Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men Part 11

After proceeding about three miles, we stopped in front of a neat farmhouse, surrounded with a garden and s.p.a.cious outbuildings, and forth came a very pretty and modest-looking young woman, with a lovely child in her arms, and leading another by the hand. It was the wife of my driver; and I must confess she did not seem well pleased to have him taken away from her. They evidently parted with reluctance. She gave him many special charges to take care of himself, and commissions to execute by the way. The children were then held up to be kissed heartily by their father, and we drove off. This little family scene interested me, and augured well, I thought, for my own chances of comfort and protection.

When we had jogged and jolted on at a reasonable pace for some time, and I had felt my way sufficiently, I began to make some inquiries into the position and circ.u.mstances of my companion. The first few words explained those discrepancies in his features, voice, and appearance, which had struck me.

His grandfather was a Frenchman. His father had married an Irishwoman, and settled in consequence in the south of Ireland. He became, after some changes of fortune, a grazier and cattle-dealer; and having realised a small capital which could not be safely or easily invested in the old country, he had brought out his whole family, and settled his sons on farms in this neighbourhood. Many of the first settlers about this place, generally emigrants of the poorest and lowest description, after clearing a certain portion of the land, gladly disposed of their farms at an advanced price; and thus it is that a considerable improvement has taken place within these few years by the introduction of settlers of a higher grade, who have purchased half-cleared farms, rather than waste toil and time on the wild land.

My new friend, John B----, had a farm of one hundred and sixty acres, for which, with a log-house and barn upon it, he had paid 800 dollars (about 200_l._); he has now one hundred acres of land cleared and laid down in pasture. This is the first instance I have met with in these parts of a grazing farm, the land being almost uniformly arable, and the staple produce of the country, wheat. He told me that he and his brother had applied most advantageously their knowledge of the management and rearing of live stock; he had now thirty cows and eighty sheep. His wife being clever in the dairy, he was enabled to sell a good deal of b.u.t.ter and cheese off his farm, which the neighbourhood of Port Stanley enabled him to ship with advantage. The wolves, he said, were his greatest annoyance; during the last winter they had carried off eight of his sheep and thirteen of his brother's flock, in spite of all their precautions.

The Canadian wolf is about the size of a mastiff, in colour of a dirty yellowish brown, with a black stripe along his back, and a bushy tail of about a foot in length. His habits are those of the European wolf; they are equally bold, "hungry, and gaunt, and grim,"--equally destructive, ferocious, and troublesome to the farmer. The Canadian wolves hunt in packs, and their perpetual howling during the winter nights has often been described to me as frightful. The reward given by the magistracy for their destruction (six dollars for each wolf's head) is not enough.

In the United States the reward is fifteen and twenty dollars a head, and from their new settlements the wolves are quickly extirpated.

_Here_, if they would extend the reward to the Indians, it would be of some advantage; for at present they never think it worth while to expend their powder and shot on an animal whose flesh is uneatable, and the skin of little value; and there can be no doubt that it is the interest of the settlers to get rid of the wolves by all and any means. I have never heard of their destroying a man, but they are the terror of the sheepfold--as the wild cats are of the poultry yard. Bears become scarcer in proportion as the country is cleared, but there are still a great number in the vast tracts of forest land which afford them shelter. These, in the severe winters, advance to the borders of the settlements, and carry off the pigs and young cattle. Deer still abound, and venison is common food in the cottages and farmhouses.

My guide concluded his accounts of himself by an eloquent and heartfelt eulogium on his wife, to whom, as he a.s.sured me, "he owed all his _peace of mind_ from the hour he was married!" Few men, I thought, could say the same. _She_, at least, is not to be numbered among the drooping and repining women of Upper Canada; but then she has left no family--no home on the other side of the Atlantic--all her near relations are settled here in the neighbourhood.

SETTLERS IN THE BUSH.

The road continued very tolerable during the greater part of this day, running due west, at a distance of about six or ten miles from the sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie. On either side I met a constant succession of farms partially cleared, and in cultivation, but no village, town, or hamlet.

One part of the country through which I pa.s.sed to-day is settled chiefly by Highlanders, who bring hither all their clannish attachments, and their thrifty, dirty habits--add also their pride and their honesty. We stopped about noon at one of these Highland settlements, to rest the horses and procure refreshments. The house was called Campbell's Inn, and consisted of a log-hut and a cattle-shed. A long pole, stuck into the decayed stump of a tree in front of the hut, served for a sign. The family spoke nothing but Gaelic; a brood of children, ragged, dirty, and without shoes or stockings (which latter I found hanging against the wall of the best room, as if for a show), were running about--and all stared upon me with a sort of half-scared, uncouth curiosity, which was quite savage. With some difficulty I made my wants understood, and procured some milk and Indian corn cakes. This family, notwithstanding their wretched appearance, might be considered prosperous. They have a property of two hundred acres of excellent land, of which sixty acres are cleared, and in cultivation: five cows and forty sheep. They have been settled here sixteen years,--had come out dest.i.tute, and obtained their land gratis. For them, what a change from abject poverty and want to independence and plenty! But the advantages are all outward; if there be any inward change, it is apparently retrogradation, not advancement.

