Lost in the Backwoods Part 7

"Aye from the sultry heat, We to our cave retreat, O'er canopied by huge roots, intertwined, Of wildest texture, blackened o'er with age."

COLERIDGE.

"Louis, what are you cutting out of that bit OF wood?" said Catharine, the very next day after the first ideas of the shanty had been started.

"Hollowing out a canoe."

"Out of that piece of stick!" said Catharine, laughing. "How many pa.s.sengers is it to accommodate, my dear?"

"I am only making a model. My canoe will be made out of a big pine log, and large enough to hold three."

"Is it to be like the big sap-trough in the sugar-bush at home?"

Louis nodded a.s.sent. "I long to go over to the island; I see lots of ducks popping in and out of the little bays beneath the cedars, and there are plenty of partridges, I am sure, and squirrels--it is the very place for them."

"And shall we have a sail as well as oars?"

"Yes; set up your ap.r.o.n for a sail."

Catharine cast a rueful look upon the tattered remnant of the ap.r.o.n.

"It is worth nothing now," she said, sighing; "and what am I to do when my gown is worn out? It is a good thing it is so strong; if it had been cotton, now, it would have been torn to bits among the bushes."

"We must make clothes of skins as soon as we get enough," said Hector.--"Louis, I think you can manufacture a bone needle; we can pierce the hole with the strong thorns, or a little round bone bodkin that can be easily made."

"The first rainy day we will see what we can do," replied Louis; "but I am full of my canoe just now."

"Indeed, Louis, I believe you never think of anything else; but even if we had a canoe to-morrow, I do not think that either you or I could manage one," said cautious Hector.

"I could soon learn as others have done before me. I wonder who first taught the Indians to make canoes, and venture out on the lakes and streams. Why should we be more stupid than these untaught heathens? I have listened so often to my father's stories and adventures when he was out lumbering on the St. John River, that I am as familiar with the idea of a boat as if I had been born in one. Only think now," he said, turning to Catharine; "just think of the fish, the big ones, we could get if we had but a canoe to push out from the sh.o.r.e beyond those rush-beds."

"It strikes me, Louis, that those rush-beds, as you call them, must be the Indian rice that we have seen the squaws make their soup of."

"Yes; and you remember old Jacob used to talk of a fine lake that he called Rice Lake, somewhere to the northward of the Cold Springs, where he said there was plenty of game of all kinds, and a fine open place where people could see through the openings among the trees. He said it was a great hunting-place for the Indians in the Fall of the year, and that they came there to hunt the peccary, which is, as you know, a kind of wild boar, and whose flesh is very good eating."

"I hope the Indians will not come here and find us out," said Catharine, shuddering; "I think I should be more frightened at the Indians than at the wolves. Have we not heard fearful tales of their cruelty?"

"But we have never been harmed by them; they have always been civil enough when they came to the Springs."

"They came, you know, for food, or shelter or something that they wanted from us; but it may be different when they find us alone and unprotected, encroaching upon their hunting-grounds."

"The place is wide enough for us and them; we will try and make them our friends."

"The wolf and the lamb do not lie down in the fold together," observed Hector. "The Indian is treacherous. The wild man and the civilized man do not live well together, their habits and dispositions are so contrary the one to the other. We are open and they are cunning, and they suspect our openness to be only a greater degree of cunning than their own--they do not understand us. They are taught to be revengeful, and we are taught to forgive our enemies. So you see that what is a virtue with the savage is a crime with the Christian. If the Indian could be taught the Word of G.o.d he might be kind, and true, and gentle as well as brave."

It was with conversations like this that our poor wanderers whiled away their weariness. The love of life, and the exertions necessary for self-preservation, occupied so large a portion of their thoughts and time, that they had hardly leisure for repining. They mutually cheered and animated each other to bear up against the sad fate that had thus severed them from every kindred tie, and shut them out from that home to which their young hearts were bound by every endearing remembrance from infancy upwards.

