Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life
by Elizabeth H. Walshe · English · Gutenberg #31091 · 546,415 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life
Author: Elizabeth H. Walshe
Release date: January 26, 2010 [eBook #31091]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CEDAR CREEK: FROM THE SHANTY TO THE SETTLEMENT. A TALE OF CANADIAN LIFE ***
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[Illustration:
ANDY HELPS THE INDIAN SQUAW TO CONSTRUCT THE WIGWAM.--_Page_ 225.]
CEDAR CREEK
_FROM THE SHANTY TO THE SETTLEMENT_
A Tale of Canadian Life
BY THE AUTHOR OF
'GOLDEN HILLS, A TALE OF THE IRISH FAMINE'
'THE FOSTER-BROTHERS OF DOON,' ETC.
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
56 PATERNOSTER ROW, 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
AND 164 PICCADILLY
MORRISON AND GIBB, EDINBURGH,
PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. WHY ROBERT WYNN EMIGRATED, 7
II. CROSSING THE 'FERRY,' 22
III. UP THE ST. LAWRENCE, 35
IV. WOODEN-NESS, 44
V. DEBARKATION, 52
VI. CONCERNING AN INCUBUS, 63
VII. THE RIVER HIGHWAY, 70
VIII. 'JEAN BAPTISTE' AT HOME, 78
IX. 'FROM MUD TO MARBLE,' 86
X. CORDUROY, 96
XI. THE BATTLE WITH THE WILDERNESS BEGINS, 105
XII. CAMPING IN THE BUSH, 115
XIII. THE YANKEE STOREKEEPER, 123
XIV. THE 'CORNER,' 133
XV. ANDY TREES A 'BASTE,' 138
XVI. LOST IN THE WOODS, 145
XVII. BACK TO CEDAR CREEK, 154
XVIII. GIANT TWO-SHOES, 166
XIX. A MEDLEY, 171
XX. THE ICE-SLEDGE, 180
XXI. THE FOREST-MAN, 186
XXII. SILVER SLEIGH-BELLS, 196
XXIII. STILL-HUNTING, 202
XXIV. LUMBERERS, 214
XXV. CHILDREN OF THE FOREST, 220
XXVI. ON A SWEET SUBJECT, 229
XXVII. A BUSY BEE, 235
XXVIII. OLD FACES UPON NEW NEIGHBOURS, 244
XXIX. ONE DAY IN JULY, 250
XXX. VISITORS AND VISITED, 259
XXXI. SUNDAY IN THE FOREST, 260
XXXII. HOW THE CAPTAIN CLEARED HIS BUSH, 274
XXXIII. THE FOREST ON FIRE, 280
XXXIV. TRITON AMONG MINNOWS, 291
XXXV. THE PINK MIST, 298
XXXVI. BELOW ZERO, 309
XXXVII. A CUT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, 315
XXXVIII. JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES, 324
XXXIX. SETTLER THE SECOND, 329
XL. AN UNWELCOME SUITOR, 338
XLI. THE MILL-PRIVILEGE, 343
XLII. UNDER THE NORTHERN LIGHTS, 351
XLIII. A BUSH-FLITTING, 359
XLIV. SHOVING OF THE ICE, 370
XLV. EXEUNT OMNES, 378
CEDAR CREEK.
CHAPTER I.
WHY ROBERT WYNN EMIGRATED.
A night train drew up slowly alongside the platform at the Euston Square
terminus. Immediately the long inanimate line of rail-carriages burst
into busy life: a few minutes of apparently frantic confusion, and the
individual items of the human freight were speeding towards all parts of
the compass, to be absorbed in the leviathan metropolis, as drops of a
shower in a boundless sea.
One of the cabs pursuing each other along the lamplit streets, and
finally diverging among the almost infinite ramifications of London
thoroughfares, contains a young man, who sits gazing through the window
at the rapidly passing range of houses and shops with curiously fixed
vision. The face, as momentarily revealed by the beaming of a brilliant
gaslight, is chiefly remarkable for clear dark eyes rather deeply set,
and a firm closure of the lips. He scarcely alters his posture during
the miles of driving through wildernesses of brick and stone: some
thoughts are at work beneath that broad short brow, which keep him thus
still. He has never been in London before. He has come now on an errand
of hope and endeavour, for he wants to push himself into the army of the
world's workers, somewhere. Prosaically, he wants to earn his bread,
and, if possible, butter wherewith to flavour it. Like Britons in
general, from Dick Whittington downwards, he thinks that the capital is
the place in which to seek one's fortune, and to find it. He had not
expected streets paved with gold, nor yet with the metaphorical plenty
of penny loaves; but an indefinite disappointment weighs upon him as he
passes through quarters fully as dingy and poverty-stricken as those in
his own provincial town.
Still on--on--across 'the province covered with houses;' sometimes in a
great thoroughfare, where midnight is as noisy as noon-day, and much
more glaring; sometimes through a region of silence and sleep, where
gentility keeps proper hours, going to bed betimes in its respectable
streets. Robert Wynn began to wonder when the journey would end; for,
much as he knew of London by hearsay and from books, it was widely
different thus personally to experience the metropolitan amplitude. A
slight dizziness of sight, from the perpetual sweeping past of lamps and
shadowy buildings, caused him to close his eyes; and from speculations
on the possible future and the novel present, his thoughts went straight
home again.
Home to the Irish village where his ancestors had long been lords of the
soil; and the peasantry had deemed that the greatest power on earth,
under majesty itself, was his Honour Mr. Wynn of Dunore, where now,
fallen from greatness, the family was considerably larger than the
means. The heavily encumbered property had dropped away piece by piece,
and the scant residue clung to its owner like shackles. With difficulty
the narrow exchequer had raised cash enough to send Robert on this
expedition to London, from which much was hoped. The young man had
been tolerably well educated; he possessed a certain amount and
quality of talent, extolled by partial friends as far above the
average; but the mainstay of his anticipations was a promise of a
Civil Service appointment, obtained from an influential quarter; and
his unsophisticated country relatives believed he had only to present
himself in order to realize it at once.
He was recalled to London by the sudden stoppage of the cab. On the dim
lamp over a doorway was stained the name of the obscure hotel to which
he had been recommended as central in situation, while cheap in charges.
Cabby's fare was exorbitant, the passenger thought; but, after a faint
resistance, Mr. Wynn was glad to escape from the storm of h-less
remonstrances by payment of the full demand, and so entered the
coffee-room.
It was dingy and shabby-genteel, like the exterior; a quarter of a
century might have elapsed since the faded paper had been put up, or a
stroke of painting executed, in that dispiriting apartment. Meanwhile,
all the agencies of travel-stain had been defacing both. An odour of
continual meal-times hung about it; likewise of smoke of every grade,
from the perfumed havanna to the plebeian pigtail. The little tables
were dark with hard work and antiquity; the chair seats polished with
innumerable frictions. A creeping old waiter, who seemed to have known
better days in a higher-class establishment, came to receive the
new-comer's orders; and Robert sat down to wait for his modest chop and
glass of ale.
That morning's _Times_ lay on his table: he glanced over the broad sheet
of advertisements--that wondrous daily record of need and of endeavour
among the toiling millions of London. The inexplicable solitude in a
crowd came about the reader's heart: what a poor chance had a provincial
stranger amid the jostling multitude all eager for the prizes of comfort
and competence! Robert went back for anchor to one strong fact. The
Honourable Mr. Currie Faver, Secretary to the Board of Patronage, had
declared to the member for the Irish county of C----, on the eve of an
important division, that his young friend should have the earliest
appointment at his disposal in a certain department. Robert Wynn felt an
inward gratulation on the superiority of his auspices. True, the promise
made in January yet remained due in July; but there were numberless
excellent good reasons why Mr. Currie Faver had been as yet unable to
redeem his pledge.
Robert turned his paper to look for the news: a paragraph in the corner
arrested his attention.
'We learn from the best authority that, owing to the diminution of
business consequent upon recent Acts of the Legislature, it is the
intention of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Public Locomotion to reduce
their staffs of officials, so that no fresh appointments can be made for
some months.'
He gazed at this piece of intelligence much longer than was necessary
for the mere reading of it. The Board of Public Locomotion was the very
department in which he had been promised a clerkship. Robert made up his
mind that it could not be true; it was a mere newspaper report: at
all events, Mr. Currie Faver was bound by a previous pledge; whoever
remained unappointed, it could not be a friend of the hon. member for
C----.
There were voices in the next compartment, and presently their
conversation was forced on Mr. Wynn's attention by the strongly stated
sentiment, 'The finest country in the world--whips all creation, it
does.'
Some rejoinder ensued in a low tone.
'Cold!' with a rather scornful accent, 'I should think so. Gloriously
cold! None of your wet sloppy winters and foggy skies, but ice a yard
and a half thick for months. What do you think of forty degrees below
zero, stranger?'
Robert could fancy the other invisible person shrugging his shoulders.
'Don't like it, eh? That's just a prejudice here in the old country;
natural enough to them that don't know the difference. When a man hears
of seventy degrees below the freezing-point, he's apt to get a shiver.
But there, we don't mind it; the colder the merrier: winter's our time
of fun: sleighing and skating parties, logging and quilting bees, and
other sociabilities unknown to you in England. Ay, we're the finest
people and the finest country on earth; and since I've been to see
yours, I'm the steadier in that opinion.'
'But emigrants in the backwoods have so few of the comforts of
civilisation,' began the other person, with a weak, irresolute voice.
'Among which is foremost the tax-gatherer, I suppose?' was the
triumphant rejoinder. 'Well, stranger, that's an animal I never saw in
full blow till I've been to the old country. I was obliged to clear out
of our lodgings yesterday because they came down on the furniture for
poor-rate. Says I to the landlady, who was crying and wringing her
hands, "Why not come to the country where there's no taxes at all,
nor rent either, if you choose?" Then it would frighten one, all
she counted up on her fingers--poor-rate, paving-rate, water-rate,
lighting, income-tax, and no end of others. I reckon that's what you
pay for your high civilisation. Now, with us, there's a water privilege
on a'most every farm, and a pile of maple-logs has fire and gaslight in
it for the whole winter; and there's next to no poor, for every man
and woman that's got hands and health can make a living. Why, your
civilisation is your misfortune in the old country; you've got to
support a lot of things and people besides yourself and your family.'
'Surely you are not quite without taxes,' said the other.
'Oh, we lay a trifle on ourselves for roads and bridges and schools, and
such things. There's custom-houses at the ports; but if a man chooses to
live without tea or foreign produce, he won't be touched by the indirect
taxes either. I guess we've the advantage of you there. You can't hardly
eat or drink, or walk or ride, or do anything else, without a tax
somewhere in the background slily sucking your pocket.'
'A United States citizen,' thought Robert Wynn. 'What a peculiar accent
he has! and the national swagger too.' And Mr. Wynn, feeling intensely
British, left his box, and walked into the midst of the room with his
newspaper, wishing to suggest the presence of a third person. He glanced
at the American, a middle-aged, stout-built man, with an intelligent
and energetic countenance, who returned the glance keenly. There was
something indescribably foreign about his dress, though in detail it was
as usual; and his manner and air were those of one not accustomed to the
conventional life of cities. His companion was a tall, pale, elderly
person, who bore his piping voice in his appearance, and seemed an eager
listener.
'And you say that I would make an independence if I emigrated?' asked
the latter, fidgeting nervously with a piece of paper.
'Any man would who has pluck and perseverance. You would have to work
hard, though;' and his eyes fell on the white irresolute hands, dubious
as to the requisite qualities being there indicated. 'You'd want a
strong constitution if you're for the backwoods.'
'The freedom of a settler's life, surrounded by all the beauties of
nature, would have great charms for me,' observed the other.
'Yes,' replied the American, rather drily; 'but I reckon you wouldn't
see many beauties till you had a log shanty up, at all events. Now that
young man'--he had caught Robert Wynn's eye on him again--'is the very
build for emigration. Strong, active, healthy, wide awake: no offence,
young gentleman, but such as you are badly wanted in Canada West.'
From this began a conversation which need not be minutely detailed. It
was curious to see what a change was produced in Robert's sentiments
towards the settler, by learning that he was a Canadian, and not a
United States man: 'the national swagger' became little more than a
dignified assertion of independence, quite suitable to a British
subject; the accent he had disliked became an interesting local
characteristic. Mr. Hiram Holt was the son of an English settler, who
had fixed himself on the left bank of the Ottawa, amid what was then
primeval forest, and was now a flourishing township, covered with
prosperous farms and villages. Here had the sturdy Saxon struggled with,
and finally conquered, adverse circumstances, leaving his eldest son
possessed of a small freehold estate, and his other children portioned
comfortably, so that much of the neighbourhood was peopled by his
descendants. And this, Hiram's first visit to the mother country--for
he was Canadian born--was on colonial business, being deputed from his
section of the province, along with others, to give evidence, as a
landed proprietor, before the Secretary of State, whose gate-lodge
his father would have been proud to keep when he was a poor Suffolk
labourer.
'Now there's an injustice,' quoth Mr. Holt, diverging into politics.
'England has forty-three colonies, and but one man to oversee them
all--a man that's jerked in and out of office with every successive
Ministry, and is almost necessarily more intent on party manoeuvres
than on the welfare of the young nations he rules. Our colony alone--the
two Canadas--is bigger than Great Britain and Ireland three times over.
Take in all along Vancouver's Island, and it's as big as Europe.
_There's_ a pretty considerable slice of the globe for one man to
manage! But forty-two other colonies have to be managed as well;
and I guess a nursery of forty-three children of all ages left to
one care-taker would run pretty wild, I do.'
'Yet we never hear of mismanagement,' observed Robert, in an unlucky
moment; for Mr. Hiram Holt retained all the Briton's prerogative of
grumbling, and in five minutes had rehearsed a whole catalogue of
colonial grievances very energetically.
'Then I suppose you'll be for joining the stars and stripes?' said the
young man.
'Never!' exclaimed the settler. 'Never, while there's a rag of the union
jack to run up. But it's getting late;' and as he rose to his feet with
a tremendous yawn, Robert perceived his great length, hitherto concealed
by the table on which he leaned. 'This life would kill me in six months.
In my own place I'm about the farm at sunrise in summer. Never knew
what it was to be sick, young man.' And so the party separated; Robert
admiring the stalwart muscular frame of the Canadian as he strode before
him up the stairs towards their sleeping-rooms. As he passed Mr. Holt's
door, he caught a glimpse of bare floor, whence all the carpets had been
rolled off into a corner, every vestige of curtain tucked away, and the
window sashes open to their widest. Subsequently he learned that to
such domestic softnesses as carpets and curtains the sturdy settler had
invincible objections, regarding them as symptoms of effeminacy not
suitable to his character, though admitting that for women they were
well enough.
Robert was all night felling pines, building log-huts, and wandering
amid interminable forests; and when his shaving water and boots awoke
him at eight, he was a little surprised to find himself a denizen
of a London hotel. Mr. Holt had gone out hours before. After a hasty
breakfast Mr. Wynn ordered a cab, and proceeded to the residence of the
hon. member for C---- county.
It was a mansion hired for the season in one of the fashionable squares;
for so had the hon. member's domestic board of control, his lady-wife
and daughters, willed. Of course, Robert was immensely too early; he
dismissed the cab, and wandered about the neighbourhood, followed by
suspicious glances from one or two policemen, until, after calling at
the house twice, he was admitted into a library beset with tall dark
bookcases. Here sat the M.P. enjoying the _otium cum dignitate_, in a
handsome morning gown, with bundles of parliamentary papers and a little
stack of letters on the table. But none of the legislative literature
engrossed his attention just then: the _Morning Post_ dropped from his
fingers as he arose and shook hands with the son of his constituent.
'Ah, my dear Wynn--how happy--delighted indeed, I assure you. Have you
breakfasted? all well at home? your highly honoured father? late sitting
at the House last night--close of the session most exhausting even to
seasoned members, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said to me last
evening in the lobby;' and here followed an anecdote. But while he thus
ran on most affably, the under-current of idea in his mind was somewhat
as follows: 'What on earth does this young fellow want of me? His
family interest in the county almost gone--not worth taking pains to
please any longer--a great bore--yet I must be civil;--oh, I recollect
Currie Paver's promise--thinks he has given me enough this session'--
Meanwhile, Robert was quite interested by his agreeable small talk.
It is so charming to hear great names mentioned familiarly by one
personally acquainted with them; to learn that Palmerston and Lord John
can breakfast like ordinary mortals. By and by, with a blush and a
falter (for the mere matter of his personal provision for life seemed so
paltry among these world-famed characters and their great deeds, that he
was almost ashamed to allude to it), Robert Wynn ventured to make his
request, that the hon. member for C---- would go to the hon. Secretary
of the Board of Patronage, and claim the fulfilment of his promise.
Suddenly the M.P. became grave and altogether the senator, with his
finger thoughtfully upon his brow--the identical attitude which Grant
had commemorated on canvas, beaming from the opposite wall.
'An unfortunate juncture; close of the session, when everybody wants to
be off, and Ministers don't need to swell their majorities any longer.
I recollect perfectly to what you allude; but, my dear young friend,
all these ministerial promises, as you term them, are more or less
conditional, and it may be quite out of Mr. Currie Paver's power to
fulfil this.'
'Then he should not have made it, sir,' said Robert hotly.
'For instance,' proceeded the hon. gentleman, not noticing the
interruption, 'the new arrangements of the Commissioners renders it
almost impossible that they should appoint to a clerkship, either
supernumerary or otherwise, while they are reducing the ordinary staff.
But I'll certainly go to Mr. Faver, and remind him of the circumstance:
we can only be refused at worst. You may be assured of my warmest
exertions in your behalf: any request from a member of your family
ought to be a command with me, Mr. Wynn.'
Robert's feelings of annoyance gave way to gratification at Mr. A----'s
blandness, which, however, had a slight acid behind.
'And though times are greatly altered, I don't forget our old
electioneering, when your father proposed me on my first hustings.
Greatly altered, Mr. Wynn; greatly altered. I must go to the morning
sitting now, but I'll send you a note as to the result of my interview.
You must have much to see about London. I quite envy you your first
visit to such a world of wonders; I am sure you will greatly enjoy it.
Good morning, Mr. Wynn. I hope I shall have good news for you.'
And so Robert was bowed out, to perambulate the streets in rather
bitter humour. Was he to return to the poor, scantily supplied home,
and continue a drag on its resources, lingering out his days in
illusive hopes? Oh that his strong hands and strong heart had some
scope for their energies! He paused in one mighty torrent of busy faces
and eager footsteps, and despised himself for his inaction. All these
had business of one kind or other; all were earnestly intent upon their
calling; but he was a waif and a straw on the top of the tide, with
every muscle stoutly strung, and every faculty of his brain clear and
sound. Would he let the golden years of his youth slip by, without
laying any foundation for independence? Was this Civil Service
appointment worth the weary waiting? Emigration had often before
presented itself as a course offering certain advantages. Mr. Holt's
conversation had brightened the idea. For his family, as well as
for himself, it would be beneficial. The poor proud father, who had
frequently been unable to leave his house for weeks together, through
fear of arrest for debt, would be happier with an ocean between him and
the ancestral estates, thronged with memories of fallen affluence: the
young brothers, Arthur and George, who were nearing man's years without
ostensible object or employment, would find both abundantly in the
labour of a new country and a settler's life. Robert had a whole
picture sketched and filled in during half an hour's sit in the dingy
coffee-room; from the shanty to the settlement was portrayed by his
fertile fancy, till he was awakened from his reverie by the hearty
voice of Hiram Holt.
'I thought for a minute you were asleep, with your hat over your eyes. I
hope you're thinking of Canada, young man?'
Robert could not forbear smiling.
'Now,' said Mr. Holt, apparently speaking aloud a previous train of
thought, 'of all things in this magnificent city of yours, which I'm
free to confess beats Quebec and Montreal by a long chalk, nothing seems
queerer to me than the thousands of young men in your big shops, who are
satisfied to struggle all their lives in a poor unmanly way, while our
millions of acres are calling out for hands to fell the forests and own
the estates, and create happy homes along our unrivalled rivers and
lakes. The young fellow that sold me these gloves'--showing a new pair
on his hands--'would make as fine a backwoodsman as I ever saw--six feet
high, and strong in proportion. It's the sheerest waste of material to
have that fellow selling stockings.'
But Mr. Holt found Robert Wynn rather taciturn; whereupon he observed:
'I'm long enough in the world young man, to see that to-day's experience,
whatever it has been, has bated your hopes a bit; the crest ain't so
plumy as last night. But I say you'll yet bless the disappointment,
whatever it is, that forces you over the water to our land of plenty.
Come out of this overcrowded nation, out where there's elbow-room and
free breathing. Tell you what, young man, the world doesn't want you in
densely packed England and Ireland, but you're wanted in Canada, every
thew and sinew that you have. The market for such as you is overstocked
here: out with us you'll be at a premium. Don't be offended if I've
spoke plain, for Hiram Holt is not one of them that can chop a pine
into matches: whatever I am thinking, out with the whole of it. But if
you ever want a friend on the Ottawa'--
Robert asserted that he had no immediate idea of emigration; his
prospects at home were not bad, etc. He could not let this rough
stranger see the full cause he had for depression.
'Not bad! but I tell you they're nothing compared to the prospects you
may carve out for yourself with that clever head and those able hands.'
Again Mr. Holt seized the opportunity of dilating on the perfections of
his beloved colony: had he been a paid agent, he could not have more
zealously endeavoured to enlist Robert as an emigrant. But it was all
a product of national enthusiasm, and of the pride which Canadians may
well feel concerning their magnificent country.
