Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An Autobiography
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Title: Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An Autobiography
Author: Samuel Thompson
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF A CANADIAN PIONEER FOR THE LAST FIFTY YEARS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY ***
Produced by K Nordquist, Ross Cooling and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
http://www.pgdpcanada.net ( This file was produced from
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Archive/Canadian Libraries)
REMINISCENCES
OF A
Canadian Pioneer.
REMINISCENCES
OF A
CANADIAN PIONEER
FOR
THE LAST FIFTY YEARS.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
BY
SAMUEL THOMPSON,
_Formerly Editor of the "Toronto Daily Colonist," the "Parliamentary
Hansard," &c., &c._
Toronto:
HUNTER, ROSE & COMPANY.
MDCCCLXXXIV.
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the
year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four, by Samuel
Thompson, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture.
PREFACE.
It was in consequence of a suggestion by the late S. J. Watson,
Librarian of the Ontario Legislature--who urged that one who had gone
through so many experiences of early Canadian history as myself, ought
to put the same on record--that I first thought of writing these
"Reminiscences," a portion of which appeared in the _Canadian Monthly
Magazine_. For the assistance which has enabled me to complete and issue
this volume, I am obliged to the kind support of those friends who have
subscribed for its publication; for which they will please accept my
grateful thanks.
In the space at my disposal, I have necessarily been compelled to give
little more than a gossiping narrative of events coming under my own
observation. But I have been careful to verify every statement of which
I was not personally cognizant; and to avoid everything of a
controversial character; as well as to touch gently on those faults of
public men which I felt obliged to notice.
It has been a labour of love to me, to place on record many honourable
deeds of Nature's gentlemen, whose lights ought not to be hidden
altogether "under a bushel," and whose names should be enrolled by
Canada amongst her earliest worthies. I have had the advantage, in
several cases, of the use of family records, which have assisted me
materially in rendering more complete several of the earlier chapters,
particularly the account of Mackenzie's movements while in the
neighbourhood of Gallows Hill; also the sketches of the "Tories of
Rebellion Times;" as well as the history of the Mechanics' Institute, in
which though a very old member, I never occupied any official position.
Since the first part of these pages was in type, I have had to lament
the deaths of more than one comrade whose name is recorded therein;
amongst them Dr. A. A. Riddel--my "Archie"--and my dearest friend Dr.
Alpheus Todd, to whom I have been indebted for a thousand proofs of
generous sympathy.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface iii
Chap. I. The Author's Antecedents and Forbears 9
II. History of a Man of Genius 14
III. Some Reminiscences of a London Apprentice 19
IV. Westward, Ho! 21
V. Connemara and Galway fifty years ago 27
VI. More Sea Experiences 33
VII. Up the St. Lawrence 36
VIII. Muddy Little York 39
IX. A Pioneer Tavern 42
X. A First Day in the Bush 46
XI. A Chapter on Chopping 52
XII. Life in the Backwoods 65
XIII. Some Gatherings from Natural History 69
XIV. Our Removal to Nottawasaga 78
XV. Society in the Backwoods 84
XVI. More about Nottawasaga and its People 91
XVII. A Rude Winter Experience 93
XVIII. The Forest Wealth of Canada 98
XIX. A Melancholy Tale 101
XX. From Barrie to Nottawasaga 104
XXI. Farewell to the Backwoods 107
XXII. A Journey to Toronto 109
XXIII. Some Glimpses of Upper Canadian Politics 116
XXIV. Toronto During the Rebellion 119
XXV. The Victor and the Vanquished 134
XXVI. Results in the Future 140
XXVII. A Confirmed Tory 143
XXVIII. Newspaper Experiences 146
XXIX. Introduction to Canadian Politics 154
XXX. Lord Sydenham's Mission 156
XXXI. Tories of the Rebellion Times:
Ald. G. T. Denison, Sen 165
Col. R. L. Denison 171
Col. Geo. T. Denison, of Rusholme 172
Alderman Dixon 174
XXXII. More Tories of Rebellion Times:
Edward G. O'Brien 186
John W. Gamble 198
XXXIII. A Choice of a Church 201
XXXIV. The Clergy Reserves 210
XXXV. A Political Seed-time 215
XXXVI. The Maple Leaf 217
XXXVII. {St. George's Society 229
{North America St. George's Union 234
XXXVIII. A Great Conflagration 239
XXXIX. The Rebellion Losses Bill 242
XL. The British American League 245
XLI. Results of the B. A. League 261
XLII. Toronto Civic Affairs 262
XLIII. Lord Elgin in Toronto 268
XLIV. Toronto Harbour and Esplanade 274
XLV. Mayor Bowes--City Debentures 281
XLVI. Carlton Ocean Beach 285
XLVII. Canadian Politics from 1853 to 1860 288
XLVIII. Business Troubles 295
XLIX. Business Experiences in Quebec 300
L. Quebec in 1859-60 303
LI. Departure From Quebec 315
LII. John A. Macdonald and George Brown 317
LIII. John Sheridan Hogan 320
LIV. Domestic Notes 322
LV. The Beaver Insurance Company 325
LVI. The Ottawa Fires 326
LVII. Some Insurance Experiences 329
LVIII. A Heavy Calamity 333
LIX. The Hon. J. Hillyard Cameron 336
LX. The Toronto Athenaeum 340
LXI. The Buffalo Fete 344
LXII. The Boston Jubilee 349
LXIII. Vestiges of the Mosaic Deluge 365
LXIV. The Franchise 368
LXV. Free Trade and Protection 371
LXVI. The Future of Canada 374
LXVII. The Toronto Mechanics' Institute 377
LXVIII. The Free Public Library 384
LXIX. Postscript 392
REMINISCENCES
OF
A CANADIAN PIONEER.
CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHOR'S ANTECEDENTS AND FORBEARS.
The writer of these pages was born in the year 1810, in the City of
London, and in the Parish of Clerkenwell, being within sound of Bow
Bells. My father was churchwarden of St. James's, Clerkenwell, and was a
master-manufacturer of coal measures and coal shovels, now amongst the
obsolete implements of by-gone days. His father was, I believe, a
Scotsman, and has been illnaturedly surmised to have run away from the
field of Culloden, where he may have fought under the name and style of
Evan McTavish, a name which, like those of numbers of his fellow
clansmen, would naturally anglicise itself into John Thompson, in order
to save its owner's neck from a threatened Hanoverian halter. But he
was both canny and winsome, and by-and-by succeeded in capturing the
affections and "tocher" of Sarah Reynolds, daughter of the wealthy
landlord of the Bull Inn, of Meriden, in Warwickshire, the greatest and
oldest of those famous English hostelries, which did duty as the
resting-place of monarchs _en route_, and combined within their solid
walls whole troops of blacksmiths, carpenters, hostlers, and many other
crafts and callings. No doubt from this source I got my Warwickshire
blood, and English ways of thinking, in testimony of which I may cite
the following facts: while living in Quebec, in 1859-60, a mason
employed to rebuild a brick chimney challenged me as a brother
Warwickshire man, saying he knew dozens of gentlemen there who were as
like me "as two peas." Again, in 1841, a lady who claimed to be the last
direct descendant of William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, and
the possessor of the watch and other relics of the poet, said she was
quite startled at my likeness to an original portrait of her great
ancestor, in the possession of her family.
My grandfather carried on the business of timber dealer (we in Canada
should call it lumber merchant), between Scotland and England, buying up
the standing timber in gentlemen's parks, squaring and teaming it
southward, and so became a prosperous man. Finally, at his death, he
left a large family of sons and daughters, all in thriving
circumstances. His second son, William, married my mother, Anna Hawkins,
daughter of the Rev. Isaac Hawkins, of Taunton, in Somersetshire, and
his wife, Joan Wilmington, of Wilmington Park, near Taunton. My
grandfather Hawkins was one of John Wesley's earliest converts, and was
by him ordained to the ministry. Through my mother, we are understood to
be descended from Sir John Hawkins, the world-renowned buccaneer,
admiral, and founder of the English Royal Navy, who was honoured by
being associated with her most sacred Majesty Queen Elizabeth, in a
secret partnership in the profits of piratical raids undertaken in the
name and for the behoof of Protestant Christianity. So at least says the
historian, Froude.
One word more about my father. He was a member of the London
trained-bands, and served during the Gordon riots, described by Dickens
in "Barnaby Rudge." He personally rescued a family of Roman Catholics
from the rioters, secreted them in his house on Holborn Hill, and aided
them to escape to Jamaica, whence they sent us many valuable presents of
mahogany furniture, which must be still in the possession of some of my
nephews or nieces in England. My mother has often told me, that she
remembered well seeing dozens of miserable victims of riot and
drunkenness lying in the kennel in front of her house, lapping up the
streams of gin which ran burning down the foul gutter, consuming the
poor wretches themselves in its fiery progress.
My father died the same year I was born. My dear mother, who was the
meekest and most pious of women, did her best to teach her children to
avoid the snares of worldly pride and ambition, and to be contented with
the humble lot in which they had been placed by Providence. She was by
religious profession a Swedenborgian, and in that denomination educated
a family of eleven children, of whom I am the youngest. I was sent to a
respectable day-school, and afterwards as boarder to a commercial
academy, where I learnt the English branches of education, with a little
Latin, French, and drawing. I was, as a child, passionately fond of
reading, especially of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and of Sir Walter
Scott's novels, which latter delightful books have influenced my tastes
through life, and still hold me fascinated whenever I happen to take
them up.
So things went on till 1823, when I was thirteen years old. My mother
had been left a life-interest in freehold and leasehold property worth
some thirty thousand pounds sterling; but, following the advice of her
father and brother, was induced to invest in losing speculations, until
scarcely sufficient was left to keep the wolf from the door. It was,
therefore, settled that I must be sent to learn a trade, and, by my
uncle's advice, I was placed as apprentice to one William Molineux, of
the Liberty of the Rolls, in the district of Lincoln's Inn, printer. He
was a hard master, though not an unkind man. For seven long years was I
kept at press and case, working eleven hours a day usually, sometimes
sixteen, and occasionally all night, for which latter indulgence I got
half a crown for the night's work, but no other payment or present from
year's end to year's end. The factory laws had not then been thought of,
and the condition of apprentices in England was much the same as that of
convicts condemned to hard labour, except for a couple of hours'
freedom, and too often of vicious license, in the evenings.
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF A MAN OF GENIUS.
The course of my narrative now requires a brief account of my mother's
only brother, whose example and conversation, more than anything else,
taught me to turn my thoughts westwards, and finally to follow his
example by crossing the Atlantic ocean, and seeking "fresh fields and
pastures new" under a transatlantic sky.
John Isaac Hawkins was a name well known, both in European and American
scientific circles, fifty years ago, as an inventor of the most fertile
resource, and an expert in all matters relating to civil engineering. He
must have left England for America somewhere about the year 1790, full
of republican enthusiasm and of schemes of universal benevolence. Of his
record in the United States I know very little, except that he married a
wife in New Jersey, that he resided at Bordenton, that he acquired some
property adjacent to Philadelphia, that he was intimate with the elder
Adams, Jefferson, and many other eminent men. Returning with his wife to
England, after twenty-five years' absence, he established a sugar
refinery in Titchfield Street, Cavendish square, London, patronized his
English relatives with much condescension, and won my childish heart by
great lumps of rock-candy, and scientific experiments of a delightfully
awful character. Also, he borrowed my mother's money, to be expended for
the good of mankind, and the elaboration of the teeming offspring of his
inexhaustible inventive faculty. Morden's patent lead pencils, Bramah's
patent locks, and, I think, Gillott's steel pens were among his numerous
useful achievements, from some or all of which he enjoyed to the day of
his death a small income, in the shape of a royalty on the profits. He
assisted in the perfecting of Perkins's steam-gun, which the Duke of
Wellington condemned as too barbarous for civilized warfare, but which
its discoverer, Mr. Perkins, looked upon as the destined extirpator of
all warfare, by the simple process of rendering resistance utterly
impossible. This appalling and destructive weapon has culminated in
these times in the famous mitrailleuses of Napoleon III, at Woerth and
Sedan, which, however, certainly neither exterminated the Prussians nor
added glory to the French empire.
At his home I was in the habit of meeting the leading men of the Royal
Society and the Society of Arts, of which he was a member, and of
listening to their discussions about scientific novelties. The
eccentric Duke of Norfolk, Earl Stanhope, the inventor of the Stanhope
press, and other noble amateur scientists, availed themselves of his
practical skill, and his name became known throughout Europe. In 1825 or
thereabouts, he was selected by the Emperor Francis Joseph, of Austria,
to design and superintend the first extensive works erected in Vienna
for the promotion of the new manufacture of beet-root sugar, now an
important national industry throughout Germany. He described the
intercourse of the Austrian Imperial-Royal family with all who
approached them, and even with the mendicants who were daily admitted to
an audience with the Emperor at five o'clock in the morning, as of the
most cordial and lovable character.
From Vienna my uncle went to Paris, and performed the same duties there
for the French Government, in the erection of extensive sugar works. The
chief difficulty he encountered there, was in parrying the determination
of the Parisian artisans not to lose their Sunday's labour. They could
not, they said, support their families on six days' wages, and unless he
paid them for remaining idle on the Sabbath day, they must and would
work seven days in the week. I believe they gained their point, much to
his distress and chagrin.
His next exploit was in the construction of the Thames tunnel, in
connection with which he acted as superintendent of the works under Sir
Isambert Brunel. This occupied him nearly up to the time of my own
departure for Canada, in 1833. The sequel of his story is a melancholy
one. He made fortunes for other men who bought his inventions but
himself sank into debt, and at last died in obscurity at Rahway, New
Jersey, whither he had returned as a last resort, there to find his
former friends dead, his beloved republic become a paradise for
office-grabbers and sharpers, his life a mere tale of talents
dissipated, and vague ambition unsatisfied.[1]
After his return from Vienna, I lived much at my uncle's house, in
London, as my mother had removed to the pleasant village of Epsom in
Surrey. There I studied German with some degree of success, and learnt
much about foreign nations and the world at large. There too I learnt to
distrust my own ability to make my way amidst the crowded industries of
the old country, and began to cast a longing eye to lands where there
was plenty of room for individual effort, and a reasonable prospect of
a life unblighted by the dread of the parish workhouse and a pauper's
grave.
[Footnote 1: Since writing the above, I find in _Scribner's Monthly_ for
November 1880, the following notice of my uncle, which forms a sad
sequel to a long career of untiring enthusiasm in the service of his
fellow-creatures. It is the closing paragraph of an article headed
"Bordentown and the Bonapartes," from the pen of Joseph B. Gilder:
"It yet remains to say a few words of Dr. John Isaac Hawkins--civil
engineer, inventor, poet, preacher, phrenologist and 'mentor-general to
mankind,'--who visited the village towards the close of the last
century, married and lived there for many years; then disappeared, and,
after a long absence, returned a gray old man, with a wife barely out of
her teens. 'This isn't the wife you, took away, doctor,' some one
ventured to remark. 'No,' the blushing girl replied, 'and he's buried
one between us.' The poor fellow had hard work to gain a livelihood. For
a time, the ladies paid him to lecture to them in their parlours; but
when he brought a bag of skulls, and the heart and windpipe of his
[adopted] son preserved in spirits, they would have nothing more to do
with him. As a last resort, he started the 'Journal of Human Nature and
Human Progress,' his wife 'setting up' for the press her husband's
contributions in prose and rhyme. But the 'Journal' died after a brief
and inglorious career. Hawkins claimed to have made the first survey for
a tunnel under the Thames, and he invented the 'ever-pointed pencil,'
the 'iridium-pointed gold pen,' and a method of condensing coffee. He
also constructed a little stove with a handle, which he carried into the
kitchen to cook his meals or into the reception-room when visitors
called, and at night into his bedroom. He invented also a new religion,
whose altar was erected in his own small parlour, where Dr. John Isaac
Hawkins, priest, held forth to Mrs. John Isaac Hawkins, people. But a
shadow stretched along the poor man's path from the loss of his only
[adopted] son--'a companion in all of his philosophical researches,' who
died and was dissected at the early age of seven. Thereafter the old man
wandered, as 'lonely as a cloud,' sometimes in England, sometimes in
America; but attended patiently and faithfully by his first wife, then
by a second, and finally by a third, who clung to him with the devotion
of Little Nell to her doting grandfather."]
CHAPTER III.
SOME REMINISCENCES OF A LONDON APPRENTICE.
Having been an indulged youngest child, I found the life of a printer's
boy bitterly distasteful, and it was long before I could brace myself up
to the required tasks. But time worked a change; I got to be a smart
pressman and compositor; and at eighteen the foremanship of the office
was entrusted to me, still without remuneration or reward. Those were
the days of the Corn Law League. Col. Peyronnet Thompson, the apostle of
Free Trade, author of the "Catholic State Waggon" and other political
tracts, got his work done at our office. We printed the _Examiner_,
which brought me into contact with John and Leigh Hunt, with Jeremy
Bentham, then a feeble old man whose life was passed in an easy chair,
and with his _protege_ Edwin Chadwick; also with Albany Fonblanque, Sir
John Morland the philanthropist, and other eminent men. Last but not
least, we printed "Figaro in London," the forerunner of "Punch," and I
was favoured with the kindest encouragement by De Walden, its first
editor, afterwards Police Magistrate. I have known that gentleman come
into the office on the morning of publication, ask how much copy was
still wanted, and have seen him stand at a desk, and without preparation
or hesitation, dash off paragraph after paragraph of the pungent
witticisms, which the same afternoon sent all London into roars of
laughter at the expense of political humbugs of all kinds, whether
friends or foes. These were not unhappy days for me. With such
associations, I became a zealous Reformer, and heartily applauded my
elder brother, when he refused, with thousands of others, to pay taxes
at the time the first Reform Bill was rejected by the House of Lords.
At this period of my life, as might have been expected from the nature
of my education and the course of reading which I preferred, I began to
try my hand at poetry, and wrote several slight pieces for the Christmas
Annuals, which, sad to say, were never accepted. But the fate of
Chatterton, of Coleridge, and other like sufferers, discouraged me; and
I adopted the prudent resolution, to prefer wealth to fame, and comfort
to martyrdom in the service of the Muses.
With the termination of my seven years' apprenticeship, these literary
efforts came also to an end. Disgusted with printing, I entered the
service of my brother, a timber merchant, and in consequence obtained a
general knowledge of the many varieties of wood used in manufactures,
which I have since found serviceable. And this brings me to the year
1831, from which date to the present day, I have identified myself
thoroughly with Canada, her industries and progress, without for a
moment ceasing to be an Englishman of the English, a loyal subject of
the Queen, and a firm believer in the high destinies of the Pan-Anglican
Empire of the future.
CHAPTER IV.
WESTWARD, HO!
"Martin Doyle," was the text-book which first awakened, amongst tens of
thousands of British readers, a keen interest in the backwoods of what
is now the Province of Ontario. The year 1832, the first dread year of
Asiatic cholera, contributed by its terrors to the exodus of alarmed
fugitives from the crowded cities of the old country. My brothers
Thomas and Isaac, both a few years older than myself, made up their
minds to emigrate, and I joyously offered to join them, in the
expectation of a good deal of fun of the kind described by Dr. Dunlop.
So we set seriously to work, "pooled" our small means, learnt to make
seine-nets, economized to an unheard of extent, became curious in the
purchase of stores, including pannikins and other primitive tinware, and
at length engaged passage in the bark _Asia_, 500 tons, rated A. No. 1,
formerly an East Indiaman, and now bound for Quebec, to seek a cargo of
white pine lumber for the London market. So sanguine were we of
returning in the course of six or seven years, with plenty of money to
enrich, and perhaps bring back with us, our dear mother and unmarried
sisters, that we scarcely realized the pain of leave-taking, and went on
board ship in the St. Catherine's Docks, surrounded by applauding
friends, and in the highest possible spirits.
Our fellow-passengers were not of the most desirable class. With the
exception of a London hairdresser and his wife, very respectable people,
with whom we shared the second-cabin, the emigrants were chiefly rough
countrymen, with their wives and numerous children, sent out by the
parish authorities from the neighbourhood of Dorking, in Surrey, and
more ignorant than can readily be conceived. Helpless as infants under
suffering, sulky and even savage under privations, they were a
troublesome charge to the ship's officers, and very ill-fitted for the
dangers of the sea which lay before us. Captain Ward was the ship's
master; there were first and second mates, the former a tall Scot, the
latter a short thick-set Englishman, and both good sailors. The
boatswain, cook and crew of about a dozen men and boys, made up our
ship's company.
