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GEIKIE. 1 l.Vli X0tl9t LONDON: EOUTLEDGE, WAENE, AND EOUTLEDGE, FABBINGDON 8TBBET. IITEW YOKE : 66, WALEEB STREET. 1864 BIBLIOTKeCA OthivieT»8\8 ft^ ' mm ' ' 1 Sh! 1 ' ^S^^i '' H. u u^ i re 30fc7-3 CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. Boy-dreanu about travelling — Our family determines to go to^ Canada — ^The first day on board — Cure for sea-sicknessT— Our passengers — Henry's adventure — We encounter a storm — Height of the waves — ^The bottom of the ocean — A fossil ship — ^The fishing'grounds — See whales and ice- bergs — Porpoises — Sea-birds — Lights in the sea — ^The great Gulf of St. Lawrence— Thick ice*fog8 — See land at last — Sailing up the river — Land at Quebec . . . pp. 1 — 17 CHAPTER 11. Quebec — Wolfe — Montcalm's skull — Toronto — We set oflE for the bush — Mud-roads — A rough ride— Our log-housfr— How it was built — Our bam — We get oxen and cows- Elephant and Buckeye — Unpacking our stores — ^What some of our neighbours brought when they came — Hot days — Bush costumes — Sun-strokes — My sisters have to turn salamanders — Our part of the house-work . . pp. 18 — 40 CHAPTER m. Clearing the land — David's bragging, and the end of it-* Burning the log-heaps— Our logging bee — What prejudice can do — Our fences and crops nearly burned — ^The woods on fire — Building a snake- fence— "Shingle" pigs give us sore trouble — " Breachy" horses and cattle . pp. 41 — 67 3 1 'm .,:(,: : rM IV Contents. CHAPTER IV. We begin our preparations for sowing — Gadflies — Mosquitoes — Harrowing experiences — A huge fly — Sandflies — The poison of insects and serpents — Winter wheat — The wonders of plant-life — Our first "sport" — Woodpeckers — <*Chitmunks"— The blue jay— The blue bird— The flight of birds pp. 68— 74 CHAPTER V. ^me family changes — Amusements — Cow-hunting — Our "side-line" — ^The bush — Adventures with rattlesnakes — Garter-snakes — ^A frog's flight for life — Black squirrels pp. 76—89 CHAPTER VI. Spearing fish — Ancient British canoes — Indian ones — A bargain with an Indian — Henry^s cold bath — Canadian thunderstorms — Poor Yorick's death — Our glorious au- tumns — ^The change of the leaf — Sunsets — Indian summer — ^The fall rains and the roads — ^The first snow — Canadian cold — A winter landscape — "Ice-storms" — Snow crystals —The minute perfection of God's works — Deer-shooting — David's misfortune — Useless cruelty — Shedding of the stag's horns pp. 90—127 CHAPTER VII. Wolves — My adventure with a bear — Courtenay's cow and the wolves — A finght in the woods by night — The river freezes — Our winter fires — Cold, cold, cold! — A winter's journey — Sleighing — ^Winter mufflings — Accidents through intense cold pp. 128—142 Contents, CHAPTER VIII. The aurora borealii — "Jumpers" — Squaring timber — Rafts — Camping out — A public meeting — Winter fasliions — My toe frozen — A long winter's wallt — Hospitality — Nearly lost in the woods pp. 143 — 158 CHAPTER IX. Involuntary racing — A backwoods parsonage — Graves in tlio wilderness — Notions of equality — Arctic winters— Ruffed grouse — Indian fishing in winter — A marriage — Our winWs pork pp. 169 — 17 CHAPTER X. Our neighbours — Insect plagues — Military officers' families in the bush — An awkward mistake — Dr. D nearly shot for a bear — Major M — Our candles — Fortunate escape from a fatal accident pp. 171 — 181 ) 1 r ^i;^ CHAPTER XL "Now Spring returns'*— Sugar-making — Bush psalmody — Bush preaching — "Worship under difficulties — A clerical Mrs. Partington — Biology — A ghost — "It slips good" — Squatters . . ^ pp. 182—196 ' !.- ; i:li CHAPTER XII. Bush magistrates — Indian forest guides — Senses quickened by necessity — Breaking up of the ice — Depth of the frost— A grave in winter — ^A ball — A holiday coat pp. 197—207 VI Contents, CHAPTER XIII. Willi leeks — Spring birds— Wilson's poem on the blue bird — Downy woodpeckers — Passenger pigeons — Their num- bers — Roosting iilaces — The frogs — Bull frogs — Tree frogs— Flying squirrels pp. 208—220 CHAPTER XIV. Our spring crops — Indian com — Pumpkins — Melons — Fruits —Wild Flowers pp. 221—227 CHAPTER XV. ' The Iniliana— Wigwams — Dress — Can the Indians be civilized ? — Their past decay as a race — Alleged innocence of savage life— Narrative of Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary pp. 228 — 260 CHAPTER XVI. The medicine-man — Painted faces — Medals — An embassy — Peligious notions — Feast of the dead — Christian Indians — Visit to the Indians on Lake Huron — Stolidity of the Indians — Henry exorcises an Indian rifle . pp. 261 — 279 CHAPTER XVII. The humming-bird — Story of a pet — Canada a good country for poor men — A bush story of misfortune — Statute labour — Tortoises — The hay season — Our waggon 'driying — Henry and I are nearly drowned — Henry falls ill — Back- wood doctors pp. 280 — 298 Contenta. VII CHAPTER XVIII. American men and women — FireflicB— Profusion of insect life — Gnwshoppers— Frederick and David leave Canada — Soap-making — Home-made candles — Reciiie for washing quickly — Writing letters — The parson for driver pp. 299—313 CHAPTER XIX. Americanisms — Our poultry — The wasps — Their nests — "Bob's" skill in killing them — Racoons — A hunt — Racoon cake — The town of Busaco — Summer "sailing" — Boy drowned — French settlers pp. 814 — 327 CHAPTER XX. Apple-bees — Orchards — Gorgeous display of apple-blossom — A meeting in the woods — The ague — Wild parsnips — Man lost in the woods pp. 328—840 CHAPTER XXI. |A tornado — Bats — Deserted lots — American inquisitiveneps —An election agent pp. 341 — 349 CHAPTER XXII. journey to Niagara — River St. Clair — Detroit — A slave's escape — An American steamer — Description of the Falls of Niagara — Fearful catastrophe . . • . pp. 350— 366 CHAPTER XXin. le suspension-bridge at Niagara — The whirlpool — The battle of Lundy's Lane — Brock's monument — A soldier nearly drowned pp. 367 — 374 VUl Contents, CHAPTER XXrV. The Canadian lakes — ^The exile's love of home — ^The coloured people in Canada — Bice — The Maid of the Mist — Home- spun cloth— A narrow road — A grumbler — New England emigrants — A potato-pit — The winter's wood pp. 876—390 CHAPTER XXV. Thoughts for the future — Changes — ^Too-hard study — Educa- tion in Canada — Christmas markets — Winter amusements — Ice-boats — Very cold ice — Oil-springs — Changes on the farm — Growth of Canada — ^The American climate — Old England again 391—408 \ ERRATUM. On page 8, twelfth and thirteenth lines, for ** twenty-five, or, at most, thirty," read, "thirty-five, or, at most, forty," feet, as the height of Atlantic storm-waves. lit LIFE IN THE WOODS. CHAPTER I. Boy- dreams about travelling — Our family determines to go to Canada — The first day on board — Cure for sea-sickness — Our passengers — Henry's adventure — We encounter a stoiin — Height of the waves — The bottom of the ocean — A fossil ship — The iBshing-grounds — See whales and ice- bergs — Porpoises — Sea-birds — Lights in the sea — ^The great Gulf of St. Lawrence— Thick ice-fogs — See land at last — Sailing up the river — Land at Quebec. i I WONDER if ever tliere were a boy who did not wish to travel? I know I did, and used to spend many I an hour thinking of all the wonderful things I should j see, and of what I would bring home when I returned. Books of travel I devoured greedily — and very good reading for boys, as well as for grown men, I have always thought them. I began with "Robinson ICrusoe," like most boys — for who has not read his Istory? Burckhardt, the traveller, found a young [Arab reading a translation of it in the door of his [father's tent in the desert. But I don't think I ever Iwished to be like him, or to roam in a wild ro- jmantic way, or " go to sea," as it is called, like many B i j 1 2 Boy-dreams about Travelling, other boys I have known, which is a very different thing from having harmless fancies, that one would like to see strange races of men and strange countries. Some of my schoolmates, whom nothing would con- tent but being sailoio, early cured me of any thought of being one, if ever I had it, by what I knew of their story when they came back. One of them, James Roper, I did not see for some years after he went off, but when I met him at last among the ships, he was so worn and broken down I hardly knew him again, and he had got so many of the low forecastle ways about him, that I could not bear his company. Another, Robert Simpson, went one voyage to Trebizond, but that cured him. He came back perfectly contented to stay at home, as he had found the romance of sailoring, which had lured him away, a very different thing from the reality. He had never counted on being turned out of his bed every other night or so for something or other, as he was, or being clouted with a wet swab by some sulky fellow, or having to fetch and carry for the men, and do their bidding, or to climb wet rigging in stormy weather, and get drenched every now and then, with- out any chance of changing his clothes ; not to speak of the difference between his nice room at home and the close, crowded, low-roofed forecastle, where he could hardly see for tobacco-smoke, and where he had to eat and sleep with companions whom he would not have thought of speaking to before he sailed. He The First Bay on Board, 8 came back quite sobered down, and, after a time, went to study law, and is now a barrister in good practice. Yet I was very glad when I learned that we were going to America. The great woods, and the sport I would have with the deer and bears in them, and the Indians, of whom I had read so often, and the curious wildness there was in the thought of settling where there were so few people, and living so differ- ently from anything I had known at home, quite captivated me. I was glad when the day of sailing came, and went on board our ship, the Ocean King^ with as much delight as if I had been going on a holiday trip. There were eight of us altogether — five brothers and three sisters (my father and mother were both dead), and I had already one brother in America, while another stayed behind to push his way in England. The anchor once heaved, we were soon on our way down the Mersey, and the night fell on us while we were still exploring the wonders of the ship, and taking an occasional peep over the side at the shore. When we had got into the channel, the wind having come round to the south-east, the captain resolved to go by the northern route, passing the upper end of Ireland. All we saw of it, however, was very little; indeed, most of us did not see it at [all, for the first swell of the sea had sent a good many to their berths, in all stages of sickness. One old gentleman, a Scotchman, who had been boasting that B 2 pi ) 1 . ■ ; 1 -i 4 Cure for Sea sickness, he had a preventive that would keep him clear of it, made us all laugh by his groans and wretchedness ; for his specific had not only failed, but had set him off amongst the first. He had been told that if he took enough gingerbread and whisky, he might face any sea, and he had followed the advice faithfully; but as the whisky itself was fit to make him sick, even on shore, you may judge how much it and the gingerbread together helped him when the ship was heaving and rolling under his feet. We boys did not fail, of course, when we heard him lamenting that either the one or the other had crossed his lips, to come over their names pretty often in his hearing, and advise each other to try some, every mention of the words bringing out an additional shudder of disgust from the imfortunate sufferer. My eldest sister had sent me, just before coming on board, for some laudanum and mustard, which she was to mix and apply some way that was sure, she said, to keep her well ; but she got sick so instantly on the ship beginning to move that she forgot them, and we had the mustard afterwards at dinner in America, and the laudanum was a long time in the house for medicine. For a few days everything was unpleasant enough, but gradually all got right again, and even the ladies ventured to reappear on deck. Of course, among a number of people gathered in a ship, you were sure to meet strange characters. A little light man in a wig was soon the butt of the cabin, Our Passengers, 5 he would ask such silly questions, and say pnch out- rageous things. He was taking cheeses, and tea, and I don't know what else, to America with him, for fear he would get nothing to eat there ; and he was dreadfully alarmed by one of the passengers, who had been over before, telling him he would find cockroach pie the chief dainty in Canada. I believe the cheeses he had with him had come firom America at first. He thought the best thing to make money by in Canada was to sow all the country with mustard- seed, it yielded such a great crop, he said ; and he seemed astonished at all the table laughing at the thought of what could possibly be done with it. There was another person in the cabin — a stiff, con- ceited man, with a very strange head, the whole face and brow running back from the chin, and great standing-out ears. He was a distant relation of some admiral, I believe ; but if he had been the admiral himself, he could not have carried his head higher than he did. Nobody was good enough for him. It seemed a condescension in him to talk with any one. But he soon lost all his greatness, notwithstanding his airs, by his asking one day, when we were speak- ing about Italy, " What river it was that ran north and south along the coast?" in that country. We were speaking of a road, and he thought it was about a river. Then he asked, the same day, where the Danube was, and if it were a large river ; and when some one spoke about Sicily, and said that it had ) 1 6 Henry's Adventure. been held by the Carthaginians, he wished to know if these people held it now. Boy as I was, I could not help seeing what a dreadful thing it was to be so ignorant ; and I determined that I would never be like Mr. (I sha'n't tell his name), at any rate, but would learn as much as ever I could. . . I daresay we were troublesome enough to the captain sometimes, but, if so, he took his revenge on one of ua after a time. One day we were play- ing with a rope and pulley which was hooked high up in the rigging. There was a large loop at the! one end, and the other, after passing through the block, hung down on the deck. Henry had just put this loop over his shoulders and fitted it nicely below his arms, when the captain chanced to see him, and, in an instant, before he knew what he was going to do, he had hauled him up ever so high, with all the passengers looking at him and laughing at the ridi- culous figure he cut. It was some time before he would let him down, and as he was a pretty big lad, and thought himself almost a man, he felt terribly affronted. But he had nothing for it when he got down but to hide in his berth till his pride got cooled and till the laugh stopped. We were all careful enough to keep out of Captain Morrison's way after that. - One way or other the days passed very pleasantly to us boys, whatever they were to older people. It We encounter a Storm, % was beautiful when the "weather was fine and the wind right, to see how we glided through the green galleries of the sea, which rose, crested with white, at each side. One day and night we had, what we thought, a great storm. The sails were nearly all struck, and I heard the mate say that the two that were left did more harm than good, because they only drove the ship deeper into the water. When it grew nearly dark, I crept up the cabin-stairs to look along the deck at the waves ahead. I could see them rising like great black moimtains seamed with snow, and coming with an awful motion towards us, making the ship climb a huge hill, as it were, the one moment, and go down so steeply the next, that you could not help being afraid that it was sinking bodily into the depths of the sea. The wind, mean- while, roared through the ropes and yards, and every little while there was a hollow thump of some wave against the bows, followed by the rush of water over the bulwarks. I had read the account of the storm in Virgil, and am sure he must have seen something like what I saw that night to have written it. There is an ode in Horace to him when he was on the point of setting out on a voyage. Perhaps he saw it then. The description in the Bible is, however, the grandest picture of a storm at sea: " The Lord commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves of the deep. They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths: their ) 1 1 ; if '\ .:!i :M1^ w 8 Height of the Waves, soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end." " The Lord hath His way in the whirl- wind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet." Yet I have found since, that though the waves appear so very high, they are much lower than we suppose, our notions of them being taken from looking up at them from the hol- low between two. Dr. Scoresby, a great authority, measured those of the Atlantic in different weathers, and found that they seldom rise above fifteen feet, a great storm only causing them to rise to t¥Faafy-five, ' or, at most, *hwty, which is very diiferent from " running mountains high," as we often hear said. I could not help pitying the men who had to go up to the yards and rigging in the terrible wind and rain, with the ship heaving and rolling so dread- fully, and work with the icy cold sheets and ropes. Poor fellows ! it seems a wonder how they ever can hold on. Indeed, they too often lose their hold, and then there is no hope for them; down they go, splash into the wild sea, with such a scream of agony as no one can ever forget after having heard it. My brother, on crossing some years after, saw a man thus lost — a fine, healthy Orkneyman, whom some sudden lurch of the ship threw from the outside ot the yard. Though it was broad daylight, and though they would have done anything to help him as they saw him rising on the wave, farther and farther The Bottom of the Ocean 9 behind them, swimming bravely, they were perfectly unable even to make an effort, the sea rolling so wildly, and the ship tearing on through the waves so swiftly. So they had, with hearts like to break, to let him drown before their very eyes. As we got further over we heard a great deal about the Banks of Newfoundland, and, natu- rally enough, thought the shores of that island were what was meant; but we found, when we reached them, that it was only the name given to the shallower part of the sea to the south of the coast. The soundings for the electric telegraph have since shown that from Ireland on the one side, and New- foundland on the other, a level table-land forms the floor of the ocean, at no great depth, for some hundreds of miles, the space between sinking sud- denly on both sides into unfathomable abysses. What the depth of the Atlantic is at the deepest is not known, but I remember seeing a notice of a surveying ship, which had been able to sink a line in the southern section of it to the wonderful depth of seven miles, finding the bottom only with that great length of rope. The banks are, no doubt, formed in part from the material carried by the great ocean current which flows up from the Gulf of Mexico, washing the shores all the way ; and then, passing Newfoundland, reaches across even to the most northern parts of Europe and the Arctic circle. Ii the quantity of mud, and gravel, and sand deposited pi 1 • i , h X'^% 10 A Fossil Ship, on the Banks be great enough to bury some of the many wrecks of all sizes which go to the bottom there, what a wonderful sight some future ages may have 1 The floor of the ocean has often, elsewhere, been gradually or suddenly raised into dry land ; and if the Banks should be so, and the wrecks be buried in them before they had rotted away, geologists of those days will perhaps be laying bare in some quarry, now far down in the sea, the outline of a fossil ship, with all the things it had in it when it was lost! We met a great many fishing-boats in this part, . some from Newfoundland, some from Nova Scotia, others, again, from the northern coasts of the United States, with not a few all the way from France. We were becalmed one day close to some from the Stat3 of Maine, and one of them very soon sent off a boat to us with some as fine looking men in it as you could well see, to barter fish with the captain for some pork. For a piece or two of the sailor's mess- pork, which I thought dreadful-looking, it was so yellow and fat, they threw on board quite a number of cod-fish and some haddocks, giving us, I thought, by far the best of the exchange. I am told that a great many of these fishing-vessels are lost every year by storms, and occasionally some are run down and sunk in a moment by a ship passing over them. They are so rash as to neglect hanging out lights in many cases, and the weather is, more- The Fishing-grounds, 11 over, often so very foggy, that, even when they do, it is impossible to see them. The ships, if going at all fast, sound fog-horns every now and then on such days — that is, they should do it — but I fear they sometimes forget. There is far less humanity in some people than one would like to see, even the chance of causing death itself seeming to give them no concern. I remember once going in a steamer up the Bay of Fundy, over part of the same ground, when we struck a fishing-schooner in the dead of the night ; but the captain only swore at it for being in his way, and never stopped to see if it were much injured or not, though, for anything he or any one knew, it might be in a sinking state. Whether it be thoughtlessness or passion at the time, or stony hardheartedness, it is an awful thing to be unkind. Uncle Toby, who put the fly out of the window rather than kill it, makes us love him for his ten- derness even in an instance so slight. One day we saw two whales at a short distance from the ship, but their huge black backs, and the spout of water they made from their breathing-holes when they were taking a fresh breath, was all we saw of them. Some of the youngsters, however, made some sport out of the sight by telling a poor simple woman, who had got into the cabin, how they had read of a ship that once struck on a great black island in the middle of the sea and went down, and how the sailors got off on the rock, and landed their pro- •II c M ] 2 See Whales and Icebergs, visions, and were making themselves comfortable, when one of them unfortimately thought he would kindle a fire to cook something ; but had hardly done it before they discovered that they had got on the back of a sleeping whale, which no sooner felt the heat burning it than it plunged down into the waves with all on it! It is a part of one of the boy's stories we have all read, but the poor creature believed it, listening to them with her eyes fixed on their laces, and expressing her pity for the sailors who had made the mistake. We had two or three icebergs in sight when near' Newfoundland, and very beautiful they were. Only think of great mountains of ice shining in the sun with every colour that light can give, and cascades of snowy- white water leaping down their sides into the sea. Those we saw were perhaps from eighty to a hundred feet high, but they are sometimes even two hundred; and as there are eight feet of ice below the water lor every one above, this would make a two hunded feet iceberg more than the third of a mile from the bottom to the top. They are formed on the shores of the icy seas in the north, by the alternate melting and freezing of the edge ot those ice-rivers which we call glaciers, which get thrust out from the land till they are undermined by the sea, and cracked by summer thaws, and then tumble into the waters, to find their way wherever the currents may carry them. Dr. Kane and Captain arrows, as Icebergs, 13 M*Clintock both saw them in the different stages ot their growth ; and I don't know a more interoating narrative tlian that of the ascent to the top of the great frozen stream, on the shore of Washirigton\s Land, by the tormer, and his looking away to the north, east, and south, over the vast, broken, many- coloured continent of ice, which stretches in awful depth and unbroken continuity over Greenland. The icebergs often carry off from the shore a vast quan- tity of stones and gravel, which gets frozen into them. Dr. Scoresby says he has seen one of them carrying, he should think, from fifty to a hundred thousand tons of rock on it. It has, no doubt, been in this way that most of the great blocks and boulders of stone, difierent from any in their neighbourhood, which lie scattered over many parts of the world, have been taken to their present places.