Next morning a few courteous lines from the hon. member for C---- county
informed Mr. Wynn, with much regret, that, as he had anticipated, Mr.
Currie Faver had for the present no nomination for the department
referred to, nor would have for at least twelve months to come.
'Before which time, I trust,' soliloquized Robert a little fiercely, 'I
shall be independent of all their favours.' And amidst some severe
reflections on the universal contempt accorded to the needy, and the
corrupted state of society in England, which estimates a man by the
length of his purse chiefly, Robert Wynn formed the resolution that he
would go to Canada.
CHAPTER II.
CROSSING THE 'FERRY.'
Robert Wynn returned home to Dunore, having gained nothing by his
London trip but a little of that bitter though salutary tonic called
experience. His resolve did not waver--nay, it became his day-dream; but
manifold obstacles occurred in the attempt to realize it. Family pride
was one of the most stubborn; and not until all hope from home resources
was at an end, did his father give consent.
About a month after his meeting with Hiram Holt in the London
coffee-house, he and his brother Arthur found themselves on board a fine
emigrant vessel, passing down the river Lee into Cork harbour, under the
leadership of a little black steam-tug. Grievous had been the wailing of
the passengers at parting with their kinsfolk on the quay; but, somewhat
stilled by this time, they leaned in groups on the bulwarks, or were
squatted about on deck among their infinitude of red boxes and brilliant
tins, watching the villa-whitened shores gliding by rapidly. Only an
occasional vernacular ejaculation, such as 'Oh, wirra! wirra!' or, 'Och
hone, mavrone!' betokened the smouldering remains of emotion in the
frieze coats and gaudy shawls assembled for'ard: the wisest of the
party were arranging their goods and chattels 'tween-decks, where they
must encamp for a month or more; but the majority, with truly Celtic
improvidence, will wait till they are turned down at nightfall, and have
a general scramble in the dusk.
Now the noble Cove of Cork stretches before them, a sheet of glassy
water, dotted with a hundred sail, from the base of the sultry hill
faced with terraces and called Queenstown, to the far Atlantic beyond
the Heads. Heavy and dark loom the fortified Government buildings of
Haulbowline and the prisons of Spike Island, casting forbidding
shadows on the western margin of the tide. Quickly the steam-tug
and her follower thread their way among islets and moored barques and
guard-ships, southward to the sea. No pause anywhere; the passengers of
the brig Ocean Queen are shut up in a world of their own for a while;
yet they do not feel the bond with mother country quite severed till
they have cleared the last cape, and the sea-line lies wide in view; nor
even then, till the little black tug casts off the connecting cables,
and rounds away back across the bar, within the jaws of the bay.
Hardly a breath of breeze: but such as blows is favourable; and
with infinite creaking all sail is set. The sound wakes up emigrant
sorrow afresh; the wildly contagious Irish cry is raised, much to the
discomposure of the captain, who stood on the quarterdeck with Robert
Wynn.
'The savages! they will be fitting mates for Red Indians, and may add
a stave or two to the war-whoop. One would think they were all going
to the bottom immediately.' He walked forward to quell the noise, if
possible, but he might as well have stamped and roared at Niagara. Not a
voice cared for his threats or his rage, but those within reach of his
arm. The choleric little man had to come back baffled.
'Masther Robert, would _ye_ like 'em to stop?' whispered a great hulking
peasant who had been looking on; 'for if ye would, I'll do it while ye'd
be taking a pinch of snuff.'
Andy Callaghan disappeared somewhere for a moment, and presently emerged
with an old violin, which he began to scrape vigorously. Even his tuning
was irresistibly comical; and he had not been playing a lively jig for
ten minutes, before two or three couples were on their feet performing
the figure. Soon an admiring circle, four deep, collected about the
dancers. The sorrows of the exiles were effectually diverted, for that
time.
'A clever fellow,' quoth the captain, regarding Andy's red hair and
twinkling eyes with some admiration. 'A diplomatic tendency, Mr. Wynn,
which may be valuable. Your servant, I presume?'
'A former tenant of my father's, who wished to follow our fortunes,'
replied Robert. 'He's a faithful fellow, though not much more civilised
than the rest.'
That grand ocean bluff, the Old Head of Kinsale, was now in the offing,
and misty ranges of other promontories beyond, at whose base was
perpetual foam. Robert turned away with a sigh, and descended to the
cabins. In the small square box allotted to them, he found Arthur lying
in his berth, reading Mrs. Traill's _Emigrant's Guide_.
'I've been wondering what became of you; you've not been on deck since
we left Cork.'
'Of course not. I should have been blubbering like a schoolboy; and as I
had enough of that last night, I mean to stay here till we're out of
sight of land.'
Little trace of the stoicism he professed was to be seen in the tender
eyes which had for an hour been fixed on the same page; but Arthur was
not yet sufficiently in manhood's years to know that deep feeling is an
honour, and not a weakness.
Towards evening, the purple mountain ranges of Kerry were fast fading
over the waters; well-known peaks, outlines familiar from childhood to
the dwellers at Dunore, were sinking beneath the great circle of the
sea. Cape Clear is left behind, and the lonely Fassnet lighthouse; the
Ocean Queen is coming to the blue water, and the long solemn swell
raises and sinks her with pendulum-like regularity.
'Ah, then, Masther Robert, an' we're done wid the poor ould counthry for
good an' all!' Andy Callaghan's big bony hands are clasped in a tremor
of emotion that would do honour to a picturesque Italian exile. 'The
beautiful ould counthry, as has the greenest grass that ever grew, an'
the clearest water that ever ran, an' the purtiest girls in the wide
world! An' we're goin' among sthrangers, to pull an' dhrag for our bit
to ate; but we'll never be happy till we see them blue hills and green
fields once more!'
Mr. Wynn could almost have endorsed the sentiment just then. Perhaps
Andy's low spirits were intensified by the uncomfortable motion of
the ship, which was beginning to strike landsmen with that rolling
headache, the sure precursor of a worse visitation. Suffice it to say,
that the mass of groaning misery in the steerage and cabins, on the
subsequent night, would melt the heart of any but the most hardened 'old
salt.' Did not Robert and Arthur regret their emigration bitterly, when
shaken by the fangs of the fell demon, sea-sickness? Did not a chance of
going to the bottom seem a trivial calamity? Answer, ye who have ever
been in like pitiful case. We draw a curtain over the abject miseries of
three days; over the Dutch-built captain's unseasonable joking and
huge laughter--he, that could eat junk and biscuit if the ship was in
Maelstrom! Robert could have thrown his boots at him with pleasure,
while the short, broad figure stood in the doorway during his diurnal
visit, chewing tobacco, and talking of all the times he had crossed
'the ferry,' as he familiarly designated the Atlantic Ocean. The sick
passengers, to a man, bore him an animosity, owing to his ostentatiously
rude health and iron nerves, which is, of all exhibitions, the most
oppressive to a prostrate victim of the sea-fiend.
The third evening, an altercation became audible on the companion-ladder,
as if some ship's officer were keeping back somebody else who was
determined to come below.
'That's Andy Callaghan's voice,' said Arthur.
'Let me down, will ye, to see the young masthers?' came muffled through
the doors and partition. 'Look here, now,'--in a coaxing tone,--'I don't
like to be cross; but though I'm so bad afther the sickness, I'd set ye
back in your little hole there at the fut of the stairs as aisy as I'd
put a snail in its shell.'
At this juncture Robert opened their state-room door, and prevented
further collision. Andy's lean figure had become gaunter than ever.
'They thought to keep me from seeing ye, the villains! I'd knock every
mother's son of 'em into the middle o' next week afore I'd be kep' away.
Sure I was comin' often enough before, but the dinth of the sickness
prevented me; an' other times I was chucked about like a child's marvel,
pitched over an' hether by the big waves banging the side of the vessel.
Masther Robert, asthore, it's I that's shaking in the middle of my
iligant new frieze shute like a withered pea in a pod--I'm got so thin
intirely.'
'We are not much better ourselves,' said Arthur, laughing; 'but I hope
the worst of it is over.'
'I'd give the full of my pockets in goold, if I had it this minit,' said
Andy, with great emphasis, 'to set me foot on the nakedest sod of bog
that's in Ould Ireland this day! an' often I abused it; but throth, the
purtiest sight in life to me would be a good pratiefield, an' meself
walkin' among the ridges!'
'Well, Andy, we mustn't show the white-feather in that way; we could
not expect to get to America without being sick, or suffering some
disagreeables.'
'When yer honours are satisfied, 'tisn't for the likes of me to
grumble,' Andy said resignedly. 'Only if everybody knew what was before
them, they mightn't do many a thing, maybe!'
'Very true, Andy.'
'So we're all sayin' down in the steerage, sir. But oh, Masther Robert,
I a'most forgot to tell ye, account of that spalpeen that thought to
hindher yer own fosther-brother from comin' to see ye; but there's the
most wondherful baste out in the say this minit; an' it's spoutin' up
water like the fountain that used to be at Dunore, only a power bigger;
an' lyin' a-top of the waves like an island, for all the world! I'm
thinkin' he wouldn't make much of cranching up the ship like a hazel
nut.'
'A whale! I wonder will they get out the boats,' said Arthur, with
sudden animation. 'I think I'm well enough to go on deck, Bob: I'd like
to have a shot at the fellow.'
'A very useless expenditure of powder,' rejoined Robert. But Arthur,
boy-like, sprang up-stairs with the rifle, which had often done execution
among the wild-fowl of his native moorlands. Certainly it was a feat to
hit such a prominent mark as that mountain of blubber; and Arthur felt
justly ashamed of himself when the animal beat the water furiously and
dived headlong in his pain.
Now the only other cabin passengers on board the brig were a retired
military officer and his family, consisting of a son and two daughters.
They had made acquaintance with the Wynns on the first day of the
voyage, but since then there had been a necessary suspension of
intercourse. And it was a certain mild but decided disapproval in Miss
Armytage's grave glance, when Arthur turned round and saw her sitting on
the poop with her father and little sister, which brought the colour to
his cheek, for he felt he had been guilty of thoughtless and wanton
cruelty. He bowed and moved farther away. But Robert joined them, and
passed half an hour very contentedly in gazing at a grand sunset. The
closing act of which was as follows: a dense black brow of cloud on the
margin of the sea; beneath it burst a flaming bolt of light from the
sun's great eye, along the level waters. Far in the zenith were broad
beams radiating across other clouds, like golden pathways. Slowly the
dark curtain seemed to close down over the burning glory at the horizon.
'How very beautiful!' exclaimed Miss Armytage.
'Yes, my dear Edith, except as a weather barometer,' said her father.
'In that point of view it means--storm.'
'Oh, papa!' ejaculated the little girl, nestling close--not to him, but
to her elder sister, whose hand instantly clasped hers with a reassuring
pressure, while the quiet face looked down at the perturbed child,
smiling sweetly. It was almost the first smile Robert had seen on her
face; it made Miss Armytage quite handsome for the moment, he thought.
Miss Armytage, caring very little for his thought, was occupied an
instant with saying something in a low tone to Jay, which gradually
brightened the small countenance again. Robert caught the words, 'Our
dear Saviour.' They reminded him of his mother.
Captain Armytage was correct in his prediction: before midnight a fierce
north-easter was raging on the sea. The single beneficial result was,
that it fairly cured all maladies but terror; for, after clinging to
their berths during some hours with every muscle of their bodies, lest
they should be swung off and smashed in the lurches of the vessel, the
passengers arose next morning well and hungry.
'I spind the night on me head, mostly,' said Andy Callaghan. 'Troth, I
never knew before how the flies managed to walk on the ceilin' back
downwards; but a thrifle more o' practice would tache it to meself, for
half me time the floor was above at the rafters over me head. I donno
rightly how to walk on my feet the day afther it.'
This was the only bad weather they experienced, as viewed nautically:
even the captain allowed that it had been 'a stiffish gale;' but
subsequent tumults of the winds and waves, which seemed tremendous to
unsophisticated landsmen, were to him mere ocean frolics. And so, while
each day the air grew colder, they neared the banks of Newfoundland,
where everybody who could devise fishing-tackle tried to catch the
famous cod of those waters. Arthur was one of the successful captors,
having spent a laborious day in the main-chains for the purpose. At
eventide he was found teaching little Jay how to hold a line, and how to
manage when a bite came. Her mistakes and her delight amused him: both
lasted till a small panting fish was pulled up.
'There's a whiting for you, now,' said he, 'all of your own catching.'
Jay looked at it regretfully, as the poor little gills opened and shut
in vain efforts to breathe the smothering air, and the pretty silver
colouring deadened as its life went. 'I am very sorry,' she said,
folding her hands together; 'I think I ought not to have killed it only
to amuse myself.' And she walked away to where her sister was sitting.
'What a strange child!' thought Arthur, as he watched the little figure
crossing the deck. But he wound up the tackle, and angled no more for
that evening.
The calm was next day deepened by a fog; a dense haze settled on the
sea, seeming by sheer weight to still its restless motion. Now was the
skipper much more perturbed than during the rough weather: wrapt in a
mighty pea-coat, he kept a perpetual look-out in person, chewing the
tobacco meanwhile as if he bore it an animosity. Frequent gatherings
of drift-ice passed, and at times ground together with a disagreeably
strong sound. An intense chill pervaded the atmosphere,--a cold unlike
what Robert or Arthur had ever felt in the frosts of Ireland, it was so
much more keen and penetrating.
'The captain says it is from icebergs,' said the latter, drawing up the
collar of his greatcoat about his ears, as they walked the deck. 'I wish
we saw one--at a safe distance, of course. But this fog is so
blinding'--
Even as he spoke, a vast whitish berg loomed abeam, immensely
higher than the topmasts, in towers and spires snow-crested. What
great precipices of grey glistening ice, as it passed by, a mighty
half-distinguishable mass! what black rifts of destructive depth! The
ship surged backward before the great refluent wave of its movement. A
sensation of awe struck the bravest beholder, as slowly and majestically
the huge berg glided astern, and its grim features were obliterated by
the heavy haze.
Both drew a relieved breath when the grand apparition had passed. 'I
wish Miss Armytage had seen it,' said Arthur.
'Why?' rejoined Robert, though the same thought was just in his own
mind.
'Oh, because it was so magnificent, and I am sure she would admire it.
I could almost make a poem about it myself. Don't you know the feeling,
as if the sight were too large, too imposing for your mind somehow? And
the danger only intensifies that.'
'Still, I wish we were out of their reach. The skipper's temper will be
unbearable till then.'
It improved considerably when the fog rose off the sea, a day or two
subsequently, and a head-wind sprang up, carrying them towards the Gulf.
One morning, a low grey stripe of cloud on the horizon was shown to the
passengers as part of Newfoundland. Long did Robert Wynn gaze at that
dim outline, possessed by all the strange feelings which belong to the
first sight of the new world, especially when it is to be a future home.
No shame to his manhood if some few tears for the dear old home dimmed
his eyes as he looked. But soon that shadow of land disappeared, and,
passing Cape Race at a long distance, they entered the great estuary
of the St. Lawrence, which mighty inlet, if it had place in our little
Europe, would be fitly termed the Sea of Labrador; but where all the
features of nature are colossal, it ranks only as a gulf.
One morning, when little Jay had gone on deck for an ante-breakfast run,
she came back in a state of high delight to the cabin. 'Oh, Edith, such
beautiful birds! such lovely little birds! and the sailors say they're
from the land, though we cannot see it anywhere. How tired they must be
after such a long fly, all the way from beyond the edge of the sea! Do
come and look at them, dear Edith--do come!'
Sitting on the shrouds were a pair of tiny land birds, no bigger than
tomtits, and wearing red top-knots on their heads. How welcome were the
confiding little creatures to the passengers, who had been rocked at
sea for nearly five weeks, and hailed these as sure harbingers of solid
ground! They came down to pick up Jay's crumbs of biscuit, and twittered
familiarly. The captain offered to have one caught for her, but, after a
minute's eager acquiescence, she declined. 'I would like to feel it in
my hand,' said she, 'but it is kinder to let it fly about wherever it
pleases.'
'Why, you little Miss Considerate, is that your principle always?' asked
Arthur, who had made a great playmate of her. She did not understand his
question; and on his explaining in simpler words, 'Oh, you know I always
try to think what God would like. That is sure to be right, isn't it?'
'I suppose so,' said Arthur, with sudden gravity.
'Edith taught me--she does just that,' continued the child. 'I don't
think _she_ ever does anything that is wrong at all. But oh, Mr. Wynn,'
and he felt a sudden tightening of her grasp on his hand, 'what big bird
is that? look how frightened the little ones are!'
A hawk, which had been circling in the air, now made a swoop on the
rigging, but was anticipated by his quarry: one of the birds flew
actually into Arthur's hands, and the other got in among some barrels
which stood amidships.
'Ah,' said Arthur, 'they were driven out here by that chap, I suppose.
Now I'll give you the pleasure of feeling one of them in your hands.'
'But that wicked hawk!'
'And that wicked Jay, ever to eat chickens or mutton.'
'Ah! but that is different. How his little heart beats and flutters! I
wish I had him for a pet. I would love you, little birdie, indeed I
would.'
For some days they stayed by the ship, descending on deck for crumbs
regularly furnished them by Jay, to whom the office of feeding them was
deputed by common consent. But nearing the island of Anticosti, they
took wing for shore with a parting twitter, and, like Noah's dove, did
not return. Jay would not allow that they were ungrateful.
CHAPTER III.
UP THE ST. LAWRENCE.
Little Jay could hardly be persuaded into the belief that they were now
sailing on a river; that the swift broad tide bearing against them, more
than one hundred and twenty miles across at this island of Anticosti,
was the mouth of a stream having source in a mountain far away, and once
narrow enough to step over. Arthur showed her the St. Lawrence on a map
hung in the saloon; but such demonstration did not seem to convince her
much. 'Then where are the banks? My geography says that a river always
has banks,' was her argument.
In the evening he was able to show her the wide pitiless snow ranges of
Labrador, whence blew a keen desert air. Perpetual pine-woods--looking
like a black band set against the encroaching snow--edged the land,
whence the brig was some miles distant, tacking to gain the benefit
of the breeze off shore.
Presently came a strange and dismal sound wafted over the waters from
the far pine forests--a high prolonged howl, taken up and echoed by
scores of ravenous throats, repeated again and again, augmenting in
fierce cadences. Jay caught Mr. Wynn's arm closer. 'Like wolves,' said
Arthur; 'but we are a long way off.'
'I must go and tell Edith,' said the child, evidently feeling safer with
that sister than in any other earthly care. After he had brought her
to the cabin, he returned on deck, listening with a curious sort of
pleasure to the wild sounds, and looking at the dim outlines of the
shore.
As darkness dropped over the circle of land and water, a light seemed
to rise behind those hills, revealing their solid shapes anew, stealing
silently aloft into the air, like a pale and pure northern dawn. At
first he thought it must be the rising moon, but no orb appeared; and as
the brilliance deepened, intensified into colour, and shot towards the
zenith, he knew it for the aurora borealis. Soon the stars were blinded
out by the vivid sweeping flicker of its rays; hues bright and varied as
the rainbow thrilled along the iridescent roadways to the central point
above, and tongues of flame leaped from arches in the north-west. Burning
scarlet and amber, purple, green, trembled in pulsations across the
ebony surface of the heavens, as if some vast fire beneath the horizon
was flashing forth coruscations of its splendour to the dark hemisphere
beyond. The floating banners of angels is a hackneyed symbol to express
the oppressive magnificence of a Canadian aurora.
The brothers were fascinated: their admiration had no words.
'This is as bad as the iceberg for making a fellow's brain feel too big
for his head,' said Arthur at last. 'We've seen two sublime things, at
all events, Bob.'
Clear frosty weather succeeded--weather without the sharp sting of cold,
but elastic and pure as on a mountain peak. Being becalmed for a day
or two off a wooded point, the skipper sent a boat ashore for fuel and
water. Arthur eagerly volunteered to help; and after half an hour's
rowing through the calm blue bay, he had the satisfaction to press his
foot on the soil of Lower Canada.
There was a small clearing beside a brook which formed a narrow deep
cove, a sort of natural miniature dock where their boat floated. A
log hut, mossed with years, was set back some fifty yards towards the
forest. What pines were those! what giants of arborescence! Seventy feet
of massive shaft without a bough; and then a dense thicket of black
inwoven branches, making a dusk beneath the fullest sunshine.
'I tell you we haven't trees in the old country; our oaks and larches
are only shrubs,' he said to Robert, when narrating his expedition.
'Wait till you see pines such as I saw to-day. Looking along the forest
glades, those great pillars upheld the roof everywhere in endless
succession. And the silence! as if a human creature never breathed among
them, though the log hut was close by. When I went in, I saw a French
_habitan_, as they call him, who minds the lighthouse on the point,
with his Indian wife, and her squaw mother dressed in a blanket, and of
course babies--the queerest little brown things you ever saw. One of
them was tied into a hollow board, and buried to the chin in "punk," by
way of bed-clothes.'
'And what is punk?' asked Robert.
'Rotten wood powdered to dust,' answered Arthur, with an air of superior
information. 'It's soft enough; and the poor little animal's head
was just visible, so that it looked like a young live mummy. But the
grandmother squaw was even uglier than the grandchildren; a thousand and
one lines seamed her coppery face, which was the colour of an old penny
piece rather burnished from use. And she had eyes, Bob, little and wide
apart, and black as sloes, with a snaky look. I don't think she ever
took them off me, and 'twas no manner of use to stare at her in return.