I know it has been laid down as a principle, that the more and the closer men are congregated together, the more prevalent is vice of every kind; and that an isolated or scattered population is favourable to virtue and simplicity. It may be so, if you are satisfied with negative virtues and the simplicity of ignorance. But here, where a small population is scattered over a wide extent of fruitful country, where there is not a village or a hamlet for twenty, or thirty, or forty miles together--where there are no manufactories--where there is almost entire equality of condition--where the means of subsistence are abundant--where there is no landed aristocracy--no poor laws, nor poor rates, to grind the souls and the substance of the people between them, till nothing remains but chaff,--to what shall we attribute the gross vices, the profligacy, the stupidity, and basely vulgar habits of a great part of the people, who know not even how to enjoy or turn to profit the inestimable advantages around them?--And, alas for them!

there seems to be no one as yet to take an interest about them, or at least infuse a new spirit into the next generation. In one log-hut in the very heart of the wilderness, where I might well have expected primitive manners and simplicity, I found vulgar finery, vanity, affectation, under the most absurd and disgusting forms, combined with a want of the commonest physical comforts of life, and the total absence of even elementary knowledge. In another, I have seen drunkenness, profligacy, stolid indifference to all religion; and in another, the most senseless fanaticism. There are people, I know, who think--who fear, that the advancement of knowledge and civilisation must be the increase of vice and insubordination; who deem that a scattered agricultural population, where there is a sufficiency of daily food for the body; where no schoolmaster interferes to infuse ambition and discontent into the abject, self-satisfied mind; where the labourer reads not, writes not, thinks not--only loves, hates, prays, and toils--that such a state must be a sort of Arcadia. Let them come here!--there is no march of intellect here!--there is no "schoolmaster abroad" here! And what are the consequences? Not the most agreeable to contemplate, believe me.

I pa.s.sed in these journeys some school-houses built by the way side: of these, several were shut up for want of schoolmasters; and who that could earn a subsistence in any other way, would be a schoolmaster in the wilds of Upper Canada? Ill fed, ill clothed, ill paid, or not paid at all--boarded at the houses of the different farmers in turn, I found, indeed, some few men, poor creatures! always either Scotch or Americans, and totally unfit for the office they had undertaken. Of female teachers I found none whatever, except in the towns. Among all the excellent societies in London for the advancement of religion and education, are there none to send missionaries here?--such missionaries as we want, be it understood--not sectarian fanatics. Here, without means of instruction, of social amus.e.m.e.nt, of healthy and innocent excitements--can we wonder that whisky and camp-meetings a.s.sume their place, and "season toil" which is unseasoned by anything better?

Nothing, believe me, that you may have heard or read of the frantic disorders of these Methodist love-feasts and camp-meetings in Upper Canada can exceed the truth; and yet it is no less a truth that the Methodists are in most parts the only religious teachers, and that without them the people were utterly abandoned. What then are our church and our government about? Here, as in the old country, they are quarrelling about the tenets to be inculcated, the means to be used: and so, while the shepherds are disputing whether the sheep are to be fed on old hay or fresh gra.s.s--out of the fold or in the fold--the poor sheep starve, or go astray.

I supped here on eggs and radishes, and milk and bread. On going to my room, I found that the door, which had merely a latch, opened into the road. I expressed a wish to fasten it, on which the good lady of the house brought a long nail, and thrust it lengthways over the latch, saying, "That's the way we lock doors in Canada!" The want of a more secure defence did not trouble my rest, for I slept well till morning.

After breakfast, my guide, who had found what he called a "shake-down"

at a neighbouring farm, made his appearance, and we proceeded.

For the first five or six miles the road continued good, but at length we reached a point where we had to diverge from the Talbot road, and turn into what they call a "town line," a road dividing the Howard from the Harwich township. My companion stopped the team to speak to a young man who was mixing lime, and as he stood talking to us, I thought I had never seen a better figure and countenance: his accent was Irish; his language and manner infinitely superior to his dress, which was that of a common workman. I soon understood that he was a member of one of the richest and most respectable families in the whole district, connected by marriage with my driver, who had been boasting to me of their station, education, and various attainments. There were many and kind greetings and inquiries after wives, sisters, brothers, and children.