* I must not forget the porpoises — ^great pig-like fish, which once or twice mocked us by racing alongside, darting a-head every now and then like arrows, as if to show us how slow wj were in com- parison — nor the birds, which never left us the whole way, and must sleep on the water when they do sleep— nor the beautiful lights which shone in j the sea at night. We used to sit at the stern look- * What is known as the ** boulder clay," however, seems rather to be the moraine of ancient glaciers — that is, the i wreck of broken rocks torn away by them in their passage I through the valleys, and now left bare by their having melted away. c I D . \m 111 14 Porpoises and Sea-birds, ing at them for long together. The ridges of the waves iTould sometimes seem all on fire, and streaks and spots of light would follow the ship with every moment's progress. Sometimes, as the water rushed round the stern and up from beneath, they would glitter like a shower of stars or diamonds, joining presently in a sheet of flame. Now they would look like balls of glowing metal; then, presently, they would pass like ribbons of light. There was no end to the combinations or changes of beauty; the very water joined to heighten them by its ceaseless min- gling of colours, from the whitest foam, through every shade of green, to the dark mass of the ocean around. These appearances come from the presence of myriads of creatures of all sizes, chiefly the different kinds of Sea-nettles,* some of which are so small as to need a microscope to show their parts, while others form large masses, and shine like the suns of these watery constellations. They are luminous by a phosphoric light they are able to secrete; their brilliancy being thus of the same kind as that which smokes and burns in the dark from the skin of fish, and makes the lights in so many different insects. The phosphorus used in manufactures is obtained from burned bones. I have often seen a similar light in the back woods on the old half-rotten stumps of trees which had been * The jelly-fish, or medusa, which we so often see on our beaches, is a familiar example of the class. Lights in the Sea, 1 5 cut down. The glow-worm of England and the fire-fly of Canada are familiar examples of the same wonderful power of self-'Uumination. Indeed, few countries are without some species of insect possess- ing this characteristic. One can't help thinking how universal life is when they see it as it is shown in these sights at sea — millions on millions of shining creatures in the path of a single ship ; and the happi- ness which life gives us in our youth makes us admire the kindness of God, who, by making every- thing so full of it, has crowded the air, and earth, and waters with so much enjoyment. Our sabbaths on board were not quite like those at home ; but, as we had a clergyman with us, who was going with his family to a chaplaincy in the Far West, we had prayers and sermons in the forenoon, when the weather permitted. But a good many of the passengers were not very respectful to the day, and some, who, I dare say, were very orderly on Sundays at home, seemed to act as if to be on a voyage made every day a week-day. We were now in the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, which was called so because Cabot, who discovered it, chanced to do so on the day set apart to that saint. But we were some time in it before we siiw land, and there was more care taken about the posi- tion of the ship than ever before, for fear we should, like so many vessels, fall foul of the island of Anti- costi, or run on shore in a fog. We had had thick '■^ \i- ill ll.il ■ill, TJiich Ice-fogs, weather occasionally from our approaching New- foundland, and it still prevailed now and then till we got near Quebec. The icebergs coming down from the north, and the different temperature of the air coming over them and over the great frozen regions, cause these thick mists by condensing the evapora- tion from the warmer sea and preventing its rising into the air. We could sometimes hardly see the length of the bowsprit before us, and as the sun would be shut out for days together, so that we could not find out our position, it made every one anxious and half afraid. Many ships are lost by being mufHed in these thick clouds. They drive, at full speed, against icebergs or on sunken rocks, or ashore on the wild coast, when they think themselves safe in an open clear sea. I often won- dered when crossing again, some years after, in a great steamer, how we ever escaped. On we would go in it, with the fog-bell ringing and horns blowing, to be sure, but in perfect blind ignorance of what lay a few yards ahead. Other ships, icebergs, rocks, or the iron shore, might be close at hand, yet on, on, up and down went the great shafts, and beat, beat, Avent the huge paddle-wheels — the ship trembling all over, as if even it were half uneasy. It is a wonder, not that so many, but that so few, ships should be lost, covering the sea as they do at all seasons, like great flocks of seafowl. After a time the land became visible at last, first Sailing tip the Elver, 17 5n one side and then on the other, and the pilot was iken on board — a curious looking man to most of IS, in his extraordinary mufflings, and with his }roken French-English. As we sailed up the river le views on the banks became very pleasing. The irhite houses, with their high roofs, like those we see pictures of French chateaux, and the churches foofed with tin, and as white underneath as the bthers, and the line of fields of every shade, from the brown earth to the dark green wheat, and the curious ligzag wooden fences, and the solemn woods, every here id there coming out at the back of the picture, like reat grim sentinels of the land, made it impossible stay away from the deck. Then there were the rand sunsets, with the water like glass, and the piores reflected in them far down into their depths, Ind the curtains of gold and crimson in the west, ^here the sun sank out of sight, and the light langing into crimson, and violet, and green, by rns, as the twilight faded into night. \ 1 jiiMt i, first 18 CHAPTER II. ir Quebec — ^Wolfe — Montcabn's skull — Toronto — We set ofl for the bush — Mud-roads — A rough ride — Our log-house— How it was built — Our bam — We get oxen and cows- Elephant and Buckeye — Unpacking our stores — What some of our neighbours brought when they came — Hot days- Bush costumes — Sun-strokes — My sisters have to turn salamanders — Our part of the house-work. Our landing at Quebec was only for a very short time, till some freight was delivered, our vessel having to go up to Montreal before we left it. But we had stay enough to let us climb the narrow streets of this, the oldest of Canadian cities, and to see some of its sights. The view from different points was unspeak- ably grand to us after being so long pent up in a ship. Indeed, in itself, it is very fine. Cape Dia- mond and the fortifications hanging high in the air — the great basin below, like a sheet of the purest silver, where a hundred sail of the line might ride in safety — ^the village spires and the fields of every shape, dotted with countless white cottages, the silver thread of the River St. Charles winding hither and thither among them, and, in the distance, shutting in lliij!;,: m Montcalm! i Skull, 19 this varied loveliness, a range of lofty mountains, purple and blue by turns, standing out against the sky in every form of picturesque beauty, made alto- gether a glorious panorama. Of course, the great sight of sights to a Briton is the field of battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe, on the 13th September, 1759, won for us, at the price of his own life, the magnificent colonies of what is now British North America. Wolfe's body was taken to England for burial, and now lies in the vault below the parish church at Greenwich. That of Montcalm, the French general, who, also, was killed in the battle, was buried in the Ursuline Con- vent, where they showed us a ghastly relic of him — his fleshless, eyeless skull, kept now in a little glass case, as if it were a thing fit to be exhibited. It was to me a horrible sight to look at the grinning death's head, and think that it was once the seat of the gallant spirit who died so nobly at his post. His virtues, which aU honour, are his fitting memorial ia every mind, and his appropriate monument is the I tomb erected by his victorious enemies — not this j parading him in the dishonour and humiliation of the j grave. It is the spirit of which we speak when we talk of a hero, and there is nothing in common with it and the poor mouldering skull that once con- Itained it. '' • - r Quebec is, as I have said, a beautiful place in sum - c 2 c 20 Toronto, V I mer, but it must be bad enough in winter. The snow lies till well on in May, and it is so deep that, in the country, everything but houses and trees and other high objects are covered. The whole landscape is one unbroken sheet of white, over which you may go in any direction without meeting or seeing the smallest obstacle. But people get used to anything; and even the terrible cold is so met and resisted by double window-sashes, and fur caps, and gloves, and coats, that the inhabitants seem actually to enjoy it. When we got to Toronto, we found that my brother Robert, who was already in the country, had been travelling in different directions to look out a place for us, and had at length bought a farm in the town- ship of Bidport, on the banks of the River St. Clair. We therefore stayed no longer in Toronto than pos- sible, but it took us some time to get everything put right after the voyage, and we were further detained by a letter from my brother, telling us that the house on the farm could not be got ready for us for a week or two longer. We had thus plenty of time to look about us, and strange enough everything seemed. Thp town is very different now-a-days ; but, then, it was a straggling collection of wooden houses of all sizes and shapes, a large one next to a miserable one- storey shell, placed with its end to the street. There were a few brick houses, but only a few. Thf^ bcr. 3ts were like a newly-ploughed field in rainy weather, Mud-roads, 21 for mud, the waggons often sinking almost to the axles in it. There was no gas, and the pavements were both few and bad. It has come to be a fine place now, but to us it seemed very wretched. While we were waiting, we laid in whatever provision we thought we would need for a good while, everything being much cheaper in Toronto than away in the bush. A month or less saw us moving, my sisters going with Andrew and Henry by water, while Frederic was left behind in an office; Robert, my Canadian brother, and I, going by land, to get some business done up the country as we passed. The stage in which we took our places was a huge affair, hung on leather springs, with a broad shelf behind, supported by straps from the upper corners, for the luggage. There were three seats, the middle one movable, which it needed to be, as it came exactly in the centre of the door. The machine and its load were drawn by four horses, rough enough, but of good bottom, as they say. The first few miles were very pleasant, for they had been macadamized, but after that, what travelling I The roads liad not yet dried up after the spring rains and thaws, and as they were only mud, and much travelled, the most the horses could do w^as to pull us through at a walk. When we came to a very deep hole, we had to get out till the coach floundered through it. Every here and there, where the water had overflowed from the bush c t i i \ » ;1 , 1 ' %\ \\-\ si i • t !■ m ii ! 23 A Bough Ride, and washed the road completely away in its passage across it, the ground was strewn with rails which had been taken from the nearest fences to hoist out some wheels that had stuck fast. At some places there had been a wholesale robbery of rails, which had been thrown into a gap of this kind in the road, till it was practicable for travellers or waggons. After a time we had to bid adieu to the comforts of a coach and betake ourselves to a great open waggon — a mere strong box, set on four wheels, with pieces of plank laid across the top for seats. In this affair — some ten feet long and about four broad — we went through some of the worst stages. But, beyond Hamilton, we got back our coach again, and for a time went on smoothly enough, till we reached a swamp, which had to be crossed on a road made of trees cut into lengths and laid side by side, their ends resting on the trunks of others placed lengthwise. You may think how smooth it would be, with each log a different size from the one next it — a great pa- triarch of the woods rising high between " babes " half its thickness. The whole fabric had, moreover, sunk pretty nearly to the level of the water, and the alder bushes every here and there overhung the edges. As we reached it late at night, and there was neither moon nor stars, and a yard too much either way \.ould have sent coach and all into the water, men had to be got from the nearest house to go at 1 1 ( 1. A Rough Bide, 23 the horses' heads with lanterns, and the passengers were politely requested to get out, and stumble on behind as they could, except two ladies, who were allowed to stay and be battered up and down inside, instead of having to sprawl on in the dark with us. This was my first experience of " corduroy roads," but we had several more stretches of them before we got to our journey's end. I have long ago learned all the varieties of badness of which roads are capable, and question whether " corduroy" is entitled to the first rank. There is a kind made of thick planks, laid side by side, which, when they get old and broken, may bid fair for the palm. I have seen a stout, elderly lady, when the coach was at a good trot, bumped fairly against the roof by a sudden hole and the shock against the plank at the other side. But, indeed, *' corduroy" is dreadful. When we came to it I tried everything to save my poor bones — sitting on my hands, or raising my body on them — but it was of little use ^ on we went, thump, thump, thumping against one log afler another, and this, in the last part of our journey, with the bare boards of an open waggon for seats once more. It was bad enough in the coach with stuffed seats, but it was awful on the hard wood. But we got through without an actual upset or breakdown, which is more than a friend of mine could say, for the coach in which he was went into so deep a mud-hole at one 24 Otir Log.hoiise, part of the road, that it fairly overturned, throwing the passengers on the top of one another inside, and leaving them no way of exit, when they came to themselves, but to crawl out through the window. It was fine weather, however, and the leaves were making the woods beautiful, and the birds had begun to flit about, so that the cheeifulness of nature kept us from thinking much of our troubles. It took us three days to go a hundred and fifty miles, and we stopped on the way besides for my brother's business, so that the rest of our party had reached our new home, by their route, before us. The look of the house which was to be our dwelling was novel enough to me, with my old ideas about houses still in my head. It was built a little back from the river, far enough to give room for a garden when we had time to make one; and the trees had been cut down from the water's edge to some distance behind the house to make things a little more cheery, and also to prevent the risk of any of them falling on our establishment in a high wind. The house itself had, in fact, been built of the logs procured by felling these patriarchs of the forest, every one of which had, as usual on Canadian farms, been cut down. My brother had left special instruc- tions to spare some of the smaller ones, but the "chopper" had imderstood him exactly the wrong way, and had cut down those pointed out with How it was Built, 25 especial zeal as the objects of his greatest dislike. Building the house must have been very heavy work, for it was made of great logs, the whole thickness of the trees, piled one on another, a story and a half high. The neighbours had made what they call a "bee" to help to "raise" it — that is, they had come without expecting wages, but with the understanding that each would get back from us, when he wanted it, as many days' labour as he had given. They manage a difficult business like that of getting up the outside of a log house, more easily than one would think. First, the logs are cut into the proper lengths for the sides and the ends; then they are notched at the end to make them keep together; then an equal number are put at the four sides to be ready, and Ithe first stage is over. The next step is to get four llaid in the proper positions on the ground, and then Ito get up the rest, layer by layer, on the top of each jther, till the whole are in their places. It is a ter- rible strain on the men, for there is nothing but pheer strength to help them, except that they put 3oles from the top of the last log raised, to the round, and then, with handspokes, force another up |ihe slope to its destined position. I have known lany men terribly wrenched by the handspoke of ^ome other one slipping and letting the whole weight |)f one end come upon the person next him. The 3gs at the front and back were all fully twenty feet c D m I i III! 26 Our Log -house * long, and some of them eighteen inches tliick, so that you may judge their weight. After the square frame had been thus piled up, windows and a door were cut with axes, a board at the sides of each keeping the ends of the logs in their places. You may wonder how this could be done, but backwoodsmen are so skilful with the axe that it was done very neatly. The sashes for the windows and the planking for different parts of the house were got from a saw-mill some distance off, across the river, and my brother put in the glass. Of course there were a great many chinkj between the logs, but these were filled up, as well as possible, with billets and chips of wood, the whole being finally coated and made air-tight with mortar. Thus the logs looked as if built up with lime, the great black trunks of the trees alternating with the grey belts between. The frame of the roof was made of round poles, flattened on the top, on which boards were put, and these again were covered with shingles — a kind of wooden slate made of split pine, which j answers very well. The angles at the ends were filled up with logs fitted to the length, and fixed in | their places by wooden pins driven through the roof- pole at each corner. On the whole house there were j no nails used at all, except on the roof. Wooden pins, and an auger to make holes, made everything fast. Inside, it was an extrao i-^Hnary place. The floor was paved with pine slabs, the ( uter planks cut firom \m How it was Builf, 27 logs, with the round side down, and fixed by wooden pins to sleepers made of thin young trees, cut the right lengths. Overhoud, a number of similar round poles, about the thickness of a man's leg, supported the floor of the upper story, which was to be my sisters' bedroom. They had planks, however, instead of boards, in honour of their sex, perhaps. They had to climb to this paradise by an extraordinary ladder, made with the never-failing axe and auger, out of [green, round wood. I used always to think of IKobinson Crusoe getting into his fortification when I jsaw them going up. ' \ The chinmey was a wonderful affair. It was large lenough to let you walk up most of the way, and could lold, I can't tell how many logs, four or five feet long, for a fire. It was built of mud, and when whitewashed looked very well — at least we came to like it ; it was BO clean and cheerful in the winter time. But we had to pull it down some years after, and get one built of jrick, as it was always getting out of repair. A partition was put up across the middle and then livided again, and this made two bedrooms for my jrothers, and left us our solitary room which was ko serve for kitchen, dining-room, and drawing-room, ^he outer door opening into it. As to paint, it was jut of the question, but we had lime for whitewash, md what with it and some newspapers which my jrothers pasted up in their bedrooms, and a few pic- c D \n ii i' :i :R::i vm !it!!!!!i!! I iiii ill It p, 'ill ill ^ Iiii if Ml I m' III u 'i, -ill'! 28 . Our Log-liouse, tiires we brought from home, we thought we were quite stylish. There was no house any better, at any rate, in the neighbourhood, and, I suppose, we judged by that. To keep out the rain and the cold — for rats were not known on the river for some years after — the whole of the bottom log outside had to be banked up after our arrival, the earth being dug up all round and thrown against it. The miserable shan- ties in which some settlers manage to live for a time are half buried by this process, and the very wretched ones built by labourers alongside public works while making, look more like natural mounds than human habitations. I have often thought it was a curious thing to see how people, when in the same, or nearly the same, circumstances, fall upon similar plans. Some of the Indians in America, for instance, used to sink a pit for a house and build it round with stones, putting a roof on the walls, which reached only ? I'^^^le above the ground; and antiquarians tell us that the early Scotch did the very same. Then Xenophon, long ago, and Curzon, in our day, tell us how they were often like to fall through the roof of the houses in Armenia into the middle of the family huddled up, with their oxen, beneath, their dwellings being burrowed into the side of a slope, and showing no signs of their presence from above. But our house was not like this, I am happy to say ; it was on the How it was Built, 29 crround, not in it, and was very warm for Canada, when the wind did not come against the door, whicli was a very poor one, of inch-thick wood. The i thickness of the logs kept out the cold wonderfully, j though that in a very ambiguous word for a Cana- dian house, which would need to be made two logs thick to be warm without tremendous fires — at least, in the open unsheltered country. The houses made of what they call " clap-boards" — that is, of narrow boards three-quarters of an inch thick, and lathed and plastered inside — are very much colder; indeed, they are, in my opinion, awful, in any part of them [where a fire is not kept up all winter. One thing struck me very much, that locks and [bolts seemed to be thought very useless things. Most of the doors had only wooden latches, made with an axe or a knife, and fastened at night by a iTooden pin stuck in above the bar. We got water rom the river close at hand ; a plank run out into the stream forming what they called " a wharf," to let us get depth enough for our pitchers and pails. Besides the house, my brother had got a barn Duilt not far from the house — of course a log one — 3n the piece clear of trees. It was about the size of ^he house, but the chinks between the logs were not BO carefully filled up as in it. The squirrels, indeed. Boon found this out, and were constantly running in md out when we had any grain in it. The upper C D i ^«' Illllilii ^ili! i!j|ji J.' Illil lilt 30 TFe get Oxen and Coios, part was to hold our hay, and half of the ground- lioor was for our other crops, the cows having the remainder for their habitation. We bought a yoke of oxen — that is, two — a few days after our arrival, and we began with two cows, one of them a pretty fair milker, but the other, which had been bought at an extra price, was chosen by Robert for its fine red skin, and never had given much milk, and never did. The oxen, great unwieldy brutes, were pretty well broken ; but they were so different from anything we had ever seen for ploughing or drawing a waggon, that we were all rather afraid of their horns at first, and not very fond of having anything to do with them. We had bought a plough and harrows, and I don't know what else, before coming up, and had brought a great many things besides from England, so that we had a pretty fair beginning in farm implements. An ox- waggon was very soon added to our purchases — a rough affair as could be. It was nothing but two planks for the bottom and | one for each side, with short pieces at the ends, like the waggon-stage, on the road from Toronto — a I long box on four wheels, about the height of a cart, The boards were quite loose, to let them rise and | fall in going over the roads when they were bad, The oxen were fastened to this machine by a yoke, which is a heavy piece of hard wood, with a hollow | at each end for the back of the necks of the oxen, , Elephant and Buckeye, 81 and an iron ring in the middle, on the under side, to slip over a pin at the end of the waggon -pole, the oxen being secured to it by two thin collars of a tough wood called