One bright September morning our young people set off on an exploring expedition, leaving the faithful Wolfe to watch the wigwam; for they well knew he was too honest to touch their store of dried fish and venison himself, and too trusty and fierce to suffer wolf or wild cat near it.

They crossed several narrow, deep ravines, and the low wooded flat along the lake sh.o.r.e, to the eastward of Pine-tree Point. Finding it difficult to force their way through the thick underwood that always impedes the progress of the traveller on the low sh.o.r.es of the lake, they followed the course of an ascending narrow ridge, which formed a sort of natural causeway between two parallel hollows, the top of this ridge being in many places not wider than a cart or wagon could pa.s.s along. The sides were most gracefully adorned with flowering shrubs, wild vines, creepers of various species, wild cherries of several kinds, hawthorns, bilberry bushes, high-bush cranberries, silver birch, poplars, oaks, and pines; while in the deep ravines on either side grew trees of the largest growth, the heads of which lay on a level with their path. Wild cliffy banks, beset with huge boulders of red and gray granite and water-worn limestone, showed that it had once formed the boundary of the lake, though now it was almost a quarter of a mile in its rear. Springs of pure water were in abundance, trickling down the steep rugged sides of this wooded glen. The children wandered onwards, delighted with the wild picturesque path they had chosen, sometimes resting on a huge block of moss-covered stone, or on the twisted roots of some ancient gray old oak or pine, whilst they gazed with curiosity and interest on the lonely but lovely landscape before them. Across the lake, the dark forest shut all else from their view, rising in gradual far-off slopes till it reached the utmost boundary of sight. Much the children marvelled what country it might be that lay in the dim, blue, hazy distance,--to them, indeed, a _terra incognita_--a land of mystery; but neither of her companions laughed when Catharine gravely suggested the probability of this unknown sh.o.r.e to the northward being her father's beloved Highlands. Let not the youthful and more learned reader smile at the ignorance of the Canadian girl; she knew nothing of maps, and globes, and hemispheres,--her only book of study had been the Holy Scriptures, her only teacher a poor Highland soldier.

Following the elevated ground above this deep valley, the travellers at last halted on the extreme edge of a high and precipitous mound, that formed an abrupt termination to the deep glen. They found water not far from this spot fit for drinking by following a deer-path a little to the southward. And there, on the borders of a little basin on a pleasant brae, where the bright silver birch waved gracefully over its sides, they decided upon building a winter house. They named the spot Mount Ararat: "For here," said they, "we will build us an ark of refuge, and wander no more." And Mount Ararat is the name which the spot still bears. Here they sat them down on a fallen tree and ate a meal of dried venison and drank of the cold spring that welled out from beneath the edge of the bank. Hector felled a tree to mark the site of their house near the birches; and they made a blaze, as it is called, on he trees, by cutting away pieces of the outer bark as they returned home towards the wigwam, that they might not miss the place.

They found less difficulty in retracing their path than they had formerly, as there were some striking peculiarities to mark it, and they had learned to be very minute in the marks they made as they travelled, so that they now seldom missed the way they came by. A few days after this they removed all their household stores--namely, the axe, the tin pot, bows and arrows, baskets, and bags of dried fruit, the dried venison and fish, and the deerskin; nor did they forget the deer-scalp, which they bore away as a trophy, to be fastened up over the door of their new dwelling, for a memorial of their first hunt on the sh.o.r.es of the Rice Lake. The skin was given to Catharine to sleep on.

The boys were now busy from morning till night chopping down trees for house-logs. It was a work of time and labour, as the axe was blunt and the oaks hard to cut; but they laboured on without grumbling, and Kate watched the fall of each tree with lively joy. They were no longer dull; there was something to look forward to from day to day--they were going to commence housekeeping in good earnest; they would be warmly and well lodged before the bitter frosts of winter could come to chill their blood. It was a joyful day when the log walls of the little shanty were put up, and the door hewed out. Windows they had none, so they did not cut out the s.p.a.ces for them; [Footnote: Many a shanty is put up in Canada without windows, and only an open s.p.a.ce for a door, with a rude plank set up to close it in at night.] they could do very well without, as hundreds of Irish and Highland emigrants have done before and since.