All things went reasonably well for some time. Heavy head-winds detained
us in the channel for a fortnight, which was relieved by landing at
Torbay, climbing the heights of Brixham, and living on fresh fish for
twenty-four hours. Then came a fair wind, which lasted until we got near
the banks of Newfoundland. Head-winds beset us again, and this time so
seriously that our vessel, which was timber-sheathed, sprang a plank,
and immediately began to leak dangerously. The passengers had taken to
their berths for the night, and were of course ignorant of what had
happened, but feared something wrong from the hurry of tramping of feet
overhead, the vehement shouts of the mates giving orders for lowering
sail, and the other usual accompaniments of a heavy squall on board
ship. It was not long, however, before we learned the alarming truth.
"All hands on deck to pump ship," came thundering down both hatchways,
in the coarse tones of the second mate. We hurried on deck half-dressed,
to face a scene of confusion affrighting in the eyes of landsmen--the
ship stripped to her storm-sails, almost on her beam-ends in a
tremendous sea, the wind blowing "great guns," the deck at an angle of
at least fifteen degrees, flooded with rain pouring in torrents, and
encumbered with ropes which there had not been time to clew away, the
four ship's pumps manned by twice as many landsmen, the sailors all
engaged in desperate efforts to stop the leak by thrumming sails
together and drawing them under the ship's bows.
Captain Ward told us very calmly that he had been in gales off the Cape
of Good Hope, and thought nothing of a "little puff" like this; he also
told us that he should keep on his course in the hope that the wind
would abate, and that we could manage the leak; but if not, he had no
doubt of carrying us safely back to the west coast of Ireland, where he
might comfortably refit.
Certainly courage is infectious. We were twelve hundred miles at sea,
with a great leak in our ship's side, and very little hope of escape,
but the master's coolness and bravery delighted us, and even the
weakest man on board took his spell at the pumps, and worked away for
dear life. My brother Thomas was a martyr to sea-sickness, and could
hardly stand without help; but Isaac had been bred a farmer, accustomed
to hard work and field sports, and speedily took command of the pumps,
worked two spells for another man's one, and by his example encouraged
the grumbling steerage passengers to persevere, if only for very shame.
Some of their wives even took turns with great spirit and effect. I did
my best, but it was not much that I could accomplish.
In all my after-life I never experienced such supreme comfort and peace
of mind, as during that night, while lying under wet sails on the
sloping deck, talking with my brother of the certainty of our being at
the bottom of the sea before morning, of our mother and friends at home,
and of our hope of meeting them in the great Hereafter. Tired out at
last, we fell asleep where we lay, and woke only at the cry, "spell ho!"
which summoned us again to the pumps.
The report of "five feet of water in the hold--the ballast shifted!"
determined matters for us towards morning. Capt. Ward decided that he
must put about and run for Galway, and so he did. The sea had by
daylight gone down so much, that the captain's cutter could be lowered
and the leak examined from the outside. This was done by the first mate,
Mr. Cattanagh, who brought back the cheering news that so long as we
were running before the wind the leak was four feet out of water, and
that we were saved for the present. The bark still remained at the same
unsightly angle, her ballast, which was chiefly coals, having shifted
bodily over to leeward; the pumps had to be kept going, and in this
deplorable state, in constant dread of squalls, and wearied with
incessant hard work, we sailed for eight days and nights, never sighting
a ship until nearly off the mouth of the Shannon, where we hailed a brig
whose name I forget. She passed on, however, refusing to answer our
signals of distress.
Next day, to our immense relief, the _Asia_ entered Galway Bay, and here
we lay six weeks for repairs, enjoying ourselves not a little, and
forgetting past danger, except as a memorable episode in the battle of
life.
CHAPTER V.
CONNEMARA AND GALWAY FIFTY YEARS AGO.
The Town of Galway is a relic of the times when Spain maintained an
active commerce with the west of Ireland, and meddled not a little in
the intrigues of the time. Everybody has read of the warden of Galway,
who hanged his son outside a window of his own house, to prevent a
rescue from justice by a popular rising in the young man's favour. That
house still stood, and probably yet stands, a mournful memento of a most
dismal tragedy. In 1833 it was in ruins, as was also the whole long row
of massive cut stone buildings of which it formed part. In front there
was a tablet recording the above event; the walls were entire, but the
roof was quite gone, and the upper stories open to the winds and storms.
The basement story appeared to have been solidly arched, and in its
cavernous recesses, and those of the adjoining cellars along that side
of the street, dwelt a race of butchers and of small hucksters, dealing
in potatoes, oats, some groceries and rough wares of many kinds. The
first floor of a brick store opposite was occupied by a hair-dresser
with whom our London fellow-passenger claimed acquaintance. One day we
were sitting at his window, looking across at the old warden's house,
when a singular scene was enacted under our astonished eyes. A
beggarman, so ragged as barely to comply with the demands of common
decency, and bearing an old sack suspended over his shoulder on a short
cudgel, came lounging along the middle of the street seeking alms. A
butcher's dog of aristocratic tastes took offence at the man's rags, and
attacked him savagely. The old man struck at the dog, the dog's owner
darted out of his cellar and struck at the beggar, somebody else took a
part, and in the twinkling of an eye as it were, the narrow street was
blocked up with men furiously-wielding shillelaghs, striking right and
left at whoever happened to be most handy, and yelling like Dante's
devils in full chorus. Another minute, and a squad of policemen in green
uniforms--peelers, they are popularly called--appeared as if by magic,
and with the effect of magic; for instantly, and with a celerity
evidently the result of long practice, the crowd, beggarman, butcher,
dog and all, vanished into the yawning cellars, and the street was left
as quiet as before, the police marching leisurely back to their
barracks.
We spent much of our time in rambling along the shore of Galway Bay, a
beautiful and extensive harbour, where we found many curious specimens
of sea-weeds, particularly the edible dilosk, and rare shells and
minerals. Some of our people went out shooting snipe, and were warned on
all hands to go in parties, and to take care of their guns, which would
prove too strong a temptation for the native peasantry, as the spirit of
Ribbonism was rife throughout Connemara. Another amusement was, to watch
the groups of visitors from Tuam and the surrounding parts of Clare and
other counties, who were attracted by the marvel of a ship of five
hundred tons in their bay, no such phenomenon having happened within the
memory of man. At another time we explored the rapid river Corrib, and
the beautiful lake of the same name, a few miles distant. The salmon
weirs on the river were exceedingly interesting, where we saw the
largest fish confined in cribs for market, and apparently quite
unconscious of their captivity. The castle of one of the Lynch family
was visible from the bay, an ancient structure with its walls mounted
with cannon to keep sheriffs' officers at a distance. Other feudal
castles were also in sight.
Across the bay loomed the rugged mountains of Clare, seemingly utterly
barren in their bleak nakedness. With the aid of the captain's telescope
we could see on these inhospitable hills dark objects, which turned out
to be the mud cabins of a numerous peasantry, the very class for whom,
in this present year of 1883, Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues are
trying to create an elysium of rural contentment. We traversed the
country roads for miles, to observe the mode of farming there, and could
find nothing, even up to the very streets of Galway, but mud cabins with
one or two rooms, shared with the cow and pigs, and entrenched, as it
were, behind a huge pile of manure that must have been the accumulation
of years. Anything in the shape of valuable improvements was
conspicuously absent.
Everything in Connemara seems paradoxical. These rough-coated,
hard-worked, down-trodden Celts proved to be the liveliest, brightest,
wittiest of mankind. They came in shoals to our ship, danced reels by
the hour upon deck to a whistled accompaniment, with the most
extravagant leaps and snapping of fingers. It was an amusing sight to
see women driving huge pigs into the sea, held by a string tied to the
hind leg, and there scraping and sluicing the unwieldy, squealing
creatures until they came out as white as new cream. These Galway women
are singularly handsome, with a decidedly Murillo cast of features,
betokening plainly their Iberian ancestry. They might well have sat as
models to the chief of Spanish painters.
In the suburbs of Galway are many acres of boggy land, which are
cultivated as potato plots, highly enriched with salt sea-weed manure,
and very productive. These farms--by which title they are
dignified--were rented, we were told, at three to four pounds sterling
per acre. Rents in the open country ranged from one pound upwards. Yet
we bought cup potatoes at twopence per stone of sixteen lbs.; and for a
leg of mutton paid sixpence English.
Enquiring the cause of these singular anomalies, we were assured on all
hands, that the system of renting through middlemen was the bane of
Ireland. A farm might be sub-let two or three times, each tenant paying
an increased rental, and the landlord-in-chief, a Blake, a Lynch, or a
Martin, realizing less rent than he would obtain in Scotland or England.
We heard of no Protestant oppressors here; the gentry and nobility
worshipped at the same altar with the humblest of their dependents, and
certainly meant them well and treated them considerately.
We attended the English service in the ancient Gothic Abbey Church. The
ministrations were of the strictest Puritan type; the sculptured
escutcheons and tablets on the walls--the groined arches and bosses of
the roof--were almost obliterated by thick coat upon coat of whitewash,
laid on in an iconoclastic spirit which I have since seen equalled in
the Dutch Cathedral of Rotterdam, and nowhere else. Another Sunday we
visited a small Roman Catholic chapel at some distance. It was
impossible to get inside the building, as the crowd of worshippers not
only filled the sacred edifice, but spread themselves over a pretty
extensive and well-filled churchyard, where they knelt throughout
morning prayer, lasting a full hour or more.
The party-feuds of the town are quite free from sectarian feeling. The
fishermen, who were dressed from head to foot in hoddengray, and the
butchers, who clothed themselves entirely in sky-blue--coats,
waistcoats, breeches, and stockings alike, with black hats and
shoes--constituted the belligerent powers. Every Saturday night, or
oftener, they would marshal their forces respectively on the wide
fish-market place, by the sea-shore, or on the long wharf extending into
deep water, and with their shillelaghs hold high tournament for the
honour of their craft and the love of fair maidens. One night, while the
_Asia_ lay off the wharf, an unfortunate combatant fell senseless into
the water and was drowned. But no inquiry followed, and no surprise was
expressed at a circumstance so trivial.
By the way, it would be unpardonable to quit Connemara without recording
its "potheen." Every homestead had its peat-stack, and every peat-stack
might be the hiding-place of a keg of illicit native spirits. We were
invited, and encouraged by example, to taste a glass; but a single
mouthful almost choked us; and never again did we dare to put the fiery
liquid to our lips.
Our recollections of Galway are of a mixed character--painful, because
of the consciousness that the empire at large must be held responsible
for the unequal distribution of nature's blessings amongst her
people--pleasant, because of the uniform hospitality and courtesy shown
to us by all classes and creeds of the townsfolk.
CHAPTER VI.
MORE SEA EXPERIENCES.
In the month of July we were ready for sea again. In the meantime
Captain Ward had got together a new list of passengers, and we more than
doubled our numbers by the addition of several Roman Catholic gentlemen
of birth and education with their followers, and a party of Orangemen
and their families, of a rather rough farming sort, escaping from
religious feuds and hostile neighbours. A blooming widow Culleeney, of
the former class, was added to the scanty female society on board; and
for the first few hours after leaving port, we had fun and dancing on
deck galore. But alas, sea-sickness put an end to our merriment all too
soon. Our new recruits fled below, and scarcely showed their faces on
deck for several days. Yet, in this apparently quiet interval, discord
had found her way between decks.
We were listening one fine evening to the comical jokes and rich brogue
of the most gentlemanly of the Irish Catholics above-mentioned, when
suddenly a dozen men, women and children, armed with sticks and foaming
at the mouth, rushed up the steerage hatchway, and without note of
warning or apparent provocation, attacked the defenceless group standing
near us with the blindness of insanity and the most frantic cries of
rage. Fortunately there were several of the ship's officers and sailors
on deck, who laid about them lustily with their fists, and speedily
drove the attacking party below, where they were confined for some days,
under a threat of severe punishment from the captain, who meant what he
said. So this breeze passed over. What it was about, who was offended,
and how, we never could discover; we set it down to the general
principle, that the poor creatures were merely 'blue-mowlded for want of
a bating.'
Moderately fair breezes, occasional dead calms, rude, baffling
head-winds, attended us until we reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence. After
sailing all day northward, and all night southerly, we found ourselves
next morning actually retrograded some thirty or forty knots. But we
were rewarded sometimes by strange sights and wondrous spectacles. Once
a shoal of porpoises and grampuses crossed our course, frolicking and
turning summersets in the air, and continuing to stream onwards for full
two hours. Another time, when far north, we had the most magnificent
display of aurora borealis. Night after night the sea became radiant
with phosphorescent light. Icebergs attended us in thousands, compelling
our captain to shorten sail frequently; once we passed near two of these
ice-cliffs which exceeded five hundred feet in height, and again we were
nearly overwhelmed by the sudden break-down of a huge mass as big as a
cathedral. Near the Island of Anticosti we saw at least three hundred
spouting whales at one view. I have crossed the Atlantic four times
since, and have scarcely seen a single whale or shark. It seems that
modern steamship travel has driven away the inhabitants of the deep to
quieter seas, and robbed "life on the ocean wave" of much of its
romance.
CHAPTER VII.
UP THE ST. LAWRENCE.
The St. Lawrence River was gained, and escaping with a few days'
quarantine at Grosse Isle, we reached Quebec, there to be transferred to
a fine steamer for Montreal. At Lachine we were provided with large
barges, here called batteaux, which sufficed to accommodate the whole of
the _Asia's_ passengers going west, with their luggage. They were drawn
by Canadian ponies, lively and perfectly hardy little animals, which,
with their French-Canadian drivers, amused us exceedingly. While loading
up, we were favoured with one of those accidental historical "bits"--as
a painter would say--which occur so rarely in a lifetime. The then
despot of the North-West, Sir George Simpson, was just starting for the
seat of his government _via_ the Ottawa River. With him were some
half-dozen officers, civil and military, and the party was escorted by
six or eight Nor'-West canoes--each thirty or forty feet long, and
manned by some twenty-four Indians, in the full glory of war-paint,
feathers, and most dazzling costumes. To see these stately boats, and
their no less stately crews, gliding with measured stroke, in gallant
procession, on their way to the vasty wilderness of the Hudson's Bay
territory, with the British flag displayed at each prow, was a sight
never to be forgotten. And as they paddled, the woods echoed far and
wide to the strange weird sounds of their favourite boat-song:--
"A la claire fontaine,
M'en allant promener,
J'ai trouve l'eau si belle,
Que je m'y suis baigne.
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime,
Jamais je ne t'oublirai."
From Lachine to the Coteau, thence by canal and along shore successively
to Cornwall, Prescott, and Kingston, occupied several days. We were
charmed to get on dry land, to follow our batteau along well-beaten
paths, gathering nuts, stealing a few apples now and then from some
orchard skirting the road; dining at some weather-boarded way-side
tavern, with painted floors, and French cuisine, all delightfully
strange and comical to us; then on board the batteau again at night.
Once, in a cedar swamp, we were enraptured at finding a dazzling
specimen of the scarlet _lobelia fulgens_, the most brilliant of wild
flowers, which Indians use for making red ink. At another time, the
Long Sault rapids, up which was steaming the double-hulled steamer
_Iroquois_, amazed us by their grandeur and power, and filled our minds
with a sense of the vastness of the land we had come to inhabit. And so
we wended on our way until put aboard the Lake Ontario steamer _United
Kingdom_ for Little York, where we landed about the first week in
September, 1833, after a journey of four months. Now-a-days, a trip to
England by the Allan Line is thought tedious if it last ten days, and
even five days is considered not unattainable. When we left England, a
thirty mile railway from Liverpool to Manchester was all that Europe had
seen. Dr. Dionysius Lardner pronounced steam voyages across the Atlantic
an impossibility, and men believed him. Now, even China and Japan have
their railways and steamships; Canada is being spanned from the Atlantic
to the Pacific by a railroad, destined, I believe, to work still greater
changes in the future of our race, and of the world.
CHAPTER VIII.
MUDDY LITTLE YORK.
When we landed at York, it contained 8,500 inhabitants or thereabouts,
being the same population nearly as Belleville, St. Catharines, and
Brantford severally claimed in 1881. In addition to King street the
principal thoroughfares were Lot, Hospital, and Newgate streets, now
more euphoniously styled Queen, Richmond and Adelaide streets
respectively; Church, George, Bay and York streets were almost without
buildings; Yonge street ran north thirty-three miles to Lake Simcoe, and
Dundas street extended westward a hundred miles to London. More or less
isolated wooden stores there were on King and Yonge streets; taverns
were pretty numerous; a wooden English church; Methodist, Presbyterian,
and Roman Catholic churches of the like construction; a brick gaol and
court-house of the ugliest architecture: scattered private houses, a
wheat-field where now stands the Rossin House; beyond it a rough-cast
Government House, brick Parliament Buildings uglier even than the gaol,
and some government offices located in one-story brick buildings
twenty-five feet square,--comprised the lions of the Toronto of that
day. Of brick private buildings, only Moore's hotel at the corner of
Market square; J. S. Baldwin's residence, now the Canada Company's
office; James F. Smith's grocery (afterwards the _Colonist_ office), on
King street; Ridout's hardware store at the corner of King and Yonge
streets, occur to my memory, but there may have been one or two others.
So well did the town merit its muddy soubriquet, that in crossing Church
street near St. James's Church, boots were drawn off the feet by the
tough clay soil; and to reach our tavern on Market lane (now Colborne
street), we had to hop from stone to stone placed loosely along the
roadside. There was rude flagged pavement here and there, but not a
solitary planked footpath throughout the town.
To us the sole attraction was the Emigrant Office. At that time, Sir
John Colborne, Lieut. Governor of Upper Canada, was exerting himself to
induce retired army officers, and other well-to-do settlers, to take up
lands in the country north and west of Lake Simcoe. U. E. rights,
_i.e._, location tickets for two hundred acres of land, subject to
conditions of actual settlement, were easily obtainable. We purchased
one of these for a hundred dollars, or rather for twenty pounds
sterling--dollars and cents not being current in Canada at that
date--and forthwith booked ourselves for Lake Simcoe, in an open waggon
without springs, loaded with the bedding and cooking utensils of
intending settlers, some of them our shipmates of the _Asia_. A day's
journey brought us to Holland Landing, whence a small steamer conveyed
us across the lake to Barrie. The Holland River was then a mere muddy
ditch, swarming with huge bullfrogs and black snakes, and winding in and
out through thickets of reeds and rushes. Arrived at Barrie, we found a
wharf, a log bakery, two log taverns--one of them also a store--and a
farm house, likewise log. Other farm-houses there were at some little
distance, hidden by trees.
Some of our fellow travellers were discouraged by the solitary
appearance of things here, and turned back at once. My brothers and
myself, and one other emigrant, determined to go on; and next afternoon,
armed with axes, guns, and mosquito nets, off we started for the unknown
forest, then reaching, unbroken, from Lake Simcoe to Lake Huron. From
Barrie to the Nottawasaga river, eleven miles, a road had been chopped
and logged sixty-six feet wide; beyond the river, nothing but a bush
path existed.
CHAPTER IX.
A PIONEER TAVERN.
We had walked a distance of eight miles, and it was quite dark, when we
came within sight of the clearing where we were advised to stop for the
night. Completely blockading the road, and full in our way, was a
confused mass of felled timber, which we were afterwards told was a
wind-row or brush-fence. It consisted of an irregular heap of prostrate
trees, branches and all, thrown together in line, to serve as a fence
against stray cattle. After several fruitless attempts to effect an
entrance, there was nothing for it but to shout at the top of our voices
for assistance.
Presently we heard a shrill cry, rather like the call of some strange
bird than a human voice; immediately afterwards, the reflection of a
strong light became visible, and a man emerged from the brush-wood,
bearing a large blazing fragment of resinous wood, which lighted up
every object around in a picturesque and singular manner. High over
head, eighty feet at least, was a vivid green canopy of leaves,
extending on all sides as far as the eye could penetrate, varied here
and there by the twinkling of some lustrous star that peeped through
from the dark sky without, and supported by the straight trunks and
arching branches of innumerable trees--the rustic pillars of this superb
natural temple. The effect was strikingly beautiful and surprising.
Nor was the figure of our guide less strange. He was the first genuine
specimen of a Yankee we had encountered--a Vermonter--tall, bony and
awkward, but with a good-natured simplicity in his shrewd features; he
wore uncouth leather leggings, tied with deer sinews--loose mocassins, a
Guernsey shirt, a scarlet sash confining his patched trowsers at the
waist, and a palmetto hat, dragged out of all describable shape, the
colour of each article so obscured by stains and rough usage, as to be
matter rather of conjecture than certainty. He proved to be our landlord
for the night, David Root by name.