hickory, which were just pieces bent to fit their deep necks, the ends being pushed up through two holes in the yokes at each side, and fastened by pins at the top. There was no harness of any kind, and no reins, a long wmivI serving to guide them. I used at first to think it was a very brave thing to put the yoke on them or take it oiF. The names of our two were Elephant and Buck- eye, the one, as his name showed, a great creature, but as lazy as he was huge; the other, a much nicer beast, somewhat smaller, and a far better [worker. They were both red and white, and so patient and quiet that I used to be ashamed of my- self when I got angry at them for their solemn slow- ness and stupidity. Had we been judges of cattle we might have got much better ones for the money they cost us; but my brother Andrew, who bought them, had never had any more to do with oxen till [then than to help to eat them at dinner. However, Iwe never bought anything more from the man who Isold us them. Our first concern when we had got fairly into the [house was to help to get the furniture and luggage {brought from the wharf, two miles oflf, for we had to leave everything except our bedding there on land- U? r-; 32 JJnpachmg our Stores. ing. It was a great job to get all into the waggon, and then to open it after reaching the house. The whaff was a long wooden structure, built of logs driven into the shallow bed of the river for perhaps a hundred yards out to the deep water, and planked over. There was a broad place at the end to turn a waggon, but so much of it was heaped up with what they called " cord wood" — that is, wood for fuel, cut four feet long — ^that it took some management to get this done. A man whom we had hired as servant of all work, at two pounds and his board and lodg- ing a-month, brought down the waggon, and I shall never forget how we laughed at his shouting and roaring all the way to the oxen, as he walked at their heads with a long beech wand in his hand. He never ceased bellowing at them in rough, angry names, except to vary them by orders, such as Haw ! Gee ! Woa ! Hup ! which were very ridi- culous when roared at their ears loud enough to have let them know his wishes if they had been on the other side of the river. Somehow, every one who drives oxen in Canada seems to have got into the same plan ; we ourselves, indeed, fell into it more than I would have thought after a time. When we had begun to move the luggage, what boxes on boxes had to be lifted I We all lent a hand, but it was hard work. There was the piano, and the eight-day clock, in a box like a coffin, and carpets, and a huge What some of our Neighbours hrout/ht. 33 I wardrobe, packed full of I don't know what, large lenough to have done for a travelling show, and boxes lof books, and crockery, and tables, and a great car- Ipenter's chest, not to speak of barrels of oatmeal, md flour, and salt, and one of split peas. I think the books were the heaviest, except that awful ward- robe and the chest of drawers, which were all packed full of something. But they paid over and over for ill the trouble and weight, proving the greatest pos- sible blessing. If we had not brought them we TOuld have turned half savages, I suppose, for there rare none to buy nearer than eighty or ninety miles, ^nd, besides, we would not have had money to buy We had a whole set of Sir Walter Scott's lem. bharming stories, which did us a world of good, both }y helping us to spend the winter evenings plea- mtly, by the great amount of instruction in history Lnd antiquarian lore they contained, and by showing ly young sisters, especially, that all the world were Lot like the rude people about us. They got a taste )r elegance and refinement from them that kept lem ladies in their feelings while they had only the ife of servants. When we had got all the things into the house, 16 next thing was to unpack them. A large pier- [lass, which would have been very useful, but rather |ut of the way in such a house, was discovered to be livered to fragments ; and some crockery had found D • IS'; D I M 84 JFAat some of our Neighbours brought, the shaking on the journey too much for its powers of resistance. That horrid wardrobe, which had sprained our backs to get on the waggon, would barely go in at the door, and we were very much afraid at first, that, after bringing it more than three thousand miles, we should have to roof it over, cut j holes in it, and make it a hen-house. It was all but j too large, like the picture in the " Vicar of Wake- field," which would not go in at any door when it I was brought home. There was not room for nearly all our furniture, and one end of my sisters' loft was packed like a broker's store-room with part of it. My brother's being in America before had, however, saved us from bringing as outrageous things as some | who afterwards settled in the neighbourhood. I re- member one family who brought ever so many huge! heavy grates, not knowing that there was no coal in Canada, and that they were useless. They would, indeed, be able to get Ohio coal now, in the larger! towns ; but there was none then anywhere. The only fuel burned all through the country parts, iu fireplaces, is, still, great thick pieces of split logs, four feet long. One settler from Ireland had heard that there were a great many rattlesnakes in Canada; and] as he had been a cavalry volunteer, and had the ac- coutrements, he brought a brass helmet, a regulation! sabre, buckskin breeches, and jack-boots with him, that he might march safely through the jungle whicli If hat some of our Neighbours brought. 35 he supposed he should find on his route. The young i clergyman who afterwards came out had a different fear. He thought there might be no houses for him to sleep in at nights, and brought out a hammock to [swing up under the trees. Wliat he thought the people jto whom he was to preach lived in, I don't know ; Iperhaps he fancied we cooked our dinners under the trees, and lived without houses, like the Indians. In Bome countries, hammocks are u^ed in travelling through uninhabited places, on account of the poi- Bonous insects on the ground and the thickness of khe vegetation ; but in Canada such a thing is never leard of, houses being always within reach in the parts at all settled ; and travellers sleep on the ground irhen beyond the limits of civilization. But to leap in the open air at all makes one such a figure Ufore morning with mosquito-bites, that nobody rould try it a second time, if he could help it. I cas once on a journey up Lake Huron, of which I lall speak by and bye, where we had to sleep a [ight on the ground, and, what with ants running rer us, and with the mosquitoes, we had a most retched time of it. A firiend who was with me had b nose so bitten that it was thicker above than Blow, and looked exactly as if it had been turned pside down in the dark. It took us some time to get everything fairly in ler, but it was all done after a while. We were all d2 MM* mi Il I 36 Hot Boys. in good health; everything before us was new; and the weather, though very Avarm, was often delightful in the evenings. Through the day it was sometimes very oppressive, and we had hot nights now and then that were still worse. A sheet seemed as heavy as ifj it had been a pair of blankets, and when we were sure the door was fast, we were glad to throw even it aside. We always took a long rest at noon till thel sun got somewhat cooler, but the heat was bad enougil even in the shade. I have known it pretty nearly,! if not quite, 100° some days in the house. I remem.! ber hearing some old gentlemen once talking aboutj it, and telling each other how they did to escape it;j the one declared that the coolest part of the hoiise| was beloAv the bed, and the other, a very stout clergj'- man, said he found the only spot for study was in tlijl cellar. Captain W used to assert that it to| often as hot in Canada as in the West Indies. My sisters never went with so little clothing before;! and, indeed, it was astonishing how their circmDJ ference collapsed under the influence of the sun. iij to us, we thought only of coolness. Coarse straKi hats, with broad brims, costing about eightpencfl apiece, with a handkerchief in the crown to keep tliJ heat off the head ; a shirt of blue cotton, wide trow] sers of dark printed calico, or, indeed, of anythii^ thin, and boots, composed our dress. But this wj elaborate, compared with that adopted by a gentW Bush Costumes. m man who was leading a bachelor life back in the bush some distance from us. A frieuu went to see him one day, and found him frying some bacon on a fire below a tree before his door; — a potato-pot hang- ling by a chain over part of it, from a bough — his only dress being a shirt, boots, a hat, and a belt round his hvaist, with a knife in it. He had not thought of any one penetrating to his wilderness habitation, and llaughed as heartily at being caught in such a plight las my friend did at catching him. For my part, I thought I should be cooler still if I turned up my shirt-sleeves ; but my arms got forthwith so tanned md freckled, that even yet they are more useful than aeautiful. One day there chanced to be a torn place )n my shoulder, which I did not notice on going out. thought, after a time, that is was very hot, but took It for granted it could not be helped. When I came In at dinner, however, I was by no means agreeably surprised when my sister Margaret called out to me, George, there's a great blister on your shoulder," irhich sure enough there was. I took care to have llways a whole shirt after that. "We had hardly been a month on the river when we leard that a man, fresh from England, who had been It work for a neighbour, came into the house one after- loon, saying he had a headache, and died, poor fellow, less than an hour. He had had a sun-stroke. Some- kimes those who are thus seized fall down at once in a fit Mi D :i P 88 Smi'StroJces. of apoplexy, as was the case with Sir Charles Napier in Scinde. I knew a singular instance of what the sun sometimes does, in the case of a young man, a plumber by trade, who liad been working on a roof in one of the towns on a hot day. He was struck down in an instant, and was only saved from death by a fellow-workman. For a time he lost his reason, but that gradually came back. He lost the power of every part of his body, however, except his head, nothing remaining alive, you may sjiy, but that. He could move or control his eyes, mouth, and neck, but that was all. He had been a strong man, but he wasted away till his legs and arms were not thicker than a child's. Yet he got much better eventually, after being bedridden for several years, and when I last was at his house, could creep about on two crutches. I used to pity my sisters, who had to work over the fire, cooking for us. It was bad enough for girls who had just left a fashionable school in England, and were quite young yet, to do work which hitherto they had always had done for them, but to have to stoop over a fire in scorching hot weather must have been very exhausting. They had to bake in a large iron pot, set upon embers, and covered with them over the lid; and the dinner had to be cooked on the logs in the kitchen fireplace, until we thought of setting up a contrivance made by laying a stout stick on two upright forked ones, driven into the ground at each Going to MilL 89 end of a firo kindled outside, and hanging the pots from it. While I think of it, what a source of annoy- ance the cooking on the logs in the fireplace was before we got a crane ! I remember we once had a large brass panfull of raspberry jam, nicely poised, as we thought, on the burning logs, and just ready to be lifted off, when, lo ! some of the fire- wood below gave way and down it went into the ashe.^! Baking was a hard art to learn. What bread we had to eat at first 1 We used to quote Hood's lines — "Who has not heard of home-made bread — That heavy compound of putty and lead ?" But practice, and i. few lessons from a neighbour's wife, made my sisters quite expert at it. We had some trouble in getting flour, however, after our first stock ran out. The mill was five miles off, and, as we had only oxen, it was a tedious job getting to it and back again. One of my brothers used to set off at five in the morning, with his breakfast over, and I was not back again till nine or ten at night — that is, j after we had wheat of our own. It had to be ground i while he waited. But it was not all lost time, for the shoemaker's was near the mill, and we always made the same journey do for both. In winter hve were sometimes badly off when our flour ran short. On getting to the mill, we, at times, found the wheel frozen hard, and that the miller had no O 40 Out part of the houseioork, flour of his own to sell. X have known us for a fort- night having to use potatoes instead of bread, when our neighbours happened to be as ill-provided os we, and could not lend us a " baking." But baking was not all that was to be done in a house like ours, with so many men in it. No servants could be had ; the girls round, even when their fathers had been labourers in England, were quite above going out to service, so that my sisters har^ their hands full. We tried to help them as much as we could, bringing in the wood for the fire, and carrying all the water from the river. Indeed, I used to think it almost a pleasure to fetch the water, the river was so beautifully clear. Never was crystal more transparent. I was wont to idle as well as work while thus employed, looking at the beautiful stones and pebbles that lay at the bottom, far beyond the end of the plank that served for our " wharf" \ 41 • CHAPTER HI. Clearing the land — David's bragging, and tho end of it — Burning the log-heapa—Our logging bee — What prejudice can do — Our fences and crops nearly burned— The woods on fire — Building a snake-fence — "Shingle" pigs give us sore trouble — " Breachy" horses and cattle. ITiie first thing that had to be done with the land Iwas to make a farm of it, by cutting down and burn- jiug as many trees as wo could before the end ot lAugust, to have some room for sowing wheat in the Ifirst or second week of September. It was now well Ion in June, so that we had very little time. How- lever, by hiring two men to chop (we didn't board or ■lodge them) and setting our other hired man to help, md with the addition of what my brothers Robert and )avid could do, we expected to get a tolerably-sized ield ready. Henry and I were too young to be of luch use; Henry, the elder, being only about fif- teen. As to Andrew, he could not bear such work, md paid one of the men to work for him. Yet both le and we had all quite enough to do, in the lighter parts of the business. We had got axes in Toronto, ind our man fitted them into the crooked handles r n cl 'I :ii! ),:' 42 Clearing the Land. which they use in Canada. A British axe, with a long, thin blade, only set the men a laughing ; and, indeed, it chanced to be a very poor affair, for one day the whole face of it flew off as Robert was making a furious cut with it at a thistle. The Canadian axes were shaped like wedges, and it was wonderful to see how the men made the chips fly out of a tree with them. We got up in the morning with the sun, and went out to work till breakfast, the men whack- ing away with all their might ; Nisbet, our own man, as we called him, snorting at every stroke, as if that helped him, and my two elder brothers using their axes as well as they could. We, younger hands, had, for our part, to lop off the branches when the trees were felled. My brothers soon got to be very fair choppers, and could finish a pretty thick tree sooner than you would suppose. But it was hard work, for some of the trees were very large. One in particular, an elm, which the two men attacked at the same] time, was so broad across the stump, after it was cut down, that Nisbet, who was a fair-sized man, when he lay down across it, with his head at the edge on one side, did not reach with his feet to the other. But, thicker or thinner, all came doAvn as we ad-| vanced. The plan was to make, first, a slanting stroke, and, then, another, straight in, to cut off the chip thus I made; thus gradually reaching the middle, leaving a | smooth, flat stump about three feet high miderneath, Clearing the Land. 43 and a slope inwards above. The one side done, they ; began the same process with the other, hacking away I chip after chip from the butt, till there was not enough left to support the mass above. Then came the signal of the approaching fall by a loud crack of the thin strip that was left uncut; on hearing which, we looked up to see which way the huge shaft was coming, and would take to our heels out of its reach, if it Ithreatened to fall in our direction. It is wonderful, Ihowever, how exactly a skilful chopper can deter- Imine beforehand how a tree shall come down. They Isometimes manage, indeed, to aim one so fairly at |a smaller one, close at hand, as to send it, also, to the round with the blow. Accidents rarely happen, though, sometimes, a poor man runs the wrong way ind gets killed. What a noise the great monarchs [)f the forest made as they thundered down I It was like firing off a great cannon; and right glad we rere when we had a good many such artillery to fire }ff in a day. But it was often dreadfully hot work, ind my brothers seemed as if they should never irink enough. I used to bring them a small pailful )f water at a time, and put it on the shady side of a btump, covering it over with some green thing besides, to keep it cool. The cows and oxen seemed bo take as much pleasure as ourselves in our pro- ress, for no sooner was a tree down than they would 36 among its branches, munching oiF the tender ends ^1 44 BavicVs Bragging ^ and the end of it, as if they were great delicacies in their eyes. It was harder to keep them out of harm's way than our- selves, and many a time I was half afraid a tree would be down on me before I got them out ot danger. Indeed, we had one loss, though only a small one. We had been talking over night about cattle being killed, and David, who was always a great brag, had told us that "he thought it all stupidity ; he didn't know how people killed beasts ; he could chop for years and never hu^t anything, if there were ever so many cattle about." Next morning, however, before breakfast, we were aU hard at work, and the oxen and cows were busy with the twigs as usual, when a fine little calf we had got with one of the cows, wandered off in David's direction, just as a tree he was at was about to fall; and, presently, while he was all excitement about its I going the right way for himself, it was down smash on the poor calf, which was, of course, gone in a moment. We were sorry for the unfortunate little creature, but we could not help laughing amidst all at the face David put on. " It was very singular- very. He couldn't account for it; how could he think a calf would leave its mother ?" But he said I no more about the stupidity of people who killed oxen or cows while chopping. Working hard every day, it was surprising what i piece we soon felled. When we had got as much I Burning the Log -heaps, 45 down as we thought we could clear off in time for the wheat, we gave the rest a respite for a while, and set to getting rid of those we had already overthrown. The straightest of them were selected for rails, with which to fence our intended field ; all the others were to be remorselessly burned, stock and branch. The first step towards this had been taken already, by us lads ;.aving cut off the branches from each tree as it was felled, and heaped them together in different spots. The trunks of the trees had next , i be cut into pieces about ten feet long, those intended for rails being left somewhat lor;g«^ I wonder how often the axes rose and fell during . '^to weeks. Even my brothers be- gan to be able to use them more skilfully, their stumps beginning to look smooth and clean cut, instead of being hacked in a thousand ridges, as at first. How an English carpenter's heart would have grieved over the destruction of so much splendid wood ! The finest black walnut, and oak, and maple, was slashed at irom morning to night, with no thought on our parts but to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. Everything was, at last, ready for the grand finishing act, but that required the help of some neighbours, so that we had to call another " bee." Tlic logs had to be rolled together and piled up for burning, which would have taken us too long if left to ourselves alone. We got a good woman from a 11^ mm. 46 Our Logging Bee. farm not far off to come in to help my sisters in their preparations, for there is always a great deal of| cooking on these occasions. Salt beef and salt pork were to form the centre dishes at the dinner, but there was to be a great array of pies and tarts, for which we bought part of the fruit across the river, and, of the rest, there were pumpkins, which we got from settlers near at hand, and we had plums enough, very good though wild, from trees in our own bush. Tea, with cream to every one's taste, formed the principal beverage, though the most of the men wanted to get whisky besides. But it almost always leads to drunkenness and fighting, so that we did without it. On the day appointed there was a very good muster — perhaps twenty men altogether. They came immediately after breakfast, and we took care to be ready for them. Our oxen were brought to the ground with their yoke on, and a long chain fastened to the ring in it, and two of the men brought each another yoke, so that we were noisy enough and had plenty of excite- ment. Two men got it as their task to drive, others fixed the chains round the logs, and drew them as j near each other as possible, in lots of about six or seven, and the rest had to lift each lot, one log on another, into piles. Henry and I were set to gather the loose brush that was left, and throw it on the top of the heaps, and thrust the dry rotten sticks lying I What Prejudice can do, 47 j about, into the holes between the logs, to help them to burn. It was astonishing to sec how the oxen walked away with their loads. Standing as quiet a3 jif they could not move, except when their tails were sent to do duty on some troublesome flies, their faces las solemnly stupid as possible, the first shout of the [driver made them lean instantly against their yoke jin a steady pull, which moved almost any log to (which they might be chained. Horses would have humped and tugged, and the log would have stuck irhere it was, but the solid strain of the oxen, their two heads often together, and their bodies far apart, ras irresistible. OiF they walked with huge cuts ot rees, ten feet long, as if they had been trifles. It iras a wonder how they could stand dragging such leavy weights over the rough ground, with nothing )ut the thin wooden collar round their necks, against (rhich to press. A horse needs a padded collar, but tin ox doesn't seem to suffer from the want of it. In fova Scotia, which I afterwards visited, and also in jower Canada, oxen are harnessed by the horns, and (rou are only laughed at if you say that it seems cruel. believe if they were yoked by the tail in any kountry, the people who used them in that way would tand up for its superiority to any other. Prejudice a wonderful thing for blinding men. I have heard kf a gentleman in the East Indies, who felt for the la- iourers having to carry the earth from some public work Cm** o n 48 Burning the Logs, they were digging, in baskets, on their shoulders, and got a number of wheelbarrows made for them, showing them himself how to use them, and how much better they were than their own plan. But, next morning, when he came to see how they were liking the new system, what was his astonishment to find that they had turned the barrows also into baskets, carrying them on their shoulders, with a man at each handle and one at the wheel 1 "With a due rest for dinner and supper, an extra time being taken in the middle of the day to escape the heat, and with a wonderful consumption of eat- ables, including beef and pork, pies, tarts, pickles, puddings, cakes, tea, and other things, at each meal, we got through the day to the satisfaction of all, and had now only to get everything burned off. The next day it was slightly windy, which was in our favour, and, still better, the wind was blowing away from our house and barn. The burning was as thorough as we could have desired, but it was hot work. We brought some wood embers from the house, and laid them on the top of one of the logs, on the side next the wind. Then we piled chips and splinters on them, which were soon in flames, and from them there soon was a grand blaze of the whole pile. Thus we went on, from one to another, until they were all a-fire. But