From this point onward, although their difficulties were by no means at an end, they struggled on to the St. Lawrence, and reached Quebec on the 24th of April.
The trip was a great disappointment to Finlay. He had no intention of having it made at this time; but Sir John Johnston, superintendent general of Indian affairs, had informed him that he was about to make a trip to Halifax, and would be prepared to take a mail with him. Finlay lost no time in advertising the fact throughout the colony, and had gathered a large number of letters when Johnston changed his plans and did not go to Halifax.
There was nothing for Finlay to do but to send a special courier. Durand whom he engaged could not tell him what the cost would be, but from the figures furnished by another courier who had frequently carried despatches, he thought that 120 would be about the expense. Imagine his dismay when the account was shown to be 191, and he had collected less than 75 as postage on the letters contained in the mail.
There was no choice open to the colony. At whatever cost, an easy road must be made between Quebec and Halifax. Dependence on a foreign, and, at the time, hostile nation, for communication with the mother country was not to be thought of, still less endured.
Indeed, in January 1783, before the peace was signed, Haldimand had taken steps to establish a road between Canada and Nova Scotia. He sent a surveyor with two hundred men down to work on the Temiscouata portage, and at the same time urged governor Parr of Nova Scotia to do what was necessary to facilitate travel in his province.
Haldimand had observed that a considerable part of the expense of a mail service by this route arose from the extortionate charges for guides and forwarding, which were made by the Acadians settled at Aupaque, a few miles above Fredericton.[131] His plan, therefore, was to gather into his own hands all the agencies for transportation on the route; and with that end in view, he proposed to establish some experienced men at the head of lake Temiscouata, with canoes and other facilities for travel, whose business it should be to convey passengers and mail couriers across the lake, down the Madawaska river, and on down the St. John river as far as Grand Falls, where he intended to settle another post.
From an Acadian courier, named Mercure, whom Haldimand frequently employed to convey despatches to Halifax, he learned that a number of Acadians desired to take up land on the upper St. John, in order that they might be nearer ministers of religion, in the parishes on the St.
Lawrence. The plan was to place these Acadians on the lands along the river from Grand Falls up to lake Temiscouata, and it was hoped that the settlement thus formed would extend eventually to the St. Lawrence.
The governor of Nova Scotia responded heartily to Haldimand's proposals, and the settlement, once begun under their united efforts, made rapid progress. When Finlay travelled by this route to Halifax in July 1787, he found no settlers at all on the Madawaska, and only some twenty Acadians huddled together on the south bank of the St. John, opposite the mouth of the Madawaska.[132]
From this point downwards to the Grand Falls, a distance of forty miles, the country was entirely unoccupied. In 1791, a gentleman from Scotland, who was making a tour through Canada remarked with satisfaction on the regularity of the settlement over an extent of fifty miles of very rich country, and on the evidences of material well-being observable on every side.[133] The people carried the modes of life of a self-dependent community with them, as the traveller says that the settlement was entirely isolated and self-contained, electing its own magistrates, and that a high degree of comfort prevailed.
Governor Carleton, of New Brunswick, who had assisted materially in the formation of the settlement, obtained a troop of soldiers from Lord Dorchester, and by manning the posts at Presqu' Isle, Fredericton and St. John, he provided the means for keeping the road in good order.
The section of the long route between Quebec and Halifax, which commenced at the northern end of the Temiscouata portage, and ended at the mouth of the St. John river, was the one presenting most difficulties. But the other parts of the route, that is, the section between Quebec and the Temiscouata portage, which was entirely within the jurisdiction of the governor of Quebec, and the section from St.
John to Halifax, which was partly in New Brunswick, and partly in Nova Scotia, remain to be mentioned.
The courier had a comparatively easy journey from Quebec down the south shore of the St. Lawrence to the entrance of the portage. There had been a fair road for some years through that part of the country, and in 1786 Finlay, by the governor's orders, settled post houses on the route in order to facilitate the travel of mail couriers and others. The gentleman whose travels through Canada have been mentioned, observed that it was a comfortable trip through these parts, and that the country was thickly settled, there being from twelve to sixteen families to the mile.