So, as I could not understand what they were saying,--gabbling a sort
of _patois_ of bad French and worse English, with a sprinkling of
Indian,--and as the old lady's gaze was getting uncomfortable, I went
out again among my friends, the mighty pines. I hope we shall have some
about our location, wherever we settle.'
'And I trust more intimate acquaintance won't make us wish them a trifle
fewer and slighter,' remarked Robert.
'Well, I am afraid my enthusiasm would fade before an acre of such
clearing,' rejoined Arthur. 'But, Bob, the colours of the foliage are
lovelier than I can tell. You see a little of the tinting even from this
distance. The woods have taken pattern by the aurora: it seems we are
now in the Indian summer, and the maple trees are just burning with
scarlet and gold leaves.'
'I suppose you did not see many of our old country trees?'
'Hardly any. Pine is the most plentiful of all: how I like its sturdy
independent look! as if it were used to battling with snowstorms, and
got strong by the exercise. The mate showed me hickory and hemlock,
and a lot of other foreigners, while the men were cutting logs in the
bush.'
'You have picked up the Canadian phraseology already,' observed Robert.
'Yes;' and Arthur reddened slightly. 'Impossible to avoid that, when
you're thrown among fellows that speak nothing else. But I wanted
to tell you, that coming back we hailed a boat from one of those
outward-bound ships lying yonder at anchor: the mate says their wood and
water is half a pretence. They are smuggling skins, in addition to their
regular freight of lumber.'
'Smuggling skins!'
'For the skippers' private benefit, you understand: furs, such as sable,
marten, and squirrel; they send old ship's stores ashore to trade with
vagrant Indians, and then sew up the skins in their clothes, between the
lining and the stuff, so as to pass the Custom-house officers at home.
Bob! I'm longing to be ashore for good. You don't know what it is to
feel firm ground under one's feet after six weeks' unsteady footing. I'm
longing to get out of this floating prison, and begin our life among the
pines.'
Robert shook his head a little sorrowfully. Now that they were nearing
the end of the voyage, many cares pressed upon him, which to the volatile
nature of Arthur seemed only theme for adventure. Whither to bend their
steps in the first instance, was a matter for grave deliberation. They
had letters of introduction to a gentleman near Carillon on the Ottawa,
and others to a family at Toronto. Former friends had settled beside the
lonely Lake Simcoe, midway between Huron and Ontario. Many an hour of
the becalmed days he spent over the maps and guide-books they had brought,
trying to study out a result. Jay came up to him one afternoon, as he
leaned his head on his hand perplexedly.
'What ails you? have you a headache?'
'No, I am only puzzled.'
Her own small elbow rested on the taffrail, and her little fingers
dented the fair round cheek, in unwitting imitation of his posture.
'Is it about a lesson? But you don't have to get lessons.'
'No; it is about what is best for me to do when I land.'
'Edith asks God always; and He shows her what is best,' said the child,
looking at him wistfully. Again he thought of his pious prayerful
mother. She might have spoken through the childish lips. He closed his
books, remarking that they were stupid. Jay gave him her hand to walk
up and down the deck. He had never made it a custom to consult God,
or refer to Him in matters of daily life, though theoretically he
acknowledged His pervading sovereignty. To procure the guidance of
Infinite Wisdom would be well worth a prayer. Something strong as a
chain held him back--the pride of his consciously unrenewed heart.
When the weather became favourable, they passed up the river rapidly;
and a succession of the noblest views opened around them. No panorama
of the choice spots of earth could be lovelier. Lofty granite islets,
such as Kamouraska, which attains an altitude of five hundred feet;
bold promontories and deep basin bays; magnificent ranges of bald blue
mountains inland; and, as they neared Grosse Isle and the quarantine
ground, the soft beauties of civilisation were superadded. Many ships of
all nations lay at anchor; the shore was dotted with white farmhouses,
and neat villages clustered each round the glittering spire of a church.
'How very French that is, eh?' said Captain Armytage, referring to those
shining metal roofs. 'Tinsel is charming to the eyes of a _habitan_. You
know, I've been in these parts before with my regiment: so I am well
acquainted with the ground. We have the parish of St. Thomas to our left
now, thickly spotted with white cottages: St. Joachim is on the opposite
bank. The nomenclature all about here smacks of the prevailing faith and
of the old masters.'
''Tis a pity they didn't hold by the musical Indian names,' said Robert
Wynn.
'Well, yes, when the music don't amount to seventeen syllables a-piece,
eh?' Captain Armytage had a habit of saying 'eh' at every available
point in his sentences. Likewise had he the most gentleman-like manners
that could be, set off by the most gentleman-like personal appearance;
yet, an inexplicable something about him prevented a thorough liking.
Perhaps it was the intrinsic selfishness, and want of sincerity of
nature, which one instinctively felt after a little intercourse had worn
off the dazzle of his engaging demeanour. Perhaps Robert had detected
the odour of rum, ineffectually concealed by the fragrance of a smoking
pill, more frequently than merely after dinner, and seen the sad shadow
on his daughter's face, following. But that did not prevent Captain
Armytage's being a very agreeable and well-informed companion
nevertheless.
'Granted that "Canada" is a pretty name,' said he; 'but it's Spanish
more than native. "Aca nada," nothing here,--said the old Castilian
voyagers, when they saw no trace of gold mines or other wealth along
the coast. That's the story, at all events. But I hold to it that our
British John Cabot was the first who ever visited this continent, unless
there's truth in the old Scandinavian tales, which I don't believe.'
But the gallant officer's want of credence does not render it the less
a fact, that, about the year 1001, Biorn Heriolson, an Icelander, was
driven south from Greenland by tempestuous weather, and discovered
Labrador. Subsequently, a colony was established for trading purposes
on some part of the coast named Vinland; but after a few Icelanders
had made fortunes of the peltries, and many had perished among the
Esquimaux, all record of the settlement is blotted out, and Canada fades
from the world's map till restored by the exploration of the Cabots and
Jacques Cartier. The two former examined the seaboard, and the latter
first entered the grand estuary of the St. Lawrence, which he named from
the saint's day of its discovery; and he also was the earliest white
man to gaze down from the mighty precipice of Quebec, and pronounce
the obscure Indian name which was hereafter to suggest a world-famed
capital. Then, the dwellings and navies of nations and generations yet
unborn were growing all around in hundreds of leagues of forest; a dread
magnificence of shade darkened the face of the earth, amid which the red
man reigned supreme. Now, as the passengers of the good brig Ocean Queen
gazed upon it three centuries subsequently, the slow axe had chopped
away those forests of pine, and the land was smiling with homesteads,
and mapped out in fields of rich farm produce: the encroachments of the
irresistible white man had metamorphosed the country, and almost blotted
out its olden masters. Robert Wynn began to realize the force of Hiram
Holt's patriotic declaration, 'It's the finest country in the world!'
'And the loveliest!' he could have added, without even a saving clause
for his own old Emerald Isle, when they passed the western point of the
high wooded island of Orleans, and came in view of the superb Falls of
Montmorenci; two hundred and fifty feet of sheer precipice, leaped by a
broad full torrent, eager to reach the great river flowing beyond, and
which seemed placidly to await the turbulent onset. As Robert gazed, the
fascination of a great waterfall came over him like a spell. Who has not
felt this beside Lodore, or Foyers, or Torc? Who has not found his eye
mesmerized by the falling sheet of dark polished waters, merging into
snowy spray and crowned with rainbow crest, most changeable, yet most
unchanged?
Thousands of years has this been going on; you may read it in the worn
limestone layers that have been eaten through, inches in centuries, by
the impetuous stream. Thus, also, has the St. Lawrence carved out its
mile-wide bed beneath the Heights of Abraham--the stepping-stone to
Wolfe's fame and Canadian freedom.
CHAPTER IV.
WOODEN-NESS.
Piled on the summit of Cape Diamond, and duplicated in shadow upon the
deep waters at its base, three hundred feet below, stands the fortress
of Quebec. Edinburgh and Ehrenbreitstein have been used as old-world
symbols to suggest its beauty and strength; but the girdle of mighty
river is wanting to the former, and the latter is a trifling miniature
of the Canadian city-queen. Robert Wynn knew of no such comparisons;
he only felt how beautiful was that mass of interwoven rock, and wood,
and town, reflected and rooted in the flood; he scarcely heard Captain
Armytage at his left reminding him for the tenth time that he had been
here before with his regiment.
'There's Point Levi to the south, a mile away, in front of the mountains.
Something unpleasant once befell me in crossing there. I and another
sub. hired a boat for a spree, just because the hummocks of ice were
knocking about on the tide, and all prudent people stayed ashore; but we
went out in great dreadnought boots, and bearskin caps over our ears,
and amused ourselves with pulling about for a while among the floes. I
suppose the grinding of the ice deafened us, and the hummocks hid us
from view of the people on board; at all events, down came one of the
river steamers slap on us. I saw the red paddles laden with ice at every
revolution, and the next instant was sinking, with my boots dragging me
down like a cannon-ball at my feet. I don't know how I kicked them off,
and rose: Gilpin, the other sub., had got astride on the capsized boat;
a rope flung from the steamer struck me, and you may believe I grasped
it pretty tightly. D'ye see here?' and he showed Robert a front tooth
broken short: 'I caught with my hands first, and they were so numb, and
the ice forming so fast on the dripping rope, that it slipped till I
held by my teeth; and another noose being thrown around me lasso-wise,
I was dragged in. A narrow escape, eh?'
'Very narrow,' echoed Robert. He noticed the slight shiver that ran
through the daughter's figure, as she leaned on her father's arm. His
handsome face looked down at her carelessly.
'Edith shudders,' said he; 'I suppose thinking that so wonderful an
escape ought to be remembered as more than a mere adventure.' To which
he received no answer, save an appealing look from her soft eyes. He
turned away with a short laugh.
'Well, at all events, it cured me of boating among the ice. Ugh! to be
sucked in and smothered under a floe would be frightful.'
Mr. Wynn wishing to say something that would prove he was not thinking
of the little aside-scene between father and daughter, asked if the St.
Lawrence was generally so full of ice in winter.
It was difficult to believe now in the balmy atmosphere of the Indian
summer, with a dreamy sunshine warming and gladdening all things,--the
very apotheosis of autumn,--that wintry blasts would howl along this
placid river, surging fierce ice-waves together, before two months
should pass.
'There's rarely a bridge quite across,' replied Captain Armytage;
'except in the north channel, above the isle of Orleans, where the tide
has less force than in the southern, because it is narrower; but in the
widest place the hummocks of ice are frequently crushed into heaps
fifteen or twenty feet high, which makes navigation uncomfortably
exciting.'
'I should think so,' rejoined Robert drily.
'Ah, you have yet to feel what a Canadian winter is like, my young
friend;' and Captain Armytage nodded in that mysterious manner which
is intended to impress a 'griffin' with the cheering conviction that
unknown horrors are before him.
'I wonder what is that tall church, whose roof glitters so intensely?'
'The cathedral, under its tin dome and spires. The metal is said to
hinder the lodging and help the thawing of the snow, which might
otherwise lie so heavy as to endanger the roof.'
'Oh, that is the reason!' ejaculated Robert, suddenly enlightened as to
the needs-be of all the surface glitter.
'Rather a pretty effect, eh? and absolutely unique, except in Canadian
cities. It suggests an infinitude of greenhouses reflecting sunbeams at
a variety of angles of incidence.'
'I presume this is the lower town, lying along the quays?' said Robert.
'Yes, like our Scottish Edinburgh, the old city, being built in
dangerous times, lies huddled close together under protection of its
guardian rock,' said the Captain. 'But within, you could fancy yourself
suddenly transported into an old Normandy town, among narrow crooked
streets and high-gabled houses: nor will the degree of cleanliness
undeceive you. For, unlike most other American cities, Quebec has a
Past as well as a Present: there is the French Past, narrow, dark,
crowded, hiding under a fortification; and there is the English Present,
embodied in the handsome upper town, and the suburb of St. John's,
broad, well-built, airy. The line of distinction is very marked between
the pushing Anglo-Saxon's premises and the tumble-down concerns of the
stand-still _habitan_.'
Perhaps, also, something is due to the difference between Protestant
enterprise and Roman Catholic supineness.
'There's a boat boarding us already,' said Robert.
It proved to be the Custom-house officers; and when their domiciliary
visit was over, Robert and Arthur went ashore. Navigating through a
desert expanse of lumber rafts and a labyrinth of hundreds of hulls,
they stepped at last on the ugly wooden wharves which line the water's
edge, and were crowded with the usual traffic of a port; yet singularly
noiseless, from the boarded pavement beneath the wheels.
Though the brothers had never been in any part of France, the peculiarly
French aspect of the lower town struck them immediately. The old-fashioned
dwellings, with steep lofty roofs, accumulated in narrow alleys, seemed
to date back to an age long anterior to Montcalm's final struggle with
Wolfe on the heights; even back, perchance, to the brave enthusiast
Champlain's first settlement under the superb headland, replacing the
Indian village of Stadacona. To perpetuate his fame, a street alongside
the river is called after him; and though his 'New France' has long
since joined the dead names of extinct colonies, the practical effects
of his early toil and struggle remain in this American Gibraltar which
he originated.
Andy Callaghan had begged leave to accompany his young masters ashore,
and marched at a respectful distance behind them, along that very
Champlain Street, looking about him with unfeigned astonishment. 'I
suppose the quarries is all used up in these parts, for the houses is
wood, an' the churches is wood, and the sthreets has wooden stones
ondher our feet,' he soliloquized, half audibly. 'It's a mighty quare
counthry intirely: between the people making a land on top of the wather
for 'emselves by thim big rafts, an' buildin' houses on 'em, and
kindlin' fires'----
Here his meditation was rudely broken into by the sudden somerset of a
child from a doorstep he was passing; but it had scarcely touched the
ground when Andy, with an exclamation in Irish, swung it aloft in his
arms.
'_Mono mush thig thu_! you crathur, is it trying which yer head or the
road is the hardest, ye are? Whisht now, don't cry, me fine boy, and
maybe I'd sing a song for ye.'
'Wisha then, cead mille failthe a thousand times, Irishman, whoever ye
are!' said the mother, seizing Andy's hand. 'And my heart warms to the
tongue of the old counthry! Won't you come in, honest man, an' rest
awhile, an' it's himself will be glad to see ye?'
'And who's himself?' inquired Andy, dandling the child.
'The carpenter, Pat M'Donagh of Ballinoge'--
'Hurroo!' shouted Andy, as he executed a whirligig on one leg, and then
embraced the amazed Mrs. M'Donagh fraternally. 'My uncle's son's wife!
an' a darling purty face you have of yer own too.'
'Don't be funnin', now,' said the lady, bridling; 'an' you might have
axed a person's lave before ye tossed me cap that way. Here, Pat, come
down an' see yer cousin just arrived from the ould counthry!'
Robert and Arthur Wynn, missing their servitor at the next turn, and
looking back, beheld something like a popular _émeute_ in the narrow
street, which was solely Andy fraternizing with his countrymen and
recovered relations.
'Wait a minit,' said Andy, returning to his allegiance, as he saw them
looking back; 'let me run afther the gentlemen and get lave to stay.'
'Lave, indeed!' exclaimed the republican-minded Mrs. M'Donagh; 'it's I
that wud be afther askin lave in a free counthry! Why, we've no masthers
nor missusses here at all.'
'Hut, woman, but they're my fostherers--the young Mr. Wynns of Dunore.'
Great had been that name among the peasantry once; and even yet it had
not lost its prestige with the transplanted Pat M'Donagh. He had left
Ireland a ragged pauper in the famine year, and was now a thriving
artisan, with average wages of seven shillings a day; an independence
with which Robert Wynn would have considered himself truly fortunate,
and upon less than which many a lieutenant in Her Majesty's infantry has
to keep up a gentlemanly appearance. Pat's strength had been a drug in
his own country; here it readily worked an opening to prosperity.
And presently forgetting his sturdy Canadian notions of independence,
the carpenter was bowing cap in hand before the gentlemen, begging them
to accept the hospitality of his house while they stayed in Quebec. 'The
M'Donaghs is ould tenants of yer honours' father, an' many a kindness
they resaved from the family, and 'twould be the joy of me heart to see
one of the ancient stock at me table,' he said; 'an' sure me father's
brother's son is along wid ye.'
'The ancient stock' declined, with many thanks, as they wanted to see
the city; but Andy, not having the same zeal for exploring, remained in
the discovered nest of his kinsfolk, and made himself so acceptable,
that they parted subsequently with tears.
Meanwhile the brothers walked from the Lower to the Upper Town, through
the quaint steep streets of stone houses--relics of the old French
occupation. The language was in keeping with this foreign aspect, and
the vivacious gestures of the inhabitants told their pedigree. Robert
and Arthur were standing near a group of them in the market-square,
assembled round a young bear brought in by an Indian, when the former
felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, and the next instant the tenacity of
his wrist was pretty well tested in the friendly grasp of Hiram Holt.
CHAPTER V.
DEBARKATION.
The chill of foreignness and loneliness which had been creeping over
Robert Wynn's sensations since he had entered the strange city, was
dissipated as if a cloud had suddenly lifted off. The friendly face
of the colossal Canadian beaming a welcome upon him, with that broad
sunshiny smile which seems immediately to raise the temperature of the
surrounding air, did certainly warm his heart, and nerve it too. He was
not altogether a stranger in a strange land.
'And so you've followed my advice! Bravo, young blood! You'll never be
sorry for adopting Canada as your country. Now, what are your plans?'
bestowing an aside left-hand grasp upon Arthur. 'Can Hiram Holt help
you? Have the old people come out? So much the better; they would only
cripple you in the beginning. Wait till your axe has cut the niche big
enough. You rush on for the West, I suppose?'
All these inquiries in little longer than a breath; while he wrung
Robert's hand at intervals with a heartiness and power of muscle which
almost benumbed the member.
'We have letters to friends on Lake Erie, and to others on Lake Simcoe,'
said Robert, rescuing his hand, which tingled, and yet communicated a
very pleasurable sensation to his heart. 'We are not quite decided on
our line of march.'
'Well, how did you come? Emigrant vessel?'
Adopting the laconic also, Robert nodded, and said it was their first
day in Quebec.
'Get quit of her as soon as you can; haul your traps ashore, and come
along with me. I'll be going up the Ottawa in a day or two, home; and
'twill be only a step out of your way westward. You can look about you,
and see what Canadian life is like for a few weeks; the longer, the more
welcome to Hiram Holt's house. Is that fixed?'
Robert was beginning to thank him warmly--
'Now, shut up, young man; I distrust a fellow that has much palaver.
_You_ look too manly for it. I calculate your capital ain't much above
your four hands between you?'
Arthur was rather discomfited at a query so pointed, and so directly
penetrating the proud British reserve about monetary circumstances; but
Robert, knowing that the motive was kind-hearted, and the manner just
that of a straightforward unconventional settler, replied, 'You are
nearly right, Mr. Holt; our capital in cash is very small; but I hope
stout bodies and stout hearts are worth something.'
'What would you think of a bush farm? I think I heard you say you had
some experience on your father's farm in Ireland?'
'My father's estate, sir,' began Arthur, reddening a little.
Holt measured him by a look, but not one of displeasure. 'Farms in
Canada grow into estates,' said he; 'by industry and push, I shouldn't
be surprised if you became a landed proprietor yourself before your
beard is stiff.' Arthur had as yet no symptom of that manly adornment,
though anxiously watching for the down. The backwoodsman turned to
Robert.
'Government lands are cheap enough, no doubt; four shillings an acre,
and plenty of them. If you're able, I'd have you venture on that
speculation. Purchase-money is payable in ten years; that's a good
breathing time for a beginner. But can you give up all luxuries for a
while, and eat bread baked by your own hands, and sleep in a log hut on
a mess of juniper boughs, and work hard all day at clearing the eternal
forests, foot by foot?'
'We can,' answered Arthur eagerly. His brother's assent was not quite so
vivacious.
Hiram Holt thought within himself how soon the ardent young spirit might
tire of that monotony of labour; how distasteful the utter loneliness
and uneventfulness of forest life might become to the undisciplined lad,
accustomed, as he shrewdly guessed, to a petted and idling boyhood.
'Well _said_, young fellow. For three years I can't say well _done_;
though I hope I may have that to add also.'
By this time they had passed from the Market Square to the Esplanade,
overhanging the Lower Town, and which commands a view almost matchless
for extent and varied beauty. At this hour the shades of evening were
settling down, and tinging with sombre hues the colouring of the
landscape: over the western edge the sun had sunk; far below, the noble
river lay in black shadow and a single gleaming band of dying daylight,
as it crept along under the fleets of ships.
Indistinct as the details were becoming, the outlined masses were
grander for the growing obscurity, and Robert could not restrain an
exclamation of 'Magnificent!'
'Well, I won't deny but it _is_ handsome,' said Mr. Holt, secretly
gratified; 'I never expect to see anything like it for situation,
whatever other way it's deficient. Now I'm free to confess it's only a
village to your London, for forty thousand wouldn't be missed out of two
or three millions; but bigness ain't the only beauty in the world, else
I'd be a deal prettier than my girl Bell, who's not much taller than my
walking-stick, and the fairest lass in our township.'
The adjective 'pretty' seemed so ridiculously inappropriate to one of
Mr. Holt's dimensions and hairy development of face, that Robert could
not forbear a smile. But the Canadian had returned to the landscape.
'Quebec is the key of Canada, that's certain; and so Wolfe and Montcalm
knew, when they fought their duel here for the prize.'
Arthur pricked up his ears at the celebrated names. 'Oh, Bob, we must
try and see the battlefield,' he exclaimed, being fresh from Goldsmith's
celebrated manual of English history.
