hese poor creatures to hide by day and to travel by
night. When all other signs failed they kept their eyes fixed on the
North Star, whose light "seemed the enduring witness of the divine
interest in their deliverance." By the system known as the
"underground railway," the fugitive was passed from one friendly house
to another. A code of signals was used by those engaged in the work of
mercy--pass words, peculiar knocks and raps, a call like that of the
owl. Negroes in transit were described as "fleeces of wool," and
"volumes of the irrepressible conflict bound in black."

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law deprived the negro of his
security in the free states, and dragged back into slavery men and
women who had for years been living in freedom, and had found means
to earn their bread and to build up little homes. Hence an impetus was
given to the movement towards Canada, which the slave-holders tried to
check by talking freely of the rigours of the Canadian climate. Lewis
Clark, the original of George Harris in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was told
that if he went to Canada the British would put his eyes out, and keep
him in a mine for life. Another was told that the Detroit River was
three thousand miles wide.

But the exodus to Canada went on, and the hearts of the people were
moved to compassion by the arrival of ragged and foot-sore wanderers.
They found a warm friend in Brown, who paid the hotel bill of one for
a week, gave fifty dollars to maintain a negro family, and besides
numerous acts of personal kindness, filled the columns of the _Globe_
with appeals on behalf of the fugitives. Early in 1851 the
Anti-Slavery Society of Canada was organized. The president was the
Rev. Dr. Willis, afterwards principal of Knox Presbyterian College,
and the names of Peter Brown, George Brown, and Oliver Mowat are found
on the committee. The object of the society was "the extinction of
slavery all over the world by means exclusively lawful and peaceable,
moral and religious, such as the diffusion of useful information and
argument by tracts, newspapers, lectures, and correspondence, and by
manifesting sympathy with the houseless and homeless victims of
slavery flying to our soil." Concerts were given, and the proceeds
applied in aid of the refugees.

Brown was also strongly interested in the settlements of refugees
established throughout Western Canada. Under an act of the Canadian
parliament "for the settlement and moral improvem