Following his guidance, and climbing successively over a number of huge
trunks, stumbling through a net-work of branches, and plunging into a
shallow stream up to the ankles in soft mud, we reached at length what
he called his tavern, at the further side of the clearing. It was a log
building of a single apartment, where presided "the wife," a smart,
plump, good-looking little Irishwoman, in a stuff gown, and without
shoes or stockings. They had been recently married, as he promptly
informed us, had selected this wild spot on a half-opened road,
impassable for waggons, without a neighbour for miles, and under the
inevitable necessity of shouldering all their provisions from the embryo
village we had just quitted: all this with the resolute determination of
"keeping tavern."
The floor was of loose split logs, hewn into some approach to evenness
with an adze; the walls of logs entire, filled in the interstices with
chips of pine, which, however, did not prevent an occasional glimpse of
the objects visible outside, and had the advantage, moreover, of
rendering a window unnecessary; the hearth was the bare soil, the
ceiling slabs of pine wood, the chimney a square hole in the roof; the
fire literally an entire tree, branches and all, cut into four-feet
lengths, and heaped up to the height of as many feet. It was a chill
evening, and the dancing flames were inspiriting, as they threw a
cheerful radiance all around, and revealed to our curious eyes
extraordinary pieces of furniture--a log bedstead in the darkest corner,
a pair of snow-shoes, sundry spiral augers and rough tools, a bundle of
dried deer-sinews, together with some articles of feminine gear, a small
red framed looking-glass, a clumsy comb suspended from a nail by a
string, and other similar treasures.
We were accommodated with stools of various sizes and heights, on three
legs or on four, or mere pieces of log sawn short off, which latter our
host justly recommended as being more steady on the uneven floor. We
exchanged our wet boots for slippers, mocassins, or whatever the
good-natured fellow could supply us with. The hostess was intently busy
making large flat cakes; roasting them, first on one side, then on the
other; and alternately boiling and frying broad slices of salt pork,
when, suddenly suspending operations, she exclaimed, with a vivacity
that startled us, "Oh, Root, I've cracked my spider!"
Inquiring with alarm what was the matter, we learned that the cast-iron
pan on three feet, which she used for her cookery, was called a
"spider," and that its fracture had occasioned the exclamation. The
injured spider performed "its spiriting gently" notwithstanding, and,
sooth to say, all parties did full justice to its savoury contents.
Bed-time drew near. A heap of odd-looking rugs and clean blankets was
laid for our accommodation and pronounced to be ready. But how to get
into it? We had heard of some rather primitive practices among the
steerage passengers on board ship, it is true, but had not accustomed
ourselves to "uncase" before company, and hesitated to lie down in our
clothes. After waiting some little time in blank dismay, Mr. Root kindly
set us an example by quietly slipping out of his nether integuments and
turning into bed. There was no help for it; by one means or other we
contrived to sneak under the blankets; and, after hanging up a large
coloured quilt between our lair and the couch occupied by her now
snoring spouse, the good wife also disappeared.
In spite of the novelty of the situation, and some occasional
disturbance from gusts of wind stealing through the "chinks," and
fanning into brightness the dying embers on the hearth, we slept
deliciously and awoke refreshed.
CHAPTER X.
A FIRST DAY IN THE BUSH.
Before day-break breakfast was ready, and proved to be a more tempting
meal than the supper of the night before. There were fine dry potatoes,
roast wild pigeon, fried pork, cakes, butter, eggs, milk, "China tea,"
and chocolate--which last was a brown-coloured extract of cherry-tree
bark, sassafras root, and wild sarsaparilla, warmly recommended by our
host as "first-rate bitters." Declining this latter beverage, we made a
hearty meal.
It was now day-break. As we were new comers, Root offered to convoy us
"a piece of the way," a very serviceable act of kindness, for, in the
dim twilight we experienced at first no little difficulty in discerning
it. Pointing out some faint glimmerings of morning, which were showing
themselves more and more brightly over the tall tree-tops, our friend
remarked, "I guess that's where the sun's calc'lating to rise."
The day had advanced sufficiently to enable us to distinguish the road
with ease. Our tavern-keeper returned to his work, and in a few minutes
the forest echoed to the quick strokes of his lustily-wielded axe. We
found ourselves advancing along a wide avenue, unmarked as yet by the
track of wheels, and unimpeded by growing brush-wood. To the width of
sixty-six feet, all the trees had been cut down to a height of between
two and three feet, in a precisely straight course for miles, and burnt
or drawn into the woods; while along the centre, or winding from side to
side like the course of a drunken man, a waggon-track had been made by
grubbing up smaller and evading the larger stumps, or by throwing a
collection of small limbs and decayed wood into the deeper inequalities.
Here and there, a ravine would be rendered passable by placing across it
two long trunks of trees, often at a sharp angle, and crossing these
transversely with shorter logs; the whole covered with brush-wood and
earth, and dignified with the name of a "corduroy bridge."
At the Nottawasaga River, we found a log house recently erected, the
temporary residence of Wellesley Richey, Esq., an Irish gentleman, then
in charge of the new settlements thereabouts. Mr. Richey received us
very courteously, and handed us over to the charge of an experienced
guide, whose business it was to show lands to intending settlers--a very
necessary precaution indeed, as after a mile or two the road ceased
altogether.
For some miles further, the forest consisted of Norway and white pine,
almost unmixed with any other timber. There is something majestic in
these vast and thickly-set labyrinths of brown columnar stems averaging
a hundred and fifty feet in height, perhaps, and from one to five in
thickness, making a traveller feel somewhat like a Lilliputian Gulliver
in a field of Brobdignagian wheat. It is singular to observe the effect
of an occasional gust of wind in such situations. It may not even fan
your cheek; but you hear a low surging sound, like the moaning of
breakers in a calm sea, which gradually increases to a loud boisterous
roar, still seemingly at a great distance; the branches remain in
perfect repose, you can discover no evidence of a stirring breeze, till,
looking perpendicularly upwards, you are astonished to see some
patriarchal giant close at hand--six yards round and sixty high--which
alone has caught the breeze, waving its huge fantastic arms wildly at a
dizzy height above your head.
There are times when the hardiest woodman dares not enter the pine
woods; when some unusually severe gale sweeping over them bends their
strong but slender stems like willow wands, or catches the
wide-spreading branches of the loftier trees with a force that fairly
wrenches them out by the roots, which creeping along on the surface of
the soil, present no very powerful resistance. Nothing but the close
contiguity of the trees saves them from general prostration. Interlocked
branches are every moment broken off and flung to a distance, and even
the trunks clash, and as it were, whet themselves against each other,
with a shock and uproar that startles the firmest nerves.
It were tedious to detail all the events of our morning's march: How
armed with English fowling pieces and laden with ammunition, we
momentarily expected to encounter some grisly she-bear, with a numerous
family of cubs; or at the least a herd of deer or a flock of wild
turkeys: how we saw nothing more dangerous than woodpeckers with crimson
heads, hammering away at decayed trees like transmigrated carpenters;
how we at last shot two partridges sitting on branches, very unlike
English ones, of which we were fain to make a meal, which was utterly
detestable for want of salt; how the government guide led us,
helter-skelter, into the untracked woods, walking as for a wager,
through thickets of ground hemlock,[2] which entangled our feet and
often tripped us up; how we were obliged to follow him over and under
wind-falls, to pass which it was necessary to climb sometimes twenty
feet along some half-recumbent tree; how when we enquired whether clay
or sand were considered the best soil, he said some preferred one, and
some the other; how he showed us the front of a lot that was bad, and
guessed that the rear ought to be better; how we turned back at last,
thoroughly jaded, but no wiser than when we set out--all this and much
more, must be left to the reader's imagination.
It was drawing towards evening. The guide strode in advance, tired and
taciturn, like some evil fate. We followed in pairs, each of us provided
with a small bunch of leafy twigs to flap away the mosquitoes, which
rose in myriads from the thick, damp underbrush.
"It will be getting dark," said the guide, "you must look out for the
blaze."
We glanced anxiously around. "What does he mean?" asked one of the
party, "I see no blaze."
The man explained that the blaze (query, blazon?) was a white mark which
we had noticed on some of the trees in our route, made by slicing off a
portion of the bark with an axe, and invariably used by surveyors to
indicate the road, as well as divisions and sub-divisions of townships.
After a time this mark loses its whiteness and becomes undistinguishable
in the dusk of evening, even to an experienced eye.
Not a little rejoiced were we, when we presently saw a genuine blaze in
the form of a log fire, that brilliantly lighted up the forest in front
of a wigwam, which, like everything else on that eventful day, was to us
delightfully new and interesting. We found, seated on logs near the
fire, two persons in blanket coats and red sashes, evidently gentlemen;
and occupying a second wigwam at a little distance, half-a-dozen axemen.
The gentlemen proved to be the Messrs. Walker, afterwards of Barrie,
sons of the wealthy owner of the great shot-works at Waterloo Bridge,
London, England. They had purchased a tract of a thousand acres, and
commenced operations by hiring men to cut a road through the forest
eight or ten miles to their new estate, which pioneering exploit they
were now superintending in person. Nothing could exceed the vigour of
their plans. Their property was to be enclosed in a ring fence like a
park, to exclude trespassers on their game. They would have herds of
deer and wild horses. The river which intersected their land was to be
cleared of the drift logs, and made navigable. In short, they meant to
convert it into another England. In the meanwhile, the elder brother had
cut his foot with an axe, and was disabled for the present; and the
younger was busily engaged in the unromantic occupation of frying
pancakes, which the axemen, who were unskilled in cookery, were to have
for their supper.
Nowhere does good-fellowship spring up so readily as in the bush. We
were soon engaged in discussing the aforesaid pancakes, with some fried
pork, as well as in sharing the sanguine hopes and bright visions which
accorded so well with our own ideas and feelings.
We quitted the wigwam and its cheerful tenants with mutual good wishes
for success, and shortly afterwards reached the river whence we had
started, where Mr. Richey kindly invited us to stay for the night.
Exhausted by our rough progress, we slept soundly till the morning sun
shone high over the forest.
[Footnote 2: Taxus Canadensis, or Canadian Yew, is a trailing evergreen
shrub which covers the ground in places. Its stems are as strong as
cart-ropes, and often reach the length of twenty feet.]
CHAPTER XI.
A CHAPTER ON CHOPPING.
Imagine yourself, gentle reader, who have perhaps passed most of your
days between the wearisome confinement of an office or counting-house,
and a rare holiday visit of a few days or weeks at your cousin's or
grandfather's pleasant farm in the country--imagine yourself, I say,
transplanted to a "home" like ours. No road approaches within ten miles;
no footpath nearer than half that distance; the surveyor's blaze is the
sole distinctive mark between the adjoining lots and your own; there
are trees innumerable--splendid trees--beech, maple, elm, ash,
cherry--above and around you, which, while you are wondering what on
earth to do with them, as you see no chance of conveying them to market
for sale, you are horrified to hear, must be consumed by fire--yea,
burnt ruthlessly to ashes, and scattered over the surface of the earth
as "good manure"; unless indeed--a desperately forlorn hope--you may
"some day" have an opportunity of selling them in the shape of potash,
"when there is a road out" to some navigable lake or river.
Well, say you, let us set to work and chop down some of these trees.
Softly, good sir. In the first place, you must underbrush. With an axe
or a strong, long handled bill-hook, made to be used with both hands,
you cut away for some distance round--a quarter or half an acre
perhaps--all the small saplings and underwood which would otherwise
impede your operations upon the larger trees. In "a good hard-wood
bush," that is, where the principal timber is maple, white oak, elm,
white ash, hickory, and other of the harder species of timber--the
"underbrush" is very trifling indeed; and in an hour or two may be
cleared off sufficiently to give the forest an agreeable park-like
appearance--so much so that, as has been said of English Acts of
Parliament, any skilful hand might drive a coach and six through.
When you have finished "under-brushing," you stand with whetted axe,
ready and willing to attack the fathers of the forest--but stay--you
don't know how to chop? It is rather doubtful, as you have travelled
hither in a great hurry, whether you have ever seen an axeman at work.
Your man, Carroll, who has been in the country five or six years, and is
quite _au fait_, will readily instruct you. Observe--you strike your
axe, by a dexterous swing backwards and round over your shoulder,--take
care there are no twigs near you, or you may perhaps hurt yourself
seriously--you strike your axe into the tree with a downward slant, at
about thirty inches from the ground; then, by an upward stroke you meet
the former incision and release a chip, which flies out briskly. Thus
you proceed, by alternate downward and upward or horizontal strokes on
that side of the tree which leans over, or towards which you wish to
compel it to fall, until you have made a clear gap rather more than half
way through, when you attack it in rear.
Now for the reward of your perspiring exertions--a few well-aimed blows
on the reverse side of the tree, rather higher than in front, and the
vast mass "totters to its fall,"--another for the
_coup-de-grace_--crack! crack! cra-a-ack!--aha!--away with you behind
yon beech--the noble tree bows gently its leafy honours with graceful
sweep towards the earth--for a moment slowly and leisurely, presently
with giddy velocity, until it strikes the ground, amidst a whirlwind of
leaves, with a loud _thud_, and a concussion both of air and earth, that
may be _felt_ at a considerable distance. You feel yourself a second
David, who has overthrown a mightier Goliath.
Now do you step exultingly upon the prostrate trunk, which you forthwith
proceed to cut up into about fourteen-foot lengths, chopping all the
branches close off, and throwing the smaller on to your brush piles. It
is a common mistake of new immigrants, who are naturally enough pleased
with the novel spectacle of falling trees, to cut down so many before
they begin to chop them into lengths, that the ground is wholly
encumbered, and becomes a perfect chaos of confused and heaped-up trunks
and branches, which nothing but the joint operation of decay and fire
will clear off, unless at an immense waste of time and trouble. To an
experienced axeman, these first attempts at chopping afford a ready text
for all kinds of ironical comments upon the unworkmanlike appearance of
the stumps and "cuts," which are generally--like those gnawn off by
beavers in making their dams--haggled all round the tree, instead of
presenting two clear smooth surfaces, in front and rear, as if sliced
off with a knife. Your genuine axeman is not a little jealous of his
reputation as a "clean cutter"--his axe is always bright as burnished
silver, guiltless of rust or flaw, and fitted with a handle which, with
its graceful curve and slender proportions, is a tolerable approach to
Hogarth's "line of beauty;" he would as soon think of deserting his
beloved "bush" and settling in a town! as trust his keen weapon in the
hands of inexperience or even mediocrity. With him every blow tells--he
never leaves the slightest chip in the "cut," nor makes a false stroke,
so that in passing your hand over the surface thus left, you are almost
unable to detect roughness or inequality.
But we must return to our work, and take care in so doing to avoid the
mishap which befel a settler in our neighbourhood. He was busy chopping
away manfully at one of those numerous trees which, yielding to the
force of some sudden gust of wind, have fallen so gently among their
compeers, that the greater portion of their roots still retains a
powerful hold upon the soil, and the branches put forth their annual
verdure as regularly as when erect. Standing on the recumbent trunk, at
a height of five or six feet from the ground, the man toiled away, in
happy ignorance of his danger, until having chopped nearly to the centre
on both sides of the tree, instead of leaping off and completing the cut
in safety on terra firma, he dealt a mighty stroke which severed at once
the slight portion that remained uncut--in an instant, as if from a
mortar, the poor fellow was launched sixteen feet into the air, by the
powerful elasticity of the roots, which, relieved from the immense
weight of the trunk and branches, reverted violently to their natural
position, and flung their innocent releaser to the winds. The astonished
chopper, falling on his back, lay stunned for many minutes, and when he
was at length able to rise, crawled to his shanty sorely bruised and
bewildered. He was able, however, to return to his work in a few days,
but not without vowing earnestly never again to trust himself next the
root.
There are other precautions to be observed, such as whether the branches
interlock with other trees, in which case they will probably break off,
and must be carefully watched, lest they fall or are flung back upon
oneself--what space you have to escape at the last moment--whether the
tree is likely to be caught and twisted aside in its fall, or held
upright, a very dangerous position, as then you must cut down others to
release it, and can hardly calculate which way it will tend: these and
many other circumstances are to be noted and watched with a cool
judgment and steady eye, to avoid the numerous accidents to which the
inexperienced and rash are constantly exposed. One of these mischances
befel an Amazonian chopper of our neighbourhood, whose history, as we
can both chop and talk, I shall relate.
Mary ---- was the second of several daughters of an emigrant from the
county of Galway, whose family, having suffered from continual hardship
and privation in their native land, had found no difficulty in adapting
themselves to the habits and exigencies of the wilderness.
Hardworking they were all and thrifty. Mary and her elder sister,
neither of them older than eighteen, would start before day-break to the
nearest store, seventeen miles off, and return the same evening laden
each with a full sack flung across the shoulder, containing about a
bushel and a half, or 90lbs. weight of potatoes, destined to supply food
for the family, as well as seed for their first crop. Being much out of
doors, and accustomed to work about the clearing, Mary became in time a
"first-rate" chopper, and would yield to none of the new settlers in the
dexterity with which she would fell, brush and cut up maple or beech;
and preferring such active exercise to the dull routine of household
work, took her place at chopping, logging or burning, as regularly and
with at least as much spirit as her brothers. Indeed, chopping is quite
an accomplishment among young women in the more remote parts of the
woods, where schools are unknown, and fashions from New York or
Philadelphia have not yet penetrated. A belle of this class will employ
her leisure hours in learning to play--not the piano-forte--but the
dinner-horn, a bright tin tube sometimes nearly four feet in length,
requiring the lungs of that almost forgotten individual, an English
mail-coach-guard; and an intriguing mamma of those parts will bid her
daughter exhibit the strength of her throat and the delicacy of her
musical ear, by a series of flourishes and "mots" upon her graceful
"tooting-weapon." I do not mean, however, that Mary possessed this
fashionable acquirement, as the neighbourhood had not then arrived at
such an advanced era of musical taste, but she made up in hard work for
all other deficiencies; and being a good-looking, sunny-faced,
dark-eyed, joyous-hearted girl, was not a little admired among the young
axe-men of the township. But she preferred remaining under her parents'
roof-tree, where her stout-arm and resolute disposition rendered her
absolute mistress of the household, to the indignity of promising to
"obey" any man, who could wield no better axe than her own. At length it
was whispered that Mary's heart, long hard as rock-elm, had become soft
as basswood, under the combined influence of the stalwart figure,
handsome face and good axe of Johnny, a lad of eighteen recently arrived
in the neighbourhood, who was born in one of the early Scotch
settlements in the Newcastle District--settlements which have turned out
a race of choppers, accustomed from their infancy to handle the axe, and
unsurpassed in the cleanness of their cut, the keenness of their weapon,
or the amount of cordwood they can chop, split and pile in a day.
Many a fair denizen of the abodes of fashion might have envied Mary the
bright smiles and gay greetings which passed between her and young
Johnny, when they met in her father's clearing at sunrise to commence
the day's work. It is common for axemen to exchange labour, as they
prefer working in couples, and Johnny was under a treaty of this kind
with Patsy, Mary's brother. But Patsy vacated his place for Mary, who
was emulous of beating the young Scotch lad at his own weapon; and she
had tucked up her sleeves and taken in the slack, as a sailor would say,
of her dress--Johnny meanwhile laying aside his coat, waistcoat and
neckcloth, baring his brawny arms, and drawing tight the bright scarlet
sash round his waist--thus equipped for their favourite occupation, they
chopped away in merry rivalry, at maple, elm, ash, birch and
basswood--Johnny sometimes gallantly fetching water from the
deliciously-cold natural spring that oozed out of the mossy hill-side,
to quench Mary's thirst, and stealing now and then a kiss by way of
guerdon--for which he never failed to get a vehement box on the ear, a
penalty which, although it would certainly have annihilated any lover of
less robust frame, he seemed nowise unwilling to incur again and again.
Thus matters proceeded, the maiden by no means acknowledging herself
beaten, and the young man too gallant to outstrip overmuch his fair
opponent--until the harsh sound of the breakfast or dinner horn would
summon both to the house, to partake of the rude but plentiful mess of
"colcannon" and milk, which was to supply strength for a long and severe
day's labour.
