded. The wolf and bear were the principal enemies the emigrant had to encounter in Canada. But worse than wolf or bear or tiger are the lusts of man. Endowed with infinite desires, nothing can keep him from degenerating, but communion with the Absolute; nothing but Eternity can outweigh his vast and turbulent passions, in which earth-born and earth-bounded resolutions are as straw and drift

EARLY METHODISM.

GEORGE NEAL.

97

in the grasp and coil of roused-up seas. And the same country which was, in the eighth and ninth centuries for Europe, the lamp of truth and the ark of civilization, sent men here to Canada to root hard by her foundations, the gospel.

The Methodist Church is one of the most useful and numerous denominations in Canada. It numbers in Ontario alone nearly five hundred thousand. In Quebec it numbers thirty-four thousand one hundred; in New Brunswick, nearly seventy thousand; in Nova Scotia, forty thousand eight hundred and seventy-one. This church is traceable to the Irish Methodist Church as child to parent.

In 1766, Embury and Barbara Heck emigrated from Ireland, and founded Methodism in the States. Embury died in 1773. His widow married John Lawrence, who, like herself, had emigrated from Ireland. On the breaking out of the revolutionary war, this couple, together with David Embury, Paul Heck, and Barbara Heck, and many more of the Irish Palatines, removed to 'Lower' Canada, settling first about Montreal, whence they afterwards removed to Augusta, in 'Upper' Canada. Here they pursued their work with zeal. In the house of John and Catherine Lawrence, the first "class" of Augusta was held. They thus anticipated and prepared the way for the itinerant Methodist preachers, and, as some think, for the ultimate universality of Methodism in the Dominion.*

Another man whose name, at this period, should not be forgotten, was George Neal. George Neal wielded not only the sword of truth, but the sword of steel. He belonged to that curious race of soldiers who unite fervent religious feeling to a warlike instinct, such as Havelock, Hedley Vicars, and hundreds of others, whose names will readily occur. A major of a cavalry regiment in the British army, he was a local Methodist preacher. He crossed the Niagara river at Queenston, and commenced preaching. The same results followed as have always followed the preaching of the Gospel by warm-hearted men. The story of immortal love, of purity, and rectitude, that had no harsher word for impurity and error than "sin no more;" of that mysterious

See Goldwin Smith in "Fortnightly Review" for March, 1877.

person who went through the world, like a breeze of balm and healing through a fever-stricken town; of one so great that the power of empire seems trifling compared with His; of one so tender, and withal so sorrowful, that He seemed the incarnate sigh of Heaven over human woe; this divine tale, when told with the Irish warmth of Major Neal, was, says Dr. Bangs," blessed to the awakening and conversion of many souls," and the bluff Christian soldier, whose house became afterwards a home for the preachers, and who lived to see large and flourishing societies established throughout all the district where he lived, "was always spoken of by the people with great affection and veneration, as the pioneer of Methodism in that country." For some years he was the only Methodist preacher in Canada. But in 1788 another pioneer came into the field, James M'Carty, who was destined to win the glory of martyrdom. A convert of Whitfield's ministry, he crossed over from the United States to Kingston, and passed on to Ernestown, where he began to hold religious meetings in the log-cabins. He was a man of attractive manners and speech. Large numbers attended his preaching. A great impression was made. Many were awakened. His success provoked hostility among churchmen, who were, as we may be sure, without any claim to be considered religious men. The word "Methodist" is even now used by some foolish people as a term of reproach. In England, the church-doors had been closed in the face of John Wesley, and he and his followers were often subjected to indignity. We need not wonder, then, that a sheriff, a militia captain, and an engineer, should combine to rid the country of this "pestilent fellow." Four armed men entered the house on Sunday morning where M'Carty was dwelling in that peace which man can neither give nor take away. Their object was to drag him to the Kingston prison; but the congregation resisting, and one Perry offering bail for M'Carty's appearance before the magistrate, they retired. The next day the Sheriff of Kingston refused to interfere with him. Nevertheless, the three ruffians, before night, had him in prison on some frivolous pretext. Perry succeeded in bailing him out. On his being returned for trial, his enemies seized him, thrust him into a boat, and had him landed on one of the small islands in the rapids near Cornwall, where he perished.