A pile of stones rudely cemented together with wet clay and ashes against the logs, and a hole cut in the roof, formed the chimney and hearth in this primitive dwelling. The c.h.i.n.ks were filled with wedge-shaped pieces of wood, and plastered with clay: the trees, being chiefly oaks and pines, afforded no moss. This deficiency rather surprised the boys, for in the thick forest and close cedar-swamps moss grows in abundance on the north side of the trees, especially on the cedar, maple, beech, ba.s.s, and iron wood; but there were few of these, excepting a chance one or two in the little basin in front of the house. The roof was next put on, which consisted of split cedars.

And when the little dwelling was thus far habitable, they were all very happy. While the boys had been putting on the roof, Catharine had collected the stones for the chimney, and cleared the earthen floor of the chips and rubbish with a broom of cedar boughs, bound together with a leathern thong. She had swept it all clean, carefully removing all unsightly objects, and strewing it over with fresh cedar sprigs, which gave out a pleasant odour and formed a smooth and not unseemly carpet for their little dwelling. How cheerful was the first fire blazing up on their own hearth! It was so pleasant to sit by its gladdening light, and chat away of all they had done and all that they meant to do! Here was to be a set of split cedar shelves, to hold their provisions and baskets; there a set of stout pegs was to be inserted between the logs, for hanging up strings of dried meat, bags of birch bark, or the skins of the animals they were to shoot or trap.

A table was to be fixed on posts in the centre of the floor. Louis was to carve wooden platters and dishes, and some stools were to be made with hewn blocks of wood till something better could be devised. Their bedsteads were rough poles of ironwood, supported by posts driven into the ground, and partly upheld by the projection of the logs at the angles of the wall. Nothing could be more simple. The frame-work was of split cedar; and a safe bed was made by pine boughs being first laid upon the frame, and then thickly covered with dried gra.s.s, moss, and withered leaves. Such were the lowly but healthy couches on which these children of the forest slept.

A dwelling so rudely framed and scantily furnished would be regarded with disdain by the poorest English peasant. Yet many a settler's family have I seen as roughly lodged, while a better house was being prepared for their reception; and many a gentleman's son has voluntarily submitted to privations as great as these from the love of novelty and adventure, or to embark in the tempting expectation of realizing money in the lumbering trade,--working hard, and sharing the rude log shanty and ruder society of those reckless and hardy men, the Canadian lumberers. During the spring, and summer months these men spread themselves through the trackless forests, and along the sh.o.r.es of nameless lakes and unknown streams, to cut the pine or oak lumber,--such being the name they give to the felled stems of trees,--which are then hewn, and in the winter dragged out upon the ice, where they are formed into rafts, and in spring floated down the waters till they reach the great St. Lawrence, and are, after innumerable difficulties and casualties, finally shipped for England.

I have likewise known European gentlemen voluntarily leave the comforts of a civilized home and a.s.sociate themselves with the Indian trappers and hunters, leading lives as wandering and as wild as the uncultivated children of the forest.

The nights and early mornings were already growing sensibly more chilly. The dews at this season fall heavily, and the mists fill the valleys till the sun has risen with sufficient heat to draw up the vapours. It was a good thing that the shanty was finished so soon, or the exposure to the damp air might have been productive of ague and fever. Every hour almost they spent in making little additions to their household comforts, but some time was necessarily pa.s.sed in trying to obtain provisions. One day Hector, who had been out from dawn till moonrise, returned with the welcome news that he had shot a young deer, and required the a.s.sistance of his cousin to bring it up the steep bank (it was just at the entrance of the great ravine) below the precipitous cliff near the lake: he had left old Wolfe to guard it in the meantime. They had now plenty of fresh broiled meat, and this store was very acceptable, as they were obliged to be very careful of the dried meat that they had.