Alas! that I should have to relate the melancholy termination of poor
Mary's unsophisticated career. Whether Johnny's image occupied her
thoughts, to the exclusion of the huge yellow birch she was one day
chopping, or that the wicked genius who takes delight in thwarting the
course of true love had caught her guardian angel asleep on his post, I
know not; but certain it is, that in an evil hour she miscalculated the
cut, and was thoughtlessly continuing her work, when the birch,
overbalancing, split upwards, and the side nearest to Mary, springing
suddenly out, struck her a blow so severe as to destroy life
instantaneously. Her yet warm remains were carried hastily to the house,
and every expedient for her recovery that the slender knowledge of the
family could suggest, was resorted to, but in vain. I pass over the
silent agony of poor Johnny, and the heart-rending lamentations of the
mother and sisters. In a decent coffin, contrived after many
unsuccessful attempts by Johnny and Patsy, the unfortunate girl was
carried to her grave, in the same field which she had assisted to clear,
amid a concourse of simple-minded, coarsely-clad, but kindly
sympathising neighbours, from all parts of the surrounding district.
Many years have rolled away since I stood by Mary's fresh-made grave,
and it may be that Johnny has forgotten his first love; but I was told,
that no other had yet taken the place of her, whom he once hoped to make
his "bonny bride."
By this time you have cut down trees enough to enable you fairly to see
the sky! Yes, dear sir, it was entirely hidden before, and the sight is
not a little exhilarating to a new "bush-whacker." We must think of
preparing fire-wood for the night. It is highly amusing to see a party
of axemen, just returning from their work, set about this necessary
task. Four "hands" commence at once upon some luckless maple, whose
excellent burning qualities ensure it the preference. Two on each side,
they strike alternate blows--one with the right hand, his "mate" with
the left--in a rapid succession of strokes that seem perfectly
miraculous to the inexperienced beholder--the tree is felled in a
trice--a dozen men jump upon it, each intent on exhibiting his skill by
making his "cut" in the shortest possible time. The more modest select
the upper end of the tree--the bolder attack the butt--their bright
axes, flashing vividly in the sunbeams, are whirled around their heads
with such velocity as to elude the eye--huge chips a foot broad are
thrown off incessantly--they wheel round for the "back cut" at the same
instant, like a file of soldiers facing about upon some enemy in
rear--and in the space of two or three minutes, the once tall and
graceful trunk lies dissevered in as many fragments as there are
choppers.
It invariably astonishes new comers to observe with what dexterity and
ease an axeman will fell a tree in the precise spot which he wishes it
to occupy so as to suit his convenience in cutting it up, or in removing
it by oxen to the log-pile where it is destined to be consumed. If it
should happen to overhang a creek or "swale" (wet places where oxen
cannot readily operate), every contrivance is resorted to, to overcome
its apparently inevitable tendency. Choosing a time when not a breath of
air is stirring to defeat his operations, or better still, when the wind
is favourable, he cuts deeply into the huge victim on the side to which
he wishes to throw it, until it actually trembles on the slight
remaining support, cautiously regulating the direction of the "cut" so
that the tree may not overbalance itself--then he gently fells among its
branches on the reverse side all the smaller trees with which it may be
reached--and last and boldest expedient of all, he cuts several "spring
poles"--trimmed saplings from twenty to forty feet in length and four to
eight inches thick--which with great care and labour are set up against
the stem, and by the united strength and weight of several men used as
spring levers, after the manner in which ladders are employed by
fire-men to overthrow tottering stacks of chimneys; the squared end of
these poles holding firmly in the rough bark, they slowly but surely
compel the unwilling monster to obey the might of its hereditary ruler,
man. With such certainty is this feat accomplished, that I have seen a
solitary pine, nearly five feet thick and somewhere about a hundred and
seventy feet in height, forced by this latter means, aided by the
strength of two men only, against its decided natural bearing, to fall
down the side of a mound, at the bottom of which a saw-pit was already
prepared to convert it into lumber. The moment when the enormous mass is
about yielding to its fate, is one of breathless interest--it sways
alarmingly, as if it must inevitably fall backward, crushing poles and
perhaps axemen to atoms in its overwhelming descent--ha! there is a
slight cat's paw of air in our favour--cling to your pole--now! an inch
or two gained!--the stout stick trembles and bends at the revulsive sway
of the monstrous tree but still holds its own--drive your axe into the
back cut--that helps her--again, another axe! soh, the first is
loose--again!--she _must_ go--both axes are fixed in the cut as
immovably as her roots in the ground--another puff of wind--she sways
the wrong way--no, no! hold on--she cracks--strike in again the
slackened axes--bravo! one blow more--quick, catch your axe and clear
out!--see! what a sweep--what a rush of wind--what an enormous
top--down! down! how beautifully she falls--hurrah! _just in the right
place!_
CHAPTER XII.
LIFE IN THE BACKWOODS.
We had selected, on the advice of our guide, a tolerably good hard-wood
lot in the centre of the Township of Sunnidale, part of which is now the
site of the village of New Lowell, on the Northern Railway. To engage a
young Scotch axeman from the County of Lanark, on the Ottawa river; to
try our virgin axes upon the splendid maples and beeches which it seemed
almost a profanation to destroy; to fell half an acre of trees; to build
a bark wigwam for our night's lodging; and in time to put up a
substantial log shanty, roofed with wooden troughs and "chinked" with
slats and moss--these things were to us more than mortal felicity. Our
mansion was twenty-five feet long and eighteen wide. At one end an open
fire-place, at the other sumptuous beds laid on flatted logs, cushioned
with soft hemlock twigs, redolent of turpentine and health. For our
provisions, cakes made of flour; salt pork of the best; tea and coffee
without milk; with the occasional luxury of a few partridges and
pigeons, and even a haunch of venison of our own shooting; also some
potatoes. We wanted no more. There were few other settlers within many
miles, and those as raw as ourselves; so we mended our own clothes, did
our own cooking, and washed our own linen.
Owing to the tedious length of our sea voyage, there was no time for
getting in crops that year; not even fall wheat; so we had plenty of
leisure to make ourselves comfortable for the winter. And we were by no
means without visitors. Sometimes a surveyor's party sought shelter for
the night on their way to the strangely-named townships of Alta and
Zero--now Collingwood and St. Vincent. Among these were Charles Rankin,
surveyor, now of London; his brother, Arthur Rankin, since M.P. for
Essex; a young gentleman from England, now Dr. Barrett, late of Upper
Canada College. By-and-by came some Chippawa Indians, _en route_ to or
from the Christian Islands of Lake Huron; we were great friends with
them. I had made a sort of harp or zittern, and they were charmed with
its simple music. Their mode of counting money on their fingers was
highly comical--"one cop, one cop, one cop, three cop!" and so on up to
twenty, which was the largest sum they could accomplish. At night, they
wrapped their blankets round them, lay down on the bare earthen floor
near the fire, and slept quietly till day-break, when they would start
on their way with many smiles and hand-shakings. In fact, our shanty,
being the only comfortable shelter between Barrie and the Georgian Bay,
became a sort of half-way house, at which travellers looked for a
night's lodging; and we were not sorry when the opening of a log-tavern,
a mile off, by an old Scotchwoman, ycleped Mother McNeil, enabled us to
select our visitors. This tavern was a curiosity in its way, built of
the roughest logs, with no artificial floor, but the soil being swaley
or wet--a mud-hole yawned just inside the door, where bullfrogs not
unfrequently saluted the wayfarer with their deepest diapason notes.
I must record my own experiences with their congeners, the toads. We
were annoyed by flies, and I noticed an old toad creep stealthily from
under the house logs, wait patiently near a patch of sunshine on the
floor, and as soon as two or three flies, attracted by the sun's warmth,
drew near its post, dart out its long slender tongue, and so catch them
all one after another. Improving upon the hint, we afterwards regularly
scattered a few grains of sugar, to attract more flies within the old
fellow's reach, and thus kept the shanty comparatively clear of those
winged nuisances, and secured quiet repose for ourselves in the early
mornings. Another toad soon joined the first one, and they became so
much at home as to allow us to scratch their backs gently with a stick,
when they would heave up their puffed sides to be scrubbed. These toads
swallow mice and young ducks, and in their turn fall victims to garter
and other snakes.
During the following year, 1834, the Government opened up a settlement
on the Sunnidale road, employing the new immigrants in road making,
chopping and clearing, and putting up log shanties; and gave them the
land so cleared to live on, but without power of sale. In this way, two
or three hundred settlers, English, Irish and Highland Scotch, chiefly
the latter, were located in Sunnidale. A Scottish gentleman, a Mr. H. C.
Young, was appointed local immigrant agent, and spent some time with us.
Eventually it was found that the laud was too aguish for settlement,
being close to a large cedar swamp extending several miles to the
Nottawasaga River; and on the representation of the agent, it was in
1835 determined to transfer operations to the adjoining township of
Nottawasaga, in which the town of Collingwood is now situated.
It was about this time that the prospect of a railway from Toronto to
the Georgian Bay was first mooted, the mouth of the Nottawasaga River
being the expected terminus. A talented Toronto engineer whose name I
think was Lynn, published a pamphlet containing an outline route for the
railroad, which was extended through to the North-West. To him,
doubtless, is due the first practical suggestion of a Canadian Pacific
Railway. We, in Sunnidale, were confidently assured that the line would
pass directly through our own land, and many a weary sigh at hope
deferred did the delusion cost us.
CHAPTER XIII.
SOME GATHERINGS FROM NATURAL HISTORY.
I need not weary the reader with details of our farming proceedings,
which differed in no respect from the now well-known routine of bush
life. I will, however, add one or two notices of occurrences which may
be thought worth relating. We were not without wild animals in our bush.
Bears, wolves, foxes, racoons, skunks, mink and ermine among beasts;
eagles, jays, many kinds of hawks, wood-peckers, loons, partridges and
pigeons, besides a host of other birds, were common enough. Bears' nests
abounded, consisting of a kind of arbour which the bear makes for
himself in the top of the loftiest beech trees, by dragging inwards all
the upper branches laden with their wealth of nuts, upon which he feasts
at leisure. The marks of his formidable claws are plainly visible the
whole length of the trunks of most large beech-trees. In Canada West the
bear is seldom dangerous. One old fellow which we often encountered,
haunted a favourite raspberry patch on the road-side; when anybody
passed near him he would scamper off in such haste that I have seen him
dash himself violently against any tree or fallen branch that might be
in his way. Once we saw a bear roll himself headlong from the forks of
a tree fully forty feet from the ground, tumbling over and over, but
alighting safely, and "making tracks" with the utmost expedition.
An Englishman whom I knew, of a very studious temperament, was strolling
along the Medonte road deeply intent upon a volume of Ovid or some other
Latin author, when, looking up to ascertain the cause of a shadow which
fell across his book, he found himself nearly stumbling against a huge
brown bear, standing erect on its hind legs, and with formidable paw
raised ready to strike. The surprise seems to have been mutual, for
after waiting a moment or two as if to recognise each other's features
should they meet again, the student merely said "Oh! a bear!" coolly
turned on his heel, plunged into his book again, and walked slowly back
toward the village, leaving Bruin to move off at leisure in an opposite
direction. So saith my informant.
Another friend, when a youth, was quail-shooting on the site of the City
of Toronto, which was nothing but a rough swampy thicket of cedars and
pines mixed with hardwood. Stepping hastily across a rotten pine log,
the lad plumped full upon a great fat bear taking its siesta in the
shade. Which of the two fled the fastest is not known, but it was
probably the animal, judging by my own experience in Sunnidale.
Wolves often disturbed us with their hideous howlings. We had a
beautiful liver and white English setter, called Dash, with her two
pups. One night in winter, poor Dash, whom we kept within doors, was
excited by the yelping of her pups outside, which appeared to be alarmed
by some intruder about the premises. A wolf had been seen prowling near,
so we got out our guns and whatever weapon was handy, but incautiously
opened the door and let out the slut before we were ourselves quite
dressed. She rushed out in eager haste, and in a few seconds we heard
the wolf and dog fighting, with the most frightful discord of yells and
howls that ever deafened the human ear. The noise ceased as suddenly as
it had begun. We followed as fast as we could to the scene of the
struggle, but found nothing there except a trampled space in the snow
stained with blood, the dog having evidently been killed and dragged
away. Next morning we followed the track further, and found at no great
distance another similar spot, where the wolf had devoured its victim so
utterly, that not a hair, bone, nor anything else was left, save the
poor animal's heart, which had been flung away to a little distance in
the snow. Beyond this were no signs of blood. We set a trap for the
wolf, and tracked him for miles in the hope of avenging poor Dash, but
without effect. This same wolf, we heard afterwards, was killed by a
settler with a handspike, to our great satisfaction.
Among our neighbours of the Sunnidale settlement was a married couple
from England, named Sewell, very well-conducted and industrious. They
had a fair little child under two years old, named Hetty, whom we often
stopped to admire for her prettiness and engaging simplicity. They also
possessed, and were very proud of, several broods of newly-hatched
chickens, some of which had been carried off by an immense falcon, which
would swoop down from the lofty elm-trees still left standing in the
half-chopped clearing, too suddenly to be easily shot. One day Hetty was
feeding the young chickens when the hawk pounced upon the old hen, which
struggled desperately; whereupon little Hetty bravely joined in the
battle, seized the intruder by the wings from behind and held him fast,
crying out loudly, "I've got him, mother!" It turned out, after the hawk
was killed, that it had been blind of one eye.
In the spring of 1834, we had with infinite labour managed to clear off
a small patch of ground, which we sowed with spring wheat, and watched
its growth with the most intense anxiety, until it attained a height of
ten inches, and began to put forth tender ears. Already the exquisite
pleasure of eating bread the product of our own land, and of our own
labour, was present to our imaginations, and the number of bushels to be
reaped, the barn for storage, the journeys to mill, were eagerly
discussed. But one day in August, occurred a hail-storm such as is
seldom experienced in half a century. A perfect cataract of ice fell
upon our hapless wheat crop. Flattened hailstones measuring two and a
half inches in diameter, seven and a half in circumference, covered the
ground several inches deep. Every blade of wheat was utterly destroyed,
and with it all our sanguine hopes of plenty for that year. I have
preserved a tracing which I made at the time, of one of those
hailstones. The centre was spherical, an inch in girth, from which
laterally radiated lines three fourths of an inch long, like the spokes
of a wheel, and outside of them again a wavy border resembling the
undulating edge of pie crust. The superficial structure of the whole,
was much like that of a full blown rose. A remarkable hail-storm
occurred in Toronto, in the year 1878, but the stones, although similar
in formation, were scarcely as bulky.
It was one night in November following, when our axeman, William
Whitelaw, who had risen from bed at eleven o'clock to fetch a new log
for the fire shouted to us to come out and see a strange sight. Lazily
we complied, expecting nothing extraordinary; but, on getting into the
cold frosty air outside, we were transfixed with astonishment and
admiration. Our clearing being small, and the timber partly hemlock, we
seemed to be environed with a dense black wall the height of the forest
trees, while over all, in dazzling splendour, shone a canopy of the
most brilliant meteors, radiating in all directions from a single point
in the heavens, nearly over-head, but slightly to the north-west. I have
since read all the descriptions of meteoric showers I could find in our
scientific annals, and watched year after year for a return of the same
wonderful vision, but neither in the records of history nor otherwise,
since that night, have I read of or seen anything so marvellously
beautiful. Hour after hour we gazed in wonder and awe, as the radiant
messengers streamed on their courses, sometimes singly, sometimes in
starry cohorts of thousands, appearing to descend amongst the trees
close beside us, but in reality shooting far beyond the horizon. Those
who have looked upwards during a fall of snow will remember how the
large flakes seem to radiate from a centre. Thus I believe astronomers
account for the appearance of these showers of stars, by the
circumstance that they meet the earth full in its orbit, and so dart
past it from an opposite point, like a flight of birds confronting a
locomotive, or a storm of hail directly facing a vessel under full
steam. No description I have read has given even a faint idea of the
reality as I saw it on that memorable night. From eleven p.m. to three
in the morning, the majestic spectacle continued in full glory,
gradually fading away before the approach of daybreak.
We often had knotty and not very logical discussions about the origin of
seeds, and the cause of the thick growth of new varieties of plants and
trees wherever the forest had been burnt over. On our land, and
everywhere in the immediate neighbourhood, the process of clearing by
fire was sure to be followed by a spontaneous growth, first of fire-weed
or wild lettuce, and secondly by a crop of young cherry trees, so thick
as to choke one another. At other spots, where pine-trees had stood for
a century, the outcome of their destruction by fire was invariably a
thick growth of raspberries, with poplars of the aspen variety. Our
Celtic friends, most of whom were pious Presbyterians, insisted that a
new creation of plants must be constantly going on to account for such
miraculous growth. To test the matter, I scooped up a panful of black
soil from our clearing, washed it, and got a small tea-cupful of
cherry-stones, exactly similar to those growing in the forest. The cause
of this surprising accumulation of seed was not far to find. A few miles
distant was a pigeon-roost. In spring, the birds would come flying round
the east shore of Lake Huron, skirting the Georgian Bay, in such vast
clouds as to darken the sun; and so swiftly that swan-shot failed to
bring them down unless striking them in rear; and, even then, we rarely
got them, as the velocity of their flight impelled them far into the
thicket before falling. These beautiful creatures attacked our crops
with serious results, and devoured all our young peas. I have known
twenty-five pigeons killed at a single shot; and have myself got a
dozen by firing at random into a maple-tree on which they had alighted,
but where not one had been visible.
The pigeon-roost itself was a marvel. Men, women and children went by
the hundred, some with guns, but the majority with baskets, to pick up
the countless birds that had been disabled by the fall of great branches
of trees broken off by the weight of their roosting comrades overhead.
The women skinned the birds, cut off their plump breasts, throwing the
remainder away, and packed them in barrels with salt, for keeping. To
these pigeons we were, doubtless, indebted for our crop of young
cherry-trees.
Where there was so much seed, a corresponding crop might be expected;
and dense thickets of choke-cherry trees grew up in neglected clearings
accordingly. Forcing my way through one of these, I found myself
literally face to face with a garter snake five feet long, which was
also in search of cherries, and had wriggled its way to the upper
branches of a young tree ten feet high. Garter snakes, however, are as
harmless as frogs, and like them, are the victims of a general
persecution. In some places they are exceedingly numerous. One summer's
evening I was travelling on foot from Holland Landing to Bradford,
across the Holland river, a distance of three miles, nearly all marsh,
laid with cedar logs placed crosswise, to form a passable road. The sun
was nearing the horizon; the snakes--garter chiefly, but a few
copperhead and black--glided on to the logs to bask apparently in the
sunshine, in such numbers, that after vainly trying to step across
without treading on them, I was fain to take to flight, springing from
log to log like some long-legged bird, and so escaping from the
unpleasant companionship.[3]
One of the most perplexing tasks to new settlers is that of keeping
cows. "Bossy" soon learns that the bush is "all before her where to
choose," and she indulges her whims by straying away in the most
unexpected directions, and putting you to half-a-day's toilsome search
before she can be captured. The obvious remedy is the cow-bell, but even
with this tell-tale appendage, the experienced cow contrives to baffle
your vigilance. She will ensconce herself in the midst of a clump of
underbrush, lying perfectly still, and paying no heed to your most
endearing appeals of "Co' bossy, co' bossy," until some fly-sting
obliges her to jerk her head and betray her hiding-place by a single
note of the bell. Then she will deliberately get up, and walk off
straight to the shanty, ready to be milked.
[Footnote 3: It is affirmed that in two or three localities in Manitoba,
garter snakes sometimes congregate in such multitudes as to form ropes
as thick as a man's leg, which, by their constant writhing and twining
in and out, present a strangely glittering and moving spectacle.]
CHAPTER XIV.
OUR REMOVAL TO NOTTAWASAGA.
In the autumn of 1835, we were favoured with a visit from Mr. A. B.
Hawke, chief emigrant agent for Upper Canada, and a gentleman held in
general esteem, as a friend to emigrants, and a kind-hearted man. He
slept, or rather tried to sleep, at our shanty. It was very hot weather,
the mosquitoes were in full vigour, and the tortures they inflicted on
the poor man were truly pitiable. We being acclimatised, could cover our
heads, and lie _perdu_, sleeping in spite of the humming hosts outside.
But our visitor had learnt no such philosophy. He threw off the
bedclothes on account of the heat; slapped his face and hands to kill
his tormentors; and actually roared with pain and anger, relieving
himself now and then by objurgations mingled with expletives not a
little profane. It was impossible to resist laughing at the desperate
emphasis of his protests, although our mirth did not help much to soothe
the annoyance, at which, however, he could not help laughing in turn.
