Cedar Creek Part 38

'I think, and Edith agrees with me, that my best chance is to get a small lot of wild land, and begin at the beginning, as you did. I want the discipline of all the enforced hard work, Bob. My unfortunate bringing up in every species of self-indulgence was no good education for a settler; but, with G.o.d's help, I'll get over it.'

Robert was lifted out of his own trouble for a time by seeing the manful struggle which this other heart had to make against the slavery of habit. He roused himself to speak cheeringly to the young man, and receive his confidence cordially, in an hour when selfishness would rather have been alone.

'Perhaps an application for a Governmental free grant of land would be advisable,' said Reginald. 'I've been thinking of it. You see I would rather like to be bound down, and forced to stay in one spot, as I must if I undertake the hundred acres on Government terms.'

'What are the terms?' asked Robert.

'Well, in the first place, I must be more than eighteen years old; must take possession of the land in a month from the date of allotment; must put twelve acres at least into cultivation within four years, besides building a log-house, twenty feet by eighteen; and must guarantee residence on the lot till these conditions be fulfilled.'

'Hard work, and no mistake,' said Robert. 'I've a mind to go with you.'

'_You!_' exclaimed the other, with unfeigned surprise, looking in Wynn's face.

'Yes, I feel as if I would be the better for a few months of the old difficulties. I'd like to get away from this for awhile.'

'But perhaps you wouldn't like the "while" to extend over four years,'

remarked Armytage. 'Of all people, I never expected to find you a rover, Wynn.'

It was the pa.s.sing fancy of a wounded spirit. Before the captain departed from Daisy Burn, Robert had become wiser. Duty called on him to remain in the home which his labour had created in the bush. After some deliberation, he asked Reginald to work Mr. Holt's newly acquired farm in shares with himself; and Reginald, though looking wistfully on his receding vision of solitary bush life, consented.

'Farming upon shares' signifies that the owner furnishes the land, implements of husbandry, and seed; the other contracting party finds all the labour required; and the produce is divided between them. This agreement was slightly modified in the case of Daisy Burn, for Robert did many a hard day's work on it himself, and was general superintendent.

The plan may answer well where ignorance and capital go together, and chance to secure the services of honest industry; but the temptations of the labourer to fraud are strong, and his opportunities unlimited. Many a new settler has been ruined by farming upon shares with dishonest people.

The last sleighing week saw the departure of the Armytage family. Before a thaw imprisoned the back settlements in spring isolation, they had reached the city of Ottawa, where the captain showed a disposition to halt for some days to look about him, he said--a favourite occupation in his lotos-eating life: Edith protested in vain. No; he might fall in with some employment to suit him perchance: though what would suit Captain Armytage, except a handsome salary for keeping his hands in his pockets, he would himself have been puzzled to define.

However, for the purpose of falling in with such employment, he frequented most of the hotel and tavern bars in the town, leaving the girls chiefly to their own devices. So, as the weather was fine, Miss Armytage and Jay walked about a great deal beside the broad brown river, just unchained from ice, and rushing, floe-laden, towards the Chaudiere Falls; through the wide rectangular streets, lined with the splendid stores and ma.s.sive houses of a busy population; through the village-like suburbs, where each cottage was fronted with a garden; and ascended the Major Hill, to behold the unrivalled view of forest, flood, and field from its summit. Far to the right and left stretched a panorama, such as only British North America could furnish; the great Ottawa river gliding by, a hundred and fifty feet below, the long line of cataracts flashing and dashing to the north, a framework of black forest closing into the edge of the streets, and bounded itself on the horizon by high blue mountains.

Here they were overtaken by Mr. Hiram Holt. He had seen them pa.s.s as he sat in some lawyer's office near by, and followed them when his business was finished. His first proposition was that they should go with him to Mapleton, while their father chose to idle about Bytown. Miss Armytage declined, for she hoped they might leave for Montreal in a day or two at furthest; but if Mr. Holt commanded any influence there,--and she told him, poor girl, the little plan of teaching which she had formed.