The eastern end of the long route, that is, the part from St. John to Halifax, consisted of a trip across the bay of Fundy from St. John to Annapolis, and a journey by land through the Annapolis valley from Annapolis to Windsor, thence to Halifax. The road from Annapolis to Halifax is described by Finlay as very rough, but it was covered in three days in a one-horse carriage, and in two days on horseback.
The maintenance of a continuous communication between Quebec and Halifax was effected in the following manner.[134] Canada controlled the section from Quebec to Fredericton, and provided couriers who made fortnightly trips over this part of the route. The section down the St. John river from Fredericton to St. John, and thence by the bay to Annapolis, was under the supervision of the government of New Brunswick; while the eastern part, which lay entirely in Nova Scotia, was naturally managed by that government. In the summer of 1787, the governor, Lord Dorchester, sent Finlay over the route to Halifax, to see what improvements would be required in order to enable this service to compete with the service over the shorter route from Montreal to New York. Dorchester at the same time submitted the whole scheme to the colonial office, intimating that if the home government saw fit to establish a packet service between England and Halifax, the arrangements for the inland conveyance through the provinces would be found satisfactory.
Lord Sydney, the colonial secretary, expressed the king's approval of the measures taken,[135] and stated that the postmasters general had directed Finlay to carry the plans into execution in a manner correspondent to Lord Dorchester's wishes. The lack of sufficient packet boats would prevent the establishment of a regular service from England for the moment, but it was hoped that vessels enough might be spared for the route, to make the service though not exactly regular yet of substantial benefit to the colonies.
Finlay in the course of his visit to St. John and Halifax found much to encourage the hope that, with the improvement of the route, a satisfactory outlet from Canada to the sea would be obtained at Halifax.
The chief trouble, he foresaw, lay in the divided responsibility for the maintenance of an efficient service, owing to the fact that post office authorities in the several provinces were entirely independent of one another. Indeed, at that very time, the deputy postmasters general of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were at strife with one another, and were carrying on an active newspaper war as to which of the two was accountable for certain defects in the service.[136] The distribution of the expense of the part of the service they had undertaken to maintain was another cause of complaint.
Finlay came back to Canada after his trip to Halifax bringing with him two strong convictions. One was that the service to be successful must be in the hands of one person. The other was that the correspondence between the provinces themselves was not of sufficient volume to cover the outlay, and that unless there were frequent English mails exchanged at Halifax, the service would have to be dropped for lack of revenue to meet the large expense. He considered that if six mails a year could be exchanged between England and Halifax, the postage arising would more than pay the expenses of the service.
Dorchester lost no time in transmitting to England the substance of Finlay's recommendations, adding his own opinion that as soon as a continuous road to St. John had been constructed, and a sufficient number of people had been settled upon it to keep it open in winter, the foot couriers would be replaced by horsemen, and then the mails would be carried more speedily and securely than by way of New York.
The governor, also, suggested that the postal service in all the provinces be put under the direction of Finlay, who was a man of much experience, zeal, and practical ability, and who was entitled to this consideration from having lost a similar appointment by the late war.[137]
The home government approved of Dorchester's recommendation as to Finlay, whose commission as deputy postmaster general was extended to comprise the whole of the colonies in British North America. At the same time Dorchester received the gratifying news that the post office had managed so to arrange matters that commencing with March 1788 the packet boats which ran between Falmouth and New York would pass by way of Halifax, stopping there two days on both the inward and the outward voyages.
The service to Halifax was to be limited, however, to eight monthly trips between March and October, as the admiralty had been informed that the prevailing winds off the Nova Scotia coast during the winter months were so contrary as to make it impracticable for the packets to call there during those months.[138]
In winter, therefore, it was still necessary to send the mails from Canada for England by way of New York. The mails between Nova Scotia and England during the winter months were exchanged by means of a schooner, which the governor of Nova Scotia put on the course between Halifax and New York.
In the winter of 1790, the conditions were made somewhat easier for the Nova Scotians, by the British post office directing that the packet agent at New York should send the Nova Scotia mails from New York to Boston, so that the governor's schooner was not required to go further south than Boston.