'To-morrow,' said Mr. Holt. 'It lies west on top of the chain of
heights flanking the river. A monument to the generals stands near here,
in the Castle gardens, with the names on opposite sides of the square
block. To be sure, how death levels us all! Lord Dalhousie built that
obelisk when he was Governor in 1827. You see, as it is the only bit of
history we possess, we never can commemorate it enough; so there's
another pillar on the plains.'
Lights began to appear in the vessels below, reflected as long brilliant
lines in the glassy deeps. 'Perhaps we ought to be getting back to the
ship,' suggested Robert, 'before it is quite dark.'
'Of course you are aware that this is the aristocratic section of the
town,' said Mr. Holt, as they turned to retrace their steps. 'Here the
citizens give themselves up to pleasure and politics, while the Lower
Town is the business place. The money is made there which is spent here;
and when our itinerating Legislature comes round, Quebec is very gay,
and considerably excited.'
'Itinerating Legislature! what's that?' asked Arthur.
'Why, you see, in 1840 the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada were
legally united; their representatives met in the same House of Assembly,
and so forth. Kingston was made the capital, as a central point; however,
last year ('49) the famous device of itineration was introduced, by
which, every four years, his Excellency the Governor and the Right
Honourable Parliament move about from place to place, like a set of
travelling showmen.'
'And when will Quebec's turn come?'
'In '51, next year. The removal of court patronage is said to have
injured the city greatly: like all half-and-half measures, it pleases
nobody. Toronto growls, and Kingston growls, and Quebec growls, and
Montreal growls; Canada is in a state of chronic dissatisfaction, so far
as the towns go. For myself, I never feel at home in Quebec; the lingo
of the _habitans_ puzzles me, and I'm not used to the dark narrow
streets.'
'Are you a member of the Parliament, Mr. Holt?' asked Arthur.
'No, though I might be,' replied Hiram, raising his hat for a moment
from his masses of grizzled hair. 'I've been town reeve many times, and
county warden once. The neighbours wanted to nominate me for the House
of Assembly, and son Sam would have attended to the farms and mills; but
I had that European trip in my eye, and didn't care. Ah, I see you look
at the post-office, young fellow,' as they passed that building just
outside the gate of the Upper Town wall; 'don't get homesick already
on our hands; there are no post-offices in the bush.'
Arthur looked slightly affronted at this speech, and, to assert his
manliness, could have resigned all letters for a twelvemonth. Mr. Holt
walked on with a preoccupied air until he said,--
'I must go now, I have an appointment; but I'll be on board to-morrow
at noon. The brig Ocean Queen, of Cork, you say? Now your path is right
down to Champlain Street; you can't lose your way. Good-bye;' and his
receding figure was lost in the dusk, with mighty strides.
'He's too bluff,' said Arthur, resenting thus the one or two
plain-spoken sentences that had touched himself.
'But sound and steady, like one of his own forest pines,' said Robert.
'We have yet to test that,' rejoined Arthur, with some truth. 'I wonder
shall we ever find the house into which Andy was decoyed; those wooden
ranges are all the image of one another. I am just as well pleased he
wasn't mooning after us through the Upper Town during the daylight;
for, though he's such a worthy fellow, he hasn't exactly the cut of a
gentleman's servant. We must deprive him of that iligant new frieze
topcoat, with its three capes, till it is fashioned into a civilised
garment.'
Mr. Pat M'Donagh's mansion was wooden--one of a row of such, situated
near the dockyard in which he wrought. Andy was already on the look-out
from the doorstep; and, conscious that he had been guilty of some
approach to excess, behaved with such meek silence and constrained
decorum, that his master guessed the cause, and graciously connived at
his slinking to his berth as soon as he was up the ship's side.
But when Mr. Wynn walked forward next morning to summon Andy's
assistance for his luggage, he found that gentleman the focus of a knot
of passengers, to whom he was imparting information in his own peculiar
way. 'Throth an' he talks like a book itself,' was the admiring comment
of a woman with a child on one arm, while she crammed her tins into her
red box with the other.
'Every single ha'porth is wood, I tell ye, barrin' the grates, an'
'tisn't grates they are at all, but shtoves. Sure I saw 'em at Pat
M'Donagh's as black as twelve o'clock at night, an' no more a sign of a
blaze out of 'em than there's light from a blind man's eye; an' 'tisn't
turf nor coal they burns, but only wood agin. It's I that wud sooner see
the plentiful hearths of ould Ireland, where the turf fire cooks the
vittles dacently! Oh wirra! why did we ever lave it?'
But Mr. Wynn intercepted the rising chorus by the simple dissyllable,
'Andy!'
'Sir, yer honour!' wheeling round, and suddenly resuming a jocose
demeanour; 'I was only jokin' about bein' back. I must be kapin' up
their sperits, the crathurs, that dunno what's before them at all at
all; only thinks they're to be all gintlemin an' ladies.' This, as he
followed his master towards the cabins: 'Whisht here, Misther Robert,'
lowering his tone confidentially.' You'd laugh if you heard what they
think they're goin' to get. Coinin' would be nothin' to it. That
red-headed Biddy Flannigan' (Andy's own chevelure was of carrot tinge,
yet he never lost an opportunity of girding at those like-haired), 'who
couldn't wash a pair of stockings if you gev her a goold guinea, expects
twenty pund a year an' her keep, at the very laste; and Murty Keefe the
labourin' boy, that could just trench a ridge of praties, thinks nothing
of tin shillins a day. They have it all laid out among them iligant.
Mrs. Mulrooney is lookin' out for her carriage by'ne-by; and they were
abusin' me for not sayin' I'd cut an' run from yer honours, now that I'm
across.'
'Well, Andy, I'd be sorry to stand in the way of your advancement--'
'Me lave ye, Misther Robert!' in accents of unfeigned surprise; 'not
unless ye drove me with a whip an' kicked me--is it your poor fostherer
Andy Callaghan? Masther Bob, asthore, ye're all the counthry I have
now, an' all the frinds; an' I'll hold by ye, if it be plasing, as long
as I've strength to strike a spade.'
Tears actually stood in the faithful fellow's eyes. 'I believe you,
Andy,' said his master, giving his hand to the servant for a grasp of
friendship, which, if it oftener took place between the horny palm of
labour and the whiter fingers of the higher born, would be for the
cementing of society by such recognition of human brotherhood.
When Andy had all their luggage on deck in order for the boats, he came
up mysteriously to Mr. Wynn, where he stood by the taffrail.
'There's that poor young lady strivin' and strugglin' to regulate them
big boxes, an' her good-for-nothin' father an' brother smokin' in the
steerage, an' lavin' everything on her. Fine gintlemin, indeed! More
like the Injins, that I'm tould lies in bed while their wives digs the
praties!'
Edith Armytage was so well accustomed to such unequal division of labour
in her family, that it had long ceased to seem singular to her that she
was invariably the worker, who bore the brunt of every labour and of
every trouble--on whose forecasting care depended the smooth arrangement
of her father's designs; for he could plan well enough, but had a lofty
disdain of details. The small matter of the luggage was type of all her
experience.
Jay rather enjoyed the hauling about of huge articles, and attempting
to bring on deck things much larger than her strength; and when she and
Edith were jointly essaying to push and pull up the companion-ladder a
carpet-bag of unusual size, it was suddenly lifted from between them,
over Jay's head, and borne on deck.
'Oh, Mr. Wynn, thank you!' said the little thing demurely. 'It was a
little too big for me and Edith. There is a leather valise besides,
that's very heavy;' and she looked a wistful request. Robert thought
internally that it would have been good business for the captain to
bring, at least, his own things on deck; and he could not prevail on
himself to do more than offer Andy's services as porter, which were
gratefully received. Did Miss Armytage's grey eyes, as they rested upon
his for a minute, understand his thoughts? Probably; he believed she
did. Presently up sauntered her worthy father, wiping his silky
moustache and beard from the smoke.
'Well, dear, how have you managed? Beautifully, I have no doubt. She's a
model of a daughter, Wynn!'
'Papa, I hope we may soon land; I positively long to tread the firm
earth again.'
'What would you do if you were rocking and rolling in a transport
five months round the Cape? All in good time, dear: I have one or
two trifling matters to settle;' and he went down to the cabins.
Just before noon Hiram Holt stepped on deck.
'I hope you're ready,' were the second words of his greeting. 'Glorious
day for sight-seeing; I've arranged to drive to Cape Rouge over the
plains; for we must be off to-morrow, up the river to Montreal. Where
are your boxes?'
During a few minutes' delay for the transit of the luggage to the boat,
Captain Armytage approached, and with those peculiarly pleasing manners
which made him a fascinating man to all who did not know him somewhat
deeper than the surface, he engaged Mr. Holt in conversation: he was
invited to join the excursion to Wolfe's Cove, and stepped over the side
of the ship after the others.
'Reginald! take care of your sisters till my return. They need not go on
shore till the afternoon. _Au revoir_;' and he kissed his hand gaily to
Miss Armytage and Jay, who stood at the vessel's side. But Robert could
not help remembering their expressed anxiety to get ashore, and the
captain's fascinations were lost upon him for a good part of their
expedition.
Always thus: postponing business and anybody else's pleasure to his
own whim or amusement,--for he was intrinsically the most selfish of
men,--Captain Armytage had hitherto contrived never to succeed in
any undertaking. He considered himself the victim of unprecedented
ill-fortune, forgetting that he had himself been his own evil genius.
His son could hardly be otherwise than a chip of the old block. Now he
turned away from the taffrail with a scowl; and, vowing that he would
not be mewed up while 'the governor' was enjoying himself, presently
hailed a boat and went ashore, leaving his sisters to walk up and down
the deck and long for the land.
CHAPTER VI.
CONCERNING AN INCUBUS.
Andy carried his wrath at the captain's company so far as to shake his
fist close to that gentleman's bland and courteous back, while he bent
forward from his thwart in speaking to Mr. Holt; which gestures of
enmity highly amused the Canadian boatmen, as they grinned and jabbered
in _patois_ (old as the time of Henri Quatre) among themselves.
'The deludherer?' muttered Andy. 'He'd coax a bird off a three wid
his silver tongue. An' he must come betune my own gintlemen an'
their frind--the old schamer!' Here a tremendous blow was lodged (in
pantomime) under the captain's ribs. 'Sure, of coorse, they can't be up
to his thricks, an' he an ould sojer!' And here Andy let fly vivaciously
beneath his unconscious adversary's left ear, restraining the knuckles
within about half an inch of his throat.
'Are you speaking to me, my good man?' said the captain, suddenly
wheeling round upon Andy, who sat face to his back.
'Is it me, yer honour?' and the dolorous submissiveness of Andy's
countenance was a change marvellous to behold. 'What could the likes
of me have to say to the likes of you, sir?'
Arthur Wynn's gravity was fairly overcome, and he got a heavy fit of
coughing in his pocket-handkerchief. Captain Armytage gazed keenly at
Andy for a moment, during which he might as well have stared at a
plaster bust, for all the discoveries he made in the passive simple
countenance.
'Six hours' knapsack drill might do that fellow some good,' said the
officer, resuming his former position and the thread of conversation
together. 'In answer to your inquiry, Mr. Holt, I have not quite decided
whether to settle in Upper or Lower Canada.'
'Then, sir, you must know very little of either,' was the blunt reply.
'There's no more comparison between them than between settling in
Normandy and in North Britain.'
'Can't say I should like either location,' rejoined the captain, with
his brilliant smile. 'But I've been here with the regiment, and am not
quite without personal experience. The life of a seigneur would just
suit me; if I could find an eligible seignory for sale'--
Hiram Holt stared. A man who had come out with his family in an emigrant
vessel, talking of purchasing a seignory! But this was a magnificent
manner of the captain's. Sixpence in his pocket assumed the dimensions
of a sovereign in his imagination.
'Some of them are thirty thousand acres in extent,' Mr. Holt remarked
drily.
'Ah, yes, quite a little principality: one should enjoy all the old
feudal feelings, walking about among one's subject _censitaires_,
taking a paternal interest in their concerns, as well as bound to them
by pecuniary ties. I should build a castellated baronial residence,
pepper-box turrets, etcetera, and resist modern new lights to the
uttermost.'
'As soon a living man chained to a dead man, as _I_ would hamper myself
with that old-world feudality!' exclaimed the Western pioneer. 'Why,
sir, can you have seen the wretched worn-out land they scratch with a
wretched plough, fall after fall, without dreaming of rotation of crops,
or drainage, or any other improvement? Do you remember the endless strips
of long narrow fields edging the road, opening out of one another,
in miserable divisions of one or two acres, perhaps, just affording
starvation to the holders? What is the reason that where vast quantities
of wheat were formerly exported, the soil now grows hardly enough for
the people to eat? Sir, the country is cut up and subdivided to the
last limits that will support even the sleepy life of a _habitan_; all
improvement of every kind is barred; the French population stand still
in the midst of our go-ahead age: and you would prolong the system that
causes this!'
It was one of the few subjects upon which Mr. Holt got excited; but he
had seen the evils of feudalism in the strong light of Western progress.
Captain Armytage, for peace' sake, qualified his lately expressed
admiration, but was met again by a torrent of words--to the unalloyed
delight of Andy, who was utterly unable to comprehend the argument,
but only hoped 'the schamer was gettin' more than he bargained for.'
'Pauperism will be the result, sir; the race is incorrigible in its
stupid determination to do as its forefathers did, and nothing else.
Lower Canada wants a clearing out, like what you are getting in Ireland,
before a healthy regeneration can set in. The religion is faulty; the
habits and traditions of the race are faulty; Jean Baptiste is the
drone in our colonial hive. He won't gather honey: he will just live,
indolently drawling through an existence diversified by feast and fast
days; and all his social vices flourish in shelter of this seignorial
system--this--this upas-tree which England is pledged to perpetuate:'
and Mr. Holt struck his hand violently on the gunwale of the boat,
awakening a responsive grin of triumph from Andy.
The captain was spared a reply by the boat just then touching the wharf;
and while they were landing, and lodging the luggage in Pat M'Donagh's
house till the starting of the Montreal boat next afternoon, we may say
a few words concerning the feudal system extant in Lower Canada at the
period when this story begins.
Henri Quatre was the monarch under whose sway the colony was originated.
Champlain and De Levi knew no better than to reproduce the landed
organization of France, with its most objectionable feature of the forced
partition of estates, in the transatlantic province, for defensive
purposes, against the numerous and powerful Indian tribes. Military
tenure was superadded. Every farmer was perforce also a soldier, liable
at any time to be called away from his husbandry to fight against the
savage Iroquois or the aggressive British. Long after these combative
days had passed away the military tenure remained, with its laws of
serfdom, a canker at the roots of property; and thinking men dreaded to
touch a matter so inwound with the very foundations of the social fabric
in Lower Canada. But in 1854 and 1859 legislative acts were passed which
have finally abolished the obnoxious tenure; each landholder, receiving
his estate in freehold, has paid a certain sum, and the Province in
general contributed £650,000 as indemnity to those whose old-established
rights were surrendered for the public weal. Eight millions of inhabited
acres were freed from the incubus, and Lower Canada has removed one
great obstacle in the way of her prosperity.
At the period when Hiram Holt expressed himself so strongly on the
subject, a grinding vassalage repressed the industry of the _habitans_.
Though their annual rent, as _censitaires_ or tenants, was not large,
a variety of burdensome obligations was attached. When a man sold his
tenure, the seigneur could demand a fine, sometimes one-twelfth of the
purchase money; heavy duties were charged on successions. The ties of
the Roman Catholic Church were oppressive. Various monopolies were
possessed by the seigneurs. The whole system of social government was a
reproduction, in the nineteenth century, of the France of the fifteenth.
Mr. Holt was somewhat cooled when his party had reached the citadel,
through streets so steep that the drive to their summit seemed a feat of
horsemanship. Here was the great rock whence Jacques Cartier, first of
European eyes, viewed the mighty river in the time of our Henry VIII.,
now bristling with fortifications which branch away in angles round the
Upper Town, crowned with a battery of thirty-two pounders, whose black
muzzles command the peaceful shipping below. Robert Wynn could not help
remarking on that peculiarly Canadian charm, the exquisite clearness of
the air, which brought distant objects so near in vision that he could
hardly believe Point Levi to be a mile across the water, and the woods
of the isle of Orleans more than a league to the eastward.
Captain Armytage had many reminiscences of the fortress, but enjoyed
little satisfaction in the relating of any; for nothing could get the
seignorial tenure out of Mr. Holt's head, and he drove in sentences
concerning it continually.
Outside the Castle gates the captain remembered important business,
which must preclude him from the pleasure of accompanying his friends
to Wolfe's Landing.
'Well, sir, I hope you now acknowledge that the seignorial system is a
blot on our civilisation.'
'I wish it had never been invented!' exclaimed the captain, very
sincerely. And, with the gracefullest of bows, he got quit of Mr. Holt
and his pet aversion together.
Hiram's features relaxed into a smile. 'I knew I could convince him; he
appears an agreeable companion,' remarked Mr. Holt, somewhat simply.
But the subject had given the keynote to the day; and in driving along
the road to Cape Rouge, parallel with the St. Lawrence, he was finding
confirmations for his opinion in most things they met and passed. The
swarming country, and minute subdivisions of land, vexed Hiram's spirit.
Not until they entered the precincts of the battlefield, and he was
absorbed in pointing out the spots of peculiar interest, did the
feudality of the Province cease to trouble him.
All along the river was bordered by handsome villas and pleasure-grounds
of Quebec merchants. Cultivation has gradually crept upon the battlefield,
obliterating landmarks of the strife. The rock at the base of which
Wolfe expired has been removed, and in its stead rises a pillar crowned
with a bronze helmet and sword, and is inscribed:
HERE DIED WOLFE, VICTORIOUS.
Not till seventy-five years after the deed which makes his fame was this
memorial erected: a tardy recognition of the service which placed the
noblest of our dependencies--a Province large as an old-world empire--in
British hands.
CHAPTER VII.
THE RIVER HIGHWAY.
'Well, Misther Robert! if ever I laid my eyes on the likes of such a
ship, in all my born days!'
With this impressive ejaculation, Andy Callaghan backed on the wharf to
take a completer view of the wondrous whole. His untravelled imagination
had hitherto pictured steamers after the one pattern and similitude of
those which sailed upon the river Lee and in the Cove of Cork--craft
which had the aquatic appendages of masts and decks, and still kept up
an exterior relation with the ship tribe. But this a steamboat! this
great three-storied wooden edifice, massive-looking as a terrace of
houses!
'An' a hole in the side for a hall-door!' soliloquized Andy. 'No, but
two holes, one for the quality an' the other for the commonality. An'
no deck at all at all for the people to take the air, only all cabins
intirely! If it isn't the very dead image of a side of a sthreet
swimmin' away!'
Andy's outspoken remarks attracted some notice when he was fairly
aboard.
'This is the fore-cabin, and you must try to keep quiet,' said Arthur.
'We'll be off presently; and whatever you do,' he added in a low tone,
'keep clear of that bar'--indicating a counter recess where liquors were
sold, and where customers had congregated already.
'Never fear, sir,' was the reply; 'though they've no right to put it
there forenent us, an' they knowin' that the bare sight of it is like
fire to tow with many a one. But sure they're not thinkin' only how to
get money:' and Mr. Callaghan ended his moral reflections by sitting
down beside a family of small children, who squalled in different keys,
and treating one of them to a ride on his foot, which favour, being
distributed impartially, presently restored good humour.
'An' isn't there any peep of the fresh air allowed us at all?' inquired
Andy of a man near him, whose peculiar cut of garments had already
excited his curiosity. 'It's a quare vessel that hasn't aither a sail or
deck: we might all go to the bottom of the say in this big box, 'athout
bein' a bit the wiser.'
The emigrant with the six children looked rather anxious, and hugged her
baby closer, poor woman; glancing for a minute at the bar, where her
husband was sipping gin, and already brawling with an American. But as
the apple-complexioned man whom Andy addressed happened to be a French
_habitan_, limited in English at the best of times, the Irish brogue
puzzled him so thoroughly, that he could only make a polite bow, and
signify his ignorance of Monsieur's meaning.
'Maybe he's an Injin,' thought Andy; 'but sure I thought thim savages
wore no clothes, and he has an iligant blue coat an' red tie. I wondher
would it be any good to thry the Irish wid him;' and, as an experiment,
he said something in the richest Munster dialect. The Canadian's
politeness was almost forgotten in his stare of surprise, and he took
the earliest opportunity of changing his place, and viewing Andy
respectfully from afar.
But if it had a repellent effect on the _habitan_, it exerted a strong
attractive force upon other of the passengers. Mr. Callaghan was never
happier than when at the focus of a knot of his countrymen, for his
talents were essentially social; and before the evening was over, his
musical feats with voice and violin had so charmed the aforesaid
Canadian, that he came up and made him another of the polite bows.
'Very much obliged to you, sir, if I only knew what you were sayin','
replied Andy, with equal courtesy.
'He's inviting you to his daughter's wedding,' interpreted one of the
sailors who stood by; 'you and the fiddle.'
'With all the pleasure in life, sir,' promptly replied Andy, as he
imitated the bow of the worthy _habitan_ to perfection. 'I'm always
ready for any fun-goin'. Ask the old gentleman when and where it's
to be,' he continued, jogging the interpreter with his elbow.
'The day after to-morrow, at a village near Montreal;' upon learning
which, Andy's countenance fell, and the festive vision faded from his
ken. 'Maybe it's in China I'd be by that time,' said he, with incorrect
notions of geography; 'but I'm obliged to you all the same, sir, an'
wherever I am I'll drink her health, if 'twas only in a glass of wather.