'Come, now,' quoth Hiram, after some conversation on that head, and a promise of writing to friends in Montreal, 'take my arm, young lady, and I'll show you some of our Ottawa lions. Biggest of all, to my fancy, is the town itself--only twenty-five years old, and as large as if it had been growing for centuries. The man is only in the prime of life who felled the first tree on this site, and now the town covers as much ground as Boston. Certainly the site is unrivalled.'

Edith, thinking a good deal of other more personally important things, acquiesced in all he said.

'You see, it's the centre of everything: three magnificent rivers flow together here, the Ottawa, Rideau, and Gatineau; water privilege is unlimited; Chaudiere up yonder would turn all the mills in creation.

Now, do you know the reason it is called Chaudiere, my dear?'

This to Jay, who had to confess her ignorance.

'Because the vapour--do you see the cloud always ascending from the crest of the Falls?--reminded somebody of the steam from a boiling kettle. Hence these are the Kettle Falls, Miss Jay.'

She thought the appellation very undignified.

'The finest building sites are on this Barracks Hill,' observed Mr.

Holt, relapsing into contemplation. 'But Government won't give them up: it is to be a sort of Acropolis, commanding the whole position at the fork of the three rivers, and the double ma.s.s of houses on both sides.

Bytown hasn't seen its best days yet, by a long chalk, I guess.'

'I thought it was called Ottawa,' said Jay inquiringly.

'Well, madam, in this country, when cities arrive at the dignity of ten thousand inhabitants, they are permitted to change their names. So a town named York has very properly become Toronto, and the town founded by Colonel By has become Ottawa. But, as I was saying, its best days are in the future: it must be the capital of the Canadas yet.'

Jay remembered that her geography book a.s.signed that distinction to Quebec and Montreal. Mr. Holt affirmed that the pre-eminence of these must dwindle before this young city at their feet, which could be captured by no _coup-de-main_ in case of war, and was at the head of the natural land avenue to the great Lakes Huron and Superior.

'The ancient Indian route,' said he--'the only safe one if there were war with the United States; and you may depend on it, if railways take in the country, one of the greatest termini will be here, at the headquarters of the lumber trade.'

His vaticination has been fulfilled. Lines of telegraph, rail, and steamers radiate from Ottawa city as a centre, at this day. It has successfully contended for the honour of being acknowledged capital of the Canadas, and has been declared such by the decision of Queen Victoria.

Lions in the way of antiquity it had none to show, being the veriest mushroom of a capital; but Mr. Holt took his friends to see the great sluice-works, the beautiful Suspension Bridge, the chain of locks forming a water staircase on the Rideau ca.n.a.l, and one of the huge sawmills turned by a rill from Chaudiere Falls, where Jay admired immensely the glittering machinery of saws, chisels, and planes, and the gay painting of the iron-work. Since then, the vast tubular bridge of the Grand Trunk Railway spans the river, and is a larger lion than all the rest.

CHAPTER XLIV.

SHOVING OF THE ICE.

We must pa.s.s over a year; for so long did Sam Holt continue in Europe.

Rambling over many countries, from the heather hills of Scotland and the deep fiords of Norway, to the Alhambra and the sunlit 'isles of Greece,'

this grandson of a Suffolk peasant, elevated to the ranks of independence and intellectual culture by the wisdom and self-denial of his immediate ancestors, saw, and sketched, and intensely enjoyed the beauty with which G.o.d has clothed the Old World. And in that same sketch-book, his constant companion, there was one page which opened oftener than any other--fell open of itself, if you held the volume carelessly--containing a drawing, not of Alpine aiguille, nor Italian valley, nor Spanish posada, nor Greek temple, but of a comfortable old mansion, no way romantically situate among swelling hills, and partially swathed in ivy.

The corner of the sketch bore the lightly pencilled letters, 'Dunore.'

And now he fancied that twelve months' travel had completed the cure, and that he had quite conquered his affection for one who did not return it. He was prepared to settle down in common life again, with the second scar on his heart just healed.

Coming home by Boston, he took rail thence to Burlington on Lake Champlain, and near the head of that n.o.ble sheet of water crossed the Canadian frontier into French scenery and manners. The line stopped short at the edge of the St. Lawrence, where pa.s.sengers take boat for La Chine or the island of Montreal--that is, ice permitting. Now, on this occasion the ice did not permit, at least for some time. Sam Holt had hoped that its annual commotion would have been over; but it had only just begun.