the rolling the pieces to- gether as they burned away, and the stuffing odd I Our Fern ends into the ho work. We ran bit of branch oi clean sweep mad were like when and hands, and si easily fancied, enough to get rid we got everything up of the fragme mained. We were fortun fire which we wis! [have known of n: pieces of dead woo aud the coat of vex .soil of the forest, Ipreventit, the fire ground, and setting 1 1 remember, some I was one day goini iTOuld be as well,| Ibrush heaps that Ibeing cleared, quitj Iroad; but he had hi [sisters, Margaret a{ liouse, noticed that M was making fo^ iililli;;! Our Fences and Crops nearly burned, 49 ends into the hollows to keep up the flame, was wild work. We ran about all day, gathering up every bit of branch or dead wood we could find, to get a clean sweep made of everything at once. What we were like when all was over, with our black faces and hands, and smudged shirts and ^^owsers, may be easily fancied. But, after , \,. day was not enough to get rid of the whole. It was days before we got everything burned, the last pile being made up of the fragments of all the rest that still re- mained. We were fortunate in not having anything set on fire which we wished to keep from being burned. I have known of many cases where dried leaves and pieces of dead wood, and the thick roots of the grass, 1 aud the coat of vegetable matter always found in the i5oil of the forest, kindled, in spite of every effort to prevent it, the tire running along, far and near, in the ground, and setting everything it reached in a blaze. I remember, some years after our arrival, Henry was one day going some distance, and thought it would be as well, before he started, to fire some [brush heaps that were standing in a field that was Ibeing cleared, quite a distance back, along the side Iroad; but he had hardly done so and setoff, than my jsisters, Margaret and Eliza, who were alone in the house, noticed that the fire had caught the ground, bd was making for the strip at the side of the road, c ) IS I 50 Our Fences and Crops nearly htirned, in the direction of the wheat field. It was leaping from one thing to another, as the wind carried it, and had already put the long fence next it, running along six or seven acres, in great danger. If it had once kindled that, it might have swept on towards the house and barn and burned up everything we had ; but my sisters were too thorough Canadians by this time to let it have its own way. Off the two set to the burning bank, and began to take down the fence rail by rail, and carry each across the road, where the fire could not reach them, Fortunately there was only stubble in the field, and the black ploughed earth checked the fire, but it kept running along the road, breaking out afresh after they had thought it was done, and keeping them fighting with the rails the whole day, until Henry came back at night. A man, who passed in a waggon when they were in the worst of their trouble, never offered them any help, poor girls, but drove on, " guessing" they " had a pretty tight job thar." Thanks to their activity there was no mis- chief done, except the taking down the fence ; but it was a wonder it did not hurt my sisters, as the rails are so heavy that men never lift more than one at a time, or very seldom. Another instance occurred about the same time, but on a larger scale. One day, on looking east] from the house, we noticed, about two miles offi great clouds o course we wer found that gr forest which w of huge pine t] some terrible before. Some parts; others j burning, and W( of time. They tliickest confusi have kept back m'les, tlieir great and naked, into \ them, and was 1 limb and sending It was a terrible I how far it woulc [spread to the fo Imany of the tree jat the ground, & livhile, sometimes, [fire would be nearly a hundred [from the earth, f ihe sight was gi' nass of prostrate Mges, tongues of b The Woods on Fire, 51 rrreat clouds of smoke rising from the woods, and of course we were instantly oif to see what it was. "We found that ground-fire had got into a piece of the forest which we called the " "Windfall," a broad belt of huge pine trees, which had been thrown down by some terrible whirlwind, I don't know how long before. Some of them had already mouldered in parts; others had been charred by some former burning, and would have lasted for almost any length of time. They lay on each other in the wildest and thickest confusion, making a barricade that would have kept back an army of giants, and reaching for m'les, their great branches rising in thousands, black and naked, into the air. The fire had fairly caught I them, and was leaping and crackling from limb to limb and sending up volumes of the densest smoke. It was a terrible sight to see, and no one could tell how far it would extend. We were afraid it would spread to the forest at each side, and it did catch Imany of the trees next it, fixing on them, sometimes [at the ground, sometimes up among the branches, {•while, sometimes, the first indication of their being on Ifire would be by the dead part at the very top, aearly a hundred feet, I should think, in some cases, Ifrom the earth, flaming out like a star. At night |the sight was gi'and in the extreme — the blazing nass of prostrate trees in the Windfall, and, at its ^dges, tongues of flame, running up the huge trunks, e2 ■•J o 62 Building a SnaJce-fence, or breaking out here and there on their sides. At one place a field came very near the path of the conflagration, and it was feared that, though the trees did not come close enough to set the fence on fire by contact, it might be kindled by the burning twigs and inflammable matter that covered the ground. A plough was therefore brought, and several broad furrows were run outside, that the ground-fire might thus be stopped. The plan was effectual, and the fence remained untouched; but the fire among the dead pines spread day afler day, till it had burned up everything before it, to an open- ing in the forest on the other side, where it at last died out. As soon as the log-piles had been fairly disposed of, we had, for our next job, to get the rails put up round the field thus cleared. They were made, from the logs that had been saved for the purpose, by one of the choppers, whom we retained. First -of all, he sank his axe into one end of the log, and then he put an iron or wooden wedge into the clefl he had made, and drove it home with a mallet. Then, into the crack made by the first wedge, he put a second, and that made it split so far down that only another was generally needed to send it in two. The same process was gone through with the halves, and then with the parts, until the whole log lay split into pieces, varying in thickness from that of a man's leg to Building a Snake fence, 53 ns much again, aa they were wanted light or heavy. You must remember that they were twelve feet long. To make them into a fence, you laid a line of them down on the ground in a zigzag, like a row of very broad V's, the end of the second resting on that of the first, and so on, round the comers, till you came to within the length of a rail from where you started. The vacant space was to be the entrance to the field. Then five or six more were laid, one on • another, all round, in the same way — or rather, were put up in short, complete portions, till all were in their places. The ends, at each side of the entrance, were next lifted and laid on pins put between two upright posts at each side. To make a gate, we had a second set of posts, with pins, close to the others, and on these pins, rails were laid which could be taken out when wanted, and served very well for a gate, but we boys almost always went over the fence rather than go round to it. To keep all the rails in their places we had to put up what they called " stakes" at each I angle — that is, we had to take shorter rails, sharp- I ened a little at the end, and push one hard into the j ground on each side of the fence, at every overlapping of the ends of the rails, leaning them firmly against the top rail, so that they crossed each other above. The last thing was to lay a light rail all round into [the crosses thus made, so as to " lock" them, and to Imake the wlicle so high that no beast could get over it. o \ r; i 64 " Shivgle Pigs** give v» sore trouble. We used to laugh about what we were told of the pigs and cattle and horses getting through and over fences ; but we soon found out that it was no laughing matter. The pigs were our first enemies, for, though we had made the lowest four rails very close, as we thought, to keep them out, we found we had not quite succeeded. There were some of a horrible breed, which they called the " shingle pig," as thin as a slate, with long snouts, long coarse bristles, iong legs, and a belly like a greyhound- creatures about as different from an English pig as can be imagined. They could run like a horse, no- thing would fatten them, and they could squeeze themselves sideways through an opening where you would have thought they could never have got in. If any hollow in the ground gave them the chance of getting below the rails, they were sure to find it out, and the first thing you would see, perhaps, would be a great gaunt skeleton of a sow, with six or eight little ones, rooting away in the heart of your field. With old fences they made short work, for if there were a piece low and ricketty they would fairly push it over with their horrid long noses, and enter with a triumphant grunt. Although they might have spared our feelings, and left our first little field alone, they did not, but never rested snuflSng round the fence, till they found out a place or two below it that had not been closely enough staked, through It ,'ll« \Mm " Shingle P'iga** give us sore trouble. 65 which they squeezed themselveB almost every day, until we found out where they were and stopped them up. The brutes were so cunning that they would never go in before you, but would stand looking round the end of the fence with their wicked eyes till you were gone. Robert thought at first he could take revenge on them and whip them out of such annoying habits, and whenever the cry was given that " the pigs were in," if he were within reach he would rush for the whip, and over the fence, to give them the weight of it. But they were better at running than he was, and, though he cut off the corners to try to head them, I don't know that, in all the times he ran himself out of breath, he ever did more than make them wonder what his intention could be in giving them such dreadful chases. We learned to be wiser after a time, and by keeping down our ill nature and driving them gently, found they would make for the place where they got in, and, by going out at I it, discover it to us. I only once saw a pig rim down, and it wasn't a "shingle" one. Neither Robert, nor any of us — for we were all, by h:*>; [orders, tearing after it in different directions — could come near it ; but a man we had at the time started off like an arrow in pursuit, and very soon had it by the hind leg, lifting it by which, the same instant, to poor piggy's great astonishment, h .; sent it with a great heave over the fence, down on the grass out- 56 " BreacJiy" Horses and Cattle, side. It was a small one, of course, else he could not have done it. A gentleman some miles above us used to be terribly annoyed by all the pigs of the neighbourhood, as he declared, getting round the end of his fence which ran into the river, and thought he would cure matters by running it out a rail farther. But they were not to be beaten, and would come to the outside, and swim round his fancied protection. He had to add a third length of rail before he stopped them, and it succeeded only by the speed of the current being too great for them to stem. , But pigs were not the only nuisance. Horses and cattle were sometimes a dreadful trouble. A " breachy" horse, or ox, or cow — that is, one given to leap fences or break them down — is sure to lead all the others in the neighbourhood into all kinds of mischief. The gentleman who was so worried by the nautical powers of the pigs, used to be half dis- tracted by a black mare which ran loose in his neighbourhood, and led the way into his fields to a whole troop of horses, which, but for her, would have been harmless enough. If a fence were weak she would shove it over ; or if firm, unless it were very high indeed, she would leap over it, generally knocking off rails enough in doing so to let the others in. She took a fancy to a fine field of Indian corn he had a little way from his house, and night after night, when he had fairly got into bed, he would hear her " Breach^" Horses and Cattle, 57 crashing over the fence into it, followed by all the rest. Of course he had to get up and dress himself, and then, after running about half an hour, through dewy corn as high as his head, to get them out attain, he had to begin in the middle of the night to rebuild his brc en rampart. Only think of this, re- peated night after night. I used to laugh at his nine or ten feet high fence, which I had to climb every time I went along the river side to see him, but he always put me off by saying — " Ah, you haven't a black mare down your way." And I am happy to say we had not. The cattle were no less accomplished in all forms of field-breaking villany than the pigs and horses. We had one brute of a cow, sometime after we came, that used deliberately to hook off the rails with her horns, until they were low enough to let her get her forelegs over, and then she leaned heavily on the rest until they gave way before her, after which she j would boldly march in. She was an excellent milker, so that we did all we could to cure her — sticking a board on her horns, and hanging another over her eyes — ^but she had a decided taste for fence-breaking, and we had at last to sentence her to death, and take our revenge by eating her up through the winter, after she had been fattened. o in 58 ■ \ CHAPTER IV. We begin our preparations for sowing — Gadflies — Mosquitoes — Harrowing experiences — A huge fly — Sandflies — The poison of insects and serpents — Winter wheat — The wonders of plant-life — Our first *' sport" — Woodpeckers— '♦Chitmunks"— The blue jay— The blue bird— The flight of birds. "When we had got our piece of ground all cleared, except the great ugly stumps, and had got our fence up, our next job was to get everything ready for sowing. First of all the ashes had to be scattered, a pro- cess that liberally dusted our clothes and faces. Then we brought up the oxen and fastened them by their chain to the sharp end of a three-cornered harrow, and with this we had to scratch the soil, as if just to call its attention to what we wished at its hand. It was the most solemnly slow work I ever saw, to get over the ground with our yoke — solemn to all but the driver, but to him the very reverse. The shouting and yelling on his part never stopped, as he iiad to get them round this stump and clear of that | one. But, if you looked only at the oxen you forgot the noise in watching whether they moved at all or Gadflies, 59 not. Elephant would lift his great leg into the air and keep it motionless for a time, as if he were thinking whether he should ever set it down again, and of course, Buckeye could not get on faster than I jjig mate. I tried the harrowing a little, but I confess I I didn't like it. We were persecuted by the gadflies, which lighted on the poor oxen and kept them in [constant excitement, as, indeed, they well might. Wherever they get a chance they pierce the skin on ithe back with a sharp tube, which shuts up and draws lout like a telescope, at the end of their body, pro- Itruding an egg through it into the creature attacked, land this egg, when hatched, produces a grub which Imakes a sore lump round it and lives in it, till it has attained its full size, when it comes out, lets itself Ifall to the ground and burrows in it, reappearing ftfter a time as a winged gadfly to torment other ittle. Then there were the long tough roots run- ling in every direction round the stumps, and itching the teeth of the harrow every little while, jiving the necks of the poor oxen uncommon jerks, ^nd needing the harrow to be lifted over them each ime. There was another trouble also, in the shape ^f the mosquitoes, which worried driver and oxen like. They are tiny creatures, but they are never- leless a great nuisance. In the woods in summer, or ^ear them, or, indeed, wherever there is stagnant rater, they are sure to sound their " airy trump." 1 .11 60 Mosquitoes, The wonderful quickness of the vibration of their wings makes a singing noise, which proclaims at once the presence of even a single tormentor. They rise in clouds from every pool, and even from the rain- water barrels kept near houses, where they may be seen in myriads, in their first shape after leaving the egg, as little black creatures with large heads, and tails perpetually in motion, sculling themselves with great speed hither and thither, but always tail foremost, A single night is sufficient to change them from this state, and send them out as fuU-blown mosquitoes, so that even if there be not one in your room on going to bed, you may have the pleasure of hearing several beibre morning, if you are in the habit of indulging in the luxury of washing in rain-water, or, worse still, to find your nose, and cheeks, or hands, orna- mented by itchy lumps, which show that the enemy has been at you, after all, while you slept. In Canada they are not half an inch long, and, until] distended with blood, are so thin as to be nearly in- visible. Their instrument of torture is a delicate! sucker, sticking down from the head and looking | very like a glass thread, the end of it furnished w sharp edges which cut the skin. I have sometimes I let one take its wiU of the back of my hand, just watch it. Down it comes, almost too light to be I felt, then out goes the lancet, its sheath serving for a support by bending up on the surface of the skin ill proportion as t the little vampj and his thin, until, very soor was when he be shining through jjou are not, for [into the punctu] land swelling, loi Ismooth-haired t (tuste almost as i 2[ot into the woe |brute, in spite of with them. Ho] attacks, and betw jseen the sides of ' Dey say ebery me one day ; " ij |for?" So do I. declared that he part of what is fhe devil ; but wl ne to settle, [iuimals by bleedj vhat Socrates sal nent of wisdom [liat, even if we nay be sure, thai Mosquitoes, 0| proportion as the sucker sinks. A sharp prick and the little vampire is drinking your blood. A minute, and his thin, shrivelled body begins to get fuller, until very soon, he is three times the mosquito he I was when he began, and is quite red with his surfeit shining through his sides. But, though he is done you are not, for some poisonous secretion is instilled into the puncture, which causes pain, inflammation, and swelling, long after he is gone. We had a little I smooth-haired terrier which seemed to please their [taste almost as much as we ourselves did. When it [got into the woods, they would settle on the poor Ibrute, in spite of all its efforts, till it was almost black tv'ith them. Horses and oxen get no rest from their attacks, and between them and the horse-flies I have Been the sides of the poor things running with blood. Dey say ebery ting has some use," said a negro to me one day ; " I wonder what de mosqueeter's good |for ?" So do I. A clergyman who once visited us leclared that he thought they and all such pests were part of what is meant in the Bible by the power of [ihe devil ; but whether he was right or not is beyond le to settle. Perhaps they keep off fevers from knimals by bleeding them as they do. But you know vhat Socrates said, that it was the highest attain- ment of wisdom to feel that we know nothing, so tliat, even if we can't tell why they are there, we lay be sure, that, if we knew as much as we might. A Huge Fly. we should find that they served some wise pur- pose. At the same time I have often been right glad to think that the little nuisances must surely have short commons in the unsettled districts, where there are no people nor cattle to torment. > The harrowing was also my first special introduc- tion to the horse-flies — great horrid creatures that they are. They fastened on the oxen at every part, and stuck the five knives with which their proboscis is armed, deep into the flesh. They are as large as honey-bees, so that you may judge how much they torment their victims. I have seen them make a horse's flanks red with the blood from their bites, They were too numerous to be driven off by the long tails of either oxen or horses, and, to tell the trutli, I was half afraid to come near them lest they should I take a fancy to myself. It is common in travelling j to put leafy branches of maple or some other tre« over the horses' ears and head to protect them as far | as possible. The largest fly I ever saw lighted on the fence, I close to me, about this time. "We had been frightened by stories of things as big as your thumb, that! soused down on you before you knew it, but I never, before or since, saw such a giant of a fly as this fellow. It was just like a house-fly magnified a great many times, how many I should not like to say. I took to my heels in a moment for fear of instant Sand-flies. C3 death, and saw no more of it. WTiether it would have bitten me or not I cannot tell, but I was not at all inclined to try the experiment. All this time we have left the oxen pulling away at the harrow, but we must leave them a minute or two longer till we get done with all the flies at once. There is a little black speck called the sand-fly, Avhich many think even worse than the mosquito. It comes in clouds, and is too small to ward off*, and its bite causes acute pain for hours after. But, notwith- standing gadflies, mosquitoes, horse-flies, and this last pest, the sand-fly, we were better off" than the I South American Indians of whom Humboldt speaks, who have to hide all night three or four inches deep in the sand to keep themselves from mosquitoes as large las bluebottles; and our cattle had nothing to contend [with hke such a fly as the tzetse, which, Dr. Livingstone Itells us, is found in swarms on the South African rivers, |a bite of which is certain death to any horse or ox. How curious it is, by the way, that any poison fihould be so powerful that the quantity left by the }ite of a fly should be able to kill a great strong horse or an ox ; and how very wonderful it is, moreover, hiat the fly's body should secrete such a frightful oison, and that it should carry it about in it ithout itself suffering any harm I Dr. Buckland, of be Life Guards, was once poisoned by some of the hnom of a cobra di capello, a kind of serpent, getting 64 Winter Wheat, below liis n.iil, into a scratch he had given himseli with a knife he had used in skinning a rat, which the serpent had killed. And yet the serpent itself could have M'hole glands full of it, without getting any hurt. But if the cobra were to bite its own body it would die at once. The scorpion can and does sting itself to death. When we had got our field harrowed over twice or thrice, till every part of it had been well scratched up, and the ashes well mixed with ti- soil, our next step was to sow it, after which came another harrow- ing, and then we had only to wait till the harvest next July, hoping we might be favoured with a good crop. That a blade so slight as that of young wheat should be able to stand the cold of the Canadian winter has always seemed to me a great wonder. It grows up the iirst year just like grass, and might be mistaken for it even in the beginning of the following spring. The snow which generally covers it during the long cold season is a great protection to it, but it survives even when it has been bare for long intervals together, though never, I believe, so strong, after such hardships suiTered in its infancy. The snow not only protects, but, in its melting, nourishes, the young plant, so that not to have a good depth of it is a double evil. But, snow or not snow, the soil is almost always frozen like a rock, and yet the tender green blades hve through it all, unless some thaw during winter expose The Wonden of Plant-life, 65 the roots, and a subsequent irost seize them, in which case the plant dies. Large patches in many fields are thus destroyed in years when the snow is not deep enough. What survives must have suspended its life while the earth in which it grows is frozen. Yet after being thus asleep for months — indeed, more than asleep, for every process of life must be stopped, the first breath of spring brings back its vigour, and it wakes as if it had been growing all the time. How I wonderful are even the common facts of nature! I The life of plants I have always thought very much Our life perishes if it be stopped for a very I short time, but the beautiful robe of flowers and Iverdure with which the world is adorned is well nigh [indestructible. Most of you know the story of Pope's [weeping willow : the poet had received a present of , basket of figs from the Levant, and when opening ^t, discovered that part of the twigs of which it was Diade were already budding, from some moisture that had reached them, and this led him to plant bne, which, when it had grown, became the stock whence all the Babylonian willows in England have oine. Then we are told that seeds gathered from eneath the ashes at Pompeii, after being buried for tghteen hundred years, have grown on being brought Qce more to the light, and it has often been found bat others brought up from the bottom of wells, ihen they were being dug, or from beneath accumu- [tions of sand, of unknown age, have only to be F o \'S\ 66 Woodpeckers, iitiijil m %^ sown near the siirface to commence instantly to grow. It is said that wheat found in the coffins of mummies in Eg}'pt has sprung up freely when sown, but the proof of any liaving done so is thought by others insufficient. Yet there is nothing to make such a thing impossible, and perhaps some future explorer like Dr. Layard or Mr. Loftus, may come on grains older still, in Babylon or Nineveh, and give us bread from the wheat that Nebuchadnezzar or Semiraniis used to eai.. Indeed, M. Michelet tells us that some seeds found in the inconceivably ancient Diluvial drift readily grew on being sown. During the busy weeks in which we were getting our first field ready, we boys, though always out of tioors, were not always at work. Henry used to I bring out his gun with him, to take a shot at any- thing he could see, and though there were not venj many creatures round us, yet there were more when you looked for them than you would otherwise have thought. The woodpeckers were the strangest to lis I among them all. They would come quite nearus, running up and down the trunks of the trees iii every way, as flies run over a window-pane. Then) were three or four kinds : one, the rarest, known bjl being partly yellow; another, by the feathers on ifil back having a strange, hairy-like look; the thirds a smaller bird, about six inches long, but othenvisl like its hairy relation; the fourth, and commonest, wail the red-headed woodpecker. This one gets its namtl JFoodpeckers. 