To Canada, the calling of the packet at Halifax, was a great boon. It settled the seaport problem, which had many perplexing aspects. Canada could never dispense with the New York route, unless the charges for transmission through the United States were made quite extortionate, and the success which had attended the efforts of Canada to make an outlet through British territory would not be lost upon the Americans when it became necessary to re-arrange the terms for transit through the United States.
To merchants and others in Quebec who depended exclusively on the Halifax post office for their correspondence with England, the service of the packet boats, curiously enough, developed a grievance, which had a real foundation, as will be seen from the following case.
The postmaster of Halifax reported to the postmaster general that the admiral of the "Leander," which was on the point of sailing for England, expressed much dissatisfaction because a mail was not sent by his ship.[139] In explanation of his refusal to do this the postmaster stated that before the packet boats began to call at Halifax, he made up and despatched a mail by every ship of war and merchantman that sailed from Halifax for England, but since the commencement of the packet service, he despatched no mails by any other vessels than the packets.
The understanding of the arrangement by the postmaster was that the packet boats would not have been sent to Halifax if they were not to be employed exclusively, and he would no more think of sending a mail by any other steamer than he would send the letters to Annapolis by the first traveller who happened to be going in that direction. The explanation was acceptable to both the post office and the admiralty, but there can be no question that the employment of the packet boats curtailed the opportunities which the Nova Scotians had enjoyed of corresponding with England.
Before leaving the Quebec-Halifax service, it seems proper to mention a remarkable scheme which was submitted to the postmaster general by William Knox, late under secretary of state, for a packet service between England and North America, and between the several parts of the latter.[140] Knox was under secretary of state during the war, and had in a large measure directed the operations of the packet service on behalf of the army in America.
The proposition, which was the result of a request by Lord Walsingham, the postmaster general, for an expression of Knox's views, was based on the sound principle that, until the post office provided facilities adequate to the requirements of the correspondence which passed between England and North America, it could never compete successfully with the number of private ships continually crossing the Atlantic.
Knox pointed out that there was only a monthly service between England, Halifax and New York, and that, at the very best, five months must elapse before an answer could be returned to a letter written in England and addressed to any of the interior parts of British North America.
The plan Knox unfolded to Walsingham was to have a fleet of fast sailing vessels ply between England and Caplin bay, Newfoundland. At Caplin bay there would be other vessels awaiting the British packets, and, on their arrival, one of these would set off with the mails for Halifax and Rhode Island, and another for Bermuda and Virginia, each vessel returning by its own route, to Caplin bay. These services were to be looped together by auxiliary services, and connected with other lines further south, until Great Britain, Newfoundland, Canada, the United States and the West Indies were all bound together by an elaborate system of intercommunication, which would give an exchange of mails, between all the parts three times a month. This scheme, it is needless to say, was never carried into execution.
The results of the war had other important consequences for Canada, besides that of forcing upon Quebec and the Maritime provinces the first of the series of steps in the direction of common action, which led eventually to confederation. When peace was concluded in 1783, the disbanded soldiers and other adherents of the British cause came and settled in Canada, and there was an early demand for postal accommodation in the newly peopled districts.
The first settlement in Upper Canada was at Niagara, where four or five families took up land in 1780. These were reinforced in 1784, by a number of the men of Butler's Rangers, and at the end of that year, the settlement was increased to over six hundred. Americans came over in large numbers, and between them and the steady stream inwards of loyalists, the district from Niagara to the head of the lake at Hamilton was rapidly settled. A gentleman travelling through that part of the province in 1800 remarked that it was all under settlement.[141]
At the other end of the province, settlement was going forward with much rapidity. From the eastern boundary westward as far as the township of Elizabethtown, near the present site of Brockville, there was a continuous line of settlers. The extreme east was taken up by Highland Scotch as far as Dundas county, and the western part of this county was occupied by Germans. Both Highlanders and Germans came from the same district on the Mohawk river in New York state.
Westward from Dundas county the settlers were more largely of British-American origin. At Elizabethtown there was a break in the settlement until Frontenac county was reached, as the land in that intermediate district did not appear so favourable. At Kingston, settlement was recommended, and from that point to the western end of the bay of Quinte, farms were taken up with an alacrity that was unsurpassed in any part of the province.