A vast sheet of ice, a mile in breadth and perhaps ten in length, was being torn from its holdfasts by the current beneath; was creaking, grinding, shoving along, crunching up against the sh.o.r.e in ma.s.ses, block over block ten or fifteen feet high, yielding slowly and reluctantly to the pressure of the deep tide below, which sometimes with a tremendous noise forced the hummocks into long ridges. The French Canadians call these 'bourdigneaux.'

The sights, the sounds, were little short of sublime. But when night came down with its added stillness, then the heaving, grating, tearing, wrenching noises were as of some prodigious hidden strength, riving the very foundations of solid earth itself. People along sh.o.r.e could hardly sleep. Mr. Holt, having a taste for strange scenery, spent much of that sharp spring night under 'the glimpses of the moon,' watching the struggle between the long-enchained water and its icy tyrant. Another pa.s.senger, like-minded, was companion of his ramble.

'I fear it is but a utopian scheme to dream of bridging such a flood as this,' observed Holt. 'No piers of man's construction could withstand the force that is in motion on the river to-night. I fear the promoters of the Victoria Bridge are too sanguine.'

'Well, I could pin my faith upon any engineering project sanctioned by Stephenson,' rejoined the other. 'We had him here to view the site, just a mile out of Montreal. He recommended the tubular plan--a modified copy of the English Britannia Bridge. And Ross, the resident engineer, has already begun preliminaries, with cofferdams and such like mysteries.'

'It will be the eighth wonder of the world if completed,' said Mr. Holt, 'and must add immensely to the commercial advantages of Canada.'

'My dear sir,' quoth the other impressively (he was a corn merchant in Montreal), 'unless you are in trade you cannot duly estimate the vast benefits that bridging the St. Lawrence will confer on the colony. For six months of the year the river is closed to navigation, as you are aware, and the industry of Canada is consequently imprisoned. But this n.o.ble highway which the Grand Trunk Railway Company have commenced will render all seasons alike to our commerce. Consider the advantage of being able to transport the inexhaustible cereals of the Far West, "without break of bulk or gauge," from the great corn countries of the Upper Lakes to the very wharves on the Atlantic.'

Mr. Holt was not surprised to hear, after this, that the speaker was a heavy shareholder in the Grand Trunk Railway, and placed unlimited faith in its projects. Whether, in subsequent years, its complete collapse (for a time) as a speculation lowered his enthusiasm, we cannot say; perhaps he was satisfied to suffer, in fulfilment of the superb ambition of opening up a continent to commerce.

The corn merchant had got upon his hobby, and could have talked all night about the rail and its prospects in Canada. 'The progress of the Province outstrips all sober calculation,' said he. 'Population has increased twelve hundred per cent. within the last forty years; wherever the rail touches the ground, an agricultural peasantry springs up.

Push it through the very wilderness, say I; there is no surer means of filling our waste places with industrial life; and the Pacific should be our terminus.'

This design has ceased to be thought extravagant, since Professor Hind's explorations have proved the existence of a fertile belt across the continent, through British territory, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains; along which, if speedily and wisely opened up, must travel the commerce of China and j.a.pan, as well as the gold of Columbia.

The nation which constructs this line will, by its means, hold the sceptre of the commercial world. Brother Jonathan is well aware of the fact, and would long since have run a chain of locomotives from Atlantic to Pacific if he could; but thousands of miles of the great American desert intervene, and along the western seaboard there is no port fit for the vast trade, from Acapulco to Esquimalt on Vancouver's Island, except San Francisco, which, for other reasons, is incapacitated.

Grinding, crushing, heaving, the broad current of the St. Lawrence bore its great burden all night along. The same might continue for many days; and Sam Holt was anxious to get home. He determined, in company with his new friend the corn merchant, to attempt the pa.s.sage in a canoe.

'Now, sir,' said the latter gentleman, while they waited on the bank, m.u.f.fled to their eyes in furs, 'you will have some experience of what a complete barrier the frozen St. Lawrence is to Canadian commerce, or the commonest intercourse, and how much the Victoria Bridge is needed.'