Mosquitoes do not plague all night, and our friend got a little repose
in the cool of the morning, but vowed, most solemnly, that nothing
should induce him to pass another night in Sunnidale.
To this circumstance, perhaps, were we indebted for the permission we
soon afterwards obtained, to exchange our Sunnidale lot for one in
Nottawasaga, where some clearing had been done by the new settlers, on
what was called the Scotch line; and gladly we quitted our first
location for land decidedly more eligible for farm purposes, although
seventeen miles further distant from Barrie, which was still the only
village within reasonably easy access.
We had obtained small government contracts for corduroying, or
causewaying, the many swampy spots on the Sunnidale road, which enabled
us to employ a number of axemen, and to live a little more comfortably;
and about this time, Mr. Young being in weak health, and unequal to the
hardships of bush life, resigned his agency, and got my brother Thomas
appointed temporarily as his successor; so we had the benefit of a good
log-house he had built on the Nottawasaga road, near the Batteau creek,
on which is now situated the Batteau station of the Northern Railway. We
abode there until we found time to cut a road to our land, and
afterwards to erect a comfortable cedar-log house thereon.
Here, with a large open clearing around us, plenty of neighbours, and a
sawmill at no great distance, we were able to make our home nearly as
comfortable as are the majority of Canadian farm-houses of to-day. We
had a neat picket-fenced garden, a large double log barn, a yoke of
oxen, and plenty of poultry. The house stood on a handsome rising
eminence, and commanded a noble prospect, which included the Georgian
Bay, visible at a distance of six miles, and the Christian Islands,
twenty miles further north. The land was productive, and the air highly
salubrious.
Would some of my readers like to know how to raise a log barn? I shall
try to teach them. For such an undertaking much previous labour and
foresight are required. In our case, fortunately, there was a small
cedar swamp within a hundred paces of the site we had chosen for our
barn, which was picturesquely separated from the house by a ravine some
thirty feet deep, with a clear spring of the sweetest and coldest water
flowing between steep banks. The barn was to consist of two large bays,
each thirty feet square and eight logs high, with a threshing floor
twelve feet wide between, the whole combined into one by an upper story
or loft, twenty by seventy-two feet, and four logs high, including the
roof-plates.
It will be seen, then, that to build such a barn would require
sixty-four logs of thirty feet each for the lower story; and sixteen
more of the same length, as well as eight of seventy-two feet each, for
the loft. Our handy swamp provided all these, not from standing trees
only, but from many fallen patriarchs buried four or five feet under the
surface in black muck, and perfectly sound. To get them out of the mud
required both skill and patience. All the branches having been cleared
off as thoroughly as possible, the entire tree was drawn out by those
most patient of all patient drudges, the oxen, and when on solid ground,
sawn to the required length. A number of skids were also provided, of
the size and kind of the spring-poles already described in chapter XI.,
and plenty of handspikes.
Having got these prime essentials ready, the next business was to summon
our good neighbours to a "raising bee." On the day named, accordingly,
we had about thirty practised axemen on the ground by day-break, all in
the best of spirits, and confident in their powers for work. Eight of
the heaviest logs, about two feet thick, had been placed in position as
sleepers or foundation logs, duly saddled at the corners. Parallel with
these at a distance of twenty-feet on either side, were ranged in order
all the logs required to complete the building.
Well, now we begin. Eight of the smartest men jump at once on the eight
corners. In a few minutes each of the four men in front has his saddle
ready--that is, he has chopped his end of the first log into an angular
shape, thus /\. The four men in rear have done the same thing no less
expeditiously, and all are waiting for the next log. Meanwhile, at the
ends of both bays, four several parties of three men each, stationed
below, have placed their skids in a sloping position--the upper end on
the rising wall and the lower on the ground--and up these skids they
roll additional logs transversely to those already in position. These
are received by the corner-men above, and carefully adjusted in their
places according to their "natural lie," that is, so that they will be
least likely to render the wall unsteady; then turned half-back to
receive the undercut, which should be exactly an inverse counterpart of
the saddle. A skilful hand will make this undercut with unerring
certainty, so that the log when turned forward again, will fit down upon
its two saddles without further adjustment. Now for more logs back and
front; then others at the ends, and so on, every log fitted as before,
and each one somewhat lighter than its predecessor. All this time the
oxen have been busily employed in drawing more logs where needed. The
skids have to be re-adjusted for every successive log, and a supply of
new logs rolled up as fast as wanted. The quick strokes of eight axes
wielded by active fellows perched on the still rising walls, and
balancing themselves dexterously and even gracefully as they work, the
constant demand for "another log," and the merry voices and rough jokes
of the workers, altogether form as lively and exciting a picture as is
often witnessed. Add to these a bright sky and a fresh breeze, with the
beautiful green back-ground of the noble hardwood trees around--and I
know of no mere pleasure party that I would rather join.
Breakfast and dinner form welcome interludes. Ample stores of provender,
meat, bread, potatoes, puddings various, tea and coffee, have been
prepared and are thoroughly enjoyed, inasmuch as they are rare luxuries
to many of the guests. Then again to work, until the last crowning
effort of all--the raising of the seventy-two-foot logs--has to be
encountered. Great care is necessary here, as accidents are not
infrequent. The best skids, the stoutest handspikes, the strongest and
hardiest men, must be selected. Our logs being cedar and therefore
light, there was comparatively little danger; and they were all
successfully raised, and well secured by cross-girders before sundown.
Then, and not till then, after supper, a little whiskey was allowed.
Teetotalism had not made its way into our backwoods; and we were
considered very straightlaced indeed to set our faces as we did against
all excess. Our Highland and Irish neighbours looked upon the weak stuff
sold in Canada with supreme contempt; and recollecting our Galway
experience, we felt no surprise thereat.
The roofing such a building is a subsequent operation, for which no
"bee" is required. Shingles four feet long, on round rafters, are
generally used for log barns, to be replaced at some future day by more
perfect roofing. A well-made cedar barn will stand for forty years with
proper care, by which time there should be no difficulty in replacing it
by a good substantial, roomy frame building.
CHAPTER XV.
SOCIETY IN THE BACKWOODS.
Sir John Colborne, as has been mentioned already, did all in his power
to induce well-to-do immigrants, and particularly military men, to
settle on lands west and north of Lake Simcoe. Some of these gentlemen
were entitled, in those days, to draw from three to twelve hundred acres
of land in their own right; but the privilege was of very doubtful
value. Take an example. Captain Workman, with his wife, highly educated
and thoroughly estimable people, were persuaded to select their land on
the Georgian Bay, near the site of the present village of Meaford. A
small rivulet which enters the bay there, is still called "the Captain's
creek." To get there, they had to go to Penetanguishene, then a military
station, now the seat of a Reformatory for boys. From thence they
embarked on scows, with their servants, furniture, cows, farm implements
and provisions. Rough weather obliged them to land on one of the
Christian Islands, very bleak spots outside of Penetanguishene harbour,
occupied only by a few Chippewa Indians. After nearly two weeks' delay
and severe privation, they at length reached their destination, and had
then to camp out until a roof could be put up to shelter them from the
storms, not uncommon on that exposed coast.
We had ourselves, along with others, taken up additional land on what
was called "the Blue Mountains," which are considered to be a spur of
the Alleghanies, extending northerly across by Niagara, from the State
of New York. The then newly-surveyed townships of St. Vincent and
Euphrasia were attracting settlers, and amongst them our axe-man,
Whitelaw, and many more of the like class. To reach this land, we had
bought a smart sail-boat, and in her enjoyed ourselves by coasting from
the Nottawasaga river north-westerly along the bay. In this way we
happened one evening to put in at the little harbour where Capt. Workman
had chosen his location. It was early in the spring. The snows from the
uplands had swelled the rivulet into a rushing torrent. The garden,
prettily laid out, was converted into an island, the water whirling and
eddying close to the house both in front and rear, and altogether
presenting a scene of wild confusion. We found the captain highly
excited, but bravely contending with his watery adversary; the lady of
the house in a state of alarmed perplexity; the servants at their wits'
end, hurrying here and there with little effect. Fortunately, when we
got there the actual danger was past, the waters subsiding rapidly
during the night. But it struck us as a most cruel and inconsiderate
act on the part of the Government, to expose tenderly reared families to
hazards which even the rudest of rough pioneers would not care to
encounter.
After enduring several years of severe hardship, and expending a
considerable income in this out-of-the-world spot, Captain Workman and
his family removed to Toronto, and afterwards returned to England,
wiser, perhaps, but no richer certainly, than when they left the old
country.
A couple of miles along the shore, we found another military settler,
Lieutenant Waddell, who had served as brigade-major at the Battle of
Waterloo; with him were his wife, two sons, and two daughters. On
landing, the first person we encountered was the eldest son, John, a
youth of twenty years--six feet in stature at least, and bearing on his
shoulder, sustained by a stick thrust through its gills, a sturgeon so
large that its tail trailed on the ground behind him. He had just caught
it with a floating line. Here again the same melancholy story: ladies
delicately nurtured, exposed to rough labour, and deprived of all the
comforts of civilized life, exhausting themselves in weary struggle with
the elements. Brave soldiers in the decline of life, condemned to tasks
only adapted to hinds and navvies. What worse fate can be reserved for
Siberian exiles! This family also soon removed to Toronto, and
afterwards to Niagara, where the kindly, excellent old soldier is well
remembered; then to Chatham, where he became barrack-master, and died
there. His son, John Waddell, married into the Eberts family, and
prospered; later he was member for Kent; and ultimately met his death by
drowning on a lumbering excursion in the Georgian Bay. Other members of
the family now reside at Goderich.
Along the west shore of Lake Simcoe, several other military and naval
officers, with their households, were scattered. Some, whose names I
shall not record, had left their families at home, and brought out with
them female companions of questionable position, whom, nevertheless,
they introduced as their wives. The appearance of the true wives rid the
county of the scandal and its actors.
Conspicuous among the best class of gentlemen settlers was the late Col.
E. G. O'Brien, of Shanty Bay, near Barrie, of whom I shall have occasion
to speak hereafter. Capt. St. John, of Lake Couchiching, was equally
respected. The Messrs. Lally, of Medonte; Walker, of Tecumseth and
Barrie; Sibbald, of Kempenfeldt Bay; are all names well known in those
days, as are also many others of the like class. But where are the
results of the policy which sent them there? What did they gain--what
have their families and descendants gained--by the ruinous outlay to
which they were subjected? With one or two exceptions, absolutely
nothing but wasted means and saddest memories.
It is pleasant to turn to a different class of settlers--the hardy
Scots, Irish, English, and Germans, to whom the Counties of Simcoe and
Grey stand indebted for their present state of prosperity. The Sunnidale
settlement was ill-chosen, and therefore a failure. But in the north of
that township, much better land and a healthier situation are found, and
there, as well as in Nottawasaga adjoining, the true conditions of
rational colonization, and the practical development of those
conditions, are plainly to be seen.
The system of clearing five acre lots, and erecting log shanties
thereon, to be given to immigrants without power of sale, which was
commenced in Sunnidale, was continued in Nottawasaga. The settlement was
called the Scotch line, nearly all the people being from the islands of
Arran and Islay, lying off Argyleshire, in Scotland. Very few of them
knew a word of English. There were Campbells, McGillivrays, Livingstons,
McDiarmids, McAlmons, McNees, Jardines, and other characteristic names.
The chief man among them was Angus Campbell, who had been a tradesman of
some kind in the old country, and exercised a beneficial influence over
the rest. He was well informed, sternly Presbyterian, and often reminded
us of "douce Davie Deans" in the "Heart of Midlothian." One of the
Livingstons was a school-master. They were, one and all, hardy and
industrious folk. Day after day, month after month, year after year,
added to their wealth and comfort. Cows were purchased, and soon became
common. There were a few oxen and horses before long. When I visited the
township of Nottawasaga some years since, I found Angus Campbell,
postmaster and justice of the peace; Andrew Jardine, township clerk or
treasurer; and McDiarmids, Livingstons, Shaws, &c., spread all over the
surrounding country, possessing large farms richly stocked, good barns
well-filled, and even commodious frame houses comfortably furnished.
They ride to church or market in handsome buggies well horsed; have
their temperance meetings and political gatherings of the most zealous
sort, and altogether present a model specimen of a prosperous farming
community. What has been said of the Scotch, is no less applicable to
the Irish, Germans and English, who formed the minority in that
township. I hear of their sons, and their sons' sons, as thriving
farmers and storekeepers, all over Ontario.
Our axeman, Whitelaw, was of Scottish parentage, but a Canadian by
birth, and won his way with the rest. He settled in St. Vincent, married
a smart and pretty Irish lass, had many sons and daughters, acquired a
farm of five hundred acres, of which he cleared and cultivated a large
portion almost single-handed, and in time became able to build the
finest frame house in the township; served as reeve, was a justice of
peace, and even a candidate for parliament, in which, well for himself,
he failed. His excessive labours, however, brought on asthma, of which
he died not long since, leaving several families of descendants to
represent him.
I could go on with the list of prosperous settlers of this class, to
fill a volume. Some of the young men entered the ministry, and I
recognise their names occasionally at Presbyterian and Wesleyan
conventions. Some less fortunate were tempted away to Iowa and Illinois,
and there died victims to ague and heat.
But if we "look on this picture and on that;" if we compare the results
of the settlement of educated people and of the labouring classes, the
former withering away and leaving no sign behind--the latter growing in
numbers and advancing in wealth and position until they fill the whole
land, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, that except as leaders
and teachers of their companions, gentlefolk of refined tastes and of
superior education, have no place in the bush, and should shun it as a
wild delusion and a cruel snare.
CHAPTER XVI.
MORE ABOUT NOTTAWASAGA AND ITS PEOPLE.
Among the duties handed over to my brother Thomas, by his predecessor in
the emigrant agency, was the care of a large medicine chest full of
quinine, rhubarb, jalap, and a host of other drugs, strong enough for
horses as well as men, including a long catalogue of poisons, such as
arsenic, belladonna, vitriol, &c. To assist in the distribution of this
rather formidable charge, a copy of "Buchan's Domestic Medicine" was
added. My brother had no taste for drugs, and therefore deputed the care
of the medicine chest to me. So I studied "Buchan" zealously, and was
fortunate enough to secure the aid of an old army sergeant, an Irishman
who had been accustomed to camp hospital life, and knew how to bleed,
and treat wounds. Time and practice gave me courage to dispense the
medicines, which I did cautiously, and so successfully as to earn the
soubriquet of "Doctor," and to be sought after in cases both dangerous
and difficult. As, however, about this time, a clever, licensed
practitioner had established himself at Barrie, thirty-four miles
distant, I declined to prescribe in serious cases, except in one or two
of great urgency. A Prussian soldier named Murtz, had received a
gun-shot wound in the chest at the battle of Quatre Bras, under Marshal
Bluecher, and had frequently suffered therefrom. One day in winter, when
the thermometer ranged far below zero, this man had been threshing in
our barn, when he was seized with inflammation of the chest, and forced
to return home. As it appeared to be a case of life and death, I
ventured to act boldly, ordered bleeding, a blister on the chest, and
poultices to the feet--in fact, everything that Buchan directed. My
brave serjeant took charge of the patient; and between us, or perhaps in
spite of us, the man got over the attack. The singular part of the case
was, that the old bullet wound never troubled him afterwards, and he
looked upon me as the first of living physicians.
In 1836, a band of Potawatomie Indians, claiming allegiance to the
Queen, was allowed to leave the State of Michigan and settle in Canada.
They travelled from Sarnia through the woods, along the eastern shore of
Lake Huron, and passed through Nottawasaga, on their way to
Penetanguishene. Between the Scotch line and Sunnidale, near the present
village of Stayner, lived an old Highland piper named Campbell, very
partial to whiskey and dirt. There were two or three small clearings
grouped together, and the principal crop was potatoes, nearly full
grown. The old man was sitting sunning himself at his shanty-door. The
young men were all absent at mill or elsewhere, and none but women and
children about, when a party of Indians, men and squaws with their
papooses, came stealing from the woods, and very quietly began to dig
the potatoes with their fingers and fill their bags with the spoil. The
poor old piper was horribly frightened and perplexed; and in his
agitation could think of nothing but climbing on to his shanty roof,
which was covered with earth, and there playing with all his might upon
his Highland pipes, partly as a summons for assistance from his friends,
partly to terrify the enemy. But the enemy were not at all terrified.
They gathered in a ring round the shanty, laughed, danced, and enjoyed
the fun immensely; nor would they pass on until the return of some of
the younger settlers summoned by the din of the bagpipes, relieved the
old piper from his elevated post. In the meantime, the presence and
efforts of the women of the settlement sufficed to rescue their potato
crop.
CHAPTER XVII.
A RUDE WINTER EXPERIENCE.
The chief inconvenience we sustained in Nottawasaga arose from the depth
of snow in winter, which was generally four feet and sometimes more. We
had got our large log barn well filled with grain and hay. Two feet of
snow had fallen during the day, and it continued snowing throughout the
night. Next morning, to our great tribulation, neither snow nor roof was
to be seen on the barn, the whole having fallen inside. No time was to
be lost. My share of the work was to hurry to the Scotch line, there to
warn every settler to send at least one stout hand to assist in
re-raising the roof. None but those who have suffered can imagine what
it is to have to walk at speed through several feet of soft snow. The
sinews of the knees very soon begin to be painfully affected, and
finally to feel as if they were being cut with a sharp knife. This is
what Indians call "snow evil," their cure for which is to apply a hot
cinder to the spot, thus raising a blister. I toiled on, however, and
once in the settlement, walked with comparative ease. Everybody was
ready and eager to help, and so we had plenty of assistance at our need,
and before night got our barn roof restored.
The practice of exchanging work is universal in new settlements; and,
indeed, without it nothing of importance can be effected. Each man gives
a day's work to his neighbour, for a logging or raising-bee; and looks
for the same help when he is ready for it. Thus as many as twenty or
forty able axemen can be relied upon at an emergency.
At a later time, some of us became expert in the use of snow-shoes, and
took long journeys through the woods, not merely with ease but with a
great deal of pleasure. As a rule, snow is far from being considered an
evil in the backwoods, on account of the very great facility it affords
for travelling and teaming, both for business and pleasure, as well as
for the aid it gives to the hunter or trapper.
My own feelings on the subject, I found leisure to embody in the
following verses:
THE TRAPPER.
Away, away! my dog and I;
The woodland boughs are bare,
The radiant sun shines warm and high,
The frost-flake[4] gems the air.
Away, away! thro' forests wide
Our course is swift and free;
Warm 'neath the snow the saplings hide--
Its ice-crust firm pace we.
The partridge[5] with expanded crest
Struts proudly by his mate;
The squirrel trims its glossy vest,
Or eats its nut in state.
Quick echoes answer, shrill and short,
The woodcock's frequent cry;
We heed them not--a keener sport
We seek--my dog and I.
Far in the woods our traps are set
In loneliest, thickest glade,
Where summer's soil is soft and wet,
And dark firs lend their shade.
Hurrah! a gallant spoil is here
To glad a trapper's sight--
The warm-clad marten, sleek and fair,
The ermine soft and white;
Or mink, or fox--a welcome prize--
Or useful squirrel grey,
Or wild-cat fierce with flaming eyes,
Or fisher,[6] meaner prey.
On, on! the cautious toils once more
Are set--the task is done;
Our pleasant morning's labour o'er,
Our pastime but begun.
Away, away! till fall of eve,
The deer-track be our guide,
The antler'd stag our quarry brave,
Our park the forest wide.
At night, the bright fire at our feet,
Our couch the wigwam dry--
No laggard tastes a rest so sweet
As thou, good dog, and I.
[Footnote 4: On a fine, bright winter morning, when the slight feathery
crystals formed from the congealed dew, which have silently settled on
the trees during the night, are wafted thence by the morning breeze,
filling the translucent atmosphere with innumerable minute, sparkling
stars; when the thick, strong coat of ice on the four-foot deep snow is
slightly covered by the same fine, white dust, betraying the foot-print
of the smallest wild animal--on such a morning the hardy trapper is best
able to follow his solitary pursuits. In the glorious winters of Canada,
he will sometimes remain from home for days, or even weeks, with no
companions but his dog and rifle, and no other shelter than such as his
own hands can procure--carried away by his ardour for the sport, and the
hope of the rich booty which usually rewards his perseverance.]