67 from the beautiful crimson of ita head and neck, and the contrast of this bright colour with the black and white of its body and wings, and with its black tail, makes it look very pretty. They would 1 ight on stumps or trees close to us, running round to the other side till we passed, if we came very close, and then reappear- ing the next instant. They kept up a constant tap, tap, tapping with their heavy bills on the bark of any tree on which they happened to alight, running up the trunk, and stopping every minute with their tail resting on the bark to support them, and hammering as if for the mere love of the noise. Every grub or insect they thus discovered, was, in a moment, caught on their tongue, which was thrust out for the purpose. Henry shot one of them, after I missing pretty often, for we were just beginning 1 shooting as well as everything else, and we brought I it to the house to let my sisters see it, and to have another look at it ourselves. Being a bit of an ornithologist, he pointed out to us how the toes were [four in number — two before and two behind — and Ihow they were spread out to give the cren iire as irm a hold as possible of the surface on which it ras climbing, and how its tail was shaped like a fedge, and the feathers very strong, to prop it up (rhile at work. Then there was the great heavy liead and heavy bill, with the long thin neck, putting le in mind of a stone-breaker's hammer, with the iiin handle and the heavy top. But its tongue was^ f2 68 ChUmunhs, perhaps, the most curious part of the whole. I !.*?<) were two long, arched, tendon-like things, which reached from the tongue round the skull, and passed quite over it down to the root of the bill at the nos- trils; and, inside the wide circle thus made, a muscle, fixed at its two ends, provided the means of thrust- ing out the tongue with amazing swiflness and to a great length, just as you may move forwards the top of a fishing-rod in an instant by pulling the line which runs from the tip to the reel. My brother Robert, who was of a religious disposition, could not help telling us, when we had seen all this, thvat he thought it just another proof of the wonderful wis- dom and goodness of God to see how everything was adapted to its particular end. One little creature used to give us a great deal of amusement and pleasure. It was what Nisbet called a chitmunk, the right name of it being the ground-squirrel. It was a squirrel in every respect, except that, instead of the great bushy tail turned up I over the back, it had a rounded hairy one, which , was short and straight, and was only twitched up and down. The little things were to be seen everj now and then on any old log, that marked where 3 tree had fallen long before. The moment we looked at them they would stare at us with their great black eyes, and, if we moved, they were into some hole in the 1 or over the back of it, and out of sight in an instant! Chitmtinka, 69 We all felt kindly disposed towards them, and never tried to shoot them. I suppose they were looking for nuts on the ground, as they feed largely on them, and carry off a great many, as well as stores of other food in little cheek-pouches which they have, that they may be provided for in winter. They do not make their houses, like the other squirrels, in holes in the trees, but dig burrows in the woods, under log3, or in hillocks of earth, or at the roots of the trees, forming a winding passage down to it, and then making two or three pantries, as I may call them, at the sides of their nest, or sitting and sleep- ing-room, for their extra food. They do not often go [up the trees, but if they be frightened, and can- not get to their holes, they run up the trunks, and get from branch to branch with wonderful quickness. Sometimes we tried to catch one when it would thus go lup some small, low tree, of which there were numbers |on the edge of a stream two fields back on our farm ; but it was always too quick for us, and affcer making pure I had it, and climbing the tree to get hold of it. It would be off in some magical way before our eyes pet us do our best. Then, at other times, we would ry to catch one in an old log, but with no better iccess. Henry would get to the one end and I to le other, and make sure it couldn't get out. It ilways did get out, however, and all we could do m to admire its beautiful shape, with the squirrel in** 70' The Blue Jay. head, and a soft brown coat which was striped with black, lengthwise, and its arch little tail, which was never still a moment. Some of the birds were the greatest beaaties you could imagine. We would see one fly into the woods all crimson, or seemingly so, and perhaps, soon after, another, which was like a living emerald. They were small birds — not larger than a thrush — and not very numerous ; but I cannot trust myself to give their true names. The blue jay was one of the pret- tiest of all the feathered folk that used to come and look at us. What a bright, quick eye it has ! what a beautiful blue crest to raise or let down as its pride or curiosity moves it or passes away ! how ex- quisitely its wings are capped with blue, and barred with black and white ! and its back — could anything be finer than the tint of blue on it ? Its very tail would be ornament enough for any one bird, with its elegant tapering shape, and its feathers barred so charmingly with black and white. But we got after- wards to have a kind of ill-will at the little urchins, when we came to have an orchard ; for greater thieves than they are, when the fancy takes them, it would be hard to imagine. When breeding, they generally kept pretty close to the woods ; but in September or i October they would favour the gardens with visits; and then woe to any fruit within reach ! But jet I they ate so many caterpillars at times that I suppose we should not have grudged them a cherry feast The Blue Bird, 71 occasionally. I am sure they must be great cox- combs, small though they be, for they are not much larger than a thrush, though the length of their tail makes them seem larger ; they carry their heads so pertly, like to show themselves off so well, and are so constantly raising and letting down their beautiful crest, as if all the time thinking how well they look. John James A.udubon, the ornithologist, got a num- ber of them, of both sexes, alive, and tried to carry them over to England, to -.nake us a present of the race, if it were able to live in our climate; but I the poor things all sickened and died on the way. I must not forget the dear little blue bird, which [comes all the way from the Far South as early as March, to stay the summer with us, not leaving till [the middle or end of November, when he seems to Ibid a melancholy farewell to his friends, and returns |to his winter retreat. In the spring and summer levery place is enlivened with his cheerful song ; but dth the change of the leaf in October it dies away ito a single note, as if he too felt sorry that the Deautiful weather was leaving. The blue bird is to America very much, in sum- (ler, what the robin is to us in England in winter — liopping as familiarly as if it trusted every one, about he orchards and the fences. Sometimes it builds in \ hole in an old apple-tree, for generation after gene- ation; but very often it takes up its abode in little [ouses built specially for it, and fixed on a high pole, :1l ,4 n The Flight of Birds, or on the top of some of the outhouses. We were sometimes amused to see its kindly ways while the hen was sitting on the nest. The little husband would sit close by her, and lighten her cares by sing- ing his sweetest notes over and over ; and, when he chanced to have found some morsel that he thought would please her — some insect or other — he would fly with it to her, spread his wing over her, and put it into her mouth. We used to take it for granted that it was the same pair that built year after year in the same spot, but I never heard of anything being done to prove it in any case. In that of other birds, however, this attachment to one spot has been very clearly shown. I have read somewhere of copper rings having been fastened round the legs of swallows, whicli were observed the year after to have returned, witli this mark on them, to their former haunts. How is it that these tiny creatures can keep a note in their head of so long a journey as they take each autumn, and cross country after country straight to a place I thousands of miles distant ? A man could not do it without all the helps he could get. I lose mjsell every now and then in the streets of any new citr I may visit ; and as to making my way across a whole kingdom without asking, I fear I would malej only a very zigzag progress. Some courier pigeons, which one of the Arctic voyagers took to tlie Far North, on being let loose, made straight for the pla to which they had been accustomed in Ayrshire, in I ^1 The Flight of Birds, 73 an incredibly short time. Lithgow, the old traveller, tells us that one of these birds will carry a letter from Bagdad to Aleppo, which is thirty days' journey at the Eastern rate of travel, in forty-eight hours, so that it could have had no hesitation, but must have flown straight for its distant home. They say that when on their long flights, they and other birds, such as swallows, soar to a great height, and skim round in circles for a time, as if surveying the bearings of the land beneath them; but what eyes they must have to see clearly over such a landscape as must I open at so great an elevation ! and how little, after all can that help them on a journey of thousands of 1 niiles ! Moore's beautiful verse speaks of the intent- net'S with which the pigeon speeds to its goal, and [how it keeps so high up in the air : — " The dove let loose in eastern skies, Returning fondly home, Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies Where idler warblers roam." I have noticed that all birds, when on long flight"?, Beek the upper regions of the air : the ducks aiici. Bwans, that used to pass over us in the spring, ^o. jtheir way to their breeding-places in the Arctic Regions, were always so high that they looked like Btrings of moving specks in the sky. They always h in a certain order, the geese in single file, arranged |ike a great V, the two sides of it stretching far awav rom each other, but the birds which form the figure ^.f««Ml:^ The Flight of Birds, never losing their respective places. Some of the ducks, on the other hand, kept in wedge-shaped phalanxes, like the order in which Hannibal dis- posed his troops at the Battle of Cannee. Whether they fly so high to see better, or because the air is thinner and gives them less resistance, or to be out of the reach of danger, or to keep from any tempta- tion to alight and loiter on their way, it would be hard to tell, but with all the help which their height can give them, it has always been a great wonder to me how they knew the road to take. There must surely be some senses in such creatures of which we do not know, or those they have must be very mucl} more acute than ours. How does a bee find its way home for miles ? And how does the little humming- bird — of which I shall speak more hereafter — thread its way, in its swift arrowy flight, from Canada to the far South, and back again, each year ? I am afraid we must all confess that we cannot tell. Our know- ledge, of which we are sometimes so proud, is a very poor affair after all. 75 CHAPTER V. Some family changes — Amusements — Cow-hunting — Our " side-line"- -The bush — Adventures with rattlesnakes — Gaiter-suakes — A frog's flight for life — Black squirrels. I HAVE talked so long about the farm, and the beasts, i and birds, that I had almost forgotten to speak of some chpiiges which took place in our family in the first summer of our settlement. My eldest sister had, it seems, found time in Toronto to get in love, [in spite of having to be mistress of such a household, [and, of course, nothing could keep her past the week [fixed for her marriage, which was to take place about two months after her getting to the River. She must needs, when the time drew near, get back to ler beloved, and had to look out her share of the rniture, &c., to take with her, or rather to send off before. My eldest brother, Andrew, also, had cast many wry looks at the thick logs, and at ais blistered hands, and had groaned through every mj hot day, maintaining that there would soon L)e nothing left of him but the bonos. " Melting loments, girls," he would say to my sisters ; " melt- ing moments, as the sailor said under the line. I au't stand this ; I shall go back to England." So r" o \W 76 Some Family Changes, he and my eldest sister made it up that he should take her, and such of her chattels as were not sent on before, to Toronto, and should leave us under the charge of Kobert. When the dny came, we all went down to the wharf with them, and, after a rather sorrowful parting, heard in due time of the marriage of the one, and, a good while afterwards — for there were no steamers in those days across the Atlantic— of the safe return of the other to England. This was the first break up of our household in America; and it left us for a time lonely enough, thongli there were still so many of us together. We didn't care much for my sister's leaving, for she would still be within reach, but it was quite likely ve should never see Andrew again. I have alwas thought it was a very touching thing that those who had grown up together should be separated, after a few years, perhaps never to meet again. My brother Robert made a very tender allusion to this I at worship that night, and moved us all by praying that we might all of us lead such Christian lives,] through God's grace, that we might meet again in tlie | Great Hereafter, ii not in our earthly pilgrimage. He wound up ;1 e set '/ ice by repeating in his very striking way — for be recited beaiitifuUy — Burns' touching] words : — "And when, at last, ^^e reach that coast, O'er life's rough ocean driven, May we rejoice, no wanderer lost j A family in Heaven." Amusements, 77 After our wheat had been sown we had time to take a little leisure, and what with fishing at the end of the long wharf by day, and in the canoe, by torch- light, in the evenings, or strolling through the woods with our guns or rifles, or practising with the latter at a rough target made by cutting a broad slice off a tree, from which we dug out the bullets again to gave the lead, ihe autumn passe' 1 very pleasantly. Of course it was not all play. There was plenty more forest to be cleared, and wo kept at that pretty steadily, though a half-holiday or a whole one did not seem out of the way to us. I, as the youngest, had for my morning and evening's task to go to the [woods and bring home the cows to be milked, and at [times, the oxen, when we wanted them for some kind [of work. The latter were left in the woods for days together, when we had nothing for them to do, and [wlien we did bring them in, we always gave them little salt at the barn-door to try to get them into |the habit of returning of their own accord. Cattle find horses in Canada all need to be often indulged irith this luxury ; the distance from the sea leaving bardly any of it in the air, or in the grass and other vegetation. It was sometimes a pleasure to go cow- liunting, as we called it, but sometimes quite the reverse. I used to set out, with the dogs for company, traight up the blazed line at the side of our lot. I lean, up a line along which the trees had been marked ky slices cut out of their sides, to show the way to i ,ii»«'*' ■«#fea^cf 78 Cow-hunting, the lots at the back of ours. It was all open for a little way back, for the post road passed up from the bank of the river along the side of our farm, for five or six acres, and then turned at a right angle parallel with the river again, and there was a piece of tlie side line cleared for some distance beyond the turn, After this piece of civilization had been passed, how- ever, nature had it all to herself. The first twelve or fifteen acres lay fine and high, and could almost always be got over easily, but the ground dropped down at that distance to the edge of a little stream, and rose on the other side, to stretch away in a dead level, for I know not how many miles. The stream- let, which was sometimes much swollen after tliausj or rains, was crossed by a rough sort of bridge formed of the cuts of young trees which rested on stouter supports of the same kind, stretchiDf| from bank to bank. One of the freshets, however, I for a time destroyed this easy communication, and left us no way of crossing till it was repaired, but either by fording, or by venturing over the trunk cf a tree, which was felled so as to reach across tie gap and make an apology for a bridge. It used at first to be a dreadful job to get over this primitivt pathway, but I got so expert that I could runovef it easily and safely enough. The dogp, however, generally preferred the water, unless when it n\ deep. Then there were pieces of swampy land farther back, over which a string of felled trees, ' Cow-hunting. 79 beyond the other, offered, again, tlie only passage. These were the worst to cross, for the wet had gene- rally taken off the bark, and they often bent almost into the water with yonr weight. One day, when I was making my best attempt at getting over one of these safely, an old settler on a lot two miles back made his appearance at the farther side. " Bad roads, Mr. Brown," said I, accosting him, for every one speaks to every one else in such a place as that. "Yes, Mr. Stanley — bad roads, indeed; but it's nothing to have only to walk out and in. What do you think it must have been when I had to bring my furniture back on a sleigh in summer-time ? We used waggons on the dry places, and then got sleighs jfor the swamps; and, Mr. Stanley, do you know, i I'm sure two or three times you hardly saw more of the oxen for a minute than just the horns. We had all to go through the water ourselves to get them to [pull, and even then they stuck fast with our load, land we had to take it off and carry it on our backs [the best way we could. You don't know anything about it, Mr. Stanley. I had to carry a chest of drawers on my shoulders through all this water, and every bit that we ate for a whole year, till we got a rop, had to be brought from the front, the same way, over these logs." No doubt he spoke the truth, but, notwithstanding tis gloomy recollections, it used to be grand fun to IJIta-' ft Cow-hunting. , „nt when I could not find the cows, or go b^cK «-««P' ;^ ^j'^, ,^,„,elves be driven lu,.e. .,e„ they v,ou d no le^ ^ ^^^^^ ,„, The dogs would b. ott ^^^^ ^^^^ ^,^ ^j^^^ while, though they nev ^^^^_^^ .ould sp.a.h into the wa^w.h_^^^^^^„,, --^-'^tT;lnlt<»nbenotrn,n>o,e the mosqmtoes. X"t5i ^^ ^^^^^^ beautiful than the woods t—^^^^^^^^^^ -v""rfi:ro7vit:vUe.anope^^^^^ »thou.md forn>s ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ „„. letaintl,-*'™. The tre ^ i^„a. Tkir b„geous like those in ^^^ V^^^l^ ^^^ «,, higW beingc.owdedtogethermuks them P 1 ,1 tV>p white and Diue ui j fo over head, the wh ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^_ ^^^^ „p the openmgs m the ^ heighten^ beauty of the Bc.n ^.^^_ ^^;<^i, .^^ swampy places, to ob ou ^^_^^^ closed in the distance by the clo^ ^^^^^^^ ^ «,^e of these -»-«^! '"' *\f „,„!„ all; the.- ofothe.s,andthevast.e.gWne^y^^^^ haustless charms of fte ^ ^^^^^ ^^^^.^. ,, irri^eiressvarietyof^adeandfo™.. i!*: :i The Bush. 81 DW8, OT I In. me. ry little or tliey gambola it quit of ng more lie leaves varied by I opening and \m- A. Tk!r far higher have great able pilliirs of of green, 3 sky filling ives. There leighten tlie ^ except In rliicli is only loser gather- thickness i ,he fine M rail; the ex- ■^ of minglei Ld above; tli« ere and there ndformintli* young trees springing up at intervals ; tlic flowers in one spot, the rough fretting of fallen and mouldering trees bright with every tint of fungus, or red with docay, or decked with mosses and lichens, in others, and llie graceful outline of broad beds of fern, contrast- inc with the many-coloured carpet of leaves — made it delightful to stroll along. The silence that reigns heightens the pleasure and adds a calm solemnity. The stroke of an axe can be heard for miles, aii< -^o may the sound of a cow-bell, as I have somet! .s found to my sorrow. But it was only when the cows or oxen could be easily got that I was disposed to hiiik of the poetry of the journey. They always ept together, and I knew the sound of our bell at ,ny distance ; but sometimes I could not, by any stening, catch it, the wearer having perhaps lain own to chew the cud, and then, what a holloaing ind getting up on fallen trees to look for them, and anclering till I was fairly tired. One of the oxen lad for a time the honour of bearing the bell, but I iiind, after a while, that he added to my trouble in ding him and his friends, by his cunning, and we npferred it to one of the cows. The brute had a ed dislike to going home, and had learned that the ikle of the bell was a sure prelude to his being off, to prevent which, ho actually got shrewd ugh to hold his head, while resting, in so still a ;y that he hardly made a sound. I have seen him, len I had at last hunted him up, looking sideways %0* O IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) k /, «.