I'll have a pain in me back if I bow much longer' added Andy _sotto
voce_; 'I don't know how he's able to keep it up at all.'
'Why, where are you going to?' asked the sailor, laughing; 'this ain't
the way to China by a long chalk.'
'Going to make me fortune,' replied Andy boldly, as he dropped the
violin into its case and latched the cover tightly, as if a secret were
locked in. While no more idea had he of his destination, nor plan for
future life, poor faithful peasant, than the fine Newfoundland dog which
slept not far from him that night in the fore-cabin, a mass of creamy
curls.
Meanwhile, all the evening, and all the night through, the noble steamer
stemmed the broad brimming flood, steadily onwards, casting behind her
on the moonlit air a breath of dark smoke ruddy with sparks, at every
palpitation of her mighty engine-heart. Past black pine forests to the
edge of the shore; past knots of white cottages centred round the usual
gleaming metal spire; past confluence of other rivers, dark paths joining
the great continental highway; blowing off steam now and then at young
roadside towns, where upon wooden wharves, waited passengers and freight
in the moonlight, swallowing into either mouth all presented to her, and
on untiringly again. Robert Wynn stayed on the small open poop astern,
gazing at the picturesque panorama, half revealed, half shaded by the
silvery beams, long after the major part of the passengers were snug in
their state rooms or berths below. With the urging of the fire-driven
machinery he could hear mingled the vast moan of the river sweeping
along eastwards. It saddened him, that never-silent voice of 'the Father
of Waters.' Memories of home came thronging round him--a home for him
extinct, dead, till in this distant land he should create another. At
the threshold of a great undertaking, before hand has been put to work
it out, the heart always shrinks and shivers, as did his here. Looking
upon the length and breadth of all that had to be done, it seemed too
hard for him.
But not so when next morning he arose from a few hours' sleep, and
beheld the bright sunshine lighting up the glorious Canadian world.
Looming giants by moonlight are reduced to very ordinary obstacles by
daylight; and the set of desponding thoughts which had weighed upon the
young man as he contemplated the inky river and darkling country, seemed
now to belong to another phase of being. Despondent! with the wide free
world to work in, and its best prizes lying beside the goal, ready for
capture by the steady heart and active hand. Robert felt almost as if
that shadowy home in the forest were already built, already peopled with
the dear old faces he had left behind. The pure fresh air--clear as is
rarely breathed in Europe (for it is as if in our Old World the breath
of unnumbered nations has for centuries been soiling the elements)--the
richly coloured scene, were a cordial to his young brain. The steamer
was fast approaching the isle of St. Helen's; and beyond, against a
background of purple mountain, lay 'the Silver Town,' radiant with that
surface glitter peculiar to Canadian cities of the Lower Province; as if
Montreal had sent her chief edifices to be electro-plated, and they had
just come home brightly burnished. In front was the shining blue current
of the St. Lawrence, escaped from a bewildering perplexity of islets
and rapids, which had apparently ruffled its temper not a little.
'Part of our Ottawa flows here,' said Mr. Holt, glancing at the stream
with a sort of home affection--'our clear emerald Ottawa, fresh from the
virgin wilderness; and it hasn't quite mingled with its muddy neighbour
yet, no more than we Westerns can comfortably mingle with the _habitans_
and their old-world practices down here. You see, Wynn, the St. Lawrence
has been running over a bed of marl for miles before it reaches Lake St.
Louis; and the Ottawa has been purified by plenty of rocks and rapids;
so they don't suit very well--no more than we and the _habitans_--ha!
ha!' Mr. Holt was vastly amused by the similitude. He pointed to a very
distinctly marked line of foam wavering on the river surface, and said,
'There's the demarcation.'
'I am glad it is of such an evanescent nature, sir,' replied Robert. He
might have said how much grander the river became when all brawling was
forgotten, and both currents fused into one glorious stream.
'Now,' said Arthur, with the contrariety of youth (and _aside_, as is
written in stage-plays), 'I'm certain these French Canadians are not so
black as they're painted. I like those sociable white villages round the
tin spires; and the guide-book says the people are amiable and civil.
I'll investigate that subject, Bob.'
'I would advise you to investigate breakfast just now,' was the reply,
as the steward's bell swung forth its summons. Then commenced a procession
of passengers to the eating-room; through the length of the sumptuously
furnished saloon, where the richest Persian carpets, marble tables,
brilliant chandeliers, and mirrors, were at the service of the public;
by a narrow staircase amidships down to the lowest storey of the vessel,
a long apartment lit by candles, and lined at the sides with curtained
rows of berths. The usual pause followed for the advent of the ladies:
nobody sat down till they had come from their cabin on the middle deck,
and established themselves wheresoever they listed.
'That's like Irish politeness' whispered Arthur, whose good spirits were
always talkative. 'My father, dear old gentleman, would take off his hat
to a petticoat on a bush, I do believe.'
The company was very mixed, and quite as much conversation went on in
French as in English. It seemed to the strangers as if the balance of
gentlemanly deportment, and yet vivacity of manner, might possibly lie
on the side of those who spoke the former tongue. Next to Arthur sat the
sallow States'-man, bolting his breakfast with unconscionable speed,
and between whiles, in a high treble voice, volunteering his opinion
pretty freely on Canadian matters, as if he were endowed with a special
commission to set them right. Badly as Hiram Holt thought of the
seignorial system, he was perforce driven to defend it in some measure,
much to Arthur's delectation; but he soon discovered that to carry
war into the enemy's country was his best policy, so he seized the
institution of slavery in his canine teeth, and worried it well. The
States'-man thought that a gentleman might be permitted to travel
without being subject to attacks on his country: Mr. Holt observed that
he thought precisely the same, which species of agreement closed the
conversation. And the States'-man relieved his feelings subsequently
by whittling a stick from the firewood into impalpable chips, with his
heels resting on the apex of the saloon stove. Kind-hearted Hiram Holt
had meanwhile more than half repented his hostility.
'Tell you what, sir,' said he, going up and extending his hand, 'it
wasn't the matter, but the manner of your talk that raised my dander
awhile since. I agree in most of what you say about this Province here,
and I hope as much as you do that the last badge of feudalism may soon
be swept away.'
The American put his bony pale hand almost sullenly into the Canadian's
brawny palm, and after suffering the pressure, returned to his interesting
pursuit of whittling, which he continued in silence for the rest of the
voyage.
CHAPTER VIII.
'JEAN BAPTISTE' AT HOME.
After seeing most of the thoroughfares of Montreal, and receiving the
set of sensations experienced by all new-comers and recorded in all
books of Canadian travel--principally wondering at the incongruities
of French and English nationality grafted together, and coherent as
the segments of the fabled centaur--the active commerce of a British
port carried on beneath the shadow of walled-in convents suggesting
Belgium--friars endued with long black robes, passing soldiers clothed
in the immemorial scarlet--a Rue Notre Dame and a St. James's Street in
neighbourhood--the brothers witnessed another phase of American life as
they dined at a monster table-d'hôte in the largest hotel of the city.
The imperial system of inn-keeping originated in the United States
has been imported across the border, much to the advantage of British
subjects; and nothing can be a queerer contrast than the Englishman's
solitary dinner in a London coffee-room, and his part in the vast
collective meals of a transatlantic hotel.
'New to this sort of thing, I should imagine?' said the gentleman next
beside Robert, in a particularly thin, wiry voice.
'Yes, quite a stranger,' answered Robert, looking round, and seeing that
the speaker was a person with a sharp nose and small keen black eyes.
'So I thought; your looks betray it. Everything seems queer, I guess.
Intending to be a settler, eh?' Then, without waiting for an answer,
'That's right: I always welcome the infusion of young blood into our
colony, particularly _gentle_ blood, for we are a rough set, mister,
and want polish--and--and--all that.'
These deferential words, uttered in the deferential manner of inferiority
to acknowledged excellence, certainly pleased Robert; for what heart is
unsusceptible to subtle flattery? And of all modes of influence, men
are most easily flattered or disparaged by reference to what is no
worthiness or fault of their own--the social station in which it has
pleased the Creator that they should enter this world. The keen brain
behind the keen eyes knew this well; the fact had oiled a way for his
wedge many a time. What was his motive for endeavouring to ingratiate
himself with young Wynn for the next twenty minutes?
'Now, mister, if it's a fact that you be settling, I can give you a
chance of some of the finest lots of land ever offered for sale in
Montcalm township. A friend of mine has a beautiful farm there that
would just suit you; best part cleared and under fence--fine water
privilege--land in good heart, and going, I may say, dirt cheap.'
Robert felt much obliged for the interest in his welfare which prompted
this eligible offer. 'But, unfortunately, I have very little money to
invest,' said he carelessly. The swift penetrating glance that followed
from his companion was unseen, as he crumbled his biscuit on the
table-cloth. 'I am rather disposed to try the backwoods,' he added.
'The bush!' in accents of amazement. 'The bush! it may do very well
for labourers, but for a gentleman of your pretensions, it would be
misery--wholly unsuitable, sir--wholly unsuitable. No, no, take my
advice, and settle where the advantages of civilisation--the comforts of
life to which you have been accustomed--are accessible. A few thousand
dollars'--
'I regret to say,' Robert interposed, 'that even one thousand is
immensely more than I possess,' turning to the Canadian with a frank
smile, which was by no means reduplicated in the sharp face. And from
the era of that revelation, conversation unaccountably flagged.
'Do you know to whom you talked at table?' asked Hiram Holt afterwards.
He had been sitting some way farther up at the other side. 'One of the
most noted land-jobbers in the country--a man who buys wild lands at
three shillings an acre, to sell them again at ten or fifteen, if he
can; and he never loses an opportunity of driving a trade. His bargain
of a cleared farm is probably some worn-out dilapidated location not
worth half-a-dollar an acre till hundreds have been spent on it.'
'Then I've gained one benefit by being poor,' said Robert; 'nobody can
have a motive for over-reaching me'--which was philosophic consolation.
Mr. Holt's business would not permit him to leave till next evening. And
so the Wynns, continuing to lionize, looked into the vast but dreary
Romish cathedral, which seats ten thousand people in its nine spacious
aisles and seven chapels; clambered to the roof, and viewed the city
from a promenade at an elevation of 120 feet; and then drove to that
special beauty of Montreal--the mountain. This is a hill more than 500
feet in height, and clothed from head to foot with the richest verdure
of woods; among which grow the most delicious apples extant since Paris
selected one as a prize. From the summit a landscape of level country
stretches below westwards; in middle, distant villages; on the horizon,
the Ottawa confluence, bounding Montreal Island and forming others.
Southwards, across the St. Lawrence, the hills of Vermont far away;
nearer, the fertile valley of the Richelieu.
'Let's go off to one of the _habitan_ villages,' said Arthur suddenly.
'Dismiss the calèche, and we will walk back. I'll ask for a drink of
water in one of the cottages just to scrape acquaintance.'
'Furbish up your French, too,' said Robert, 'for they do gabble it
fast. I heard a fellow chattering in the steerage, coming up the river
yesterday morning: by the way, he and Andy had struck up a friendship:
and such bowing as they had to each other's incomprehensible lingo!'
'I wonder what he is doing to-day,' said Arthur reflectively; 'he asked
me so particularly whether we should want him again till the evening.'
'Found out a nest of Irish somewhere, I suppose.'
'There's a fellow taking off his hat to us,' remarked Arthur, as they
passed a carter. 'Everybody seems to bow to everybody in this country.
But did you ever see such an old-fashioned vehicle as he drives? And he
keeps talking to himself and his horse all the way, apparently.'
Rapidly walking down the fine road to the plain, they were not long
in nearing a group of neat white houses round the invariable shining
steeple.
'The village looks as sociable as the people,' said Robert. 'How neat
everything seems!--Hallo, Arthur, we've come in for some festivity or
other, by all the gay ribbons about.'
'Bon jour, Madame,' said Arthur boldly, to a tidy old lady, sitting in
her green verandah. 'Nous sommes des étrangers--I'd like to ask her what
it's all about,' he whispered confidentially to Robert; 'but I'm out of
my depth already.'
The aged _Canadienne_ arose, with the politeness so natural to her
Gallic descent, and bade them welcome. But sounds issuing from the
opposite house riveted their attention. 'As sure as I'm here, that's
Andy's violin,' exclaimed Arthur; 'I'd know his scrape anywhere;' and he
crossed the road in a moment.
Without doubt Andy was the player, ay, and the performer too; for he was
dancing a species of quickstep solo, surrounded by a circle of grinning
and delighted _habitans_. The most perfect gravity dwelt in his own
countenance meanwhile, alloyed by just a spice of lurking fun in his
deep-set eyes, which altogether faded, as a candle blown out, when
suddenly he perceived the accession to the company. Silence succeeded
the dead blank on his features, down hung the violin and its bow on
either side, and the corners of his mouth sunk into a dismal curve.
'Go on, old boy--scrape away,' shouted Arthur hilariously. 'So many
pretty faces would inspire anybody;' and whether it was that the
black-eyed Canadian damsels felt the compliment through the foreign
idiom, there was considerable blushing and bridling as the speaker's
glance travelled round the group.
They deserved his encomium. The slight sprightly type of dark beauty
abounded; and so prettily decked out with bright ribbons and flowers,
that it was evident the tastefulness which renders French modistes
unrivalled had not died out in these collateral relatives of the nation.
Forward stepped Monsieur, the master of the house and father of the bride,
begging that Messieurs would be so benevolent as to seat themselves,
and would honour him by partaking of refreshment; both which requests
Messieurs were nothing loth to fulfil. It was hardly to be realized
that these were the besotted _habitans_, the unimprovable race, the
blotch on the fair face of Canadian civilisation; these happy-looking,
simple-minded people. Hiram Holt was a slanderer. Full an hour passed
before the Wynns could get away from the embarrassing hospitalities and
politeness of the good villagers, who shook hands all round at parting
in most affectionate style. As for Andy, much to his own discomfort, he
was kissed by his host.
'Now I could ondherstand if it was the missus that shaluted me,' said
he, rubbing across his cheek with his cuff as soon as he was on the
road; 'throth an' they're all very fond of me intirely, considherin'
they never laid eyes on me till this mornin', barrin' himself. An' I
never see nater houses--they're as clean as a gintleman's; you might ate
off the flure. If only the people wud forget that queer talk they have,
an' spake like Christians, that a body could know what they're sayin',
'twould be a deal more comfortable.'
'And how could you get on without understanding them?' asked Arthur.
'Oh, 'twas aisy enough sometimes; for whin they wanted me to come to
dinner they had only to show me the table; and when they wanted me to
play, they only rubbed across their arm this way, and said, "Jawer,
jawer" (I brought away that word, anyhow,' added Mr. Callaghan, with
great satisfaction). 'All other times they spake to me I bowed plinty,
and that did the business. But there was a man alongside me at the
dinner that had a few words of English; an' he tould me that this time
of the year they all marries to be ready against the winter. I likes
that fashion, Misther Robert;' and herewith Andy heaved a little sigh,
thinking perhaps of a certain pretty blue-eyed Mary in Ireland.
'Put your best foot foremost, Callaghan,' said Mr. Wynn; 'we shall
scarcely reach town in time;' and all three quickened their pace.
'I'll never believe a syllable against the _habitans_ again,' said
Arthur. 'Their old-fashioned politeness is a perfect relief from the
bluff manners of most other Canadians. They seem to me to have a lot
of virtues,--cleanliness, good-humour, good-nature,--and I like their
habit of living altogether, children settled round the parent tree
like branches of a banyan. We would give a trifle to be able to do it
ourselves, Bob;' and the smile with which the brothers met each other's
eyes was rather wistful.
CHAPTER IX.
'FROM MUD TO MARBLE.'
Hiram Holt was proud of his ancestry. Not that he had sixteen quarterings
whereof to boast, or even six; his pedigree could have blazoned an
escutcheon only with spade, and shuttle, and saw, back for generations.
But then, society all about him was in like plight; and it is a strong
consolation in this, as in matters moral, to be no worse than one's
neighbours. Truly, a Herald's College would find Canada a very jungle as
to genealogy. The man of marble has had a grandfather of mud, as was the
case with the owner of Maple Grove.
And, instead of resenting such origin as an injury received from his
progenitors, worthy Hiram looked back from the comfortable eminence of
prosperity whereunto he had attained, and loved to retrace the gradual
steps of labour which led thither. He could remember most of them; to
his memory's eye the virgin forest stretched for unknown and unnumbered
miles west and northward of the settler's adventurous clearing, and the
rude log shanty was his home beside the sombre pines. Now the pines were
dead and gone, except a few isolated giants standing gloomily among
the maple plantations; but the backwoodsman's shanty had outlived all
subsequent changes.
Here, in the wide courtyard to the rear of Mr. Holt's house, it was
preserved, like a curious thing set apart in a museum--an embodiment
of the old struggling days embalmed. The walls of great unhewn logs
fastened at the corners by notching; the crevices chinked up with chips
and clay; the single rude square window shuttered across; the roof of
basswood troughs, all blackened with age; the rough door, creaking
on clumsy wooden hinges when Mr. Holt unlocked it,--these were not
encouraging features, viewed by the light of a future personal experience.
Robert stole a glance at Arthur as they stepped inside the low dark
shed, and, as Arthur had with similar motives also stolen a glance at
Robert, their eyes naturally met, and both laughed.
They had been thinking a twin thought--'How will my brother like such
quarters as this in the forest?'
'A queer concern,' remarked Arthur in a low voice, and rubbing his chin.
'Rather!' replied Robert, looking equally dubious.
'I like to show the shanty to youngsters,' said Mr. Holt, as he turned
from pushing back the shutter, 'that they may see what they have to
expect. From such a start as this we Canadians have all waked up into
opulence--that is, the hardworking share of us; and there's room enough
for tens of thousands to do the same off in the bush.'
'I hope so, sir,' was the least desponding remark of which Robert could
think. For the naked reality of a forest life came before him as never
previously. The halo of distance had faded, as he stood beside the
rude fireplace, fashioned of four upright limestone slabs in a corner,
reaching to a hole in the roof, down which the wind was howling just
now. It was rather a bleak look-out, notwithstanding the honeyed
promises of the old settler pouring on his ear.
'To be sure there is. Fortune's at your back in the bush; and you
haven't, as in the mother country, to rise by pushing others down.
There's no impassable gulf separating you from anything you choose
to aim at. It strikes me that the motto of our capital is as good
as a piece of advice to the settler--"Industry, Intelligence, and
Integrity"--with a beaver as pattern of the first two principles,
anyhow. So recollect the beaver, my young chaps, and work like it.'
'I don't remember the building of this,' he added; 'but every stick was
laid by my father's own hands, and my mother chinked between them till
all was tight and right. I tell you I'm prouder of it than of a piece
of fancy-work, such as I've seen framed and glazed. I love every log in
the old timbers.' And Mr. Holt tapped the wall affectionately with his
walking-staff. 'It was the farthest west clearing then, and my father
chose the site because of the spring yonder, which is covered with a
stone and civilised into a well now-a-days.'
'And is the town so modern as all that comes to?' said Robert.
[Illustration]
'Twenty years grows a city in Canada,' replied Mr. Holt, somewhat
loftily. 'Twenty years between the swamp and the crowded street: while
two inches of ivy would be growing round a European ruin, we turn a
wilderness into a cultivated country, dotted with villages. The history
of Mapleton is easily told. My father was the first who ever built a
sawmill on the river down there, and the frame-houses began to gather
about it shortly. Then he ventured into the grist line; and I'm the
owner of the biggest mills in the place now, with half-a-dozen of
others competing, and all doing a fair business in flour, and lumber
for exportation. You see in this land we've room enough for all, and
no man need scowl down another of the same trade. 'Taint so in England,
where you must knock your bread out of somebody else's mouth.'
'Not always, sir,' said Robert, 'nor commonly, I hope.'
'I forgot you were a fresh importation,' observed Mr. Holt with a
satisfied chuckle. 'You ain't colonized yet. Well, let's come and look
at something else.'
Meanwhile Arthur had measured the dimensions of the shanty, by pacing
along and across: sixteen feet one way, twelve the other. Narrow limits
for the in-door life of a family; but the cottage had somewhat grown
with their growth, and thrown out a couple of small bed-chambers,
like buds of incipient shanties, from the main trunk. A curiosity of
wood-craft it looked, so mossy, gnarled, and weather-beaten, that one
could easily have believed it had sprung from the ground without the
intervention of hands, a specimen of some gigantic forest fungus.
'I'll leave a charge in my will that it's not to be disturbed,' said
Hiram. ''Twould be sacrilege to move a log of the whole consarn. D'ye
hear, Sam?'
His son had just come up and shaken hands; for this was a matutinal
expedition of Mr. Holt and his guests round the farm. Being given to
habits of extreme earliness, the former was wont to rouse any one in the
house whose company he fancied, to go with him in his morning walks; and
the Wynns had been honoured by a knocking-up at five o'clock for that
purpose. Mr. Holt had strode into their room, flung open the window
shutters and the sash with a resounding hand which completely dissipated
sleep, and rendered it hardly matter of choice to follow him, since no
repose was to be gained by lying in bed. Sam's clear brown eyes sparkled
as he saw the victims promenading after his tall father at the Gothic
hour of six, and marked Arthur furtively rubbing his eyes.
'You're tremendously early people here,' remarked Arthur, when young
Holt joined them. 'I had a mind to turn round and close the shutters
again, but was afraid I might affront your father.'