Towards the conclusion of this family conference, the following dialogue ensued.

"I say, how are the roads before us?"

"Pretty bad!" (with an ominous shake of the head.)

"Would we get on at all, do you think?"

"Well, I don't know, but you may."

"If only we a'n't _mired down_ in that big hole up by Harris's, plaze G.o.d, we'll do finely! Have they done anything up there?"

"No, I don't know that they have; but (with a glance and a good-humoured smile at me) don't be frightened! you have a good stout team there. I dare say you'll get along--first or last!"

"How are the mosquitoes?"

"Pretty bad too; it is cloudy, and then they are always worse; but there is some wind, and that's in your favour again. However, you've a long and hard day's work, and I wish you well through it; if you cannot manage, come back to _us_--that's all! Good-bye!" And lifting the gay handkerchief knotted round his head, he bowed us off with the air of a n.o.bleman.

Thus encouraged, we proceeded; and though I was not _mired down_, nor yet absolutely eaten up, I suffered from both the threatened plagues, and that most severely. The road was scarcely pa.s.sable; there were no longer cheerful farms and clearings, but the dark pine forest, and the rank swamp, crossed by those terrific corduroy paths (my bones ache at the mere recollection!) and deep holes and pools of rotted vegetable matter, mixed with water, black, bottomless sloughs of despond! The very horses paused on the brink of some of these mud-gulfs, and trembled ere they made the plunge downwards. I set my teeth, screwed myself to my seat, and commended myself to Heaven--but I was well nigh dislocated! At length I abandoned my seat altogether, and made an attempt to recline on the straw at the bottom of the cart, disposing my cloaks, carpet-bags, and pillow, so as to afford some support--but all in vain; myself and all my well-contrived edifice of comfort were pitched hither and thither, and I expected at every moment to be thrown over headlong; while to walk, or to escape by any means from my disagreeable situation, was as impossible as if I had been in a ship's cabin in the midst of a rolling sea.

But the worst was yet to come. At the entrance of a road through the woods,

If road that might be called where road was none Distinguishable,

we stopped a short time to gain breath and courage, and refresh the poor horses before plunging into a forest of about twenty miles in extent.

The inn--the only one within a circuit of more than five-and-thirty miles, presented the usual aspect of these forest inns; that is, a rude log-hut, with one window and one room, answering all purposes, a lodging or sleeping place being divided off at one end by a few planks; outside, a shed of bark and boughs for the horses, and a hollow trunk of a tree disposed as a trough. Some of the trees around it were in full and luxuriant foliage; others, which had been girdled, stood bare and ghastly in the sunshine. To understand the full force of the scripture phrase, "desolate as a lodge in a wilderness," you should come here! The inmates, from whom I could not obtain a direct or intelligible answer to any question, continued during the whole time to stare upon me with stupid wonder. I took out a card to make a sketch of the place. A man stood near me, looking on, whose appearance was revolting beyond description--hideous, haggard and worn, sinewy and fierce and squalid.

He led in one hand a wild-looking urchin of three or four years old; in the other he was crushing a beautiful young pigeon, which panted and struggled within his bony grasp in agony and terror. I looked on it, pitying.

"Don't hurt it!"

He replied with a grin, and giving the wretched bird another squeeze, "No, no, I won't hurt it."

"Do you live here?"

"Yes, I have a farm hard by--in the bush here."

"How large is it?"

"One hundred and forty acres."

"How much cleared?"

"Five or six acres--thereabout."

"How long have you been on it?"

"Five years."

"And only five acres cleared? That is very little in five years. I have seen people who had cleared twice that quant.i.ty of land in half the time."

He replied, almost with fierceness, "Then they had money, or friends, or hands to help them: I have neither. I have in this wide world only myself! and set a man with only a pair of hands at one of them big trees there!--see what he'll make of it! You may swing the axe here from morning to night for a week before you let the daylight in upon you."

"You are right!" I said, in compa.s.sion and self-reproach, "and I was wrong! pray excuse me!"

"No offence."

"Are you from the old country?"

"No, I was _raised_ here."

"What will you do with your pigeon there?"

"O, it will do for the boy's supper, or may be he may like it best to play with."

I offered to redeem its life at the price of a shilling, which I held out. He stretched forth immediately one of his huge hands and eagerly clutched the shilling, at the same moment opening the other, and releasing his captive; it fluttered for a moment helplessly, but soon recovering its wings, wheeled round our heads, and then settled in the topmost boughs of a sugar-maple. The man turned away with an exulting laugh, thinking, no doubt, that he had the best of the bargain--but upon this point we differed.