// ' i-"*^ 1.0 I.I 11.25 lai no u fit |22 ^ U£ 12.0 ^ ^ mwm iiiim 1.4 11.6 ^^ ^ r ^V--' rtiotographic Sciences Corporation 33 WIST MAIN STRUT WEBSTIR.N.Y. 14SS0 (7I6)>72-4S03 '^^'^1< ^ w '^ o^ 5^ ; ' 82 Adventured with Rattlesnalees, if at me with his great eyes, afraid for his life to stir his head lest the horrid clapper should proclaim his presence. When I did get them they were not always willing to be driven, and would set off with their heads and tails up, the oxen accompanying them, the bell making a hideous clangour, careering away over every impediment, straight into the woods, in, perhaps, the very opposite direction to that in which I wished to lead them. Then for a race to head them, round logs, over logs, through brush and below it, the dogs dashing on ahead, where they thought I was going, and looking back every minute, as if to wonder what I was about. It was sometimes the work o%hours to get them home, and sometimes for days together we could not find them at all. There is little to fear from wild animals in the bush in Canada. The deer were too frightened to trouble us, and, though I have some stories to tell about bears and wolves, they were so seldom seen that they did not give us much alarm. But I was always afraid of the rattlesnakes, especially in the long grass that grew in some wet places. I never saw but one, however, and that was once, years after, when I was riding up a narrow road that had been cut through the woods. My horse was at a walk, when, suddenly, it made a great spring to one side, very nearly unseating me, and then stood looking at a low bush and trembling in every limb. The next moment I heard the horrible rattle, and my horse Adventures with Rattlesnakes, 88 commenced a set of leaps from one side to the other, backing all the while, and snorting wildly. I could not get off, and as little could I get my horse turned away, so great was his fear. Two men luckily came up just at this time, and at once saw the cause of the poor brute's alarm, which was soon ended by one of them making a dash at the snake with a thick stick, and breaking its neck at a blow. Henry told us once that he was chased by one which he had dis- turbed, and I can easily credit it, for I have seen smaller snakes get very infuriated, and if one was alarmed, as in Henry's case, it might readily glide after him for some distance. However, it fared badly in the end, for a stick ended its days abruptly. I was told one story that I believe is true, though ridiculous enough. A good man, busy mowing in his field, in the summer costume of hat, shirt, and boots, found himself, to his horror, face to face with a rattlesnake, which, on his instantly throwing down his scythe and turning to flee, sprang at his tails and fixed its fangs in them inextricably. The next spring — the cold body of the snake struck against his legs, making him certain he had been bitten. He was a full mile from his house, but despair added strength and speed. Away he flew — over logs, fences, everything — the snake dashing against him with every [jump, till he reached his home, into which he j rushed, shouting, " The snake, the snake ! I'm bitten, I'm bitten !" Of course they were all alarmed 62 !i ^4' ■■ Adventures with Eattlesnahes, 88 commenced a set of leaps from one side to the other, backing all the while, and snorting wildly. I could not get off, and as little could I get my horse turned away, so great was his fear. Two men luckily came up just at this time, and at once saw the cause of the poor brute's alarm, which was soon ended by one of them making a dash at the snake with a thick stick, and breaking its neck at a blow. Henry told us once that he was chased by one which he had dis- turbed, and I can easily credit it, for I have seen smaller snakes get very infuriated, and if one was alarmed, as in Henry's case, it might readily glide after him for some distance. However, it fared badly in the end, for a stick ended its days abruptly. I was told one story that I believe is true, though ridiculous enough. A good man, busy mowing in his field, in the summer costume of hat, shirt, and boots, foimd himself, to his horror, face to face with a rattlesnake, which, on his instantly throwing down his scythe and turning to flee, sprang at his tails and fixed its fangs in them inextricably. The next spring — the cold body of the snake struck against his legs, making him certain he had been bitten. He was a full mile from his house, but despair added strength and speed. Away he flew — over logs, fences, everything — the snake dashing against him with ever}' [jump, till he reached his home, into which he rushed, shouting, " The snake, the snake ! I'm bitten, I'm bitten !" Of course they were all alarmed g2 84 Adventures with Rattlesnakes. t:i; ,:i.? , • -i^im, enough, but when they came to examine, the terror proved to be the whole of the injury suffered, the snake's body having been knocked to pieces on the way, the head, only, remaining fixed in the spot at which it had originally sprung. David and Henry were one day at work in our field, where there were some bushes close to a stump near the fence. The two were near each other when the former saw a number of yoimg rattlesnakes at Henry's side, and, as a good joke, for we laughed at the danger, it seemed so slight, cried out — " Henry 1 Henry I look at the rattlesnakes !" at the same time mounting the fence to the highest rail to enjoy Hanry's panic. But the young ones were not disposed to trouble any one, so that he instantly saw that he had nothing to fear; whereas, on looking towards David, there was quite enough to turn the laugh the other way. " Look at your feet, David I" followed in an instant, and you may easily imagine how quickly the latter was down the outer side of the fence, and away to a safe dis- tance, when, on doing as he was told, he saw the mother of the brood poised below him for a spring, which, but for Henry, she would have made the next moment. Pigs have a wonderful power of killing snakes, their hungry stomachs tempting them to the attack for the sake of eating their bodies. I don't* know that they ever set on rattlesnakes, but a friend of mine saw one with the body of a great black snake, the Garter Snakes, 83 thickness of his wrist, and four or five feet long, lying over its back. Monsieur Pig converting the whole into pork as fast as he could, by vigorously swallowing joint after joint. The garter-snake is the only creature of its kind which is very common in Canada, and very beautiful and harmless it is. But it is never seen without getting killed, unless it beat a very speedy retreat into some log or pile of stones, or other shelter. The influence of the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden is fatal to the whole tribe of snakes, against every individual of which a merciless crusade is waged the moment one is seen. The garter-snake feeds on frogs and other small creatures, as I chanced to see one day when walking up the road. In a broad bed of what they call tobacco- weed, a chase for life or death was being made between a poor frog and one of these snakes. The frog evidently knew it was in danger, for you never saw such leaps as it would take to get away from its enemy, falling into the weeds, after each, so as to be hidden for a time, if it had only been able to keep so. But the snake would raise itself up on a slight coil of its tail, and from that height search every place with its bright wicked eyes for his prey, and presently glide off towards where the poor frog lay panting. Then for another leap, and another poising, to scan the field. I don't know how it ended, for I had watched them till they were a good way off. How the snake would Garter Snakes, 83 thickness of his wrist, and four or five feet long, lying over its back, Monsieur Pig converting the whole into pork as fast as he could, by vigorously swallowing joint after joint. The garter-snake is the only creature of its kind which is very common in Canada, and very beautiful and harmless it is. But it is never seen without getting killed, unless it beat a very speedy retreat into some log or pile of stones, or other shelter. The influence of the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden is fatal to the whole tribe of snakes, against every individual of which a merciless crrsade is waged the moment one is seen. The garter-snake feeds on frogs and other small creatures, as I chanced to see one day when walking up the road. In a broad bed of what they call tobacco-weed, a chase for life or death was being made between a poor frog and one of these snakes. The frog evidently knew it was in danger, for you never saw such leaps as it would take to get away from its enemy, falling into the weeds, after each, so as to be hidden for a time, if it had only been able to keep so. But the snake would raise itself up on a slight coil of its tail, and from that height search every place with its bright wicked eyes for his prey, and presently glide off towards where the poor frog lay panting. Then for another leap, and another poising, to scan the field. I don't know how it ended, for I had watched them till they were a good way off. How the snake would \ , , ■ ■■ ^ * '■'i ■■■■:1 . : '; '. '\ ''^m .'*■ i\ o \ ' 1 '.. ■ r ^ if: 86 Black Squirrels* ever swallow it, if it caught it, is hard to imagine, for certainly it was at least three times as thick as itself. But we know that snakes can do wonderful things in that way. Why, the cobra di capello, at the Zoological Gardens, swallowed a great railway rug some time ago, and managed to get it up again when it found it could make nothing of it. It is a mercy- our jaws do not distend in such a fashion, for we would look very horrible if we were in the habit of swallowing two large loaves at a time, or of taking our soup with a spoon a foot broad, which would, however, be no worse than a garter-snake swallowing a frog whole. It is amazing how fierce some of the small snakes are. I have seen one of six or eight inches in length dart at a walking-stick by which it had been disturbed, with a force so great as to be felt in your hand at the farther end. Homer, in the Iliad, says that Menelaus was as brave as a flj, which, though so small, darts once and again in a man's face, and will not be driven away ; but he might have had an additional comparison for his hero if he had seen a snake no thicker than a pencil charging at a thick stick held in a man's hand. "We had very pleasant recreation now and then, hunting black squirrels, which were capital eating. They are much larger than either the grey or the red ones, and taste very much like rabbits, from which, indeed, it would be hard to distinguish them when they are on the table. Both they and the Black Squirrels, 87 ffrey squirrel are very common, and are sometimes great pests to the farmer, making sad havoc with his Indian corn while green, and with the young wheat. In Pennsylvania this at one time came to such a pitch that a law was passed, offering threepence a-head for every one destroyed, which resulted, in 1749, in 8000Z. being paid in one year as head- money for those killed. Their great numbers some- times develope strange instincts, very different from those we might expect. From scarcity of food, or some other unknown cause, all the squirrels in a large district will at times take it into their heads to make a regular migration to some other region. Scattered bodies are said to gather from distant points, and marshal themselves into one great host, which then sets out on its chosen march, allowing nothing whatever — h^ it mountain or river — ^to stop them. We ourselves had proof enough that nothing in the shape of water, short of a lake, could do it. Our neighbours agreed in telling us that, a few years before we came, it had been a bad summer for nuts, and that the squirrels of all shades had evidently seen the perils of the approaching winter, and made up their minds to emigrate to more favoured lands. Whether they held meetings on the subject, and discussed the policy to be pursued, was not known; but it is certain that squirreldom at large decided on a united course of action. Having come to this determination, they gathered, ..i! \ Ill ;,f ': .!H,|.; " m:' ■; \ f * I 98 Black Squirrels, it appears, in immense numbers, in the trees at the water's edge, where the river was at least a mile broad, and had a current of about two miles an hour, and, without hesitation, launched off in thou, sands on the stream, straight for the other side. Whether they all could swim so far, no one, of course, could tell; but vast numbers reached the southern shore, and made for the woods, to seek there the winter supplies which had been deficient in the district they had left. How strange for little creatures like them to contrive and carry out an organized movement, which looked as complete and deliberate as the migration of as many human beings ! What led them to go to the south rather than to the north? There were no woods in sight on the southern side, though there were forests enough in the interior. I think we can only come to the conclusion, which cannot be easily confuted, that the lower creatures have some faculties of which we have no idea whatever. The black squirrels are very hardy. You may see them in the woods, even in the middle of winter, when their red or grey brethren, and the little ground squirrels, are not to be seen. On bright days, how- ever, even these more delicate creatures venture out, to see what the world is like, after their long seclu- sion in their holes in the trees. They must gather a large amount of food in the summer and autumn to be sufficient to keep them through the long months Black Squirrels, 89 of cold and firost, and their diligence in getting ready in time for the season when their food is buried out of their reach, is a capital example to us. They carry things from great distances to their nests, if food be rather scarce, or if they find any delicacy worth laying up for a treat in winter. When the wheat is ripe they come out in great numbers to get a share of the ears, and run off with as many as they can manage to steal. ■■»!' 90 k CHAPTER VI. Spearing fish — Ancient British canoes — Indian ones— A bargain with an Indian — Henry*B cold bath — Canadian thunderstornia — Poor Yorick's death — Our glorious au- tumns — The change of the leaf— Sunsets— Indian summer — ^Tlie fail rains and the roads — The first snow — Canadian cold — A winter landscape — "Ice-storms" — Snow cryatali —The minute perfection of God's works — Deer- shooting-. David's misfortune — Useless cruelty — Shedding of the stag's horns. Spearing fish by moonlight was a great amusement with us in the beautiful autumn evenings. We had bought a canoe from an Indian for eight dollars, I think — that is, about thirty-two shillings, and it formed our boat on these occasions. Perhaps, how- ever, before speaking of our adventures on tlie waters, I had better describe this new purchase, and the scene of its transference to our hands, which was as curious as itself. It was made out of a long cut of a black walnut-tree, which had been burned and hollowed to the required depth, breadth, and length, and had then been shaped, outside, by an axe, to the model proposed. They are generally quite light, but ours was, to other canoes, what a ship's boat is to a skiiF. It must have taken a long time to finish, but time is of no value to an Indian. spearing FUX» 91 Indeed, the longer anything takes him the better, as it gives him at least something to do, when, otherwise, he would likely have relapsed into total idleness. There is no keel on canoes, but only a roimd bottom, and the ends are sharp and both alike. Of course, such a vessel has a natural facility at roUing, and needs only the slightest aid on your part to turn in the water like a log, so that safety depends very much on your being steady, and not leaning, under any circumstances, to either side. In some parts of Canada they are made of the tough, light bark of the birch tree, which is sewed into a long sheet, and stretched over a light but strong framework of the desired shape. Before using it, the bark is tho- roughly soaked in oil to make it waterproof. When finished, such a canoe is really elegant, rising high into a wide circular form at the ends, which are made very sharp to cut the water easily. I have seen them beautifully finished, with differently coloured porcupine quills worked into the edges, and fanciful designs at the ends. They are so light that one which will hold twenty men weighs only a few hundred-weight, and can be easily carried by three or four men. Then, they are so elastic that they yield to blows which would break a canoe of wood. When they do get an injury, it is amusing to see how easily they are mended. You can darn them like a stocking, or patch them like a shoe, using wire, however, instead of thread, and making all a 99 Spearing FUh, tight by a coating of the resinous matter got from the red pine. The ingenuity that invented such a refinement on the common canoe, as is shown in the birch-bark one, is enough to redeem the character of the Indian from the low estimate of his mechanical powers sometimes heard. If we wonder at the con- trast between such vessels at their best and our beautiful boats and ships, we must remember that our ancestors could boast of nothing better than these Indians make to-day. In both Scotland and Eng- land, canoes have been often found in draining a lake, or in excavations near streams, or near the sea-shore, where bogs or other causes have covered the ancient Bur&ce of the ground. One was discovered some years since at the foot of the Ochill hills, many feet under a bog, and not very far from it there was found the skeleton of a small whale, with the head of a harpoon sticking in its backbone. Others, foimd elsewhere, are preserved in various public and private museums. It is striking to think from such discoveries as these, and from what we know of the boats of savage nations generally over the world, how nearly men of all ages when placed in the same position, when they are at similar stages of civilization, resemble each other in their thoughts and contrivances to meet the common wants of life. All over the world hoUow trees have been used for the first steps of navigation, and the birch-bark canoe still finds a representative in the coracle which the Welsh fisher- Spearing Fish. 03 man carries home on his back ailcr using it, as his ancestors have done for generation after generation, while the Greenlander goes to sea in his light kaiack of deal-skin, as the polished inhabitant of Babylon, as Herodotus tells us, used to float his goods down the Great River in round boats made of skins stretched on a frame of wicker-work. Instead of oars, the canoe is propelled by paddles, which are short oars, with a broader blade. They are held in both hands, so that a single person has only one to work instead of having one in each hand, as with oars, when alone in a boat. An Indian in a canoe, if by himself, sits at the end, and strikes his paddle into the water at each side alternately, every now and then putting it out behind as a rudder, to turn himself in any particular direction. The one we bought was, as I have said, far too heavy for comfortable use, and was sold to us, I believe, for that reason. It was worse to paddle it empty than to paddle a proper one full of people — at least we came to think so ; but we knew no better at first than to like it for its massiveness, never thinking of the weight we should have to push through the water. The price, however, was not very great, though more than would have got us a right one, had we kno^^'n enough. The Indian who sold it to us paddled up with it, with his wife in it with him, one I morning, his dress being a dirty printed calico shirt, and a pair of cloth leggings; her's, the never- tun m. I;' i, I'M m.^' 94 Speariuff Fish, failing blanket, and leggings, like those of her husband. They were both rather elderly, and bv no means attractive in appearance. Robert and the rest of us happened to be near the fence at the river side at the time; and as the Indian came up, he saluted him, as is usual, with the words, " Bo' jour," a corruption of the phrase, " Bon jour," indicating curiously the extent of the old French dominion in America — every Indian, in any part, understanding, or, at least, acknowledging, it. A grunt on the part of our visitor conveyed his return of the courtesy, and was presently followed by, " C'noo, sell, good— you buy?" Robert, thus addressed, willingly enough entered into temptation, having determined, some time before, to buy one. Like everyone else in Canada, he seemed naturally to think that bad English makes good Indian, and pursued the dialogue somewhat as follows: — Robert — "Good c'noo?" Indian, with a grunt, "Good," making sundry signs with his hands, to show how it skimmed the water, and how easily it could be steered, both qualities being most sadly deficient, as he must have known. Robert — "What for you ask?" Indian, holding up eight fingers, and nodding to- wards them, "dollar," making, immediately after, an imitation of smoking, to stand for an additional value in tobacco. Robert — "Why you seU?" Indian- No answer, but a grunt, which might either hide a wish to decline a diflicult question, by pretending '. ^ in* *""' ''Te'^ tl -1 -» «'"-*^ "" '" ^ere sufficient ^ x« ^^^ ^^ ^^^ every slope m *« J house, we found it « had a garden -n front of ^^ .^ ^^^ ,. . almost impossible to keep ^ ^^ ^^ violence of the rams. ^^^'Jj^^^ ^nd ^W ,„pt on finding -Y^t^'eTt ^^^t of the «dv. it aU with grass, to the great a g . ..homitwas^^e--;— :^,„^.,. ■""^^•^ "" 't a— shower, and in the % light patter of - ^^^ ^^^^^. ^^, there are U- drops that dance on the ^rou , Canadian Thunderstorms* 99 ferences in this as in other kinds. I have stood sometimes below the green branches in the woods when a thin cloud was dropping its wealth on theniy and have been charmed by the murmur. But the heavy rain that came most frequently in the hot weather, falling as if through some vast cullender, was more solemn, and filled you with something like awe. It was often accompanied by thunder and lightning, such as those who live in. cooler climates seldom hear or see. The amount of the electricity h the atmosphere of any country depends very much on the heat of the weather. Captain Grahame, who had commanded a frigate on the East India station, told me once, when on a short visit, that, in the Straits of Malacca, he had to order the sails to be furled every day at one o'clock, a thunderstorm coming on regularly at that hour, accompanied with wind so terrible that the canvas of the ship would often have been torn into ribbons, and knotted into bard lumps, if he had not done so. Thunderstorms are not so exact nor so frequent in Canada, but they came too oflen in some years for my taste. I was startled out of my sleep one night by a peal that must have burst within a few yards of the l^ouse, the noise exceeding anything I ever heard before or smce. You don't know what thunder is till a cloud is fired that way at your ear. Our poor dog Yo- rick, which we had brought from England with us, was so terrified at the violence of the storms that H 2 B»BliiirH£CA 11 irfr 1* ^ 100 Canadian Thunderstorm. in through any open W^' ^ tffl all was qniet and hide Wmself under the h^ ^.^ ^ He lost his life at 1-*- PO- ^-;' J' J ,,„,,, ,„, at thunder, for one day when : the windows and ^»- ''^^^ L, and coding .ushed into the wood mh« mo ^^^^^^^__^ on the Bhanty of a Better, flew i ^^ -'^"^Trhrr:fk-Sthefac.of.. owner ol the house, not ^^^^ ^^ «-• -*"^S ::/ for:!:^ tutsan end to HU dog was mad, and lo ^^ ^ eould hardly blame hi, W- ^^^.„,, ,, ^ ,r,ere «; 7»^:';:',*i *at goes before darkness a.d solemn hud.^ ^^^ ^^ ^ one of these storms^ It^- ^^^^^^ ^^^ things were stopped. The ^^.^^ there is not a breath of wmd , ^e b. ^^^ i„ the forest, or fly lj,^n-0;^^^^^,. , ^^'' ^1 IthCt-a knew of the impen.. seems as if aU things <^ ^^^^ T never was more awed m my ui«, terrors. I never w ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^y. than at the sight of the i^ the first ^f Tidfnrp one aiternoou, i„g suspense of nature ^^^ ^^^^^ ^ ,„n.mer we were on the^ ^^ ^„^^„^„ not burst, but it lay "^ *^ ^ ^„i„„ w clouds, of a strange, unearthly look and Canadian TAunderstorma, 101 came down to within a very short distance of the earth. Not a sound broke the awful silence; the wind, as well as all things else, was still, and yet the storm-clouds moved steadily to the south, apparently only a very few yards higher than the trees. The darkness was like that of an eclipse, and no one could have said at what instant the prison of the lightnings and thunders would rend above him and envelope him in its horrors. I could not, dared not stir, but stood where I was till the great grey masses, through which it seemed as if I could see the shim- mer of the aerial fires, had sailed slowly over to the other side of the river, and the light, in part, returned. The lightning used to leave curious traces of its visits in its effects on isolated trees all round. There was a huge pine in a field at the back ^f the house that had been its sport more than once. The great top had been torn off, and the trunk was split into ribbons, which hung far down the sides. Many others which I have seen in different parts had been ploughed into deep furrows almost from top to bottom. The telegraph-posts, since they have been erected, have been an especial attraction. I have I seen fully a dozen of them in one long stretch split up, and torn spirally, through their whole length, [by a flash which had struck the wire and run along lit. That more people are not killed by it seems Ivonderful; yet there are many accidents of this 102 Our Gloriottt AnUmM. * 11 In the first 01 second year of our kind, after all. In «« „;„, „p ^ «ttlement a widow l^dy;^^;^^,^, ^^^^ ;„ „ ,tonn, river, was found dead in he^^ others peridiing and we afterwards heard of several in the same way. lightning in Canada, and *« P'«<=«';" Egyptians when Mo». lets- one sympathise with the l-gy P ^^^^^ «ent down a similar "--tion on *em^ ^^^ _^.