This time Catharine adopted a new plan. Instead of cutting the meat in strips, and drying it (or jerking it, as the lumberers term it), she roasted it before the fire, and hung it up, wrapping it in thin sheets of birch bark. The juices, instead of being dried up, were preserved, and the meat was more palatable. Catharine found great store of wild plums in a beautiful valley not far from the shanty; these she dried for the winter store, eating sparingly of them in their fresh state.

She also found plenty of wild black currants and high-bush cranberries, on the banks of a charming creek of bright water that flowed between a range of high pine hills and finally emptied itself into the lake. There were great quant.i.ties of water-cresses in this pretty brook; they grew in bright, round, cushion-like tufts at the bottom of the water, and were tender and wholesome. These formed an agreeable addition to their diet, which had hitherto been chiefly confined to animal food, for they could not always meet with a supply of the bread-roots, as they grew chiefly in damp, swampy thickets on the lake sh.o.r.e, which were sometimes very difficult of access.

However, they never missed any opportunity of increasing their stores, and laying up for the winter such roots as they could procure.

As the cool weather and frosty nights drew on, the want of warm clothes and bed-covering became more sensibly felt; those they had were beginning to wear out. Catharine had managed to wash her clothes at the lake several times, and thus preserved them clean and wholesome; but she was often sorely puzzled how the want of her dress was to be supplied as time wore on, and many were the consultations she held with the boys on the important subject. With the aid of a needle she might be able to manufacture the skins of the small animals into some sort of jacket, and the doe-skin and deer-skin could be made into garments for the boys. Louis was always suppling and rubbing the skins to make them soft: they had taken off the hair by sprinkling it with wood ashes, and rolling it up with the hairy side inwards. Out of one of these skins he made excellent moccasins, piercing the holes with a sharpened bone bodkin, and pa.s.sing the sinews of the deer through, as he had seen his father do, by fixing a stout fish-bone to the deer-sinew thread. Thus he had an excellent subst.i.tute for a needle; and, with the aid of the old file, he sharpened the point of the rusty nail, so that he was enabled, with a little trouble, to drill a hole in a bone needle for his cousin Catharine's use. After several attempts, he succeeded in making some of tolerable fineness, hardening them by exposure to a slow, steady degree of heat till she was able to work with them, and even mend her clothes with tolerable expertness. By degrees, Catharine contrived to cover the whole outer surface of her homespun woollen frock with squirrel and mink, musk-rat and woodchuck skins. A curious piece of fur patchwork of many hues and textures it presented to the eye,--a coat of many colours, it is true; but it kept the wearer warm, and Catharine was not a little proud of her ingenuity and industry,--every new patch that was added was a source of fresh satisfaction; and the moccasins that Louis fitted so nicely to her feet were great comforts. A fine skin that Hector brought triumphantly in one day, the spoil from a fox that had been caught in one of his dead-falls, was in due time converted into a dashing cap, the brush remaining as an ornament to hang down on one shoulder. Catharine might have pa.s.sed for a small Diana when she went out, with her fur dress and bow and arrows, to hunt with Hector and Louis.

Whenever game of any kind was killed, it was carefully skinned, and the fur stretched upon bent sticks, being first turned, so as to present the inner part to the drying action of the air. The young hunters were most expert in this work, having been accustomed for many years to a.s.sist their fathers in preparing the furs which they disposed of to the fur traders, who visited them from time to time, and gave them various articles in exchange for their peltries,--such as powder and shot, and cutlery of different kinds, as knives, scissors, needles, and pins, with gay calico and cotton handkerchiefs for the women.

As the evenings lengthened, the boys employed themselves with carving wooden platters. Knives, and forks, and spoons they fashioned out of the larger bones of the deer, which they often found bleaching in the sun and wind, where they had been left by their enemies the wolves; baskets too they made, and birch dishes, which they could now finish so well that they held water or any liquid. But their great want was some vessel that would bear the heat of the fire; the tin pot was so small that it could be made little use of in the cooking way.