[Footnote 5: The partridge of Canada--a grey variety of grouse--not only
displays a handsome black-barred tail like that of the turkey, but has
the power of erecting his head-feathers, as well as of spreading a black
fan-like tuft placed on either side of his neck. Although timid when
alarmed, he is not naturally shy, but at times may be approached near
enough to observe his very graceful and playful habits--a facility of
access for which the poor bird commonly pays with his life.]
[Footnote 6: Dr. Johnson, in one of his peculiar moods, has described
the _fitchew_ or _fitchat_, which is here called the "fisher" as "_a
stinking little beast that robs the hen-roost and warren_"--a very
ungrateful libel upon an animal that supplies exceedingly useful fur for
common purposes.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FOREST WEALTH OF CANADA.
Having been accustomed to gardening all my life, I have taken great
pleasure in roaming the bush in search of botanical treasures of all
kinds, and have often thought that it would be easy to fill a large and
showy garden with the native plants of Canada alone.
But of course, her main vegetable wealth consists in the forests with
which the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario were formerly clothed. In the
country around the Georgian Bay, especially, abound the very finest
specimens of hardwood timber. Standing on a hill overlooking the River
Saugeen at the village of Durham, one sees for twenty miles round
scarcely a single pine tree in the whole prospect. The townships of
Arran and Derby, when first surveyed, were wonderfully studded with
noble trees. Oak, elm, beech, butternut, ash and maple, seemed to vie
with each other in the size of their stems and the spread of their
branches. In our own clearing in St. Vincent, the axemen considered that
five of these great forest kings would occupy an acre of ground, leaving
little space for younger trees or underbrush.
I once saw a white or wainscot oak that measured fully twelve feet in
circumference at the butt, and eighty feet clear of branches. This noble
tree must have contained somewhere about seven thousand square feet of
inch boarding, and would represent a value approaching one hundred and
thirty pounds sterling in the English market. White and black ash, black
birch, red beech, maple and even basswood or lime, are of little, if
any, less intrinsic worth. Rock elm is very valuable, competing as it
does with hickory for many purposes.
When residing in the city of Quebec, in the year 1859-60, I published a
series of articles in the Quebec _Advertiser_, descriptive of the
hardwoods of Ontario. The lumber merchants of that city held then, that
their correspondents in Liverpool was so wedded to old-fashioned ideas,
that they would not so much as look at any price-list except for pine
and the few other woods for which there was an assured demand. But I
know that my papers were transmitted home, and they may possibly have
converted some few readers, as, since then, our rock elm, our white ash,
and the black birch of Lower Canada, have been in increased demand, and
are regularly quoted at London and Liverpool. But even though old
country dealers should make light of our products, that is no reason why
we should undervalue them ourselves.
Not merely is our larger timber improvidently wasted, but the smaller
kinds, such as blue beech, ironwood or hornbeam, buttonwood or plane
tree, and red and white cedar, are swept away without a thought of their
great marketable value in the Old World.[7]
It seems absolute fatuity to allow this waste of our natural wealth to
go on unheeded. We send our pine across the Atlantic, as if it were the
most valuable wood that we have, instead of being, as it really is,
amongst the most inferior. From our eastern seaports white oak is
shipped in the form of staves chiefly, also some ash, birch and elm. So
far well. But what about the millions of tons of hardwood of all kinds
which we destroy annually for fuel, and which ought to realize, if
exported, four times as many millions of dollars?
Besides the plain, straight-grained timber which we heedlessly burn up
to get it out of the way, there are our ornamental woods--our beautiful
curled and bird's eye maple, our waved ash, our serviceable butternut
or yellow walnut, our comely cherry, and even our exquisite black
walnut, all doomed to the same perdition. Little of this waste would
occur if once the owners of land knew that a market could be got for
their timber. Cheese and butter factories for export, have already
spread over the land--why not furniture factories also? Why not warm
ourselves with the coal of Nova Scotia, of Manitoba, and, by-and-by, of
the Saskatchewan, and spare our forest treasures for nobler uses? Would
not this whole question be a fitting subject for the appointment of a
competent parliamentary commission?
To me these reflections are not the birth of to-day, but date from my
bush residence in the township of Nottawasaga. If I should succeed now
in bringing them effectively before my fellow Canadians ere it is too
late, I shall feel that I have neither thought nor written in vain.
[Footnote 7: I have myself, when a youth, sold red cedar in London at
sixpence sterling per square foot, inch thick. Lime (or basswood) was
sold at twopence, and ash and beech at about the same price. White or
yellow pine was then worth one penny, or just half the value of
basswood. These are retail prices. On referring to the London wholesale
quotations for July 1881, I find these statements fully borne out. It
will be news to most of my readers, that Canadian black birch has been
proved by test, under the authority of the British Admiralty, to be of
greater specific gravity than English oak, and therefore better fitted
for ships' flooring, for which purpose it is now extensively used. Also
for staircases in large mansions.]
CHAPTER XIX.
A MELANCHOLY TALE.
The Scottish settlers in Nottawasaga were respectable, God-fearing, and
though somewhat stern in their manners, thoroughly estimable people on
the whole. They married young, had numerous families, and taught their
children at an early age the duties of good citizenship, and the
religious principles of their Presbyterian forefathers.
Among them, not the prettiest certainly, but the most amiable and
beloved, was Flora McDiarmid, a tall, bright-complexioned lass of
twenty, perhaps, who was the chief mainstay of her widowed father, whose
log shanty she kept in perfect order as far as their simple resources
permitted, while she exercised a vigilant watch over her younger
brothers and sisters, and with their assistance contrived to work their
four acre allotment to good advantage.
Wherever there was trouble in the settlement, or mirth afoot, Flora was
sure to be there, nursing the sick, cheering the unhappy, helping to
provide the good things for the simple feast,--she was, in fact, the
life of the somewhat dull and overworked community. Was the minister
from afar to be received with due honour, was the sober church service
to be celebrated in a shanty with becoming propriety--Flora was ever on
hand, at the head of all the other lassies, guiding and directing
everything, and in so kindly and cheerful a way that none thought of
disputing her behests or hesitating at their fulfilment.
Such being the case, no wonder that Malcolm McAlmon and other young
fellows contended for her hand in marriage. But Malcolm won the
preference, and blithely he set to work to build a splendid log shanty,
twenty-five feet square, divided into inner compartments, with windows
and doors, and other unequalled conveniences for domestic comfort new to
the settlement; and when it was ready, and supplied with plenishings of
all kinds, Flora and Malcolm were married amid the rejoicings of the
whole township, and settled quietly down to the steady hard work of a
life in the extreme backwoods, some miles distant from our clearing.
The next thing I heard of them was many months afterwards, when Malcolm
was happy in the expectation of an heir to his two hundred acre lot, in
the ninth or tenth concession of the township. But alas! as time stole
on, accounts were unfavourable, and grew worse and worse. The nearest
professional man lived at Barrie, thirty-four miles distant. A wandering
herb doctor, as he called himself, of the Yankee eclectic school, was
the best who had yet visited the township, and even he was far away at
this time. There were experienced matrons enough in the settlement, but
their skill deserted them, or the case was beyond their ability. And so
poor Flora died, and her infant with her.
The same day her brother John, in deep distress, came to beg us to lend
them pine boards enough to make the poor dead woman a coffin. Except the
pine tree which we had cut down and sawn up, as related already, there
was not a foot of sawn lumber in the settlement, and scarcely a hammer
or a nail either, but what we possessed ourselves. So, being very sorry
for their affliction, I told them they should have the coffin by next
morning; and I set to work myself, made a tolerably handsome box,
stained in black, of the right shape and dimensions, and gave it to them
at the appointed hour. We of course attended the funeral, which was
conducted with due solemnity by the Presbyterian minister
above-mentioned. And never shall I forget the weeping bearers,
staggering under their burthen through tangled brushwood and round
upturned roots and cradle holes, and the long train of mourners
following in their rear, to the chosen grave in the wilderness, where
now I hear stands a small Presbyterian church in the village of
Duntroon.
CHAPTER XX.
FROM BARRIE TO NOTTAWASAGA.
For nearly three years we continued to work on contentedly at our bush
farm. In the summer of 1837, we received intelligence that two of our
sisters were on their way to join us in Canada, and soon afterwards that
they had reached Toronto, and expected to meet us at Barrie on a certain
day. At the same time we learnt that the bridge across the Nottawasaga
river, eleven miles from Barrie, had given way, and was barely passable
on foot, as it lay floating on the water. One of our span of horses had
been killed and his fellow sold, so that we had to hire a team to convey
our sisters' goods from Barrie to the bridge where it was necessary to
meet them with our own ox-team and waggon. I walked to Barrie
accordingly, and found my sisters at Bingham's tavern, very glad to see
me, but in a state of complete bewilderment and some alarm at the rough
ways of the place, then only containing a tavern or two, and some twenty
stores and dwellings. My fustian clothes, which I had made myself, and
considered first-rate, they "laughed at consumedly." My boots! they were
soaked and trod out of all fashionable proportions. Fortunately, other
people in Barrie were nearly as open to criticism as myself, and as we
had to get on our way without loss of time, I forgot my eccentricities
of dress in the rough experiences of the road.
From Barrie to Root's tavern was pleasant travelling, the day being fine
and the road fairly good. We took some rest and refreshment there, and
started again, but had not gone two miles before a serious misfortune
befel us. I have mentioned corduroy-bridges before; one of these had
been thrown across a beautifully clear white-paved streamlet known to
travellers on this road as "sweet-water." The waggon was heavily laden
with chests and other luggage, and the horses not being very strong,
found it beyond their power to drag the load across the bridge on
account of its steepness. Alarmed for my eldest sister, who was riding,
I persuaded her to descend and walk on. Again and again, the teamster
whipped his horses, and again and again, after they had almost scaled
the crest, the weight of the load dragged them backward. I wanted to
lighten the load, but the man said it was needless, and bade me block
the wheels with a piece of broken branch lying near, which I did; the
next moment I was petrified to see the waggon overbalance itself and
fall sideways into the stream seven or eight feet beneath, dragging the
horses over with it, their forefeet clinging to the bridge and their
hind feet entangled amongst the spokes of the wheels below.
My elder sister had gone on. The younger bravely caught the horses'
heads and held them by main force to quiet their struggles, while the
man and I got out an axe, cut the spokes of the wheels, and so in a few
minutes got the horses on to firm ground, where they stood panting and
terrified for some minutes. Meanwhile, to get the heavy sea-boxes out of
the water and carry them up the face of a nearly perpendicular bank,
then get up the waggon and reload it, was no easy task, but was
accomplished at last.
The teamster, being afraid of injury to his horses' legs, at first
refused to go further on the road. However, they had suffered no harm;
and we finished our journey to the bridge where my brother awaited us.
Here the unlucky boxes had to be carried across loose floating logs, and
loaded on to the ox-waggon, which ended our hard work for that day.
Two days longer were we slowly travelling through Sunnidale and into
Nottawasaga, spending each night at some friendly settler's shanty, and
so lightening the fatigues of the way.
CHAPTER XXI.
FAREWELL TO THE BACKWOODS.
My sisters had come into the woods fresh from the lovely village of
Epsom, in Surrey, and accustomed to all the comforts of English life.
Their consternation at the rudeness of the accommodations which we had
considered rather luxurious than otherwise, dispelled all our illusions,
and made us think seriously of moving nearer to Toronto. I was the first
to feel the need of change, and as I had occasionally walked ninety
miles to the city, to draw money for our road contracts, and the same
distance back again, and had gained some friends there, it took me very
little time to make up my mind. My brothers and sisters remained
throughout the following winter, and then removed to a rented farm at
Bradford.
Not that the bush has ever lost its charms for me. I still delight to
escape thither, to roam at large, admiring the stately trees with their
graceful outlines of varied foliage, seeking in their delicious shade
for ferns and all kinds of wild plants, forgetting the turmoil and
anxieties of the business world, and wishing I could leave it behind for
ever and aye. In some such mood it was that I wrote--
"COME TO THE WOODS."[8]
Come to the woods--the dark old woods,
Where our life is blithe and free;
No thought of sorrow or strife intrudes
Beneath the wild woodland tree.
Our wigwam is raised with skill and care
In some quiet forest nook;
Our healthful fare is of ven'son rare,
Our draught from the crystal brook.
In summer we trap the beaver shy,
In winter we chase the deer,
And, summer or winter, our days pass by
In honest and hearty cheer.
And when at the last we fall asleep
On mother earth's ancient breast,
The forest-dirge deep shall o'er us sweep,
And lull us to peaceful rest.
[Footnote 8: These lines were set to music by the late J. P. Clarke,
Mus. Bac. of Toronto University, in his "Songs of Canada."]
CHAPTER XXII.
A JOURNEY TO TORONTO.
To make my narrative intelligible to those who are not familiar with the
times of which I am about to write, I must revert briefly to the year
1834. During that year I made my first business visit to Toronto, then
newly erected into a city. As the journey may be taken as a fair
specimen of our facilities for travelling in those days, I shall
describe it.
I left our shanty in Sunnidale in the bright early morning, equipped
only with an umbrella and a blue bag, such as is usually carried by
lawyers, containing some articles of clothing. The first three or four
miles of the road lay over felled trees cut into logs, but not hauled
out of the way. To step or jump over these logs every few feet may be
amusing enough by way of sport, but it becomes not a little tiresome
when repeated mile after mile, with scarcely any intermission, and
without the stimulus of companionship. After getting into a better
cleared road, the chief difficulty lay with the imperfectly "stubbed"
underbrush and the frequency of cradle-holes--that is, hollows caused by
up-turned roots--in roughly timbered land. This kind of travelling
continued till mid-day, when I got a substantial dinner and a boisterous
welcome from my old friend Root and his family. He had a pretty little
daughter by this time.
An hour's rest, and an easy walk of seven miles to Barrie, were pleasant
enough, in spite of stumps and hollows. At Barrie I met with more
friends, who would have had me remain there for the night; but time was
too valuable. So on I trudged, skirting round the sandy beach of
beautiful Kempenfeldt Bay, and into the thick dark woods of Innisfil,
where the road was a mere brushed track, easily missed in the twilight,
and very muddy from recent rains. Making all the expedition in my power,
I sped on towards Clement's tavern, then the only hostelry between
Barrie and Bradford, and situated close to the height of land whence
arise, in a single field, the sources of various streams flowing into
the Nottawasaga, the Holland, and the Credit Rivers. But rain came on,
and the road became a succession of water-holes so deep that I all but
lost my boots, and, moreover, it was so dark that it was impossible to
walk along logs laid by the roadside, which was the local custom in
daylight.
I felt myself in a dilemma. To go forward or backward seemed equally
unpromising. I had often spent nights in the bush, with or without a
wigwam, and the thought of danger did not occur to me. Suddenly I
recollected that about half a mile back I had passed a newly chopped and
partially-logged clearing, and that there might possibly be workmen
still about. So I returned to the place, and shouted for assistance; but
no person was within hearing. There was, however, a small log hut, about
six feet square, which the axe-men had roughly put up for protection
from the rain, and in it had left some fire still burning. I was glad
enough to secure even so poor a shelter as this. Everything was wet. I
was without supper, and very tired after thirty miles' walk. But I tried
to make the best of a bad job: collected plenty of half-consumed brands
from the still blazing log-heaps, to keep up some warmth during the
night, and then lay down on the round logs that had been used for seats,
to sleep as best I might.
But this was not to be. At about nine o'clock there arose from the
woods, first a sharp snapping bark, answered by a single yelp; then two
or three yells at intervals. Again a silence, lasting perhaps five
minutes. This kept on, the noise increasing in frequency, and coming
nearer and again nearer, until it became impossible to mistake it for
aught but the howling of wolves. The clearing might be five or six
acres. Scattered over it were partially or wholly burnt log heaps. I
knew that wolves would not be likely to venture amongst the fires, and
that I was practically safe. But the position was not pleasant, and I
should have preferred a bed at Clement's, as a matter of choice. I,
however, kept up my fire very assiduously, and the evil brutes continued
their concert of fiendish discords--sometimes remaining silent for a
time, and anon bursting into a full chorus _fortissimo_--for many long,
long hours, until the glad beams of morning peeped through the trees,
and the sky grew brighter and brighter; when the wolves ceased their
serenade, and I fell fast asleep, with my damp umbrella for a pillow.
With the advancing day, I awoke, stiffened in every joint, and very
hungry. A few minutes' walk on my road showed me a distant opening in
the woods, towards which I hastened, and found a new shanty, inhabited
by a good-natured settler and his family, from whom I got some
breakfast, for which they would accept nothing but thanks. They had
lately been much troubled, they said, with wolves about their cattle
sheds at night.
From thence I proceeded to Bradford, fifteen miles, by a road interlaced
with pine roots, with deep water-holes between, and so desperately
rugged as to defy any wheeled vehicle but an ox-cart to struggle over
it. Here my troubles ended for the present. Mr. Thomas Drury, of that
village, had been in partnership with a cousin of my own, as brewers,
at Mile End, London. His hospitable reception, and a good night's
repose, made me forget previous discomforts, and I went on my way next
morning with a light heart, carrying with me a letter of introduction to
a man of whom I had occasionally heard in the bush, one William Lyon
Mackenzie.
The day's journey by way of Yonge Street was easily accomplished by
stage--an old-fashioned conveyance enough, swung on leather straps, and
subject to tremendous jerks from loose stones on the rough road,
innocent of Macadam, and full of the deepest ruts. A fellow-passenger,
by way of encouragement, told me how an old man, a few weeks before, had
been jolted so violently against the roof, as to leave marks of his
blood there, which, being not uncommon, were left unheeded for days. My
friend advised me to keep on my hat, which I had laid aside on account
of the heat of the day, and I was not slow to adopt the suggestion.
Arrived in town, my first business was to seek out Mr. William Hawkins,
well-known in those days as an eminent provincial land surveyor. I found
him at a house on the south side of Newgate (now Adelaide) street, two
or three doors west of Bay Street. He was living as a private boarder
with an English family; and, at his friendly intercession, I was
admitted to the same privilege. The home was that of Mr. H. C. Todd,
with his wife and two sons. With them, I continued to reside as often
as I visited Toronto, and for long after I became a citizen. That I
spent there many happy days, among kind and considerate friends, numbers
of my readers will be well assured when I mention, that the two boys
were Alfred and Alpheus Todd, the one loved and lamented as the late
Clerk of Committees in the Canadian House of Commons--the other widely
known in Europe and America, as the late Librarian of the Dominion
Parliament.
My stay in Toronto on that occasion was very brief. To wait upon the
Chief Emigrant Agent for instructions about road-making in Sunnidale; to
make a few small purchases of clothing and tea; and to start back again,
without loss of time, were matters of course. One thing, however, I
found time to do, which had more bearing upon this narrative, and that
was, to present Mr. Drury's letter of introduction to William L.
Mackenzie, M. P. P., at his printing-office on Hospital Street. I had
often seen copies, in the bush, of the _Colonial Advocate_, as well as
of the _Courier_ and _Gazette_ newspapers, but had the faintest possible
idea of Canadian politics. The letter was from one whose hospitality
Mackenzie had experienced for weeks in London, and consequently I felt
certain of a courteous reception. Without descending from the high stool
he used at his desk, he received the letter, read it, looked at me
frigidly, and said in his singular, harsh Dundee dialect: "We must look
after our own people before doing anything for strangers." Mr. Drury had
told him that I wished to know if there were any opening for
proof-readers in Toronto. I was not a little surprised to find myself
ostracized as a stranger in a British colony, but, having other views,
thought no more of the circumstance at the time.
This reminds me of another characteristic anecdote of Mackenzie, which
was related to me by one who was on the spot where it happened. In 1820,
on his first arrival in Montreal from Scotland, he got an engagement as
chain-bearer on the survey of the Lachine canal. A few days afterwards,
the surveying party, as usual at noon, sat down on a grassy bank to eat
their dinner. They had been thus occupied for half an hour, and were
getting ready for a smoke, when the new chain-bearer suddenly jumped up
with an exclamation, "Now, boys, time for work! we mustn't waste the
government money!" The consequence of which ill-timed outburst was his
prompt dismissal from the service.
CHAPTER XXIII.
SOME GLIMPSES OF UPPER CANADIAN POLITICS.
In the course of the years 1835, '6 and '7, I made many journeys to
Toronto, sometimes wholly on foot, sometimes partly by steamboat and
stage. I became very intimate with the Todd family and connections,
which included Mrs. Todd's brother, William P. Patrick, then, and long
afterwards, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly; his brother-in-law, Dr.