'Affront him! oh no; but he'd just come again and again to rouse you,
till you were compelled to submit in self-defence. He wakes up young
people on principle, he says.'
'Well, he practises his precepts,' rejoined Arthur, 'and seems to have
trained his children in the same.'
'Yes, he has made us all practical men; seven chips of the old block,'
observed Sam.
'Seven brothers!' ejaculated Arthur. 'I saw only three last night. And
are they all as tall as you?'
'About forty-four feet of length among us,' said Sam. 'We're a long
family in more ways than one;' and he looked down from his altitude of
seventy-five inches on the young Irishman.
'It is quite a pleasant surprise to see your sister,' Arthur remarked.
'Bell hasn't kept up the family tradition of height, I must say. She's a
degenerate specimen of the Holts;' and the speaker's brown eyes softened
with a beam of fondness; 'for which reason, I suppose, she'll not bear
the name long.'
'And who's the lucky man?' asked Arthur, feeling an instant's disagreeable
surprise, and blushing at the sensation.
'Oh, out of half-a-dozen pretenders, 'twould be hard to say. We all
marry early in Canada; most of my contemporaries are Benedicts long ago.
Three brothers younger than I have wives and children, and are settled
in farms and mills of their own.'
'And might I ask'--began Arthur, hesitating when the very personal
nature of the inquiry struck him.
'To be sure you might. Well, in the first place, I took a fancy to go
through college, and my father left me in Toronto for four years at the
University of Upper Canada. That brought me up to twenty-three years
old; and then--for the last two years nobody would have me,' added Sam,
elevating his black brows.
'Perhaps you are too fastidious; I remark that about men who have nice
sisters,' said Mr. Arthur, with an air of much experience: 'now, Robert
and I never see anybody so nice as Linda--at least hardly ever.'
'A saving clause for Bell,' said her brother, laughing, 'which is polite,
at all events. I must tell her there's a young lady at home that you
prefer immensely.'
Which he accordingly did, at the ensuing breakfast; and pretty Miss Holt
pretended to take the matter greatly to heart, and would not permit
Arthur to explain; while mischievous Sam scouted the notion of the
unknown 'Linda' being his sister, except by the rather distant tie of
Adam and Eve.
What a plentiful table was this at Maple Grove! Several sorts of meat
and wild fowl, several species of bread and cake, several indigenous
preserves; and Robert could not help going back with aching heart to the
scant supply of meagre fare at home; he saw again his sweet pale mother
trying to look cheerful over the poor meal, and Linda keeping up an
artificial gaiety, while her soul was sick of stints and privations.
His face grew stern and sad at the memory; enjoyment or amusement was
criminal for him while they were suffering. So when, by and by, Mr. Holt
invited him and Arthur to remain for the winter months at Maple Grove,
with a view of gaining insight of Canadian manners and Canadian farming,
he decidedly declined. He wished to push on at once; whatever hardships
lay before them, had better be combated as soon as possible. A lengthened
stay here would be a bad preparation for the wilderness life; they could
scarcely but be enervated by it.
'You're a brave lad,' said Mr. Holt, 'and I admire your pluck, though
you are plunging right into a pack of troubles; but the overcoming of
each one will be a step in the ladder to fortune. Now I'll go and get
out the horses, and ride you over to Mr. Landenstein's office: he'll
know all about the wild lands, and perhaps has a cleared farm or two
cheap.'
But unfortunately such farms did not suit Robert's pocket. One of two
hundred acres, fifty cleared and the rest bush, was offered for £240,
with a wooden house thrown into the bargain; but the purchaser's fancy
for the forest was unconquerable: it puzzled even Mr. Holt. He returned
from Mapleton the proprietor of a hundred acres of bush in a newly
settled western township, and felt much the better and cheerier that his
excursion had ended so. The future had something tangible for his grasp
now; and he only grudged every hour spent away from his sphere of labour
as an opportunity of advantage lost.
CHAPTER X.
CORDUROY.
'They wor very kind to us,' observed Andy, from his elevation in the
waggon; 'an' this counthry bates all the world at 'ating and dhrinking.'
This to Arthur Wynn, who was seated rather despondingly in front of the
collection of boxes, pots, and pails, which formed their stock-in-trade
for bush life. Sam Holt and Robert were walking on before the horse, a
furlong ahead; but Arthur had dropped behind for meditation's sake, and
taken up his residence on the waggon for awhile, with his cap drawn over
his eyes. I dare say Miss Bell had something to do with the foolish boy's
regret for leaving Maple Grove.
'Every day was like a Christmas or an Aisther,' continued Andy, who had
no idea that any one could prefer silence to conversation; 'an' the
sarvints had parlour fare in the kitchen always, an' a supper that was
like a dinner, just before goin' to bed. Throth, they had fine times of
it--puddins an' pies, if you plaze: the bare lavins would feed a family
at home. An' it's the same, they tell me, in all the farmers' houses
round about. I never thought to see so much vittles.'
No reply could be elicited from Mr. Arthur Wynn but a grunt.
'Didn't you?' put in the driver, with a small sneer. Andy had deemed him
too far distant to catch his words, as he walked beside his horse.
'Why, then, you've long ears, my man; but sure it's kind for ye,'
retorted Mr. Callaghan, his eye twinkling wickedly. I fear that his
subtle irony was lost upon its subject. 'Of coorse I'm not used to ye're
foreign food. Our vittles at home are a dale dacenter, though not so
common.'
And Arthur, through his half-drowsy ears, was amused by the colloquy
that ensued, in the course of which Andy completely floored the Canadian
by a glowing description of Dunore, delivered in the present tense, but
referring, alas! to a period of sixteen or twenty years previously. But
the smart black-eyed backwoodsman wound up with the utterly incredulous
speech,--
'They left all them riches to come and settle in our bush! whew!' He
jerked his whip resoundingly upon the frying-pan and tin-kettle in the
rear, which produced a noise so curiously illustrative of his argument,
that Arthur laughed heartily, and shook off his fit of blues.
The aspect of nature would have helped him to do that. The thousand dyes
of the woods were brilliant, as if the richest sunset had gushed from
the heavens, and painted the earth with a permanent glory of colour. A
drapery of crimson and gold endued the maples; the wild bines and briars
were covered with orange and scarlet berries; the black-plumed pine trees
rose solemnly behind. A flat country, for the most part; and, as the
travellers slowly receded westward, settlements became sparse and small;
the grand forests closed more densely round them; solitary clearings
broke the monotony of trees.
The first of anything that one sees or experiences remains stronger than
all after impressions on the memory. With what interest did the embryo
settlers regard the first veritable log-hut that presented itself,
surrounded by half an acre of stumps, among which struggled potatoes and
big yellow squashes. A dozen hens pecked about; a consumptive-looking
cow suspended her chewing, as also did her master his hoeing, to gaze
after the waggon, till it disappeared beyond the square frame of forest
which shut in the little clearing.
Again the long lines of stately oaks and firs, with a straight and
apparently endless road between them, like the examples of perspective
in beginners' drawing-books, but with the vanishing point always
receding.
'I see they've turnpiked this road since I was on it before,' observed
the driver.
'Where?' asked Andy, looking about. 'I don't see a turnpike--an' sure I
ought to know a tollman's dirty face in any place. Sorra house here at
all at all, or a gate; or a ha'porth except trees,' he added in a
disgusted manner.
'There,' said the Canadian, pointing to a ploughed line along each side
of the road, whence the earth had been thrown up in the centre by a
scraper; 'that's turnpiking.'
'Ye might have invented a new name,' rejoined the Irishman, with an
offended air, 'an' not be mislading people. I thought it was one of the
ould pike-gates where I used to have to pay fourpince for me, ass and
car; an' throth, much as I hated it, I'd be a'most glad to see one of
the sort here, just for company's sake. A mighty lonesome counthry ye
have, to be sure!'
'Well, we can't be far from Greenock now; and I see a bit of a snake
fence yonder.'
It was another clearing, on a more enterprising scale than the last
described; the forest had been pushed back farther, and a good wooden
house erected in the open space; zigzag rail fences enclosed a few
fields almost clear of stumps, and an orchard was growing up behind.
A man in a red shirt, who was engaged in underbrushing at a little
distance, said that 'the town' was only a mile away--Greenock, on the
Clyde.
Alas for nomenclature! The waggon scrambled down a rather steep
declivity, towards a dozen houses scattered beside a stream: stumps
stood erect in the single short street, and a ferry-boat was the only
craft enlivening the shore. A Greenock without commerce or warehouses, a
Clyde without wharves or ships, or the possibility of either--what mere
travestie effected by a name!
'A nest of Scottish emigrants, I suppose,' said Robert Wynn, as he
contemplated 'the town.'
'Yes, and they'll push their place up to something,' replied Sam Holt:
'if pluck and perseverance can do it, they will. Only one enemy can
ruin a Scotchman here, and that's the "drap drink." Ten to one that in
twenty years you find this ground covered with factories and thousands
of houses; that solitary store is the germ of streets of shops, and the
tavern will expand into half a score hotels. Sandy will do it all.'
'I'm afraid you could not speak so well of Irish progress.'
'Because the canker of their religion continues to produce its legitimate
effects in most cases; and the influence of whisky--the great bane of
social life in our colony--is even more predominant than over the lower
class Scotch settlers. Still, they do infinitely better here than at
home; and you'll meet with many a flourishing Hibernian in the backwoods
and pioneer cities.'
'I presume this is a pioneer city?' looking round at the handful of
wooden shanties.
'Don't despise it; Rome had as small a beginning, and was manned by no
more indomitable hands and hearts than our frontier emigrants.'
'We are producing quite a sensation,' said Robert. For the major part
of the inhabitants came out of doors to view the strangers, with that
curiosity which characterizes a new-born society; many of the men
bethought themselves of some business at the wooden tavern by the
water-side, where the waggon drew up and the new arrivals entered in.
A store where everything was sold, from a nail or a spool of 'slack' to
a keg of spirits or an almanac: sold for money when it could be had,
for flour or wool or potash when it couldn't; likewise a post-office,
whither a stage came once a week with an odd passenger, or an odd dozen
of newspapers and letters; likewise the abode of a magistrate, where
justice was occasionally dispensed and marriages performed. The dwelling
that united all these offices in its single person, was a long, low,
framed house, roofed with shingles, and but one storey in height;
proprietor, a certain canny Scot, named Angus Macgregor, who, having
landed at Quebec with just forty shillings in the world, was making
rapid strides to wealth here, as a landed proprietor and store-keeper
without rivalry. Others of the clan Gregor had come out, allured by
tidings of his prosperity; and so the broad Doric of lowland Scotch
resounded about the tavern table almost as much as the Canadian twang.
All doing well. Labour was the sole commodity they possessed, and it
sufficed to purchase the best things of life in Canada, especially that
slow upward rising in circumstances and possessions which is one of the
sweetest sensations of struggling humanity, and which only a favoured
few among the working classes can enjoy at home. Robert Wynn was almost
as curious about their affairs as they were about his; for he was
energized afresh by every instance of progress, and little inducement
was required to draw from the settlers their own histories, which had
the single monotony running through each of gradual growth from poverty
to prosperity.
'What sort of roads have you across the ferry to the Cedars?' inquired
Sam Holt of mine host.
'The first part of the concession line is pretty good, but I canna say
as much for the "corduroy" afterwards: the riding's not so easy there, I
guess.'
'Corduroy!' ejaculated Arthur.
'Oh, wait till you feel it,' said Sam, with much amusement in his eyes.
'It's indescribable. I hope we won't meet in the dark, that's all.'
'Drivin' across ladders for ever, with the rungs very far apart,'
explained a Canadian to Andy, in the background, as the latter rubbed
his finger-tips over the ribs in the material of his pantaloons, and
looked puzzled.
'An' what description of vahicle stands sich thratement?' asked Mr.
Callaghan, 'an' what description of baste?'
'Oxen is the handiest, 'cos they've the strongest legs,' returned his
informant, with a fresh puff of his pipe.
'Well, of all the counthries'--began Andy, for the twentieth time that
day; and perhaps as many as ten additional utterances of the ejaculation
were forced by the discovery that he and the gentlemen were to occupy
the same sleeping apartment; but, above all, by the revelation that
behind a ragged curtain in the corner reposed two wayfaring women, going
to join their husbands in the woods, and having also a baby. The latter
creature, not being at all overawed by its company, of course screamed
in the night whenever the fancy seized it; and good-natured Andy found
himself at one period actually walking up and down with the warm bundle
of flannel in his arms, patting it on the back soothingly.
Next morning they left the little settlement, and, crossing the ferry
again, plunged into the primeval forest. Robert felt as if that mock
Clyde were the Rubicon of their fate.
'I leave the old degenerate life,' he murmured to himself, 'with all
its traditions of ease. I go forth to face Fortune in these wilds, and
to win her, if ever sturdy toil of limb and brain succeeded.'
This spirit of independence was manly, but Robert did not at the moment
join to it the nobler spirit of dependence on the Divine Disposer of
events: self-trust filled his heart; and this is the great snare of
youth.
'You are looking unusually valorous,' said Sam Holt, who marched
alongside. He had volunteered to stay with them for their first
fortnight of bush life, like a kind fellow as he was. Something about
these young Wynns had attracted his regard, and perhaps a touch of
compassion. He would, at least, help them to put up the shanty, he said.
And truly the road grew very bad; at a short bit of swamp they made
their first acquaintance with 'corduroy.' Sam explained the structure
when the waggon had done bumping over it: trunks of trees had been laid
along the road as 'sleepers' in three continuous lines; and across them
round logs, close together by theory, but in practice perhaps a foot or
two apart, with unknown abysses of mud between.
They wished even for the corduroy expedient a little farther on, when
the line became encumbered with stumps left from the underbrushing,
and which caught in the axletree every few score yards. Now came the
handspikes into action, which provident Sam had cut, and laid into the
waggon when the road was fair and smooth; for the wheels had to be
lifted high enough to slip over the obstacles. In the pauses of manual
labour came the chilling thought, 'All this difficulty between us and
home.'
Sunlight faded from the tree-tops; and soon night was descending darkly
among the pines.
'We must either camp in the woods, or get shelter at some settler's,'
decided Sam. 'We'll try a quarter of a mile farther, and see what it
brings.' So away they went again, shouting at the oxen, and endeavouring
to steer the equipage free of mud-holes and stumps.
'I am afraid our cups and saucers are all in a smash,' said Arthur.
Robert had a secret misgiving to the same effect; but, then, crockeryware
is a luxury to which no shanty-man has a right. Andy rescued a washing
basin and ewer, by wearing the former on his head and the latter on his
left arm--helmet and shield-wise; except at intervals, when he took his
turn at handspiking.
A light gleamed through the trees, and a dog barked simultaneously:
they were on the verge of a clearing; and, hearing the voices outside,
the owner of the house came forth to welcome the travellers, with a
heartiness widely different from the commonplace hospitality of more
crowded countries.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BATTLE WITH THE WILDERNESS BEGINS.
A roaring fire of logs upon the wide hearth, logs built up into walls
and roof, logs wrought into rough furniture of tables and stools--here,
within the emigrant's hut, the all-encompassing forest had but changed
its shape. Man had but pressed it into his service; from a foe it had
become a friend; the wooden realm paid tribute, being subjugated.
The still life of the cabin was rude enough. No appliances for ease,
not many for comfort, as we in England understand the words. Yet the
settler's wife, sitting by her wheel, and dressed in the home-spun
fruits thereof, had a well-to-do blooming aspect, which gaslight and
merino could not have improved; and the settler's boy, building a
miniature shanty of chips in the corner, his mottled skin testifying to
all sorts of weather-beating, looking as happy as if he had a toyshop
at his command, instead of the word being utterly unknown in his
experience; and the baby, rolled up in the hollowed pine-log, slept as
sweetly as if satin curtains enclosed its rest. Back to Sam Holt's mind
recurred words which he knew well: 'A man's life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things that he possesseth.'
The woman rose and curtsied. She had not been accustomed to make that
respectful gesture for a long time back; but something in the appearance
of the strangers half involuntarily constrained it.
'I needn't ask if you're Canadian born,' said Mr. Holt; 'you've the
manners of the old country.'
'My father and mother were from Wiltshire, and so be I,' she answered,
setting back her wheel, and looking gratified at the implied commendation.
'But that be so long ago as I scarce remember.'
'And she made amends by marrying me,' said the settler, entering from
the outer door, and latching it behind him. 'Mary, get the pan and fix
some supper quick. Them duck I shot won't be bad. You see, I've been
expectin' you along rather;' and he flung down an armful of wood, which
he began to arrange with architectural reference to the back-log and
fore-stick.
'Expecting us?' exclaimed Robert Wynn.
'You're for lot fifteen in ninth concession, township of Gazelle? Wall,
so I guessed; for I heard from Zack Bunting who lives at the "Corner,"
that it was sold by Landenstein; and I calc'lated you'd be along
presently:' and he finished his fire-building by a touch with his foot,
which appeared to demolish much of his labour, but in reality conduced
to his object of intensifying the heat and blaze.
'Benny,' to the boy, who had sat on the ground staring at the
new-comers, 'go tell your mother to be spry.' The little fellow went
accordingly, by the side door through which she had disappeared a few
minutes previously; and the Irish servant, planting himself on the
vacated spot with his toes to the fire comfortably, commenced to erect
of the child's chips a two-storied mansion.
'You've got a good slice of bush there, back from the pond; though the
cedars will be troublesome, I guess.'
'Oh, we bargained for the cedars,' said Sam Holt. 'There's enough to
clear without laying an axe to _them_ for many a day.'
'It's all the doing of that spring creek, running through the middle of
the lot, as fine a water-privilege as ever I see; but the cedars are
where it gets to the pond. If the bed was deepened down below, it's my
opinion the swamp would be drained.'
'You seem to know the ground well,' said Robert, with interest.
'I guess I ought to, that have shot over it before ever a blazed line
ran through them woods. We was farthest west once, but that's over by a
long spell; the neighbourhood's pretty thick now, and the "Corner" will
be a town shortly.'
'Well, if this is a thick neighbourhood, I should like to know his idea
of a thin one,' said Arthur, _sotto voce_, to Sam Holt. 'We have met
only this house for miles.'
'Oh, they ain't many miles, only you thought they was, cos' I guess you
ain't used to the stumps,' put in the settler. 'The back lot to ours, of
the same number, is took by a Scotchman, and last week I run a blazed
line across to his clearing through the bush; for you see I'm often
away, trapping or still-hunting, and Mary here thought she'd be a trifle
less lonesome if she had a way of going over the hill to her friend
Mrs. Macpherson. The other way is round by the "Corner," which makes it
five miles full; but now Benny can run across of a message, by minding
the marks; can't you, my lad?'
'Yes, father,' answered the boy proudly. 'And I can chop a blaze myself,
too.' Benny was not much taller than an axe handle.
Arthur looked from the child round at the wife, who was often left alone
in this solitude of woods, and longed for the slender chain of a scarred
line of trees between her and some other woman. A healthy, firm outline
of face, wholly unacquainted with nervousness; quiet, self-reliant,
hard-working; perhaps of a Dutch type of character. Her husband was a
sturdy broad-set man, with lithe limbs, and quick senses looking out
from his clear-featured countenance: he had a roving unsubdued eye,
befitting the hunter more than the farmer.
'I wouldn't desire,' said the latter, seating himself on the end of
the table, while his wife superintended a pan of frizzling pork on the
coals--'I wouldn't desire, for a feller that wanted to settle down for
good, a more promising location than yourn at the Cedars. The high
ground grows the very best sorts of hard wood--oak, sugar maple, elm,
basswood. Not too many beech, or I'd expect sand; with here and there a
big pine and a handful of balsams. The underbrushing ain't much, except
in the swamp.'
'I'm glad to hear that,' said Mr. Holt, 'for the fall is going fast, and
we'll have to work pretty hard before snow comes.'
'So I'm thinkin'. But _you_ ain't going to settle: you haven't the cut
of it: you're settled already.'
'How do you know?'
'Oh, you didn't listen as they did,' pointing his thumb towards the
Wynns, 'when I fell to talkin' of the ground. I know'd my men at once.
Nor you didn't stare about as they did, as if the house and fixins was a
show at a copper ahead.'
'You must excuse our curiosity,' said Robert politely.
'Surely; every man that has eyes is welcome to use 'em,' replied the
backwoodsman bluntly. 'We ain't got no manners in the bush, nor don't
want 'em, as I tell Mary here, when she talks any palaver. Now, wife,
them pritters must be done;' and he left his seat on the table to pry
over her pan.
'Then take the cakes out of the bake-kettle, will you?' said Mary; 'and
if them ducks be raw, 'tain't my fault, remember.' She was evidently a
woman of few words, but trenchant.
Thus warned, her husband did not press the point, but took the stewing
fowl under his own care, displaying a practical experience of cookery
won in many a day of bush life.
'These duck was shot on your pond, stranger; if you be a good hand
with the gun, you'll never want for fresh meat while that water holds
together. The finest maskelonge and pickerel I ever see was hooked out
of it.'
Arthur's face brightened; for the sportsman instinct was strong in him,
and he had been disappointed hitherto by finding the woods along their
track empty of game.
''Cos the critters have more sense than to wait by the road to be
shot,' explained the backwoodsman, as he dished up his stew--a sort of
hodgepodge of wild-fowl, the theory of which would have horrified an
epicure; but the practical effect was most savoury.
Now the boy Benny had never in his small life seen any edifice nobler
than a loghouse on the ground-floor; and the upper storey which Mr.
Callaghan had built with his chips seemed to him as queer a phenomenon
as a man having two heads.