The incomers were all from the states to the south, and in their old homes had enjoyed many of the conveniences of civilized life. In 1787, as soon as they had become fairly established, they petitioned the government for the extension of the post office into the new districts, and two years later post offices were opened at Lachine, Cedars, Coteau du Lac, Charlottenburg, Cornwall, New Johnston, Lancaster, Osnabruck, Augusta, Elizabethtown and Kingston.[142]
This was as far as the regular mail couriers ran. Trips were made once a year during the winter, and in summer, every opportunity afforded by vessels going up to lake Ontario, was taken advantage of for the despatch of mails.
In the first advertisement of the service of the new districts, it was stated that the mails would be despatched every four weeks, but this regularity could not be attained without a considerable outlay, and it was found better to utilize such means of conveyance as happened to be offering, for the carriage of the mails. Though the line of post offices along the St. Lawrence terminated at Kingston, reasonable provision was made for communication with the remote settlements of Niagara, Detroit and Michillimackinac.
Detroit and Michillimackinac are in the territory of the United States, but the forts at these places were detained in the hands of the British until 1796 as security, until the obligations imposed on the Americans by the treaty of Paris were fulfilled. Offices were established in each of the three settlements mentioned, and the post office undertook to send the mails forward from Kingston as opportunities occurred of doing so with safety.[143]
In 1792 the first postal convention to which Canada was a party, was concluded with the United States. Under its terms[144] the United States post office engaged to act as intermediary for the conveyance of mails passing between Canada and Great Britain. When a mail for Canada reached New York by the British packet, it was taken in hand by the British packet boat agent, who after assorting it, placed it in a sealed bag, which he delivered to the New York post office.
The postmaster of New York sent this bag forward by messenger as far as Burlington, Vermont, from whence it was taken to Montreal by a Canadian courier, who travelled between Montreal and Burlington every two weeks.
In 1797 these trips were made weekly.
For this service the Canadian post office agreed to pay the United States department the sum which the latter would have been entitled to collect on the same number of United States letters passing between Burlington and New York. As the mails were contained in a sealed bag, the United States post office had no means of arriving at the amount due to them for this service, and they agreed to accept the sworn statement of the British and Canadian officials on this point.
The convention, also, provided for the interchange of correspondence between Canada and the United States. According to the practice of the period, a letter from Montreal for New York, for instance, was chargeable with the postage due for conveyance from Montreal to the United States boundary. This was collected by the Canadian post office.
In addition to this, the United States post office charged the postage due to it for the conveyance from the boundary to New York.
The arrangements for the collection of the postage due to each administration were somewhat peculiar. On a letter from Canada to the United States, the Canadian postage as far as Burlington had to be paid at the time the letter was posted. The United States postage was collected from the person to whom the letter was delivered. On letters passing the other way, that is, from the United States to Canada, another arrangement was possible. The sender could, of course, if he chose, pay the United States postage to Burlington, and the Canadian post office would collect its own postage from the addressed.
But besides this arrangement, which was common to letters passing in either direction, a person in the United States could post a letter for Canada entirely unpaid, and the total amount due would be collected on the delivery of the letter to the person addressed in Canada. In this case, the postage due to the United States was collected by the postmaster at Montreal, who assumed the duties of agent, in this respect, for the United States post office. The United States did not allow any of their postmasters to act as agents for the collection of Canadian postage in the United States, alleging that there were too many post offices in that country for Burlington to look after them properly.
The convention of 1792 contained a feature which was at that time novel in post office arrangements. It provided for the conveyance of periodical magazines between Canada and Great Britain, charging for its services the unusually low figure of eight cents a magazine. The convention was signed by the deputy postmaster general of Canada and the postmaster general of the United States.
Under this convention the arrangements for the exchange of correspondence between Canada and Great Britain were very satisfactory.
During the eight months when the packet boats called at Halifax, the mails passed by the route through the Maritime provinces. In the winter, while the packet boats did not visit Halifax, the mails were sent by way of New York.
The improvements in the roads on the route through the United States, reduced greatly the time of conveyance between Montreal and New York.