Volume 10 - Section V - ElectricCanadian.com

EARLY GENERAL HISTORY 363
This road between the rivers is a very rude and
difficult one. It is barely blocked out of sufficient
width to allow a waggon with one horse to pass.
The
trees are cut down and hauled off, boulder stones and
small inequalities removed, and bridges built where they
are absolutely necessary. Only the horses of the coun
try, which all their lives have been trained to it, could
conduct even light waggons across the numerous steep
hills over which the road passes.
On this road grades of fourteen per cent were common.
But the highways afforded at best a rude and inconvenient
means of communication, which in bad weather became wellnigh
impassable. The only points in Lower Canada which
were served by good roads in the period prior to 1841 were
Quebec and Montreal, and these roads were under the control
of turnpike trusts, which were created in the case of Quebec
in 1805, and in the case of Montreal in 1829. In Upper
Canada macadamized roads were undertaken near Toronto
in 1833. Between this year and 1837 grants were made by
the legislature in aid of such construction on Yonge Street,
the Dundas Road and the Kingston Road. But these roads
were found too expensive, and plank roads, which could be
built at half the cost of the macadamized roads, began to be
constructed in the late thirties. The discomforts of travel
ling on the Kempt Road, which have been referred to, were
paralleled on the other highways. The dependence of
Montreal on water communication and winter roads was
such that as late as 1851 the cost of food and fuel doubled
while the ice was forming on the river. Between Montreal
and St Hyacinthe, a distance of thirty miles, it took a stage
coach from twelve to fifteen hours to make the journey in
the spring and autumn. From La Prairie to St Johns, a
distance of fourteen miles, it took a day to bring three barrels
of ashes in a cart drawn by two horses. In 1836 the Dundas
Road near Guelph was almost impassable in spring and
autumn, and but little better in summer. In 1852 there was
yet no road fit for a vehicle between Goderich and Port
Sarnia. _ From the townships of Innisfil or Vespra, even
when the roads were good, it cost 7,Kd. per bushel to convey