Thomas D. Morrison, M. P. P.; Thomas Vaux, Accountant of the
Legislature; Caleb Hopkins, M. P. P., for Halton; William H. Doel,
brewer; William C. Keele, attorney, and their families. Nearly all these
persons were, or had been, zealous admirers of Wm. L. Mackenzie's
political course. And the same thing must be said of my friend Mr.
Drury, of Bradford; his sister married Edward Henderson, merchant
tailor, of King Street west, whose father, E. T. Henderson, was well
known amongst Mackenzie's supporters. It was his cottage on Yonge Street
(near what is now Gloucester Street), at which the leaders of the
popular party used often to meet in council. The house stood in an
orchard, well fenced, and was then very rural and secluded from
observation.
Amongst all these really estimable people, and at their houses, nothing
of course was heard disparaging to the Reformers of that day, and their
active leader. My own political prejudices also were in his favour. And
so matters went on until the arrival, in 1835, of Sir Francis Bond Head,
as Lieutenant-Governor, when we, in the bush, began to hear of violent
struggles between the House of Assembly on the one side, and the
Lieutenant-Governor supported by the Legislative Council on the other.
Each political party, by turns, had had its successes and reverses at
the polls. In 1825, the majority of the Assembly was Tory; in 1826, and
for several years afterwards, a Reform majority was elected; in 1831,
again, Toryism was successful; in 1835, the balance veered over to the
popular side once more, by a majority only of four. This majority, led
by Mackenzie, refused to pass the supplies; whereupon, Sir Francis
appealed to the people by dissolving the Parliament.
What were the precise grounds of difference in principle between the
opposing parties, did not very clearly appear to us in the bush. Sir
Francis Head had no power to grant "Responsible Government," as it has
since been interpreted. On each side there were friends and opponents of
that system. Among Tories, Ogle R. Gowan, Charles Fothergill, and
others, advocated a responsible ministry, and were loud in their
denunciations of the "Family Compact." On the Reform side were ranged
such men as Marshall S. Bidwell and Dr. Rolph, who preferred American
Republicanism, in which "Responsible Government" was and is utterly
unknown. We consequently found it hard to understand the party cries of
the day. But we began to perceive that there was a Republican bias on
one hand, contending with a Monarchical leaning on the other; and we had
come to Canada, as had most well-informed immigrants, expressly to avoid
the evils of Republicanism, and to preserve our British constitutional
heritage intact.
When therefore Sir Francis Head threw himself with great energy into the
electoral arena, when he bade the foes of the Empire "come if they
dare!" when he called upon the "United Empire Loyalists,"--men, who in
1770 had thrown away their all, rather than accept an alien rule--to
vindicate once more their right to choose whom they would follow, King
or President--when he traversed the length and breadth of the land,
making himself at home in the farm-houses, and calling upon fathers and
husbands and sons to stand up for their hearths, and their old
traditions of honour and fealty to the Crown, it would have been strange
indeed had he failed.
The next House of Assembly, elected in 1837, contained a majority of
twenty-six to fourteen in favour of Sir F. B. Head's policy. This
precipitated matters. Had Mackenzie been capable of enduring defeat with
a good grace; had he restrained his natural irritability of temper, and
kept his skirts cautiously clear of all contact with men of Republican
aspirations, he might and probably would have recovered his position as
a parliamentary leader, and died an honoured and very likely even a
titled veteran! But he became frantic with choler and disappointment,
and rushed headlong into the most passionate extremes, which ended in
making him a mere cat's-paw in the hands of cunning schemers, who did
not fail, after their manner, to disavow their own handiwork when it had
ceased to serve their purposes.
CHAPTER XXIV.
TORONTO DURING THE REBELLION.
In November, 1837, I had travelled to Toronto for the purpose of seeking
permanent employment in the city, and meant to return in the first week
of December, to spend my last Christmas in the woods. But the fates and
William Lyon Mackenzie had decided otherwise. I was staying for a few
days with my friend Joseph Heughen, the London hairdresser mentioned as
a fellow-passenger on board the _Asia_, whose name must be familiar to
most Toronto citizens of that day. His shop was near Ridout's
hardware-store, on King Street, at the corner of Yonge Street. On
Sunday, the 3rd, we heard that armed men were assembling at the Holland
Landing and Newmarket to attack the city, and that lists of houses to be
burned by them were in the hands of their leaders; that Samuel Lount,
blacksmith, had been manufacturing pikes at the Landing for their use;
that two or three persons had been warned by friends in the secret to
sell their houses, or to leave the city, or to look for startling
changes of some sort. Then it was known that a quantity of arms and a
couple of cannon were being brought from the garrison, and stored in the
covered way under the old City Hall. Every idle report was eagerly
caught up, and magnified a hundred-fold. But the burthen of all
invariably was, an expected invasion by the Yankees to drive all
loyalists from Canada. In this way rumour followed rumour, all business
ceased, and everybody listened anxiously for the next alarm. At length
it came in earnest. At eleven o'clock on Monday night, the 4th of
December, every bell in the city was set ringing, occasional gun-shots
were fired, by accident as it turned out, but none the less startling to
nervous people; a confused murmur arose in the streets, becoming louder
every minute; presently the sound of a horse's hoofs was heard, echoing
loudly along Yonge Street. With others I hurried out, and found at
Ridout's corner a horseman, who proved to be Alderman John Powell, who
told his breathless listeners, how he had been stopped beyond the Yonge
Street toll-gate, two miles out, by Mackenzie and Anderson at the head
of a number of rebels in arms; how he had shot Anderson and missed
Mackenzie; how he had dodged behind a log when pursued; and had finally
got into town by the College Avenue.
There was but little sleep in Toronto that night, and next day
everything was uproar and excitement, heightened by the news that Col.
Moodie, of Richmond Hill, a retired officer of the army, who was
determined to force his way through the armed bodies of rebels, to bring
tidings of the rising to the Government in Toronto, had been shot down
and inhumanly left to bleed to death at Montgomery's tavern. The flames
and smoke from Dr. Horne's house at Rosedale, were visible all over the
city; it had been fired in the presence of Mackenzie in person, in
retaliation, it was said, for the refusal of discount by the Bank of
Upper Canada, of which Dr. Horne was teller. The ruins of the
still-burning building were visited by hundreds of citizens, and added
greatly to the excitement and exasperation of the hour. By-and-by it
became known that Mr. Robert Baldwin and Dr. John Rolph had been sent,
with a flag of truce, to learn the wants of the insurgents. Many
citizens accompanied the party at a little distance. A flag of truce was
in itself a delightful novelty, and the street urchins cheered
vociferously, scudding away at the smallest alarm. Arrived at the
toll-gate, there were waiting outside Mackenzie, Lount, Gibson, Fletcher
and other leaders, with a couple of hundred of their men. In reply to
the Lieutenant-Governor's message of inquiry, as to what was wanted, the
answer was, "Independence, and a convention to arrange details," which
rather compendious demand, being reported to Sir Francis, was at once
rejected. So there was nothing for it but to fight.
Mackenzie did his best to induce his men to advance on the city that
evening; but as most of his followers had been led to expect that there
would be no resistance, and no bloodshed, they were shocked and
discouraged by Col. Moodie's death, as well as by those of Anderson and
one or two others. A picket of volunteers under Col. Jarvis, fired on
them, when not far within the toll-gate, killing one and wounding two
others, and retired still firing. After this the insurgents lost all
confidence, and even threatened to shoot Mackenzie himself, for
reproaching them with cowardice. A farmer living by the roadside told me
at the time, that while a detachment of rebels were marching southwards
down the hill, since known as Mount Pleasant, they saw a waggon-load of
cordwood standing on the opposite rise, and supposing it to be a piece
of artillery loaded to the muzzle with grape or canister, these brave
warriors leaped the fences right and left like squirrels, and could by
no effort of their officers be induced again to advance.
By this time the principal buildings in the city--the City Hall, Upper
Canada Bank, the Parliament Buildings, Osgoode Hall, Government House,
the Canada Company's office, and many private dwellings and shops, were
put in a state of defence by barricading the windows and doors with
two-inch plank, loopholed for musketry; and the city bore a rather
formidable appearance. Arms and ammunition were distributed to all
householders who chose to accept them. I remember well the trepidation
with which my friend Heughen shrank from touching the musket that was
held out for his acceptance; and the outspoken indignation of the
militia sergeant, whose proffer of the firearm was declined. The poor
hairdresser told me afterwards, that many of his customers were rebels,
and that he dreaded the loss of their patronage.
The same evening came Mr. Speaker McNab, with a steamer from Hamilton,
bringing sixty of the "men of Gore." It was an inspiriting thing to see
these fine fellows land on the wharf, bright and fresh from their short
voyage, and full of zeal and loyalty. The ringing cheers they sent forth
were re-echoed with interest by the townsmen. From Scarborough also,
marched in a party of militia, under Captain McLean.
It was on the same day that a lady, still living, was travelling by
stage from Streetsville, on her way through Toronto to Cornwall, having
with her a large trunk of new clothing prepared for a long visit to her
relatives. Very awkwardly for her, Mackenzie had started, at the head of
a few men, from Yonge Street across to Dundas Street, to stop the stage
and capture the mails, so as to intercept news of Dr. Duncombe's rising
in the London District. Not content with seizing the mail-bags and all
the money they contained, Mackenzie himself, pistol in hand, demanded
the surrender of the poor woman's portmanteau, and carried it off
bodily. It was asserted at the time that he only succeeded in evading
capture a few days after, at Oakville, by disguising himself in woman's
clothes, which may explain his raid upon the lady's wardrobe; for which,
I believe, she failed to get any compensation whatsoever under the
Rebellion Losses Act. This lady afterwards became the wife of John F.
Rogers, who was my partner in business for several subsequent years.
In the course of the next day, Wednesday, parties of men arrived from
Niagara, Hamilton, Oakville, Port Credit and other places in greater or
less numbers--many of them Orangemen, delighted with their new
occupation. The Lieutenant-Governor was thus enabled to vacate the City
Hall and take up his headquarters in the Parliament Buildings; and
before night as many as fifteen hundred volunteers were armed and
partially drilled. Among them were a number of Mackenzie's former
supporters, with their sons and relatives, now thoroughly ashamed of the
man, and utterly alienated by his declared republicanism.
Next morning followed the "Battle of Gallows Hill," or, as it might more
fitly be styled, the "Skirmish of Montgomery's Farm." Being a stranger
in the city, I had not then formally volunteered, but took upon myself
to accompany the advancing force, on the chance of finding something to
do, either as a volunteer or a newspaper correspondent, should an
opening occur. The main body, led by Sir Francis himself, with Colonels
Fitzgibbon and McNab as Adjutants, marched by Yonge Street, and
consisted of six hundred men with two guns; while two other bodies, of
two hundred and a hundred and twenty men, respectively, headed by
Colonels W. Chisholm and S. P. Jarvis, advanced by bye-roads and fields
on the east and on the west of Yonge Street. Nothing was seen of the
enemy till within half-a-mile of Montgomery's tavern. The road was there
bordered on the west side by pine woods, from whence dropping
rifle-shots began to be heard, which were answered by the louder muskets
of the militia. Presently our artillery opened their hoarse throats, and
the woods rang with strong reverberations. Splinters were dashed from
the trees, threatening, and I believe causing worse mischief than the
shots themselves. It is said that this kind of skirmishing continued
for half-an-hour--to me it seemed but a few minutes. As the militia
advanced, their opponents melted away. Parties of volunteers dashed over
the fences and into the woods, shouting and firing as they ran. Two or
three wounded men of both parties were lifted tenderly into carts and
sent off to the city to be placed in hospital. Others lay bleeding by
the road-side--rebels by their rustic clothing; their wounds were bound
up, and they were removed in their turn. Soon a movement was visible
through the smoke, on the hill fronting the tavern, where some tall
pines were then standing. I could see there two or three hundred men,
now firing irregularly at the advancing loyalists; now swaying to and
fro without any apparent design. Some horsemen were among them, who
seemed to act more as scouts than as leaders.
We had by this time arrived within cannon shot of the tavern itself. Two
or three balls were seen to strike and pass through it. A crowd of men
rushed from the doors, and scattered wildly in a northerly direction.
Those on the hill wavered, receded under shelter of the undulating land,
and then fled like their fellows. Their horsemen took the side-road
westward, and were pursued, but not in time to prevent their escape. Had
our right and left wings kept pace with the main body, the whole
insurgent force must have been captured.
Sir Francis halted his men opposite the tavern, and gave the word to
demolish the building, by way of a severe lesson to the disaffected.
This was promptly done by firing the furniture in the lower rooms, and
presently thick clouds of smoke and vivid flames burst from doors and
windows. The battalion next moved on to perform the same service at
Gibson's house, several miles further north. Many prisoners were taken
in the pursuit, all of whom Sir Francis released, after admonishing them
to be better subjects in future. The march back to Toronto was very
leisurely executed, several of the mounted officers carrying dead pigs
and geese slung across their saddle-bows as trophies of victory.
Next day, volunteers for the city guard were called for, and among them
I was regularly enrolled and placed under pay, at three shillings and
nine pence per diem. My captain was George Percival Ridout; and his
brother, Joseph D. Ridout, was lieutenant. Our company was duly drilled
at the City Hall, and continued to do duty as long as their services
were required, which was about four months. I have a vivid recollection
of being stationed at the Don Bridge to look out for a second visit from
Peter Matthews's band of rebels, eighty of whom had attempted to burn
the bridge, and succeeded in burning three adjoining houses; also, of
being forgotten and kept there without food or relief throughout a
bitter cold winter's night and morning. Also, of doing duty as sentry
over poor old Colonel Van Egmond, a Dutch officer who had served under
Napoleon I., and who was grievously sick from exposure in the woods and
confinement in gaol, of which he soon afterwards died. Another day, I
was placed, as one of a corporal's guard, in charge of Lesslie's
stationery and drug-store, and found there a saucy little shop-boy who
has since developed into the portly person of Alderman Baxter, now one,
and not the least, of our city notabilities. The guards and the guarded
were on the best of terms. We were treated with much hospitality by Mr.
Joseph Lesslie, late Postmaster of Toronto, and have all been excellent
friends ever since. Our corporal, I ought to say, was Anthony Blachford,
since a well-known and respected citizen.
Those were exciting times in Toronto. The day after the battle, six
hundred men of Simcoe, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dewson, came
marching down Yonge Street, headed by Highland pipers playing the
national pibroch. In their ranks I first saw Hugh Scobie, a stalwart
Scotsman, afterwards widely known as publisher of the _British Colonist_
newspaper. With this party were brought in sixty prisoners, tied to a
long rope, most of whom were afterwards released on parole.
A day or two afterwards, entered the volunteers from the Newcastle
District, who had marched the whole distance from Brockville, under the
command, I think, of Lieutenant-Colonel Ogle R. Gowan. They were a fine
body of men, and in the highest spirits at the prospect of a fight with
the young Queen Victoria's enemies.
A great sensation was created when the leaders who had been arrested
after the battle, Dr. Thomas D. Morrison, John G. Parker, and two
others, preceded by a loaded cannon pointed towards the prisoners, were
marched along King Street to the Common Jail, which is the same building
now occupied as York Chambers, at the corner of Toronto and Court
Streets. The Court House stood, and still stands, converted into shops
and offices, on Church Street; between the two was an open common which
was used in those days as the place of public executions. It was here
that, on the 12th of April following, I witnessed, with great sorrow,
the execution by hanging of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews, two of the
principal rebel leaders.
Sir F. B. Head had then left the Province.
* * * * *
The following narrative of circumstances which occurred during the time
when Mackenzie was in command of the rebel force on Yonge Street, has
been kindly communicated to me by a gentleman, who, as a young lad, was
personally cognizant of the facts described. It has, I believe, never
been published, and will interest many of my readers:
"It was on Monday morning, the 5th of December, 1837, when
rumours of the disturbances that had broken out in Lower Canada
were causing great excitement throughout the Home District, that
the late James S. Howard's servant-man, named Bolton, went into
his master's bed-room and asked if Mr. H. had heard shots fired
during the night. He replied that he had not, and told the man
to go down to the street and find out what was the matter.
Bolton returned shortly with the news, that a man named Anderson
had been shot at the foot of the hill, and that his body was
lying in a house near by. Shortly after came the startling
report of the death of poor Col. Moodie, which was a great shock
to Mrs. Howard, who knew him well, and was herself a native of
Fredericton, where the Colonel's regiment (the old Hundred and
Fourth) had been raised during the war of 1812. Mr. Howard
immediately ordered his carriage, and started for the city, from
whence he did not return for ten days. About nine o'clock, a man
named Pool, who held the rank of captain in the rebel army,
called at Mr. Howard's house, to ask if Anderson's body was
there. Being told where it was said to be, he turned and went
away. Immediately afterwards, the first detachment of the rebel
army came in sight, consisting of some fifteen or twenty men,
who drew up on the lawn in front of the house. Presently, at the
word of command they wheeled round and went away in search of
the dead rebel. Next came three or four men (loyalists) hurrying
down the road, who said that there were five hundred rebels
behind them. Then was heard the report of fire arms, and anon
more armed men showed themselves along the brow of Gallows Hill,
and took up ground near the present residence of Mr. Hooper.
About eleven o'clock, another detachment appeared, headed by a
man on a small white horse, almost a pony, who turned out to be
the commander-in-chief, Mackenzie himself. He wore a great coat
buttoned up to the chin, and presented the appearance of being
stuffed. In talking among themselves, the men intimated that he
had on a great many coats, as if to make himself bullet proof.
To enable the man on the white pony to enter the lawn, his men
wrenched off the fence boards; he entered the house without
knocking, took possession of the sitting room where Mrs. and
Miss Howard and her brother were sitting, and ordered dinner to
be got ready for fifty men. Utterly astonished at such a demand,
Mrs. Howard said she could do nothing of the kind. After abusing
Mr. Howard for some time--who had incurred his dislike by
refusing him special privileges at the Post Office--Mackenzie
said Howard had held his office long enough, and that it was
time somebody else had it. Mrs. Howard at length referred him to
the servant in the kitchen; which hint he took, and went to see
about dinner himself. There happened to be a large iron
sugar-kettle, in which was boiling a sheep killed by dogs
shortly before. This they emptied, and refilled with beef from a
barrel in the cellar. A baking of bread just made was also
confiscated, and cut up by a tall thin man, named Eckhardt, from
Markham. While these preparations were going on, other men were
busy in the tool house mending their arms, which consisted of
all sorts of weapons, from chisels and gouges fixed on poles, to
hatchets, knives and guns of all descriptions. About two o'clock
there was a regular stampede, and the family were left quite
alone, much to their relief; with the exception of a young
Highland Scotchman mounting guard. He must have been a recent
arrival from the old country, as he wore the blue jacket and
trowsers of the sea-faring men of the western isles. Mrs. Howard
seeing all the rest had left, went out to speak to him, saying
she regretted to see so fine a young Scotchman turning rebel
against his Queen. His answer was, "Country first, Queen next."
He told her that it was the flag of truce which had called his
comrades away. About half-past three they all returned, headed
by the commander-in-chief, who demanded of Mrs. Howard whether
the dinner he had ordered was ready? She said it was just as
they had left it. Irritated at her coolness he got very angry,
shook his horse-whip, pulled her from her chair to the window,
bidding her look out and be thankful that her own house was not
in the same state. He pointed to Dr. Horne's house at Blue Hill,
on the east side of the road, which during his absence he had
set on fire, much to the disappointment of his men, whom, though
very hungry, he would not allow to touch anything, but burnt all
up. There was considerable grumbling among the men about it.
Poor Lount, who was with them, told Mrs. Howard not to mind
Mackenzie, but to give them all they wanted, and they would not
harm her. They got through their dinner about dusk, and returned
to the lawn, where they had some barrels of whiskey. They kept
up a regular--or rather an irregular firing all night. The
family were much alarmed, having only one servant woman with
them; the man Bolton had escaped for fear as he said of being
taken prisoner by the rebels. There the men remained until
Wednesday, when they returned to Montgomery's tavern, a mile or
two up the street, where is now the village of Eglinton. About
eleven o'clock in the morning, the loyalist force marched out to
attack the rebels, who were posted at the Paul Pry Inn, on the
east side of the road, with their main body at Montgomery's,
some distance further north. It was a very fine sunny day, and
the loyalists made a formidable appearance, as the sun shone on
their bright musket-barrels and bayonets. The first shot fired
was from the artillery, under the command of Captain Craig; it
went through the Paul Pry under the eaves and out of the roof.
