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The voLLowiNO Works, published during the SsASOir, , are recommended to tbxir notiob* A NEW HISTORY of GREECE. 1. Liobicdaet Gbxtcb; 2. Gbscxam HiraoBT tp the Reign of FnanaArm at Araaan. Bj GEORGE GROTE» Esq. WithMapt. 2to1s. 8to. 82*. n.. LIVES of the LORD CHANCELLORS of ENGLAND. By LORD CAMPBELL. FIRST SERIES. Smumd JSditum. 3Tola.8TO. 42$. to, MILMAN'S EDITION of GIBBON'S DECLINE and FALL of the ROMAN EMPIRE. A Ntw Editiom, thonm^fhly nvimd. With IS Mapa. 6 Tolf. 8to. £3 Si. . !▼. KUGLER'S HAND-BOOK of PAINTING— The Gkbmah, FuEmaB, and Dutch School8v Translated bj A Ladt. With Notea hj SIR EDMUND HEAD, Bart. PottSvo. 12«. T. I THOUGHl'S on ANIMALCULES; or, a Glimpie at thb Intuibls WoBu>, BXVsiXBD BT TBS IIxoBosooPB. * By G. A. MANTELL^ D.C.L. With Coloured Plates and Woodcatk Crown 8to. lOs. 6d ' \'\ ▼I. • THE GEOLOGY of RUSSIA in EUROPE and the URAL MOUNTAINS. By sir RODERICK MURCHISON, G.CS. With Coloured Maps, Sections, Plates of Fossils, &c 2 toIs. royal 4to. ▼n. MELVILLE'S FOUR MONTHS' RESIDENCE among the NATIVES of the MARQUESAS ISLANDS. Post 8to. 6«. vm. VOYAGES of DISCOVERY and RESEARCH within the ARCTIC REGIONS, from 1818 to the Present Time. By SIR JOHN BARROW, Bart. With Portrait ofthe Author, and Maps. 8?a 16s. IS* SECOND VOLUME of CATHOLIC SAFEGUARDS a«dnst the ERRORS, CORRUPTIONS, and NOVELTIES of the CHURCH of ROME. By Rev. JAMES BROGDEN. 8m Ut. :# *..^^ [CoHtimt^tm third pag$ ^ Wrapper, riilLir MUSGllAVE: OR M E M 1 R S OF A CIIIRCII OF ENGLAND MISSIONARY IN TUB NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. EDITKD BY THE REV. cf. ABBOTT, A.M. " Then fearless walk we forth, Yet full of trembling ; messengers of God. Our warrant sure, but doubting of our worth.'' Keble's Christian Year. JOHN ivIUKRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1846. % n- ■ I ' ■, i 4 FC 2111-7. ^v^*v ^y i^o. ■/ '•■ London : Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street. CONTENTS. ' NTRODUCTION • • • • CHAPTER I. •AOK I A Curacy— The Mission— Disappointmeuts CHAPTER II. The Voyage— The Journey— The Arrival— A Cemetery— A Contre- temps — The Explanation — A Coincidence CHAPTER III. A Disappointment— A Cottage— A Tent— The Glebe— The Parsonage- The Bishop— A Confirmation— The School house . 14 I CHAPTER IV. The Church — Distressing Difficulties — The Subscription List— A Triumph— A Letter— The Spiritual Church . . . .18 CHAPTER V. The Seasons— The Dark Day— An Incident— The Visitation— Village Scandal ,.....••••• 24 I? CONTENTS. CIIAlTKli VI. I'Aiit, ] lIcad-nuartiTs — The Outposts — A Snowdrift — A I'arihh (^lerk— A Liuliorous Sofiio — A 'IViiiplu not made with hands— The iJcwarJ — A Marriage -The IJectory ....... H'j ClIAl'TEU VII. A Journey — Tlie Indians —Sijuaws— Papooses — Hark Canoes — A Snag — An Aeeideut — The Kncauipment — Starvation — The Kelief— Home 3,'i I s CIIAPTEU VIII. J A Attaehment to the (^hurch — A Discussion — An Incident — A Portrait — A Methodist Preacher — A Catechetical P^xaniination — A Sermon — Dissenters* Chapels or Meeting-houses — Kesident Clergy . . 42 1 CHAPTER IX. The Hailstorm— Schools— Travelling — Pecuniary Affairs . CHAPTER X. A Clerical Association — Divisions — The Rubric — Visitors — Misfortunes |Th( c; 51 Old — A Catastrophe CHAPTER XI. Psalmody— Chants — A Confirmation — Housebreakers — A Strange Dog — Mode of Computing Time — Reflections . . . . . C4 CHAPTER XII. Idle Gossip — A New Appointment — Roads — A Rapid Thaw — The Mi- gration — The Cavalcade — A Mishap — The Arrival . . .70 Par F Visi CO.iTKNTS. CIIArXER XIII. lAoi 1^ '^f.yf EstaMislimcnt — A New Settk-ment — The Church and Par- I (llerk— A I sonage — A Farm — Housekeeping Expenses — A Funeral Sermon — A PAar u IJewurd — Scoffer es — A Snag • lief— Home 3," CHAPTER XIV. [a Fatal Accident — Superstition — An Infidel — An Earthquake — A Thunderstorm 81 L Portrait — L Sermon — 42 CIIArXER XV. A Drought — A Conflagration — A Contribution — An Insurance— The Measles — A New Settlement 87 CHAPTER XVI. The Migration— The Cavalcade — The Escort — The Bivouac— A Hurri- cane—Particular Providence — The Journey's End • . . 9G 51 Misfortunes 56 trange Dog 64 —The Mi- CHAPTER XVII. [Old Friends — Building a House — A Fatal Accident — A Liberal Edu- cation — A Death-bed Repentance— A Funeral — An Old Camlet Cloak 100 CHAPTER XVIII. [Particular Providence— A Long Story about Trifles — An Important Fact — A Good Lesson — An Extraordinary Incident . . .108 CHAPTER XIX. Visitors — A Disappointment — A Presentiment of Evil — A Sudden Death — The Asiatic Cholera— Its Fearful Ravages— The Haunted House — An Old Soldier 114 a3 ^tm vl CONTKNTS. I \ CJIAPTEK XX. I' A OK A Sad Disappointment— Ifftliiction of Salary — CJovernincnt Grant — The (^hiirc'h — Loyalty — A New Kra— The ('lioU-ra again — A New House— The (iarden— An Ice-house — My Dogs .... 