'Well, only think of that!' exclaimed Andy; 'the boy doesn't know what a
stairs is.'
'And how should he?' asked the father, rather sharply. 'He ha'n't seen
nothin' but the bush. One time I took him to Greenock, and he couldn't
stop wonderin' what med all the houses come together. For all that, he
ha'n't a bad notion of chopping, and can drive a span of oxen, and is
growin' up as hardy as my rifle--eh, Benny?'
'He cut all the wood I wanted while you were away last time, Peter,'
chimed in the mother. So the strangers saw that the principle which
leads parents to bore their unoffending visitors with copybooks and the
'Battle of Prague,' is applicable to backwood accomplishments also.
As a general rule, conversation does not flourish in the bush. The
settler's isolated life is not favourable to exchange of thought, and
events are few. Silence had fallen upon the woman in this house to a
remarkable degree, and become incorporated with her. She went about her
work quietly and quickly, speaking but five sentences in the course of
the evening. The last of these was to notify to her husband that 'the
skins was ready.'
'We've no beds,' said he, with equal curtness. 'You must try and
be snug in a wrap-up on the floor to-night. More logs, Benny;' and
additional wood was heaped down, while he brought forward a bundle of
bear and buffalo skins, enough to blanket them all. Mary had already
picked up the pine-log containing her baby, and taken it into the other
room out of sight, whither her husband followed; and Benny crept into a
sort of bed-closet in the far corner.
All night long, through the outer darkness, came a sound as of a
limitless sea upon a lonely strand. Robert knew it for the wind
wandering in the forest, and even in his home dreams it mingled a
diapason, until the early sun gleamed through the chinks of the door,
and flung a ray across his face. Simultaneously the poultry outside and
the infant within woke up, commencing their several noises; and the
farmer, coming out, built up the fire, and hung down the bake-kettle to
heat for the breakfast bread. Then he invited his company to 'a wash'
at the spring; and, leading them by a wood path beside the house, they
came to a pellucid pool fed by a rivulet, which, after flowing over its
basin, ran off rapidly to lower ground. Here Benny was flung in by his
father, though the water was quite deep enough to drown him; but he
dived, and came out buoyant as a coot.
'Now go fetch the cow, my lad, and help your mother to fix breakfast,
while we walk round the clearing.' But this morning she had an efficient
coadjutor in the person of Andy Callaghan, who dandled the baby while
the cakes were being made, his sharp eye learning a lesson meantime;
and milked the cow while the child was being dressed; and cut slices
of pork, superintending its frizzling while the room was being set to
rights. Three or four attempts to draw the silent woman into conversation
were utterly abortive.
'Troth, an' you're a jewil of a wife,' remarked the Irishman, when
everything seemed done. 'I'll engage I won't have the good luck to get
one wid her tongue in such good ordher.'
Mary Logan laughed. 'It be from having no folk to talk with,' she said.
'An' a sin an' a shame it is for himself to lave you alone,' rejoined
Andy, looking complimentary. 'Now I want to know one thing that has been
botherin' me ever since I came in here. What's them strings of yallow
stuff that are hangin' out of the rafthers, an' are like nothin' I see
in all my days, 'cept shavin's?'
'Sarce,' answered Mrs. Logan, looking up; 'them's sarce.'
'I'm as wise as ever,' said Andy. Whereupon she went to the compartment
which acted as store-closet, and, bringing out a pie which had a wooden
spoon erect in it, proffered him a bit.
'Ah,' quoth Mr. Callaghan with satisfaction, 'that's English talk; I
know what that manes well. So ye calls apples "sarce!" I've heerd tell
that every counthry has a lingo of its own, an' I partly b'lieve it now.
But throth, that way of savin' 'em would be great news intirely for the
childer at home!'
So thought Robert Wynn afterwards, when he found the practice almost
universal among the Canadians, and wondered that a domestic expedient so
simple and serviceable should be confined to American housekeepers.
'Peter planted an orchard the first thing when we settled, and maples be
plenty in the bush,' said Mrs. Logan, with unusual communicativeness.
'Yes, ma'am,' rejoined Andy suavely, and not in the least seeing the
connection between maple trees and apple-pie. 'I wondher might I make
bould to ax you for one of them sthrings? they're sich a curiosity to
me.' And he had the cord of leathern pieces stowed away in one of the
provision hampers before the others came in from the fields.
There they had seen the invariable abundance and wastefulness of
bush-farming; no trace of the economy of land, which need perforce be
practised in older countries, but an extravagance about the very zigzag
fences, which unprofitably occupied, with a succession of triangular
borderings, as much space as would make scores of garden beds. 'Nobody
cares for the selvedges when there is a whole continent to cut from,'
remarked Sam Holt, in a sententious way he had.
A yield of from twenty to five-and-twenty bushels per acre of wheat, and
two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes, were mentioned by the farmer
as an average crop. His barns and root-house were full to repletion.
Nothing of all this property was locked up: a latch on the door
sufficed.
'I suppose, then, you have no rogues in the bush?' said Robert.
'Where everybody's as well off as another, there ain't no thievin',' was
the pithy answer. 'A wolf now and then among our sheep, is all the robbers
we has.'
After breakfast the bullocks were yoked afresh.
'I guess as how you've stumps before you to-day, a few,' said the farmer,
coming out axe on shoulder. ''Tain't only a blaze up beyond your place
at the Cedars, and not much better than a track of regulation width from
the "Corner" to there. Only for that job of underbrushing I want to get
finished, I'd be along with you to-day.'
He and his boy Benny walked with the travellers so far as their way lay
together. The wife stood at the door, shading her eyes with her hand,
till the lumbering waggon was lost to view round the edge of the woods.
The day's journey was just a repetition of yesterday's, with the stumps
and the mud holes rather worse. The 'Corner' with its single sawmill and
store, offered no inducement for a halt; and a tedious two miles farther
brought them to 'hum.'
CHAPTER XII.
CAMPING IN THE BUSH.
'Well!' exclaimed Robert Wynn, 'here is my estate; and neither pond, nor
swamp, nor yet spring creek do I behold.'
He looked again at the landmark--an elm tree at the junction of the lot
line and the concession road, which bore the numbers of each, 'Nine,
Fifteen,' in very legible figures on opposite sides. A 'blaze' had been
made by chopping away a slice of the bark with an axe about three feet
from the ground, and on the white space the numbers were marked by the
surveyor. All roads through the forest, and all farm allotments, are
first outlined in this way, before the chopper sets to work.
The new townships in Upper Canada are laid out in parallel lines, running
nearly east and west, sixty-six chains apart, and sixty-six feet in
width, which are termed concession lines, being conceded by Government
as road allowances. These lands thus enclosed are subdivided into lots
of two hundred acres by other lines, which strike the concession roads
at right angles every thirty chains; and every fifth of these lot lines
is also a cross-road. We have all looked at maps of the country, and
wondered at the sort of chess-board counties which prevail in the back
settlements: the same system of parallelograms extends to the farms.
Robert's face was a little rueful. Twenty yards in any direction he
could not see for the overpowering bush, except along the line of road
darkened with endless forest. The waggon was being unpacked, for the
driver sturdily declared that his agreement had been only to bring them
as far as this post on the concession: he must go back to the 'Corner'
that evening, on his way home.
'An' is it on the road ye'll lave the masther's things?' remonstrated
Andy.
'I guess we han't no masters here, Pat,' was the reply; 'but if you see
anywar else to stow the traps, I ain't partic'ler.' And he stolidly
continued unloading.
'Come,' said the cheery voice of Sam Holt, 'we will have daylight enough
to explore the lot, and select a site for a camp. I think I can discover
the tops of cedars over the hardwood trees here. The boxes will take
care of themselves, unless a squirrel takes into his head to inspect
them. Let's follow the concession line along westward first.'
Callaghan stayed by the luggage, feeling by no means sure of its safety,
and saw the rest of the party gradually receding among the trees, with
sensations akin to those of a sailor on a desert island. Sitting upon
the tool-chest, like an item of property saved from a wreck, Andy looked
from the base to the summit of the huge walls of forest that encompassed
him, and along the canal of sky overhead, till his countenance had
fallen to zero.
The shipwrecked sensation had gone farther; Mr. Holt saw it lurking in
other faces, and forthwith found all advantages possible in the lot. The
soil was sure to be the best: he could tell by the timber. Its height
proved the depth of earth. When the trees grew shorter, a hidden
treasure of limestone flag lay beneath the surface, useful for drains
and building. And even the entangled cedar swamp was most desirable, as
furnishing the best wood for rail-fences and logs for a house.
But nothing could look more unpromising. Blackish pools of water
alternated with a network of massive roots all over the soil, underneath
broad evergreen branches; trunks of trees leaned in every direction, as
if top-heavy. Wilder confusion of thicket could not be conceived. 'The
cedars troublesome! I should think so,' groaned their owner.
'This is the worst bit,' acknowledged Sam. 'Now, if we could see it, the
lake is down yonder; perhaps if we strike a diagonal across the lot, we
may come to some rising ground.' With the pocket compass for guide they
left the blazed line, which they had followed hitherto. After a short
distance the bush began to thin, and the forest twilight brightened.
'A beaver meadow!' exclaimed Sam Holt, who was foremost. Green as emerald,
the small semicircular patch of grass lay at the foot of gentle slopes,
as if it had once been a lakelet itself. 'Two acres ready cleared, with
the finest dairy grass only waiting to be eaten,' continued encouraging
Sam. 'And the clearing on the hill will command the best view in the
township; there's the site for your house, Wynn. Altogether you've had
rare luck in this lot.'
'But why is that green flat called a _beaver_ meadow?' asked Robert.
'Do you see the creek running alongside? No, you can't for the underbrush;
but it's there all the same. Well, they say that long ago beavers dammed
up the current in such places as this with clay and brushwood, so that
the water spread over all level spaces near; and when the Indians and
French were at war, the red men cut away the dams and killed the beavers
wholesale to spite their enemies. You're to take that just as an _on
dit_, recollect.'
'And is all that verdure an appearance or a reality?'
'Something of both. I don't say but you will occasionally find it
treacherous footing, needing drainage to be comfortable. See! there's
the pond at last.'
They had been climbing out of the denser woods, among a younger growth
on the face of the slope; and when they turned, the sheet of water was
partially visible over the sunken cedar swamp.
'A pond!' exclaimed Arthur; 'why, it must be three miles across to those
limestone cliffs. What pretty islets! Such endless varieties of wood and
water!'
'I think we Americans are rather given to the diminutive style of
parlance,' quoth Mr. Holt. 'We have some justification in the colossal
proportion of all the features of nature around us. What is this pretty
lake but a mere pool, compared with our Erie and Superior?'
[Illustration: PREPARING FOR THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE BUSH.]
'It is one of a chain,' remarked Robert, taking from his breast pocket
a map of the district, which had his own farm heavily scored in red
ink. Often had he contemplated that outline of the _terra incognita_
on which he now trod, and longed for the knowledge he now possessed,
which, after its manner, had brought him both good and evil. Like balls
threaded on a cord, a succession of lakes, connected by cascades and
portages, or by reaches of river, stretched away to the north-west,
sorely marring the uniformity of the chess-board townships.
As they picked their way back along the lot line northward, Mr. Holt
stopped suddenly. 'I hear a very singular noise,' he said, 'for which
I am wholly at a loss to account, unless there be Indians about in the
neighbourhood. Even then it is totally unlike their cries. Listen!'
His sharper senses had detected before theirs a distant wail, proceeding
from some distance in front, apparently--weird and wild as it could be,
dying away or surging upon the ear as the wind swept it hither or
thither. Arthur shrugged his shoulders. 'You have no ghosts in these
forests, Holt, I suppose?'
'The country's too new for anything of the sort,' replied he gravely.
'Nor any mocking birds that can be playing us a trick? Or dryads warning
us off their territory?'
He had recognised the performance of Andy Callaghan, who, when they
turned the corner of the allotment, was discovered seated on the boxes
as when they saw him last, and crooning the dismalest melody. But
he had, in the meantime, recovered himself sufficiently to gather
brushwood, and kindle a fire beside the road; likewise to cook a panful
of rashers as the shadows grew longer and the day later.
'But sure I thought ye wor lost entirely; sure I thought ye wor never
comin' at all, Masther Robert, avourneen. 'Twas that med me rise the
keen. A single livin' thing I didn't lay my eyes on since, barrin' a big
frog. I'm afeard thim are like sticks, Masther Arthur, they're so long
fryin'.'
'No matter, Andy, they'll do first-rate. I'd only advise you to chop up
more. I feel like eating all that myself;' and, trencher on knee, they
dined with real backwood appetites.
A shelter for the night was the next consideration. Mr. Holt constituted
himself architect, and commenced operations by lashing a pole across
two trees at about his own height; the others cut sticks and shrubs for
roofing. Three young saplings sloped back to the ground as principal
rafters, and on these were laid a thatch of brushwood; the open ends of
the hut were filled with the same material.
'Now,' said Sam Holt, contemplating the work of his hands with
professional pride, 'when we have a big fire built in front, and a
lot of hemlock brush to lie on, we shall be pretty comfortable.'
And he instructed his novices further in the art of making their couch
luxuriously agreeable, by picking the hemlock fine, and spreading over
it a buffalo skin. Sam Holt had evidently become acquainted with
'considerable' bush lore at his University of Toronto.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE YANKEE STOREKEEPER.
Three men stood with their axes amid the primeval forest. Vast trunks
rose around them to an altitude of thirty or even fifty feet without
a bough; above, 'a boundless contiguity of shade,' and below, a dense
undergrowth of shrubs, which seemed in some places impenetrable jungle.
Three axes against thirty thousand trees. The odds were immensely in the
dryads' favour; the pines and hardwoods might have laughed in every leaf
at the puny power threatening their immemorial empire, and settled that
_vis inertiæ_ alone must overcome.
If, as Tennyson has bestowed upon the larkspur ears, the higher vegetation
can listen also, the following conversation would that day have been
heard from the triad of axe-men beginning their campaign against the
forest, and 'bating no jot of heart or hope' in the contest.
'Here's the site for your shanty,' said Mr. Holt, dealing a blow on a
fine maple before him, which left a white scar along the bark. 'It has
the double advantage of being close to this fine spring creek, and
sufficiently near the concession line.'
'And I'm sanguine enough to believe that there will be a view at some
future period,' added Robert, 'when we have hewed through some hundred
yards of solid timber in front. By the way, Holt, why are all the
settlers' locations I have yet seen in the country so destitute of wood
about them? A man seems to think it his duty to extirpate everything
that grows higher than a pumpkin; one would imagine it ought to be easy
enough to leave clumps of trees in picturesque spots, so as to produce
the effect of the ornamental plantations at home. Now I do not mean
exclusively the lowest grade of settlers, for of course from them so
much taste was not to be expected; but gentlemen farmers and such like.'
'I dare say they contract such an antipathy to wood of every species
during their years of clearing, that it is thenceforth regarded as a
natural enemy, to be cut down wherever met with. And when you have seen
one of our Canadian hurricanes, you will understand why an umbrageous
elm or a majestic oak near one's dwellings may not always be a source of
pleasurable sensations.'
'Still, I mean to spare that beautiful butternut yonder,' said Robert;
'of all trees in the forest it is prettiest. And I shall try to clear
altogether in an artistic manner, with an eye to the principles of
landscape gardening. Why, Holt! many an English _parvenu_ planning the
grounds of his country seat, and contemplating the dwarf larches and
infantine beeches struggling for thirty years to maturity, would give a
thousand guineas for some of these lordly oaks and walnuts, just as they
stand.'
Sam Holt refrained from expressing his conviction that, after a winter's
chopping, Robert would retract his admiration for timber in any shape,
and would value more highly a bald-looking stumpy acre prepared for fall
wheat, than the most picturesque maple-clump, except so far as the
latter boded sugar.
'To leave landscape gardening for after consideration,' said he, with
some slight irony, 'let us apply ourselves at present to the shanty. I
think, by working hard, we might have walls and roof up before dark.
Twenty by twelve will probably be large enough for the present--eh,
Robert?'
Oh yes, certainly; for the house was to be commenced so soon, that
the shanty could be regarded only as a temporary shelter. Blessed,
labour-lightening sanguineness of youth! that can bound over intermediate
steps of toil, and accomplish in a few thoughts the work of months or
years.
So Mr. Holt measured the above dimensions on the ground, choosing a spot
where the trunks appeared something less massive, than elsewhere, and
set his auxiliaries to cut down all the trees within the oblong, and for
a certain distance round; arranging also that the logs should fall as
near as might be to where they were wanted for the walls.
Now, the settler's first-felled tree is to him like a schoolboy's first
Latin declension, or a lawyer's first brief--the pledge of ability, the
earnest of future performances. Every success braces the nerves of mind,
as well as the muscles of body. A victory over the woodland was embodied
in that fallen maple. But Andy was so near getting smashed in the coming
down of his tree, that Mr. Holt ordered him to lay by the axe, and bring
his spade, to dig a hole in a certain spot within the oblong.
'An' its mighty harmless that crathur 'ud be agin the wood,' muttered
the Irishman; 'throth, the earth in this counthry is mostly timber. An'
in the name of wondher what does he want wid a hole, barrin' we're to
burrow like rabbits?'
But the others were too busy felling or chopping trees into lengths of
log to heed Andy's wonderment; and the novices were agreeably surprised
to find how dexterous they became in the handling of the axe, after even
a few hours' practice. Their spirits rose; for 'nothing succeeds like
success,' saith the Frenchman.
'Now I'll give you a lesson in basswood troughs,' said Mr. Holt. 'This
shanty of yours is to be roofed with a double layer of troughs laid
hollow to hollow; and we choose basswood because it is the easiest split
and scooped. Shingle is another sort of roofing, and that must be on
your house; but troughs are best for the shanty. See here; first split
the log fair in the middle; then hollow the flat side with the adze.'
Robert was practising his precepts busily, when he was almost startled
by a strange nasal voice beside him.
'Considerable well for a beginner; but I guess you put a powerful deal
too much strength in yer strokes yet, stranger.'
The speaker was a tall lank man, with black hair to correspond, and
lantern jaws; little cunning eyes, and a few scrubby patches of rusty
stubble on chin and cheeks. Robert disliked him at once.
'Why didn't you stop at the "Corner" yesterday? 'Twarn't neighbourly
to go on right away like that. But it all come, I reckon, of Britisher
pride and impudence.'
Robert looked at him full, and demanded, 'Pray who are you, sir?'
'Zack Bunting as keeps the store,' replied the other. 'I'm not ashamed
neither of my name nor country, which is the U--nited States, under the
glorious stars and stripes. I come up to help in raising the shanty, as
I guessed you'd be at it to-day.'
Young Wynn hardly knew what to reply to such an odd mixture of insolence
and apparent kindness. The Yankee took the adze from his hand before he
could speak, and set about hollowing troughs very rapidly.
'You chop, and I'll scoop, for a start. Now I guess you hain't been used
to this sort of thing, when you was to hum? You needn't hardly tell, for
white hands like yourn there ain't o' much use nohow in the bush. You
must come down a peg, I reckon, and let 'em blacken like other folks,
and grow kinder hard, afore they'll take to the axe properly. How many
acres do you intend to clear this winter?'
'As many as I can.'
'Humph! you should blaze 'em off all round, and work 'em reglar. You
han't more than a month's "brushing" now. Are you married?'
'No,' replied Robert, waxing fierce internally at this catechism. 'Are
you?' by way of retaliation.
'This twenty year. Raised most of our family in the States. The old
woman's spry enough yet, as you'll see when you come to the "Corner."'
All this time Mr. Bunting was chewing tobacco, and discharging the
fluid about with marvellous copiousness, at intervals. Robert thought
his dried-up appearance capable of explanation. 'What made you come to
settle in the bush?' was his next question.
'Holt!' called out Robert, quite unable patiently to endure any further
cross-examination; and he walked away through the trees to say to his
friend,--'There's an intolerable Yankee yonder, splitting troughs as
fast as possible, but his tongue is more than I can bear.'
'Leave him to me,' answered Sam; 'his labour is worth a little annoyance,
anyhow. I'll fix him.' But he quietly continued at his own work,
notwithstanding, and kept Robert beside him.
Mr. Bunting speedily tired of manufacturing the basswood troughs alone,
and sloped over to the group who were raising the walls of the shanty.
'Wal, I guess you're gitting along considerable smart,' he observed,
after a lengthened stare, which amused Arthur highly for the concentration
of inquisitiveness it betrayed. ''Tain't an easy job for greenhorns
nohow; but you take to it kinder nateral, like the wood-duck to the
pond.' He chewed awhile, watching Sam's proceedings narrowly. 'I guess
this ain't your first time of notching logs, by a long chalk, stranger?'
'Perhaps so, perhaps not,' was the reply. 'Here, lend a hand with this
stick, Mr. Bunting.'
Zack took his hands from the pockets of his lean rusty trousers, and
helped to fit the log to its place on the front wall, which, in a
shanty, is always higher than the back, making a fall to the roof. Mr.
Holt managed to keep the Yankee so closely employed during the next
hour, that he took out of him the work of two, and utterly quenched his
loquacity for the time being. 'He shall earn his dinner, at all events,'
quoth Sam to himself.
'Wal, stranger, you _are_ a close shave,' said Zack, sitting down
to rest, and fanning himself with a dirty brownish rag by way of
handkerchief. 'I hain't worked so hard at any "bee" this twelve month.
You warn't born last week, I guess.'
'I reckon not,' replied Sam, receiving the compliment as conscious
merit should. 'But we're not half done, Mr. Bunting; and I'd like such
a knowledgeable head as yours to help fix the troughs.'