Catharine had made tea of the leaves of the sweet fern,--a graceful woody fern, with a fine aromatic scent, like nutmegs. [Footnote: Comptoma asplenifolia, a small shrub of the sweet gale family.] This shrub is highly esteemed among the Canadians as a beverage, and also as a remedy against the ague. It grows in great abundance on dry sandy lands and wastes, by waysides.

"If we could but make some sort of earthen pot that would stand the heat of the fire," said Louis, "we might get on nicely with cooking."

But nothing like the sort of clay used by potters had been seen, and they were obliged to give up that thought and content themselves with roasting or broiling their food. Louis, however, who was fond of contrivances, made an oven, by hollowing out a place near the hearth and lining it with stones, filling up the intervals with wood ashes and such clay as they could find, beaten into a smooth mortar. Such cement answered very well, and the oven was heated by filling it with hot embers; these were removed when it was sufficiently heated, and the meat or roots placed within the oven being covered over with a flat stone previously heated before the fire and covered with hot embers. This sort of oven had often been described by old Jacob as one in common use among some of the Indian tribes in the Lower Province, in which they cook small animals; they could bake bread also in this oven, if they had had flour to use. [Footnote: This primitive oven is much like what voyagers have described as in use among the natives of many of the South Sea Islands.]

Since the finishing of the house and furnishing it the young people were more reconciled to their lonely life, and even entertained decided home feelings for their little log cabin. They never ceased, it is true, to talk of their parents, and brothers, and sisters, and wonder if all were well, and whether they still hoped for their return, and to recall their happy days spent in the home which they now feared they were destined never again to behold. Nevertheless, they were becoming each day more cheerful and more active. Ardently attached to each other, they seemed bound together by a yet more sacred tie of brotherhood. They were now all the world to one another, and no cloud of disunion came to mar their happiness. Hector's habitual gravity and caution were tempered by Louis's lively vivacity and ardour of temper; and they both loved Catharine, and strove to smooth as much as possible the hard life to which she was exposed, by the most affectionate consideration for her comfort; and she, in return, endeavoured to repay them by cheerfully enduring all privations, and making light of all their trials, and taking a lively interest in all their plans and contrivances.

Louis had gone out to fish at the lake one autumn morning. During his absence a sudden squall of wind came on, accompanied with heavy rain.

As he stayed longer than usual, Hector began to feel uneasy lest some accident had befallen him, knowing his adventurous spirit, and that he had for some days previous been busy constructing a raft of cedar logs, which he had fastened together with wooden pins. This raft he had nearly finished, and was even talking of adventuring over to the nearest island to explore it, and see what game and roots and fruits it afforded.

Bidding Catharine stay quietly within doors till his return, Hector ran off, not without some misgivings of evil having befallen his rash cousin, which fears he carefully concealed from his sister, as he did not wish to make her needlessly anxious. When he reached the sh.o.r.e, his mind was somewhat relieved by seeing the raft on the beach, just as it had been left the night before; but neither Louis nor the axe was to be seen, nor the fishing-rod and line.

"Perhaps," thought he, "Louis has gone further down, to the mouth of the little creek in the flat east of this, where we caught our last fish; or maybe he has gone up to the old place at Pine-tree Point."

While he yet stood hesitating within himself which way to turn, he heard steps as of some one running, and perceived his cousin hurrying through the bushes in the direction of the shanty. It was evident by his disordered air; and the hurried glances that he cast over his shoulder from time to time, that something unusual had occurred to disturb him.

"Holloa, Louis! is it a bear, wolf, or catamount that is on your trail?" cried Hector; almost amused by the speed with which his cousin hurried onward. "Why, Louis, whither away?"

Louis now turned and held up his hand, as if to enjoin silence, till Hector came up to him.

"Why, man, what ails you? what makes you run as if you were hunted down by a pack of wolves?"