^^ .eading of f ^^'^^ ^j^^^^ were, some o. of hot weather, *e P--^ ^eath to any one them, a pound weigh*, «J^^„ suchasizein they might ^^\^^^^^, ,, ^^ bad enough ^ Canada hut u^^*»^ Theymustta r t^rcwCng whirled up, by some c»- rSrai-uchaUtas freezes its conten. even in the heat of summer. "ke weather in the faU was ^^^^^^^^^^ «.inl., than in any other ---^f^fj ,, ,,,^ i—^T*^«^;7i'pthS it aside. B, .Ms s.^n >-- - f ^711 eloudless, and *e after day was bright and ^^.^^ ^^ heat had passed into a batoy m , the very feeUng of being alive a piea the very ^^^j^e landscape beautifiJ. Th thing combined to make t .^ ^^^^^^ g^eat resplendent -- ^^^ol, J, „f .ol« ecarce to ""-'^-f ^^^ , ^. ^d white sails, »a Blver, on which clouds, and sky, ana Our Glorious Autumns, 103 even the farther banks, with the houses, and fields, and woods, fafr back from the water, were painted as in a magic mirror — was a beautiful sight, of which we never tired ; like the swans in St. Mary^s Loch, which, Wordsworth says, "float double, swan and shadow," we had ships in as well as on the waters; and not a branch, nor twig, nor leaf of the great trees, nor of the bushes, nor a touch in the open landscape, was awanting, as we paddled along the shores, or looked across. And what shall I say of the sunsets? Milton says — " Now came still evening on, and twilight grey Had in her sober livery all things clad." But this would not do for some of those autumn days. The yellow light would fill earth, and air, and sky. The trees, seen between you and the setting sun, were shining amber, in trunk, and branch, and leaf; and the windows of neighbours' houses were flaming gold ; while here and there branches on which the sun shone at a diflerent angle seemed light itself; and in the distance the smoke rose purple, till, while you gazed, the whole vision faded, and faded, through every shade of green and violet, into the dark-blue of the stars. By the beginning of September the first firosts had touched the trees, and the change of colour in the leaves at once set in. It is only when this has taken place that the forests put on their greatest beauty ; S^^ ll' \ .'•I m l„4 The Change of the leaf. though, indeed, a feeUng » »^^ ^„„ected „ eiuted «ith the«. »— "^^^ ""J .t,' dolphin. »iU. .hey are, liice the la,t cc^" o^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^ thought, of decay and death. .^^^^^^ the change had —"<=!"• J,i„, J beech, the Each icind of ^'^^ j'^Ja, above ail, the mapl. Athebirch,the^aln^--^^ ^^^j„^^,y. ^,^„ __had its own hue, and e^^.ry ^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ there were the solemn p.ne., a ^^^^^^^ a.,, setting off the cl«rm.o*e^«^^^ ,, their .ber^--^^^^^^,,«„,. colour,^ ,noBt black. The n. P ^^^^.^^_ j„ j^ gofc »ained, throughout the .^ ^_^^ ^^^^^ ^ yeUow and crimson. JMo ^^^ ^^ and green, ye ow, and jarie ^^ ^^^_^^^ ^___^ Bhade of transition. Butw^ ^hen every leaf 1«1 they became after » time^ ^^^ ^,j something ot its oay Wpnded together into others. Yonder, the co o-- ^>«^\ ,^^ „, ^ pint of the brightest tint , hen c.^ ^^^ ^ Ld blue, and, -^y/^ f ^J, " ^7, and humble i^et, of glowing red go^d. ^^ ^^.^^ ^^^ undergrowth, and «« --F ^,^ the magic -fl-^-^tottwfd from the light, till ;rj:rrtr::::.ofsomefa^.e. Indian Summer. 105 The stmsets, as the year deepened into winter, frrew, I thought, if possible, more and more glorious. Til'' light suhlc behind mountains of gold and purple, and shot up its siJendours, from beyond, on every bar and fleck of cloud, to the zenith. Then came the slow advance of night, with the day retreating from before it to the glorious gates of the west, at first in a flush of crimson, then in a flood of amber, till at last, with a lingering farewell, it lefl us in paler and paler green. I have seen every tree turned into gold as I looked aiross the river, as the evening fell. Milman speaks, in one of his poems, of the " golden air of heaven." Such sights as these sunsets make the image a reality, and almost involuntarily lead one, as he gazes on the wide glory that rests on all things, to think how beautiful the better world must be if this one be 80 lovely. The Indian summer came with the end of October I and lasted about ten days, a good deal of rain having fallen just before. While it lasted, it was deliciously mild, like the finest April weather in England. A [goft mist hung over the w. ole panorama round us, [inellowing everything to a peculiar spiritual beauty. [The sun rose, and travelled through the day, and set, behind a veil of haze, through which it showed like I great crate of glowing embers. As it rose, the haze [eddened higher and higher up the sky, till, at noon, he heavens were like the hollow of a vast half- Qsparent rose, shutting out the blue. It was like m n Qg Indian Summer. at the s™ .t any ^^-^ ^^de more lovely. What not destroyed, but rather ma ^^^^ ^''^rtT'or^r-.estsone^.., been able to find out. un ^^ .^ ^^ and another somethmg else, but ^^^^^^^^^ body knew the true reason of, ^ J ^^^ ^^ ^'^"-V-tth^itu it:-thbythe.. rtirthe— rand autumn heats are,, frosts, while the ^^^^^ ^ ^^ ,„ great enough in the sou i abundance. _^ ^^^^^ the first • Until before and after tne inui« , V.U heralds of winter visited us, in tk unmistakeable heralds o ,.ape of morning ^^ar-^O'^ J^ ^ J - the day advance ^ t ^^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^^^,^. tiful to look at It, m ^^.^^ ^^^^^ ^ Tt ri^t^uiroldered over the.,.- the trees, to ^^^tt-red, or dark-hro... ^*^^"L:th"---^-°^-"''^"- or green of others, tn ,jj^^^_ ^^, ^,ved, looked charming m the ex ^^^ only the leaves, l^t the ^™nk^ and ^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ ,g,itest sprays, - « ^^^^^^^ ,,,,b, it seeded » fl,„, till, as f» ;; ; J^^^;„„ had happened m* "" r Ta m ct "y f-ture had been nio*a« night, and a >» « j, ^j^^ scene when k white, lint wl'^t ^'^'^ ^ "^^^ " The Fall Bains and the Roads, 107 sun came up in the east, to have his look at it as well as we ? What rainbow tints of every possible shade I what diamond sparkling of millions of crystals at once ! It was like the gardens of Aladdin, with the trees bending under their wealth of rubies, and sapphires, and all things precious. But the spectacle was as short-lived as it was lovely. By noon, the last trace was gone. The autumnal rains are of great value to the farmers and the country generally, by filling the ^vells and natural reservoirs, so as to secure a plen- tiful supi)ly of water for winter, and thus they were welcome enough on this ground to most, though we, with the river at hand, could have very well done without them. But, in their effects on the roads, tliey were a cause of grief to all alike. Except near towns, the roads all through Canada were, in those days, what most of them are, even yet, only mud ; and hence you may judge their state after long-con- tinued tropical rains. All I have said of our journey j to the river in the early summer, might, be repeated , of each returning fall. Men came to the house every [day or two to borrow an axe or an auger, to extem- porize some repair of their broken-down waggons or Teliicles. One pitchy night I came upon two who were intensely busy, by the light of a lantern, mending a haggon, with the help of a saw, an auger, an axe, land a rope. Of course, I stopped to ofl'er assistance, Ikt I had come only in time to be too late, and was y noR ne Fall Eui^""^'^ *'" ^"'^'■ v.»1n was not wanted. "AU'BrigU answered that n,y hdp^-s n ^.^^ ^^^ ^^ -*'^t °° Xr/- got then., and let. go T ;-"■ As tXnl f» n.y offer, it would ha. a-head. ^^ * jthem. They had cobbled been extravagant to exp ^^^^ ^^ .^^ ^^^ *^^^'^*^"^^'i:i To i had happened. T^e darkness as coolly as n fa ^^^ ^^^^^_ ^"^-^"^rXlLXldLtoeneo-e, lations of the ^-k-conn^y ^^^ ^ ^.^^^ ^^ which they carry an axe ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ i,;„v, are eenerally enouj, rope, which are g ^^^^ it is amusing to ta wheelwright «"g«Y„difference they treat misadven- .UWhatperf^c -diff ^^^^^ ^^ ,, tures which -^^f J , ^^n whom I «t Countryman 1 i^i<,i^ uthe namefor patching up h. hgHt wag^o ^^ ^. ^^_ afour-wheeled gig-settmg .^^^^^ „f t„el, count of his tri"™P'^-7„t trt on to assure* " I »-- --^ .^l^tlggy -d the tire of one of .. „ Once 1 was m my buggy ^^^ ^^^^ some miles to try ^ ^^^^ ^ rail -lc^ri;=rirLrn:r,and:.. -itxrrch^---;; -l-*-7^°t::e\'S ncetosuchofthe.. but the mud was a sore ton j^„yattemp gregation as could not come by wa^er. )^ j The Fall Rains and the Roads. 3 09 Qt two e river, he con- attempt at week-night meetings of any kind was, of course, out of the question. We were pretty nearly close pri- soners till the frost should come to relieve us. As in many other cases, however, this first step towards cure was almost worse than the disease. The i'rost often came in bitter fierceness for some time before any snow fell, and, then, who shall sing in sad enough strains the state of the roads ? Imagine mile after mile of mud, first poached into a long honeycomb by the oxen and horses, and cut into loD'^itudinal holes by the wheels, then frozen, in this state, in a night, into stone. I once had to ride nearly sixty miles over such a set of pitfalls. My brother, Frederic, was with me, but he had slipped in the stable and sprained his shoulder so that I had almost to lift him into the saddle. He came with me to lead back my horse at the sixty miles' end, where the roads permitted the stage to run for my further journey. We were two days on the way, and such days. The thermometer was below zero, our breath ifroze on our eyelashes every minute, and the horses had long icicles at their noses, and yet we could only [stumble on at a slow walk, the horses picking their ; with the greatest difiiculty, and every now and then coming down almost on their knees. Sometimes ;e got so cold we had to get off and walk with the )ri(iles on our arms ; and then there was the getting 'rederic mounted again. I thought we should never |et to the end of the first day's ride. It got dark $ U^' J ■I; lie TAe First Snow. long before we reached it, and we were afraid to sit any longer on the horses, so that we finished it by groping in the pitchy darkness, as well as we could, for some miles. . . ^ » ; The first snow fell in November, and lay, that year, from that time until April. The climate has become much milder since, from the great extent of the clearings, I suppose, so that snow does not lie, now- a-days, as it did then, and does not begin for nearly a month later. I have often heard Canadians de- ploring the change in this respect, as, indeed, they well may in the rougher parts of the country, for the winter snow, by filling up the holes in the roads and freezing the wet places, as well as by its smooth surface, enables them to bring heavy loads of all kinds to market, from places which are wholly shut up at other seasons, if they had the leisure to employ in that way, at any other, which they have not. The snow is consequently as welcome in Canada as the summer is elsewhere, and a deficiency of it is a heavy loss. When we first settled, the quantity that fell was often very great, and as none melted, except during the periodical thaw in January, the accumu- lation became quite formidable by spring. It was never so bad, however, by any means, as at Quebec, where the houses have flights of steps up to the doors to let folks always get in and out through tlie winter, the doors being put at high snow-mark, if I may so speak. I have sometimes seen the stumps Canada in Winter, 111 quite hidden and the fences dwarfed to a very Lilli- putian height; but, of late years, there have been some winters when there has hardly been enough to cover the ground, and the wheat has in many parts been killed, to a large extent, by the frost and thaws, which it cannot stand when uncovered. People in Britain often make great mistakes about the appear- ance of Canada in winter, thinking, as I remember we did, that we should have almost to get down tp our houses through the snow for months together. The whole depth may often, now-a-days, in the open country, be measured by inches, though it still keeps up its old glory in the bush, and lies for months together, instead of melting off in a i&^ days, as it very frequently does, round the towns and cities. I remember an account of the Canadian climate given by a very witty man, now dead. Dr. Dunlop, of Lake Huron, as the report sent home re- specting it by an Englishman to his friends, whom he informed, that for four months in the year you were up to the neck in mud ; for four more, you were either burned up by the heat or stung to death by mosquitoes, and, for the other four, if you managed to get your nose above the snow it was only to have it bitten off by the frost. All the evils thus arrayed are bad enough, but the writer's humour joined with his imagination in making an outrageous j caricature when he spoke thus. A Frenchman, \^T:iting about England, would, perhaps, say as much 112 Climate in America, against its climate, and, perhaps, with a nearer ap- proach to truth. I remember travelling with one in the railway from Wolverhampton to London on a very bad day in winter, whose opinion of the English climate was, " cleemate, it's no cleemate — it's only yellow fogue." Robert Southey, as true an English- man as ever lived, in the delightful letters published in his life, constantly abuses it in a most extraor- dinary way, and I suppose there are others who abuse that of every other country in which they chance to live. We can have nothing just as we would like it, and must always set the bright side over against the dark. For my part, I think that, though Canada has its charms at some seasons, and redeeming points in all, there is no place like dear Old England, in spite of its fogs and drizzle, and the colds they bring in their train. • The question often rises respecting the climate in America, since it has grown so much milder in com- paratively few years, whether it will ever grow any- thing like our own in its range of cold and heat. That many countries have changed greatly within historical periods is certain. The climate of England, in the days of the Norman conquest, is thought bv many to have been like that of Canada now. Horace hints at ir :: T.nd snow being no strangers at Eome in the time of Augustus. Cassar led his army o\ertlie frozen Rhone; and, as to Germany, the description of its climate in Tacitus is fit to make one shiver. A JFinter Landscape, 113 But we have, unfortunately, an opportunity afforded US by the case of New England, of seeing that two hundred years' occupation of an American province, though it may lessen the quantity of snow, has no effect in tempering the severity of the cold in winter, or abating the heat in summer. Connecticut and Massachusetts are as cold as Canada, if not colder, and yet they are long-settled countries. The great icy continent to the north forbids the hope of Canada ever being, in any strict sense of the term, temperate. Even in the open prairies of Wisconsin and Iowa the blasts that sweep from the awful Arctic deserts are keen beyond the conception of those who never felt them. It is the fact of Britain being an island that has made the change in its case, the wind that blows over the sea being always much cooler in summer and warmer in winter than that which blows over land. I have spoken of the beautiful effect of the hoar- frost on the forest ; that of the snow is equally striking. It is wonderful how much manages to get itself heaped up on the broad branches of pines and cedars, and even on the bare limbs and twigs of [other trees, making the landscape look most amaz- ingly wintry. But I don't think any one in Canada ever heard of such a quantity lodging on them as to Imake such an occurrence as Mrs. Mary Somerville Iquotes from some traveller in her " Physical Geo- |graphy," where she tells us that the weight of it on ■ I' »*»^ " Jce-tlorm>." , ^ A r.t the pine-trees ia «> P«at. M fl.e broad fronda of ^ ^ ^ ^^,^„_ ^^^ ^hen the wind risea and sw^s ^^ _^ ^ often tumble against each *- -*J^^ „, ^„„^. overtbro. great -f ^^^l^, x never beard r";T"'-ttitbanyone.bodid. I. of, nor did I eve j^^Me, from the mere deed, I rather tbrnk th^ ^.P^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^ ^ feet that, Aongt *« »° ^^ ^^^„^ ,., a„„, ««uck the second ™gb^1^- J ^^^^^ „„ ^ ,,,^ that of the seeond woni ^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ ana thus the de^ruct>onw^^_^^ Itm.>stbc»»e instead of spr^»g ^^ ,^, ^„Me tomadoe, curiouBandmoorrect of summer ''^*;^;; J^,, „« eonstant plea^re The snow .tself used t g^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ in looking at it mimiteiy ^^^^^ ^^^ .eeintheWeido^ope^--^- ^^,^„p^^ those of the crystals of wb.h^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ crosses, diamonds, and 1 ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^.^^j. lions when the sui ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ --P*-7'y~^::V!;derfulthingerystaUizati,n ^arypowder. T'^^on.ent you will beamed i3, If you think of It for a » J ^^ ^_^ ^^ 1 !• « ;f hrines ns as ia and awed, for rt br S ^.^^^^ ^^ ^„„, „g, God. How xs It *»' ™ ^ for more bea»- themselvesin^em^^peH^^-^^^^^^^,, *^^*::7hrt-eranerror-never.r^ ornament? •L'^^^*' The Minute Perfection of God*s Works. 115 thing like a failure. Every atr*^ of the dead, cold gnow has a law impressed on it by God, by which it takes its proper place in building up those fairy spangles and jewels. Can anything be more ex- quisite than the crystals we find in the rocks ? Yet they are built up of atoms too small for even the microscope to detect, and are always exactly the same shape in the same kind of crystal. Philosophers think that the particles of each kind of crystal have each the perfect shape which the whole crystal assumes ; but if this be so, it makes the matter still more wonderful, for what shall we think of atoms, vhich no magnifying power can make visible, being carved and pierced and fretted into the most lovely and patterns ? The great power of God is, I think, shown even more wonderfully in the smallest than in the largest of His works. The miracles of His creative skill are lavished almost more profusely on its least than on its larger productions, in animate as well as inanimate nature. The crystalline lens of a cod's eye — that is, the central hard part of it, vhich is very little larger than a pea, and is quite transparent — was long thought to have no special wonders in its structure; but the microscope has shown latterly that what appeared a mere piece of hard jelly is made up of five millions of distinct ■ fibres, which are locked into each other by sixty-two [thousand millions of teeth I The grasshopper has [two hundred and seventy horny teeth, set in rows in I 2 to 'Wm I IB 116 T/ie Minute Perfection of God* a Works. its gizzard. A quarto volume has been written on the anatomy of the earth-worm. At Bilin, in Hun- gary, there is a kind of stone which the great micro- scopist — or histologist, as 'the phrase sometimes is— . Dr. Ehrenberg, has found to consist, nearly altogether of creatures so small that three hundred and thirty millions of them make a piece only about twice the size of one of the dice used in backgammon, and yet each of these creatures is covered with a coat of mail delicately carved all over. What can be more lovely than the way m which the little feathers are laid on a butterfly's wing in such charming spots and bars of different colours ? I was looking some time since at a butterfly, which was of the most perfect azure blue when you looked down on it, but changed, when you sav>- 'fc sideways, from one shade to another, and asked an entomologist how it was it had so many different tints, taking nearly every colour by turns. It is by the wonderful arrangement of the feathers, it seems, all this is done, the way in which they are laid on the wings being such as to break the rays of light into all these colours, according to the angle at which it is held to the eye. How* wonderful the Being whose very smallest works are so perfect ! The snow in cold countries is very different in appearance at different times, as I have already in- timated. In comparatively mild weather it falls and lies in large soil flakes ; but in very cold weather it comes down almost in powder, and crackles below li! Deer-shooting, ' iT the feet at each step. The first showers seldom ^ rhe air being too warm as yet ; indeed, warm, comfort- able, days sometimes continue quite late. I re- member one November, when we were without fires, even in the middle of it, for some days together ; and in one extraordinary December, ploughs were actually going on Christmas-day ; but this was as irreat a wonder as a Canadian frost would be in England. The first winter, enough fell in November to cover all the stumps in our field, which we did 1 ot see again for many weeks. The depth of the snow must thus have been at least a yard. In the woods, there was only a dead level of snow, instead of the rough flooring of fallen logs and broken branches. At first we could not stir through it for the depth, and had to make a path to the barn and to the road ; but after a time a thaw came for a day or so, and some rain fell, and then the surface of the snow froze so firmly that even the oxen could walk over it in any direction without breaking through. The falling of the snow was a great time for the sportsmen of our household, for the deer were then most easily killed, the snow, while soft, showing their tracks, I and also making them less timid, by forcing them to i seek far and near for their food. Our. rifles were, consequently, put in the best order as soon as the ground was white; and each of us saw, in imagina- tion, whole herds of stag'='. which he had brought I down. Frederic, who had been left in Toronto, Deer-thooting- ,• wltli bv tho confinement of Im having suffered m health y ^^ ^^^ ^.