The rebels took to the woods on each side of the road, which at
that time were much nearer than at present. Thomas Bell, who had
charge of a company of volunteers, said that on the morning of
the battle, a stranger asked leave to accompany him. The man
wore a long beard, and was rumoured to have been one of
Napoleon's officers. Mr. Bell saw him take aim at one of the
retreating rebels, who was crouching behind a stump, firing at
the loyalists. Nothing could be seen but the top of his head.
The stranger fired with fatal effect. The dead man turned out to
be a farmer of the name of Widman, from Whitchurch. Montgomery's
tavern, a large building on the hill-side of the road, was next
attacked, and was quickly evacuated by the flying rebels, who
got into the woods to the west and dispersed. It was then that
Mackenzie made his escape. The tavern having been the rebel
head-quarters, and the place from which Col. Moodie was shot,
was set on fire and burned down. The house of Gibson, another
rebel rendezvous, about eight miles north, was also burnt. With
that small effort the rebellion in Upper Canada was crushed. A
few days after, some fifty or sixty rebel prisoners from about
Sharon and Lloydtown, were marched down to the city, roped
together, two and two in a long string; and shortly afterwards a
volunteer corps--commanded by Colonels Hill and Dewson, raised
amongst the log-cabin settlers, in the County of Simcoe, came
down in sleighs to the city, where they did duty all winter. It
was an extraordinary fact, that these poor settlers, living in
contentment in their log-cabins, with their potato patches
around, should turn out and put down a rebellion, originated
among old settlers and wealthy farmers in the prosperous County
of York. Mackenzie early lost the sympathies of a great
proportion of his followers. One of them, named Jacob Kurtz,
swore most lustily, the same winter, that if he could catch his
old leader he would shoot him. While retreating eastward, a
party of the rebels attempted to burn the Don Bridge, and would
have succeeded, but for the determined efforts of a Mrs. Ross,
who put out the fire, at the expense of a bullet in her knee;
the ball was extracted by the late Dr. Widmer, who was very
popular about Yorkville and the east end of the city."
CHAPTER XXV.
THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED.
It is now forty-five years since the last act of the rebellion was
consummated, by the defeat of Duncombe's party in the London district,
the punishment of Sutherland's brigands at Windsor, and the destruction
of the steamer _Caroline_ and dispersal of the discreditable ruffians,
of whom their "president," Mackenzie, was heartily sick, at Navy Island.
None of these events came within my own observation, and I pass them by
without special remark.
But respecting Sir Francis Bond Head and his antagonist, I feel that
more should be said, in justice to both. It is eminently unfair to
censure Sir Francis for not doing that which he was not commissioned to
do. Even so thorough a Reformer and so just a man as Earl Russell, had
failed to see the advisability of extending "responsible government" to
any of Her Majesty's Colonies. Up to the time of Lord Durham's report in
1839, no such proposal had been even mooted; and it appears to have been
the general opinion of British statesmen, at the date of Sir Francis
Head's appointment, that to give a responsible ministry to Canada was
equivalent to offering her independence. In taking it for granted that
Canadians as a whole were unfit to have conferred on them the same
rights of self-government as were possessed by Englishmen, Irishmen and
Scotchmen in the old country, consisted the original error. This error,
however, Sir Francis shared with the Colonial Office and both Houses of
the Imperial Parliament. Since those days the mistake has been admitted,
and not Canada alone, but the Australian colonies and South Africa have
profited by our advancement in self-government.
As for Sir Francis's personal character, even Mackenzie's biographer
allows that he was frank, kindly and generous in an unusual degree. That
he won the entire esteem of so many men of whom all Canadians of
whatever party are proud--such men as Chief Justice Robinson, Bishop
Strachan, Chief Justices Macaulay, Draper and McLean, Sir Allan N.
McNab, Messrs. Henry Ruttan, Mahlon Burwell, Jno. W. Gamble and many
others, I hold to be indubitable proof of his high qualities and honest
intentions. Nobody can doubt that had he been sent here to carry out
responsible government, he would have done it zealously and honourably.
But he was sent to oppose it, and, in opposing it, he simply did his
duty.
A gentleman[9] well qualified to judge, and who knew him personally, has
favoured me with the following remarks apropos of the subject, which I
have pleasure in laying before my readers:
"As a boy, I had a sincere admiration for his [Sir Francis's]
devoted loyalty, and genuine English character; and I have since
learnt to respect and appreciate with greater discrimination his
great services to the Crown and Empire. He was a little Quixotic
perhaps. He had a marked individuality of his own. But he was as
true as steel, and most staunch to British law and British
principle in the trying days of his administration in Canada.
His loyalty was chivalrous and magnetic; by his enlightened
enthusiasm in a good cause he evoked a true spirit of loyalty in
Upper Canada, that had well-nigh become extinct, being overlaid
with the spirit of ultra-radicalism that had for years
previously got uppermost among our people. But Upper Canada
loyalty had a deep and solid foundation in the patriotism of the
U. E. Loyalists, a noble race who had proved by deeds, not
words, their attachment to the Crown and government of the
mother land. These U. E. Loyalists were the true founders of
Upper Canada; and they were forefathers of whom we may be justly
proud--themselves 'honouring the father and the mother'--their
sovereign and the institutions under which they were born--they
did literally obtain the promised reward of that 'first
commandment with promise,' viz.: length of days and honour."
* * * * *
William Lyon Mackenzie was principally remarkable for his indomitable
perseverance and unhesitating self-reliance. Of toleration for other
men's opinions, he seems to have had none. He did, or strove to do,
whatsoever he himself thought right, and those who differed with him he
denounced in the most unmeasured terms. For example, writing of the
Imperial Government in 1837, he says:
"Small cause have Highlanders and the descendants of Highlanders
to feel a friendship for the Guelphic family. If the Stuarts had
their faults, they never enforced loyalty in the glens and
valleys of the north by banishing and extirpating the people; it
was reserved for the Brunswickers to give, as a sequel to the
massacre of Glencoe, the cruel order for depopulation. I am
proud of my descent from a rebel race; who held borrowed
chieftains, a scrip nobility, rag money and national debt in
abomination. . . . Words cannot express my contempt at
witnessing the servile, crouching attitude of the country of my
choice. If the people felt as I feel, there is never a Grant or
Glenelg who crossed the Tay and Tweed to exchange high-born
Highland poverty for substantial Lowland wealth, who would dare
to insult Upper Canada with the official presence, as its ruler,
of such an equivocal character as this Mr. what do they call
him--Francis Bond Head."
Had Mackenzie confined himself to this kind of vituperation, all might
have gone well for him, and for his followers. People would only have
laughed at his vehemence. The advocacy of the principle of responsible
government in Canada would have been and was taken up by Orangemen, U.
E. Loyalists, and other known Tories. Ever since the day when the
manufacture of even a hob-nail in the American colonies was declared by
English statesmen to be intolerable, the struggle has gone on for
colonial equality as against imperial centralization. The final adoption
of the theory of ministerial responsibility by all political parties in
Canada, is Mackenzie's best justification.
But he sold himself in his disappointment to the republican tempter, and
justly paid the penalty. That he felt this himself long before he died,
will be incontestably shown by his own words, which I copy from Mr.
Lindsey's "Life of Mackenzie," vol. ii., page 290:
"After what I have seen here, I frankly confess to you that, had
I passed nine years in the United States before, instead of
after, the outbreak, I am very sure I would have been the last
man in America to be engaged in it."
And, again, page 291:
"A course of careful observations during the last eleven years
has fully satisfied me that, had the violent movements in which
I and many others were engaged on both sides of the Niagara
proved successful, that success would have deeply injured the
people of Canada, whom I then believed I was serving at great
risks; that it would have deprived millions, perhaps, of our own
countrymen in Europe of a home upon this continent, except upon
conditions which, though many hundreds of thousands of
immigrants have been constrained to accept them, are of an
exceedingly onerous and degrading character. . . . There is not
a living man on this continent who more sincerely desires that
British Government in Canada may long continue, and give a home
and a welcome to the old countryman, than myself."
Of Mackenzie's imprisonment and career in the United States, nothing
need be said here. I saw him once more in the Canadian Parliament after
his return from exile, in the year 1858. He was then remarkable for his
good humour, and for his personal independence of party. His chosen
associates were, as it seemed to me, chiefly on the Opposition or
Conservative side of the House.
Before closing this chapter, I cannot help referring to the unfortunate
men who suffered in various ways. They were farmers of the best class,
and of the most simple habits. The poor fellows who lay wounded by the
road side on Yonge Street, were not persons astute enough to discuss
political theories, but feeble creatures who could only shed bitter
tears over their bodily sufferings, and look helplessly for assistance
from their conquerors. There were among them boys of twelve or fifteen
years old, one of whom had been commissioned by his ignorant old mother
at St. Catharines, to be sure and bring her home a check-apron full of
tea from one of the Toronto groceries.
I thought at the time, and I think still, that the Government ought to
have interfered before matters came to a head, and so saved all these
hapless people from the cruel consequences of their leaders' folly. On
the other hand, it is asserted that neither Sir Francis nor his Council
could be brought to credit the probability of an armed rising. A friend
has told me that his father, who was then a member of the Executive
Council, attended a meeting as late as nine o'clock on the 4th December,
1837. That he returned home and retired to rest at eleven. In half an
hour a messenger from Government House came knocking violently at the
door, with the news of the rising; when he jumped out of bed exclaiming,
"I hope Robinson will believe me next time." The Chief Justice had
received with entire incredulity the information laid before the
Council, of the threatened movement that week.
[Footnote 9: The late lamented Dr. Alpheus Todd, librarian of the
Dominion Parliament.]
CHAPTER XXVI.
RESULTS IN THE FUTURE.
Whatever may be thought of Sir Francis B. Head's policy--whether we
prefer to call it mere foolhardiness or chivalric zeal--there can be no
doubt that he served as an effective instrument in the hands of
Providence for the building up of a "Greater Britain" on the American
continent. The success of the outbreak of 1837 could only have ended in
Canada's absorption by the United States, which must surely have proved
a lamentable finale to the grand heroic act of the loyalists of the old
colonies, who came here to preserve what they held to be their duty
alike to their God and their earthly sovereign. It is certain, I think,
that religious principle is the true basis, and the one only safeguard
of Canadian existence. It was the influence of the Anglican, and
especially of the Methodist pastors, of 1770, that led their flocks into
the wilderness to find here a congenial home. In Lower Canada, in 1837,
it was in like manner the influence of the clergy, both Roman Catholic
and Protestant, that defeated Papineau and his Republican followers. And
it is the religious and moral sentiment of Canada, in all her seven
Provinces, that now constitutes the true bond of union between us and
the parent Empire. Only a few years since, the statesmen of the old
country felt no shame in preferring United States amity to Colonial
connection. To-day a British premier openly and even ostentatiously
repudiates any such policy as suicidal.
That Canada possesses, in every sense of the word, a healthier
atmosphere than its Southern neighbour, and that it owes its continued
moral salubrity to the defeat of Mackenzie's allies in 1837-8, I for one
confidently hold--with Mackenzie himself. That this superiority is due
to the greater and more habitual respect paid to all authority--Divine
and secular--I devoutly believe. That our present and future welfare
hangs, as by a thread, upon that one inherent, all-important
characteristic, that we are a religious community, seems to me plain to
all who care to read correctly the signs of the times.
The historian of the future will find in these considerations his best
clue to our existing status in relation to our cousins to the south of
us. He will discover on the one side of the line, peaceful industry,
home affections, unaffected charity, harmless recreations, a general
desire for education, and a sincere reverence for law and authority. On
the other, he may observe a heterogeneous commixture of many races, and
notably of their worst elements; he will see the marriage-tie degraded
into a mockery, the Sabbath-day a scoffing, the house of God a rostrum
or a concert-hall, the law a screen for crime, the judicial bench a
purchasable commodity, the patrimony of the State an asylum for
Mormonism.
I am fully sensible that the United States possesses estimable citizens
in great numbers, who feel, and lament more than anybody else, the
flagrant abuses of her free institutions. But do they exercise any
controlling voice in elections? Do they even hope to influence the
popular vote? They tell us themselves that they are powerless. And
so--we have only to wish them a fairer prospect; and to pray that Canada
may escape the inevitable Nemesis that attends upon great national
faults such as theirs.
CHAPTER XXVII.
A CONFIRMED TORY.
My good friend and host, Henry Cook Todd, was one of the most
uncompromising Tories I ever met with. He might have sat for the
portrait of Mr. Grimwig in "Oliver Twist." Like that celebrated old
gentleman, "his bark was aye waur than his bite." He would pour out a
torrent of scorn and sarcasm upon some luckless object of his
indignation, public or private; and, having exhausted the full vials of
his wrath, would end with some kind act toward, perhaps, the very person
he had been anathematizing, and subside into an amiable mood of
compassion for the weaknesses of erring mankind generally.
He was a graduate of the University of Oxford, and afterwards had charge
of a large private school in one of the English counties. Having
inherited and acquired a moderate competency, he retired into private
life; but later on he lost by the failure of companies wherein his
savings had been invested. He then commenced business as a bookseller,
did not succeed, and finally decided, at the persuasion of his wife's
brother, Mr. William P. Patrick, of Toronto, to emigrate to Canada.
Having first satisfied himself of the prudence of the step, by a tour in
the United States and Canada, he sent for his family, who arrived here
in 1833.
His two sons, Alfred and Alpheus, got the full benefit of their father's
classical attainments, and were kept closely to their studies. At an
early age, their uncle Patrick took charge of their interests, and
placed them about him in the Legislative Assembly, where I recollect to
have seen one or both of them, in the capacity of pages, on the floor of
the House. From that lowly position, step by step, they worked their
way, as we have seen, to the very summit of their respective
departments.
Mr. Todd was also an accomplished amateur artist, and drew exquisitely.
An etching of the interior of Winchester Cathedral, by him, I have never
seen surpassed.
He was fond of retirement and of antiquarian reading, and, while engaged
in some learned philological investigation, would shut himself up in his
peculiar sanctum and remain invisible for days, even to his own family.
Between the years 1833 and 1840, Mr. Todd published a book, entitled
"Notes on Canada and the United States," and I cannot better illustrate
his peculiar habits of thought, and mode of expressing them, than by
quoting two or three brief passages from that work, and from "Addenda"
which I printed for him myself, in 1840:
"As an acidulated mixture with the purest element will embitter
its sweetness, so vice and impurity imported to any country must
corrupt and debase it. To this hour, when plunderers no longer
feel secure in the scenes of their misdeeds, or culprits would
evade the strong arm of the law, to what country do they escape?
America--for here, if not positively welcomed (?), they are, at
least, safe. If it be asked, did not ancient Rome do the same
thing? I answer, slightly so, whilst yet an infant, but never in
any shape afterwards; but America, by still receiving, and with
open arms, the vicious and the vile from all corners of the
earth, does so in her full growth. As she therefore plants, so
must she also reap.
* * * "The Episcopal clergy in this country [United States] were
originally supported by an annual contribution of tobacco, each
male, so tithable, paying 40lbs.; the regular clergy of the then
thinly-settled state of Virginia receiving 16,000 lbs. yearly as
salary. In Canada they are maintained by an assignment of lands
from the Crown, which moreover extends its assistance to
ministers of other denominations; so that the people are not
called upon to contribute for that or any similar purpose; and
yet, such is the deplorable abandonment to error, and obstinate
perversion of fact, amongst the low or radical party here--a
small one, it is true, but not on that account less
censurable--that this very thing which should ensure their
gratitude is a never-ending theme for their vituperation and
abuse; proving to demonstration, that no government on earth, or
any concession whatever, can long satisfy or please them.
* * * "The mention of periodicals reminds me, that newspapers on
the arrival of a stranger are about the first things he takes
up; but on perusing them, he must exercise his utmost judgment
and penetration; for of all the fabrications, clothed too in the
coarsest language, that ever came under my observation, many
papers here, for low scurrility, and vilifying the authorities,
certainly surpass any I ever met with. It is to be regretted
that men without principle and others void of character should
be permitted thus to abuse the public ear. * * The misguided
individuals in the late disturbance, on being questioned upon
the subject, unreservedly admitted, that until reading
Mackenzie's flagitious and slanderous newspaper, they were
happy, contented, and loyal subjects."
When the seat of Government was removed to Kingston, Mr. Todd's family
accompanied it thither; but he remained in Toronto, to look after his
property, which was considerable, and died here at the age of 77.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES.
Early in the year 1838, I obtained an engagement as manager of the
_Palladium_, a newspaper issued by Charles Fothergill, on the plan of
the New York _Albion_. The printing office, situated on the corner of
York and Boulton Streets, was very small, and I found it a mass of
little better than _pi_, with an old hand-press of the Columbian
pattern. To bring this office into something like presentable order, to
train a rough lot of lads to their business, and to supply an occasional
original article, occupied me during great part of that year. Mr.
Fothergill was a man of talent, a scholar, and a gentleman; but so
entirely given up to the study of natural history and the practice of
taxidermy, that his newspaper received but scant attention, and his
personal appearance and the cleanliness of his surroundings still less.
He had been King's Printer under the Family Compact regime, and was
dismissed for some imprudent criticism upon the policy of the
Government. His family sometimes suffered from the want of common
necessaries, while the money which should have fed them went to pay for
some rare bird or strange fish. This could not last long. The
_Palladium_ died a natural death, and I had to seek elsewhere for
employment.
Amongst the visitors at Mr. Todd's house was John F. Rogers, an
Englishman, who, in conjunction with George H. Hackstaff, published the
Toronto _Herald_, a weekly journal of very humble pretensions. Mr.
Hackstaff was from the United States, and found himself regarded with
great distrust, in consequence of the Navy Island and Prescott
invasions. He therefore offered to sell me his interest in the newspaper
and printing office for a few dollars. I accepted the offer, and thus
became a member of the Fourth Estate, with all the dignities,
immunities, and profits attaching thereto. From that time until the year
1860, I continued in the same profession, publishing successively the
_Herald_, _Patriot_, _News of the Week_, _Atlas_ and _Daily Colonist_
newspapers, and lastly the Quebec _Advertiser_. I mention them all now,
to save wearisome details hereafter.
I have a very lively recollection of the first job which I printed in my
new office. It was on the Sunday on which St. James's Cathedral was
burnt owing to some negligence about the stoves. Our office was two
doors north of the burnt edifice, on Church Street, where the Public
Library now stands; and I was hurriedly required to print a small
placard, announcing that divine service would be held that afternoon at
the City Hall, where I had then recently drilled as a volunteer in the
City Guard.
The _Herald_ was the organ, and Mr. Rogers an active member, of the
Orange body in Toronto. I had no previous knowledge of the peculiar
features of Orangeism, and it took me some months to acquire an insight
into the ways of thinking and acting of the order. I busied myself
chiefly in the practical work of the office, such as type-setting and
press-work, and took no part in editorials, except to write an
occasional paragraph or musical notice.
The first book I undertook to print, and the first law book published in
Canada, was my young friend Alpheus Todd's "Parliamentary Law," a volume
of 400 pages, which was a creditable achievement for an office which
could boast but two or three hundred dollars worth of type in all. With
this book is connected an anecdote which I cannot refrain from
relating:
I had removed my office to a small frame building on Church Street, next
door south of C. Clinkinbroomer, the watchmaker's, at the south-west
corner of King and Church Streets. One day, a strange-looking youth of
fourteen or fifteen entered the office. He had in his hand a roll of
manuscript, soiled and dog's-eared, which he asked me to look at. I did
so, expecting to find verses intended for publication. It consisted
indeed of a number of poems, extending to thirty or forty pages or more,
defective in grammar and spelling, and in some parts not very legible.
Feeling interested in the lad, I enquired where he came from, what he
could do, and what he wanted. It appeared that his father held some
subordinate position in the English House of Commons; that, being put to
a trade that he disliked, the boy ran away to Canada, where he verbally
apprenticed himself to a shoemaker in Toronto, whom he quitted because
his master wanted him to mend shoes, while he wished to spend his time
in writing poetry; and that for the last year or so he had been working
on a farm. He begged me to give him a trial as an apprentice to the
printing business. I had known a fellow-apprentice of my own, who was
first taken in as an office-boy, subsequently acquired a little
education, became a printer's-devil, and when last I heard of him, was
King's printer in Australia.
Well, I told the lad, whose name was Archie, that I would try him. I was
just then perplexed with the problem of making and using composition
rollers in the cold winter of Canada, and in an old frame office, where
it was almost impossible to keep anything from freezing. So I resolved
to use a composition ball, such as may be seen in the pictures of early
German printing offices, printing four duodecimo pages of book-work at
one impression, and perfecting the sheet--or pr
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