'Oil for oil in this world,' thought Robert.
'Throth, they'll build me up entirely,' said Andy to himself; 'an' sorra
door to get out or in by, only four walls an' a hole in the middle of
the floor. Of all the quare houses that iver I see, this shanty bates
them hollow. Masther Robert,' calling aloud, 'I wondher have I dug deep
enough?'
'Come out here, and get dinner,' was the response. 'We'll see to-morrow.'
''Tis asier said than done,' remarked Andy, looking for a niche between
the logs to put his foot in. 'I hope this isn't the way we'll always
have to be clamberin' into our house; but sorra other way do I see,
barrin' the hole's to be a passage ondherground.'
'You goose! the hole is to be a cellar, wherein to keep potatoes and
pork,' said his master, overhearing the tale of his soliloquy. Andy
departed to his cookery enlightened.
Before the pan had done frizzling, whole rows of the ready-made troughs
were laid along the roof, sloping from the upper wall plate to the back;
and Mr. Bunting had even begun to place the covering troughs with either
edge of the hollow curving into the centre of that underneath. Robert
and Arthur were chinking the walls by driving pieces of wood into every
crevice between the logs: moss and clay for a further stuffing must be
afterwards found.
If the Yankee were quick at work, he fulfilled the other sequent of the
adage likewise. His dinner was almost a sleight-of-hand performance.
Arthur could hardly eat his own for concealed amusement at the gulf-like
capacity of his mouth, and the astonishing rapidity with which the
eatables vanished.
'While you'd be sayin' "thrapstick," he tucked in a quarter of a stone
of praties and a couple of pound of rashers,' said Andy afterwards.
'Before the gintlemen was half done, he was picking his long yellow
teeth wid a pin, an' discoorsin' 'em as impident as if he was a
gintleman himself, the spalpeen!'
All unwitting of the storm gathering in the person of the cook, Mr.
Bunting did indulge in some free and easy reflections upon Britishers in
general, and the present company in particular; also of the same cook's
attendance during their meal.
'Now I guess we free-born Americans don't be above having our helps to
eat with us; we ain't poor and proud, as that comes to. But I'll see ye
brought down to it, or my name's not Zack Bunting. It tickles me to see
aristocrats like ye at work--rael hard work, to take the consait out of
ye; and if I was this feller,' glancing at Andy, 'I'd make tracks if ye
didn't give me my rights, smart enough.'
The glow in the Irish servant's eyes was not to be mistaken.
'I guess I've riled you a bit,' added the Yankee wonderingly.
'An' what's my rights, sir, if yer honour would be plasin' to tell me?'
asked Andy, with mock obsequiousness; 'for I donno of a single one this
minit, barrin' to do what my master bids me.'
'Because I calc'late you've been raised in them mean opinions, an' to
think yerself not as good flesh an' blood as the aristocrats that keep
you in bondage.'
'Come now,' interrupted Sam Holt, 'you shut up, Mr. Bunting. It's
no bondage to eat one's dinner afterwards; and he'll be twice as
comfortable.'
'That's thrue,' said Andy; 'I never yet could ate my bit in presence of
the quality; so that's one right I'd forgive; and as for me--the likes
of _me_--bein' as good blood as the Masther Wynns of Dunore, I'd as soon
think the Yankee was himself.'
With sovereign contempt, Andy turned his back on Mr. Bunting, and
proceeded to cook his dinner.
'Wal, it's the first time I see a feller's dander riz for tellin' him
he's as good as another,' remarked Zack, sauntering in the wake of the
others towards the unfinished shanty. 'I reckon it's almost time for me
to make tracks to hum; the ole woman will be lookin' out. But I say,
stranger, what are you going to do with that heaver meadow below on the
creek? It's a choice slice of pasture that.'
'Cut the grass in summer,' replied Sam Holt, tolerably sure of what was
coming.
'I've as fine a red heifer,' said the Yankee confidentially, 'as ever
was milked, and I'd let you have it, being a new-comer, and not up to
the ways of the country, very cheap.' His little black eyes twinkled.
'I'd like to drive a trade with you, I would; for she's a rael prime
article.'
'Thank you,' said Mr. Holt, 'but we don't contemplate dairy farming as
yet.' Zack could not be rebuffed under half-a-dozen refusals. 'Wal, if
you won't trade, you'll be wantin' fixins from the store, an' I have
most everythin' in stock. Some of my lads will be along to see you
to-morrow, I reckon, and any whisky or tobacco you wanted they could
bring; and if you chose to run a bill'--
Refused also, with thanks, as the magazines say to rejected contributions.
This, then, was the purport of Mr. Bunting's visit: to gratify curiosity;
to drive a trade; to estimate the new settlers' worldly wealth, in order
to trust or not, as seemed prudent. While at dinner he had taken a mental
inventory and valuation of the boxes and bales about, submitting them
to a closer examination where possible. At the time Robert thought it
simply an indulgence of inordinate curiosity, but the deeper motive of
self-interest lay behind.
'In their own phrase, that fellow can see daylight,' remarked Mr. Holt,
as Zack's lean figure disappeared among the trees. 'I never saw little
eyes, set in a parenthesis of yellow crowsfeet at the corners, that did
not betoken cunning.'
CHAPTER XIV.
THE 'CORNER.'
Several days were employed in plastering all the crevices of the shanty
with clay, cutting out a doorway and a single window in the front wall,
and building a hearth and chimney. But when completed, and the goods and
chattels moved in, quite a proud sense of proprietorship stole into the
owner's heart.
As yet, this arduous bush-life had not ceased to be as it were a play:
Sam Holt's cheery companionship took the edge off every hardship; and
their youthful health and strength nourished under toil.
'Now, considering we are to be dependent on ourselves for furniture, the
best thing I can fashion in the first instance will be a work bench,'
said Arthur, whose turn for carpentering was decided. 'Little I ever
thought that my childish tool-box was educating me for this.'
'I think a door ought to be your first performance,' suggested Robert.
'Our mansion would be snugger with a door than a screen of hemlock
brush.'
'But I must go to the "Corner" for boards, and that will take an entire
day, the road is so vile. I can't see why I couldn't hew boards out of
a pine myself; eh, Holt?'
'You want to try your hand at "slabbing," do you? I warn you that the
labour is no joke, and the planks never look so neat as those from the
sawmill.'
'We have flung "looks" overboard long ago,' replied Arthur. 'Come, teach
me, like a good fellow.'
'Choose your tree as clean and straight in the grain as possible.'
'And how am I to tell how its grain runs?' asked the pupil.
'Experiment is the only certainty; but if the tree be perfectly clear of
knots for thirty or forty feet, and its larger limbs drooping downwards,
so as to shelter the trunk in a measure from the influence of the sun,
these are presumptions in favour of the grain running straight.'
'What has the sun to do with it?'
'The grain of most trees naturally inclines to follow the annual course
of the sun. Hence its windings, in great measure. Having selected and
felled your pine, cut it across into logs of the length of plank you
want.'
'But you said something of experiment in deciding about the grain of the
wood.'
'Oh, by cutting out a piece, and testing it with the axe, to see whether
it splits fair. When you have the logs chopped, mark the ends with a bit
of charcoal into the width of your planks: then slab them asunder with
wedges.'
'Holt, where did you pick up such a variety of knowledge as you have?'
'I picked up this item among the lumber-men. You must know I spent more
than one long vacation in exploring the most-out-of-the-way locations I
could find. But I'd advise you to go to the sawmill for your planks,
though I do understand the theory of slabbing.'
After due consideration--and as glass for the window was a want for
which the forest could supply no substitute--it was agreed that all
should take a half-holiday next day, and go down to the 'Corner' to
Uncle Zack's store.
'Now that is settled,' said Robert, with a little difficulty, 'I wanted
to say--that is, I've been thinking--that we are here in the wilderness,
far away from all churches and good things of that kind, and we ought to
have prayers of our own every evening, as my mother has at home.'
'Certainly,' said both Arthur and Sam Holt.
'I have never so felt the presence of God,' added Robert solemnly,
'as since I've been in these forest solitudes; never so felt my utter
dependence upon Him for everything.'
'No,' rejoined Sam. 'He seems to draw very near to the soul in the midst
of these His grand works. The very stillness exalts one's heart towards
Him.'
And so that good habit of family worship was commenced, inaugurating the
shanty that very night. Andy Callaghan sat by and listened.
'Throth, but they're fine words,' said he. 'I wouldn't believe any one
now, that that book is bad to listen to.'
'And at home you'd run away from the sight of it. How's that, Andy?'
asked Mr. Wynn.
'It's aisy explained, sir,' replied the servant, looking droll. 'Don't
you see, I haven't his riverence at me elbow here, to turn me into a
goat if I did anything contrary, or to toss me into purgatory the minit
the breath is out of my poor body.'
Thousands of Andy's countrymen find the same relief to their consciences
as soon as they tread the free soil of Canada West.
Truly a primitive settlement was the 'Corner.' The dusk forest closed
about its half dozen huts threateningly, as an army round a handful of
invincibles. Stumps were everywhere that trees were not; one log-cabin
was erected upon four, as it had been, legs ready to walk away with the
edifice. 'Uncle Zack's' little store was the most important building in
the place, next to the sawmill on the stream.
'The situation must be unhealthy,' said Robert; 'here's marsh under my
very feet. Why, there's a far better site for a town plot on my land,
Holt.'
'Ay, and a better water privilege too. Let me see what your energy does
towards developing its resources, Robert.'
They discovered one source of the storekeeper's prosperity in the
enormous price he exacted for the commonest articles. Necessity alone
could have driven Arthur to pay what he did for the wretched little
window of four panes to light the shanty. And Uncle Zack had as much to
say about the expense and difficulty of getting goods to a locality so
remote, and as much sympathizing with his purchaser because of the
exorbitant cost, as if he were a philanthropist, seeking solely the
convenience of his neighbours by his sales.
'That fellow's a master of soft sawder when he chooses: but did you see
how he clutched the hard cash after all? My opinion is, he don't often
get paid in the circulating medium,' said Arthur.
'Of that you may be sure,' rejoined Sam Holt; 'currency here lies more
in potash or flour, just as they have salt in Abyssinia. Society seems
to be rather mixed at the "Corner." Yonder's a French Canadian, and
here's an Indian.'
No glorious red man, attired in savage finery of paint and feathers;
no sculptor's ideal form, or novelist's heroic countenance; but a
mild-looking person, in an old shooting jacket and red flannel shirt,
with a straw hat shading his pale coppery complexion. He wield a
tomahawk or march on a war trail! Never. And where was the grim
taciturnity of his forefathers? He answered when spoken to, not in
Mohawk, or Cherokee, or Delaware, but in nasal Yankeefied English; nay,
he seemed weakly garrulous.
'There's another preconceived idea knocked on the head,' said Arthur.
'My glorious ideal Indian! you are fallen, never to rise.'
CHAPTER XV.
ANDY TREES A 'BASTE.'
Door and window were fitted into the holes cut in the front wall of the
shanty, and no carpenter's 'prentice would have owned to such clumsy
joinery; but Arthur was flushed with success, because the door could
positively shut and the window could open. He even projected tables
and chairs in his ambitious imagination, _en suite_ with the bedstead
of ironwood poles and platted bass-work bark, which he had already
improvised; and which couch of honour would have been awarded by common
consent to Mr. Holt, had he not adhered to the hemlock brush with all
the affection of an amateur.
The great matter on the minds of our settlers now, was the underbrushing.
They might calculate on the whole month of November for their work--the
beautiful dreamy November of Canada, as different from its foggy and
muddy namesake in Britain as well may be. Measuring off thirty acres as
next summer's fallow, by blazing the trees in a line around, took up the
best part of a day; and it necessitated also a more thorough examination
of Robert's domains. Such giant trees! One monarch pine must be nigh a
hundred feet from root to crest. The great preponderance of maple showed
that the national leaf symbol of Canada had been suitably selected.
'And is there no means,' quoth Robert, who had been mentally gauging his
small axe with the infinitude of forest--'is there no means of getting
rid of wood without chopping it down?'
'Well, yes, some slower means still; the trees may be "girdled;" that
is, a ring of bark cut from the trunk near the base, which causes death
in so far that no foliage appears next spring: consequently the tall
melancholy skeleton will preside over your crops without injury.'
'Can't say I admire that plan.'
'You are fastidious. Perhaps you would like "niggers" better?'
'I thought they were contraband in any but slave states.'
'Oh, these are "niggers" inanimate--pieces of wood laid round the trunk,
and set on fire where they touch it; of course the tree is burned
through in process of time. These two expedients might be useful in
subsidiary aids; but you perceive your grand reliance must be on the
axe.'
'There is no royal road to felling, any more than to learning. And when
may I hope to get rid of the stumps?'
'I don't think the pine stumps ever decay; but the hardwood, or those of
deciduous trees, may be hitched up by oxen and a crowbar after six or
seven years; or you might burn them down.'
'Hulloa! what's that?'
The exclamation was from Robert, following a much louder exclamation
from Andy in advance. 'He has met with some wild animal,' concluded Mr.
Holt. He was certainly cutting the strangest capers, and flourishing his
hand as if the fingers were burned, howling the while between rage and
terror.
'You disgustin' little varmint! you dirty vagabone, to stick all thim
things in me hand, an' me only goin' to lay a hold on ye gentle-like, to
see what sort of an outlandish baste ye was! Look, Masther Robert, what
he did to me with a slap of his tail!'
Callaghan's fingers radiated handsomely with porcupine's quills, some
inches long, stuck in pretty strongly and deeply; and the animal himself,
quite ready for further offensive warfare, crouched in the fork of a
small maple, just out of reach.
'Ah, then, come down here, you unnatural baste, an' may be I won't strip
off your purty feathers,' exclaimed Andy with unction.
'Cut down the tree,' suggested Arthur. But the porcupine, being more _au
fait_ with the ways of the woods than these new-comers, got away among
the branches into a thicket too dense for pursuit.
'They're as sharp as soords,' soliloquized the sufferer, as he picked
out the quills from his hand and wrist in rather gingerly fashion, and
stanched the blood that followed. 'Masther Robert, avourneen, is he a
four-footed baste or a fowl? for he has some of the signs of both on
him. Wisha, good luck to the poor ould counthry, where all our animals
is dacent and respectable, since St. Patrick gev the huntin' to all the
varmint.'
'A thrashing from a porcupine's tail would be no joke,' observed Arthur.
'I've known dogs killed by it,' said Mr. Holt. 'The quills work into
all parts of their bodies, and the barbed points make extraction very
difficult.'
'I believe the Indians use these in some sort of embroidery.' Robert
held in his hand a bunch of the quills such as had wounded Andy's
fingers. 'I've seen penholders of them, when I little thought I should
handle the unsophisticated originals out here.'
Before this time he had learned how enervating were reminiscences of
home; he resolutely put away the remembrance from him now, and walked on
to chop the blaze on the next tree. Breast-high the mark was cut, and at
one blaze another could always be discerned ahead.
'I've a regard for the beeches and elms,' quoth he, as he hacked at a
hickory stem. 'They are home trees; but the shrubs have chiefly foreign
faces, so I can chop them down without compunction.'
'All such sentimental distinctions will evaporate when you get into the
spirit of your work,' said his friend Sam. 'Your underbrushing rule does
not spare anything less than six inches in diameter; all must be cut
close to the ground, and piled in heaps for the burning.'
'A tolerable job to clear such a thicket as this! What a network of
roots must interlace every foot of soil!'
'Rather, I should say. But the first crop will amply repay your pains,
even though your wheat and Indian corn struggle into existence through
stumps and interlacing roots. Then there's the potash--thirty dollars a
barrel for second quality: less than two and a half acres of hardwood
timber will produce a barrel.'
'I don't quite understand.'
'Next summer, after your logging bee, you'll know what I mean. This
creek is as if 'twas made on purpose for an ashery.'
'By the way, here's my site for a town plot;' as they came to a fine
natural cascade over a granite barrier, after which plunge the stream
hurried down the slope towards the beaver meadow. 'Water power for half
a dozen mills going to waste there, Holt.'
'Let's give it a name!' sang out Arthur--'this our city of magnificent
intentions.'
'I hope you won't call it Dublin on the Liffey,' said Mr. Holt. 'How I
hate those imported names--sinking our nationality in a ludicrous parody
on English topography--such as London on the Thames, Windsor, Whitby,
Woodstock; while the language that furnished "Toronto," "Quebec,"
"Ottawa," lies still unexplored as a mine of musical nomenclature.'
'In default of an Indian name,' said Robert, 'let us call our future
settlement after the existing fact--CEDAR CREEK.'
'And posterity can alter it, if it chooses,' rejoined Arthur. 'All
right. Now I'll cut down this birch where the post-office is to stand
hereafter;' and a few sturdy blows of his axe prostrated the young tree.
'When I'm writing to Linda, I shall date from Cedar Creek, which will
give her an exalted idea of our location: at the same time she will be
convinced it is situated on the seashore, if I forget to say that in
Canada every stream is a "creek."'
'Our people have an absurd partiality for what they imagine "handsome
names,"' said Mr. Holt. 'Not satisfied with giving their children
the most far-fetched they can discover,--for instance, we have a maid
Armenia, at Maple Grove, and I could not resist designating her brother
as Ararat, by way of localizing their relationship,--but also the young
settlements of the country have often the most bombastic names. In the
backwoods, one time, I found a party of honest settlers in a tavern over
an old romance, searching for some sufficiently high-sounding title to
confer on their cluster of cabins.'
'I was amused to find that Zack Bunting's eldest son is called Nimrod,
familiarized to "Nim,"' said Robert. 'I never saw a more remarkable
likeness to a parent, in body and mind, than that youth exhibits; every
tuft of ragged beard and every twinkle of the knowing little eyes are to
match.'
Nearing the shanty they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied
in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was
making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee
ditty at the top of his powerful voice.
No manner of apology for having opened their cellar, and made free with
their barrel of pork, did he seem to think necessary; but when his meal
was finished, he inquired abruptly why they hadn't built their chimney
of 'cats'? 'For I reckon this stick chimney will blaze up some night,'
added he.
Robert hearkened at that startling intimation.
'Mine is of cats,' said Mr. Logan. 'Cats is clay,' he continued
sententiously, 'kinder like straw an' clay mixed up. I guess I'll stay
an' help you to fix one to-morrow, if you've a mind to.'
With rugged but real kindness, he took a day from his hunting excursion
for the purpose. The framework of the new chimney was of four upright
poles, set in one corner of the shanty, and laced across by rungs of
wood, round which the clay was well kneaded, and plastered inside. An
opening three feet high was left for the fireplace in front. Peter
promised that by and by the clay would burn hard and red, like tilework.
'I wonder you have not built yourself a handsome house, before now,'
said Mr. Wynn, 'instead of that handsome barn. Why you live in a shanty,
while your corn is in a frame building, puzzles me.'
'Ay,' assented the settler, 'but the frame barn is paving the way for
the frame house, I calculate: Benny'll have both; and for the present
I'd sooner have my crops comfortable than myself;' a persuasion which
Robert afterwards found to be rooted in common sense, for the Canadian
climate permits not of stacks or ricks wintering in the open air.
After his usual unmannerly fashion, Mr. Logan bade no farewell, but
shouldered his gun at some hour prior to daybreak, and knapsack on back,
left the sleeping camp by the light of a young moon.
CHAPTER XVI.
LOST IN THE WOODS.
One day it happened that about noon, while Arthur was 'brushing' at a
short distance from the shanty, he noticed a pack of grouse among the
underwood within shot. Dropping his axe, he ran home for the gun, which
stood loaded in one corner.
It was not altogether the sportsman's organ of destructiveness (for he
had never forgotten little Jay's lesson on that head), but probably
a growing dislike to the constant diet of pork, that urged him to an
unrelenting pursuit. Cautiously he crept through the thickets, having
wafted an unavailing sigh for the pointer he had left at Dunore, his
companion over many a fallow and stubble field, who would greatly have
simplified this business. Unconsciously he crossed the blazed side-line
of the lot into the dense cover beyond, tantalized by glimpses of game,
which never came near enough for good aim. 'I must regularly stalk
them,' thought Arthur.
Noiselessly creeping on, he was suddenly brought to by an unexpected
sight. The head and horns of a noble buck were for a moment visible
through the thicket. Arthur's heart throbbed in his ears as he stood
perfectly motionless. Grouse were utterly forgotten in the vision of
venison. With every sense concentrated in his eyes, he watched the
brush which screened the browsing deer. By a slight crackling of twigs
presently, he was made aware that the animal was moving forward; he
crept in the same direction. The leaves had been damped by a shower two
hours before, and the cloudy day permitted them to retain moisture, or
their crispness might have betrayed his tread.
Ha! a dried stick on which he inadvertently set his foot snapped across.
The splendid shy eyes of the deer looked round in alarm as he bounded
away. A shot rang through the forest after him, waking such a clamour
of jays and crows and woodpeckers, that Arthur was quite provoked with
them, they seemed exulting over his failure. Pushing aside the dried
timber which had caused this mischance, he pressed on the track of
the deer impetuously. He could not believe that his shot had missed
altogether, though the white tail had been erected so defiantly; which
'showing of the white feather,' as the Canadian sportsman calls it, is a
sign that the animal is unwounded.
But four feet had much the advantage of two in the chase. One other
glimpse of the flying deer, as he came out on the brow of a ridge, was
all that Arthur was favoured with. Some partridge got up, and this time
he was more successful; he picked up a bird, and turned homewards.
Homewards! After walking a hundred yards or so he paused. Had he indeed
gone back on his own track? f
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