^^^ office, had given 1 up, a ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ before *«, «> l^'^^j^ J ,,„, Hfle. and one g,u„ *^%^'''r at r:l*e poorest shot of us.,, good one. But ^ ^ ^reofhisa™, ,„aKoben.aB^ J- ^^^^^inthadbeen '"ilTwe: reallinaetate of gr^t eage™« » rabbit. ^"^ ^ ^i,^dy looked out «kt« to commence '^ - Some people are cruel enough to kill deer in the spring, when their young are with them, and even to kill the young themselves, though they are worth very little when got. One of the neighbours one day woi led a fawn which was following its mother, anu as usual ran up to secure and kill it. But to his astonishment, the maternal affection of the doe had so overcome its timidity, that, instead of fleeing the moment it heard the shot, it would not leave its poor bleeding young one, but turned on him, and made such vigorous rushes towards him, again and again, that it was only by making all kinds of noise he could frighten her far enough back to let him get hold of the fawn at last. I wish that instead of merely running at him, the loving-hearted creature had given 'him a good hard butt with her head; it would have served him right for such cruelty. Taking away life is only justifiable, I think, when there is some other end than mere amusement in view. To find happiness in destroying that of other living beings is a very unworthy enjoyment, when one j comes to think of it. To go out, as I have seen both I men and boys do, to shoot the sweet little singing birds in the hedges, or the lark when lie is flut- [tering down, after having filled the air with music, lor the slow-flying seagulls, as they sail heavily neai? [the shore, can only give a pleasure so long as those 124 Useless Cruelty. who indulge in it do not reflect on its cruelty. I remember, when a boy, being often very much struck with this, but, more especially, once, when a boy shot a male thrush, as it was bringing home a little worm for its young ones, which \7ould very likely die when their father was killed ; and, once, when a man shot a seagull, which fell far out on the water, from which it would often try in vain to rise, but where it would have to float, helpless and in pain, till released by death. Continued persecution, by every one, at all seasons has nearly banished the deer from all the settled parts of Canada, for years back. There are game laws now, however, fixing a time, within which, to destroy them is punishable, and it is to be hoped they may do some good. But the rifle is of use only for amusement in all the older districts, and if you want to get sport like that of old times you must go to the frontier townships, where everything is yet almost in a state of nature. The Indians were harder on every kind of game, and still are so, than even the white settlers. Tbey have long ago laid aside the bow and arrow of their ancestors, in every part of Canada, and availed them- selves of the more deadly power of firearms. As they have nothing whatever to do most of their time, and as the flesh of deer is, at once, food, and a means of getting other things, by bartering it for them, and | as it suits their natural taste, they used to be, ar be, and Shedding of the Stages Horns, 125 fltill are, what may be called hunters by profession. One Indian and his son, who had built their wigwam on our lot, in the first years of our settlement, killed in one winter, in about three weeks, no fewer than forty deer, but they spoiled everything for the rest of the season, as those that escaped them became so terrified that they fled to some other part. The species of deer common in Canada is the Vir- ffinian, and, though not so large as some others, their long, open ears, and graceful tails — longer than those o^some other kinds, and inclining to be bushy — give them a very attractive appearance. The most curious thing about them, as about other deer, was the growth and casting of the stags' horns. It is not till the spring of the second year that the first pair begin to make their appearance, the first sign of their coming being a swelling of the skin over the spots from which they are to rise. The antlers are now bud- ding; for on these spots are the footstalks from which they are to spring, and the arteries are beginning to deposit on them, particle by particle, with great ra- ipidity, the bony matter of which the horns are com ised. As the antlers grow, the skin still stretches iver them, and continues to do so, till they have [eached their full size, and have become quite hard ind solid, and forms a beautiful velvet covering, fhich is, in reality, imderneath, nothing but a great ^ssue of blood-vessels for supplying the necessary lirculation. The arteries which rim up from the if"**'*'* 126 Shedding of the Stages Horns, head, through it, are, meanwhile, so large, that they make furrows on the soft horns underneath ; and it is these that leave the deeper marks on the horns when hard. When the antlers are full-grown, they look very curious while the velvet is still over them and are so tender that the deer can, as yet, make no use of them. It must therefore be removed, but not too suddenly, lest the quantity of blood flowing through such an extent of skin should be turned to the brain or some internal organ, and death be the result. Danger is prevented, and the end at the same time accomplished, by a rough ring of bone being i ow deposited round the base of the horns where they join the footstalk, notches being left in it, through which the arteries still pass. Gradually, however, these openings are contracted by fresh bone being formed round their edges, till at length the arteries are compressed as by a ligature, and the cir- culation effectually stopped. The velvet now dies, for want of the vital fluid, and peels oif, the deer helping to get it off by rubbing its horns against the trees. It was by noticing this process of stopping the arteries in the antlers of stags, that John Hunter, the great anatomist, first conceived t?ie plan of re- ducing the great swellings of the arteries in human beings which are called aneurisms, by tying them up — 3. mode which, in certain cases, is found quite effectual. The highest thoughts of genius are thus .frequently only new applications of principles and I' ' I ( ■ )n\9 ihey lem, e no .tnot )wing ledto 36 the at the ,f bone 1 boras ift in it, idually, sb bone igtb the tbe cir- >w cdea, sbe deer Linstthe |stopping Huntei, In of re- buman tbemiip td qiJite are thus [pies and Shedding of the Stages Horns. 127 modes of operation which God has established in the humblest orders of nature, from the beginning of the world. Indeed they are always so, for we cannot create any absolutely new conception, but must be contented to read and apply wisely the teachings ftirnished by all things around us. When the velvet is gone, the horns are, at last, perfect, and the stag bears them proudly, and uses them fiercely in his battles with his rivals. But the cutting off the arte- ries makes them no longer a part of the general sys- tem of the animal. They are, thenceforth, only held on to the footstalks by their having grown from them, and, hence, each spring, when a new pair begin to swell up from beneath, the old ones are pushed off and fall away, to make room for others. It is curious to think that such great things as full-grown stags' horns drop off and are renewed every year ; but so it is. Beginning with the single horn of the first season, they grow so much larger each season till the seventh, when they reach their greatest size. But, after all, is it any more wonderful that their horns should grow once a-year, than that our hair should grow all the time ? And is a horn anything more I than heir stuck together ? a 128 CHAPTER VII. •*v, a bear— Courtenay*B cow and the «olve8-A fr S''' '" Cold, col.l, ooldl-A mM, teezas-Our vm^r_^«^^^ „„ffli„g_Aocid»t. tkougk journey — nleigniug intense o"'^- A t« favour us by howling at nights, Thv wolves used to lavour uo j V. ^ till the sound made one miaetabk close at hand t.U t^e barn-yard on We had five sheep ^"^""^IXm doneL fl.e« E?^Ws the wolves had been disturb. ! f ;t I never heard of any one bemg Med ,tor feast. ne. ^^^.^^^^ ^. by them, but they ^^ ^^___j^ ^r , Irlhed our clearing, when, tohisho™, bad almost -ache ^^^^^^ ^^^.^^ ^_ ^ he heard the c^ o ^^^^ ^^^^^, rrrtree that stood by itself, and was e»l, could, to a tre ^ ^.^^ ^ ^^^ ^^. climbed. Into this he go j Wolves, 129 have frozen to death had he not, providentially, been 80 near the house. As it was, his loud whistling for the dogs, and his shouts, were, fortunately, heard, and some of us sallying out, he was delivered from hia perilous position. Wolves are much scarcer now, however, I am thankful to say, owing in part, no doubt, to a reward of two sovereigns which is offered by Government for every head brought in. In the ref^ions north of Canada they seem to abound, and even on the shores of the Arctic Ocean they are found in great numbers. Sir John Franklin, in one of his earlier journeys, oflen came upon the remains of deer which had been hemmed in by them and driven over precipices. " Whilst the deer are quietly grazing," says he, " the wolves assemble in great numbers, and, forming a deep crescent, creep slowly towards the herd, so as not to alarm them much at first; but when they perceive that they have fairly hemmed in the unsuspecting creatures, and cut o£f their retreat across the plain, they move more I honor, ^quickly, and with hideous yells terrify their prey and, Hand urge them to flight by the only open way, which towards the precipice, appearing to know that hen the herd is at full speed it is easily driven over e cliflfs, the rear-most urging on those that are ifore. The wolves then descend at leisure and Dot of it, ^fted on the mangled carcasses." , bougli ■■ There were some bears in the woods, but they ust sooi^pd not trouble us. My sister Margaret and I were km at' ipper leels he easily! lum- m •$i 130 Courtenafs Cou, and He Wchu. t ™,r amily who had an advrenture ,he only two o^-^^y^^ ,,,,i„^, "'^ °";-™e fnt we had BtroUed out into the .cod. summer t.me « ^^. ^,^^ ^.,^ ,,„^i,,_ .„3 *" r " "rr 1 had climbed to the top of th, gathenng AowerB. ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^.^^ ^^ upturned root ot ^^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^ ^.^ ^ielcw.thftu.t»nd-^^ „,„p,I.,a„cedto **"" r!„d"okdown,whe„,lo.at'« tho use of Wmg owlnpin the tree there J^,^„„,,„,,^ ^-"-^^;'r—:iXe' However, .e no. ir«r^;5:;:;n..yahearty...h,.a.e„. Toward, the end ^^^^^ ^,^^^ ^^ ,^ This was, m great pa - ^^ ^^.^^^ ^,_,^ g^^^i^^ floating down from ba ^^^ .^ -^^""r"'dt:e toIetoUanotW. already formed there ^^ ^^^^ ^.^^^ -' ^ '"''':'' tTer;:^i:t^^-*^-'" '»^"- f'T^lX-assolidasas^ne. We « the whole surface ^^^^._^^_ ^.^^ ,,^ ^,. now to cut a ho e ev y ^^^ ^ ^ through the :ce to let the c ,^ ^^^^ ^,^^ -ter for the house^;^Jc^^ ,„,,,,„,. ,.„, cattle came down t«^ ' i,,^ ^ t, w] two afterwards we g«^^^^^^,,,, I *^"" %L IrL of the question, ta th. *^'"- oTLh»nk,andthewayinwhichto steepness of the Dan , „ged to sally o«t toi feet balled with the --^^ ^^^^ ears o/n,y J theminathickgreat-co^.-* ^^^^^^^^^ carefully tied down tojre^^.^^^.^ I ted c.av. round my ne^,^ xny hands, ihe no ^^^ ^ i ^'^-V^r'tereto-tfcyslopoJ ■ r;:r;it:c^^-hai.rtiuthe.=o..j .iilill Our Winter Fires, 183 had slid past me, when, having closed the door, with hands like the snow, Irom having had to loosen the halters, I went down with them. Vhen the wind was from the north they were white in a step or two, with their breath frozen on their chests and sides, the cold making it like smoke as it lefl their nostrils. Of course they were in no hurry, and would put their tails to the wind and drink a minute, and then lift up their heads and look round t'lem at their leisure, as if it were June. By tho time they were done, their mouths and chins were often coated with ice, long icicles hanging from tho hair all round. Right glad was I when at last I had them fairly back again, and had knocked out the balls of snow from their shoes, to let them stand firm. * The cold did not last all the time, else we could i never have endured it. There would be two or three days of hard frost, and then it would come milder for two or three more; but the mildest, [except when it was a thaw, in January, were very jmuch colder than any that are common in England, Qd as to the coldest, what shall I say they were ke? The sky was as bright and clear as can be jined, the snow crackled under foot, and the srind, when there was any, cut the skin like a razor. ndoors, the fire in the kitchen was enough to heat a ige hall in a more temperate climate. It was never [ilowed to go out, the last thing at night being tQ m If 134j Coldy cold J cold I roll a huge back-log, as they called it, into the fire- place, with hand-spokes, two of us sometimes having to help to get it into its place. It was simply a cut of a tree, about four feet long, and of various thick- nesses. The two dog-irons having beien drawn out and the embers heaped close to this giant, a number of thinner logs, whole and in parts, were then laid above them, and the fire was "gathered" for the night. By day, what with another huge back-log to replace the one burned up in the night, and a great bank of other smaller " sticks" in front and over it, I think there was often half a cart-load blazing at a time. In fact, the only measure of the quantity was the size of the huge chimney, for the wood cost no- thing except the trouble of cutting and bringing it to the house. It was grand to sit at night before the roaring mountain of fire and forget the cold outside; but it was a frightful thing to dress in the morning, in the bitter cold of the bedrooms, with the windows thick with frost, and the water frozen solid at your side. If you touched a tumbler of water with your toothbrush it would often freeze in a moment, and the water in the basin sometimes froze round the edges while we were washing. The tears would come out of our eyes, and freeze on our cheeks they rolled down. The towels were regularly frozen | like a board, if they had been at all damp. Water, brought in overnight in buckets, and put as close to the fire as possible, had to be broken with an axe in rn Coldf cold, cold! 135 the morning. The bread, for long after we went to the river, till we got a new house, was like a stone for hardness, and sparkled with the ice in it. The milk froze on the way from the barn to the house, and even while they were milking. If you went out, your eyelashes froze together every moment with your breath on them, and my brothers' whiskers were always white with frozen breath when they came in. Beef and everything of the kind were frozen solid for months together, and, when a piece was wanted, it had to be sawn off and put in cold water overnight to thaw it, or hung up in the house. I have known beef that had been on for hours taken out almost raw, from not having been thawed before- hand. One of the coldest nights I remember hap- pened once when I was from home. I was to sleep at the house of a magistrate in the village, and had gone with a minister who was travelling for the British and Foreign Bible Society to attend a meet- ing he had appointed. It was held in a wooden schoolhouse, with three windows on each side, and a single storey high. There was a stove at the end nearest the door, which opened into the room ; the pipe of it was carried up to near the roof, and then led along the room to a chimney at the opposite end. The audience consisted of seven or eight men and boys, though the night was magnificent, the stars hanging from the dark blue like sparkling globes of The cold, in fact, was so intense that nobody > % ■:.iii' , Iw '-l-l J Ik 'i ! ! 136 Cold, cold, coldt would venture out. When I got in, I found the congregation huddled round the stove, which one of them, seated in front of it, was assiduously stuffiiiff with wood, as often as the smallest chance offered of his being able to add to its contents. The stove itself was as red as the lire inside of it, and the pipe, for more than a yard up, was the same ; but our backs were wretchedly cold, :*_ jwithstanding, though we sat within a few inches of the glowing iron. As to the windows, the rime on them never thought of melting, but lay thick and hard as ever. How the unfortunate speaker bore his place at the master' b lebk at the far end I know not. He had only one ' ., .ndeed, but the hand of the other was kept deeply bedded in his pocket all the time. We were both to sleep at the same house, and therefore returned together, and after supper were shown into a double-bedded room with a painted floor, and a great stove in the middle. A delightful roar up the pipe promised comfort for the night, but alas I in a few minutes it died away, the fire having been made of chips instead of sub- stantial billets. Next morning, on waking, looking over to Mr. Thompson, I expressed a hope that he had rested well through the night. " Rested !" said he ; "I thawed a piece my om. size last night when I first got in, and have lain in it all night as if it had been my coffin. I daren't put out my leg or my hand ; it was like ice up to my body." . ^ A Winter's Journey, 137 One winter I had a dreadful journey of about two hundred miles. "We started in the st-age, which was an open rough waggon, at seven o'clock at night, the roads not as yet permitting sleighs. It was in the first week of January. I had on two great-coats, but there were no buffalo robes to lay over the knees, though the stage should have provided them. All that dreadful dark night I had to sit there, while the horses stumbled on at a walk, and the waggon bumped on the frozen clods most dreadfully. The second day's ride was much better, that part of the road being smoother ; but the next day a^nd night — what shall I say of them ? I began in a covered sleigh, some time in the forenoon, the distance being seventy miles. There was another person in it besides my^ self. Off we started at a good pace, but such was the roughness of the road, up one wave of frozen earth and snow, and down another, that both of us were thoroughly sea-sick in a short time. Each took possession of a window, and getting the head in again was out of the question till the sickness fairly spent itself. Meanwhile, there was a large high wooden box in the sleigh between us, and we had to keep a hand a-piece on it, lest it should take us at unawares^ and make a descent on our legs or backs. After a time, the covered sleigh was exchanged for an open one— a great heavy farmer's affair, a mere long box upon runners. To add to our troubles, they put a lgrea,t black horse, as one of the two to draw ua, f Ml***' mm € I 138 Sleighing, which was so wild and fierce that I have always thought it must have been mad. It was now dark night, and there were again no buffalo robes, and the thermometer far below zero. How we stood it I know not. My feet were like ice, and inces- sant motion of both them and my arms seemed all that could keep me from freezing. But away the black wretch tore, the driver pulling him back as he could, but in vain. At last, at two or three in the morning, bang went the sleigh against some stump, or huge lump of frozen mud, and — broke doMn. " You'll have to get out, gentlemen," said the driver. " You had better walk on to the first house, and I'll go before you and borrow a sleigh." Here then we were, turned out to stumble over a chaos of holes and hillocks for nearly two miles, in darkness, and in such a night I I don't know how long we were, but we reached a wayside iim at last, where the driver borrowed what he could get to carry us and the mails to the journey's end, and having gone back for the bags and his parcels, and that horrid box, to where he had lefl the broken vehicle at the roadside, he re- appeared after a time, and we finished our journey, tired and cold enough, a little before daylight. The amount of suffering from the cold, seldom, however, reaches any painful extent; indeed, you will hear people say, on every hand, that they posi- tively like it, except when it is stormy, or wheu the wind blows very keenly. Nor does it hinder work Winter Mufflings, 189 of any kind, where there is exercise enough. You may see men chopping in the forest in terribly cold days, with their jackets off, the swinging of the arms making them disagreeably hot in spite of the weather. Sleighing is, moreover, the great winter amusement of the Canadian, who seems never so pleased as when driving fast in a " cutter," with the jingling bells on the horse's neck making music as it goes. But, for ray part, I could never bear sitting with my face to the wind, while I was dragged through it at the rate of ten miles an hour, with the thermometer below zero. All the mufflings you can put on wont protect the cheeks or the eyes, and the hands get intolerably cold holding the reins. Indeed, the precautions taken"* by those who have much travelling about in winter show that, to those less fully prepared, there must be suffering as well as enjoyment. Our doctor's outfit for his winter practice used to amuse me. He had, first, a huge otter fur cap, with ears ; next, over his great-coat, the skin of a buffalo made into a coat, with the hairy side out, and reaching to his feet ; his feet were cased in mocassins, which came over his boots and tied round the ankles ; a pair of great hose reached up his thighs; his hands were muffled in huge fur gauntlets reaching half-way to his elbow ; and when he took his seat in his sleigh with all this wrapping, he sat down on a buffalo-skin spread over the seat, and stretching down over the bottom, while another was tucked in over him, his feet resting on iti«i»«*' nil if; 140 AccidenU through Intense Cold. J „<■ it to keep out every breath of air ; '^''^ZZn^l S';' W hot brick, put inside on ^»''"g' '"'' J! ^'^y ,hat he felt quite comfort- " He had c ^^^^^^^^^ J ^^^^^^,^, Greenland. ^-^^P''^ °' j^^te one day, ™th Ms driving ^-1^' ^■^^•;;La that the face of *e his wife and "l"!*!'^;"^ '! i„ ^ ride of four or r It "cir'ttrn the e.ce.ive cold five miles. Ca.e ot ^^^.^^^ ^^^^^ „e not infrequent. Y™",peedily found. A poor road, is cer«.in to d.e ^i ^^'^IJ^^^^ ^ ,^uway Indian was frozen to death on th^ m J -^°''rrso::u::-:e-.-a.. ;:rx?--.--rH!h:r;:t town an his sleigh, on ^^^ ^^^ ^ returning, when he felt ve^ ' X. 4. i^imcjplf at a farm-nouse. a "^^ aside tx) heat himselt ^^ '^^^-'rtrenirtwLr, a farmer »a riirwere drying in. 0.^^^^^^^ Toronto, and, naturaUyen^uJ^^-^^^,^^ o^er, not -"^ ^ cIl Bhould have ali,h.^ they had reached ^e c^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^,^^ ^ to her horror the daughter! ^^ ^ne dead, fi:o.en at h« ^ y Christmaa there are a great many sn Accidents through Intense Cold, 141 at which whoever kills most pigeons, let loose from a trap, at a certain distance, wins a turkey. I was one (lay riding past one of these, and noticed a group of spectators standing round, but thought no more of it, till next morning, I learned that, when the match was done and the people dispersed, a boy was seen who -^ntinued to stand i ; li *n. the vacant ground, and, on ffoing up to ^i™) it "^^^ found that he had been frozen stiff, and was stone dead. A minister once told me that he had been benighted on a lonely road in the depth of the winter and could get on no further, and, for a time, hardly knew what to do. At last he re- solved to take out his horse, and, after tying its two fore legs together, let it seek what it could for itself till morning, while he himself commenced walking round a great tree that was near, and continued doing 30, without resting, till the next morning. Had he sat down, he would have fallen asleep ; and if he had slept, he would certainly have died. My brother Henry, who, after a time, turned to the study of me- dicine, and has risen to be a professor in one of the colleges, took me, one day, to the hospital, with him, and, turning into one of the wards, walked up to the bed of a young man. Lifting up the bottom of the clothes, he told me to look; and, — what a sight I Both the feet had been frozen off at the ankle, and the red stumps were slowly healing. A poor man called, once, begging, whose fingers were all gone. He had walked some miles without gloves, mn \&A 1 ;'!i 142 Accidents through Intense Cold. and had known nothing about how to manage frozen limbs; his fingers had frozen, had been neglected, and had mortified, till at last such as did not drop off were pulled out, he told me, with pincers, being utterly rotten at the joints. I know a young man, a law student ■whose fingers are mere bone and skin : he was snow- balling, and paid the penalty in the virtual destruction of his hands. A curious case happened some years ago, resulting in the recovery of two thousand pounds of damages from the mail company. The stage from Montreal, westward, broke through an airhole on the St. Lawrence, when driving over the ice, and all the passengers were immersed in the river, one of them getting both his hands so frozen that he lost them entirely. They were both taken off at the wrists. The money was a poor consolation for such a ca- lamity. I have known of a gentleman losing both hands by taking off his fur gloves to get better con- trol over a runaway horse. He got it stopped, but his hands were lost in the doing it. The ice of the river used to give us abundant room for skating, where it was smooth enough. Near the towns every one skates, even the ladies, of late years, doing their best at it. But the ice, with us, was often too rough for this graceftil and healthy exercise, so that it was less practised than it otherwise would have been. Ill '■vf ■ \ \ 143 CHAPTER VIII. The aurora borealis — ''Jumpers" — Squaring timber — Rafts —Camping out— A public meeting — Winter fashions — My toe frozen — A long winter's walk — Hospitality — Nearly lost in the woods. The grandeur of the aurora borealis, in the cold weather, particularly struck us. At times the whole heavens would be irradiat ' by it — shafts of light stretching from every side to the zenith, or clouds of brightness, of the softest rose, shooting, from every point of the horizon, high overhead. It was like the Hindoo legend of Indra's palace, which Southey de- scribes so beautifully : *' Even we on earth at intervals descry Qleams of the glory, streaks of flowing light, Openings of Heaven, and streams that flash at night In fitful splendour, through the northern sky." Curse of Kehama, vii. 72. The fondness of almost every one for sleigh-riding was ludicrously shown in the contrivances invented in some cases to get the enjoyment of the luxury. The richer settlers, of course, had very comfortable vehicles, with nice light runners, and abundance of skins of various kinds, to adorn them, and make them warm ; but every one was not so fortunate, and yet 144 "Jumpm." you anything to go in ,, ^ ^^^t I guess we can rig «p a jumper pretty s .henitmadeitsappearane ';^^^j^^^ ,^ primitive tyi.,cons^d-P^y^„,,„,,„g„„,,, ^■"'t'tthTlcX serve for shafts lor t..e Lorse, a cross ^ ; ^ keep then, together. An oiu then, off they went, rr/l^ToLs rlyhad „o.e. a coloured W. of buffalo-robes, n J „,,^^,i to keep them warn. ,„iH,.r.ppearo™a^he. se^ea- ^^ An oia -""l-f ^'^ j;'l;Lg that would me.elj T-Hnrwinter that the great worlc of cuttLg It,, ™*^; .„ rt,, forests, for export I. «„d «