122 CIIArXER XXI. The Subscription List— The Foundation Stone— The New Church— The Uurning of the Sclioolhouse — TrouMes and Annoyances — The Liberality of the Two Venerable Church Societies — A Judgment— A Revolting Incident— Fearful Visitations — A Squatter — A Strange Story — An Ovcrruliug Providence . . • . . ,129 CHAPTER XXII. Politics— The Rebellion— The Battle— The Marauders— The Burning of the Steamer " Caroline" — A Colonel of Militia— Restoration of Tranquillity 139 CHAPTER XXIII. Pluralities — Clergy Reserves — Another New Church — A Ferry — A Perilous Adventure — Another Grace Darling — Humane Society — An Interesting Scene 146 CHAPTER XXIV. The Spring— The Aurora Borealis— A Dry Summer— Dreadful Confla- grations — Benevolent Contributions — Domestic Afflictions — Con- clusion .....•••••• 154 ■-- *i**n..\ Grant— -A New PHILIP MUSGRAVE, ^c. Sf'c, Church — ct's— The ment — A Strange 129 Burning oration of 139 erry — A liety — An 146 al Confla- is — Con- 154 INTRODUCTION. It lias ever been a matter of astonishinerit to me, that, easy of laccess as the utmost limits of tiiis vast and all but boundU'ss Jcolouial empire have become, and constant and unintennitting our intercourse now is with the mother country, so little should be known there of our social, political, or religioiis con- lition. And yet the wonder vanishes when we consider that jeople in England cannot help judging of us by the customs and habits and feelings which prevail in their own country ; so that wlien even the best-informed immigrant first lands upon the shores of this mighty continent, he finds it totally different from wliat he had been led to expect. The first distant view of the wild Interminable forest which clothes, with so forbidding an aspect, that land of promise which he had pictured to his imagination as ^he very garden of Eden, wakes him at once from his long and jTondly cherished fantasies to all the sad realities of life ; and vhen he extends his gaze over the whole face of tlie country, he ^ees that the original curse of his nature has readied it ; and lie beads, in characters which can neither be mistaken nor unfelt, in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." So it is also with those matters which relate to otir reliGrious ind ecclesiastical condition. When a poor missionary's name Mid appointment in a far off land are found in the alphabetical [ist of preferments in the * Ecclesiastical Gazette,' the impression )roduced upon the mind of the reader, if he should haply give it passing thought, would be that it was a preferment in the [ommon acceptation of the term. B K U t J ^, T= ■.i INTRODUCTION. A.id here tl»e question natunilly presents itself to our considera- tion, How comes it to pass, under tlie general prevalency of such mistaken and erroneous ideas concerning- our real case and circum- stances, that the venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign I'arts should have been enabled to make ruch gigantic and successful efforts for nearly a century and a iialf to plant and establish the Church of Ciirist, by means of their mis- sionaries, throughout the whole of these colonies, and that they should have been so lobly and so generously supported by the public in this their labour of love? The simple reply to this question would naturally be — The blessing of the Lord, our lledeemer and great Head of the Church, has been upoii them and their servants, according to his last promise while here on earth, '' Lo, I am with you always, even unto the en T.- 'V PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. I. England. In all these expectations I was doomed to be sadly disappointed. Such having been my ideas, it would be absurd for me to say that I was influenced in the important step I had taken by any- thing like that zealous and devoted missionary spirit which so often induces men to go forth into heatlien lands to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation amid toil and privation. Not but that I rejoiced to find myself placed in a much wider and more ex- tensive sphere of usefulness than I had anticipated. Indeed, it was this circumstance which took away from my otherwise sad disappointments all their bitterness ; and, with a thankful heart, I could bless God that so glorious a prospect was before me. If I did not then see all the troubles and difficulties I should have to encounter (if I had, my heart would have failed me), I saw enough to spur me on to exertion. I was young, healthy, and habitually active in mind and body. The reward was before me, and " I pressed forward towards the prize of my high calling," in faith and hope, with diligent and zealous perseverance. But God forbid that I sliould boast ! Alas, when I look back upon the long, long years of my past labours, my failings and defi- ciencies rise up before me in such fearful array, that I ought rather " to lay my hand upon my mouth, and to hide my face in the dust, and cry guilty before God ;" while I humbly pray tha^ He will not be " extreme to mark what I have done amiss." |the [chap. I. Ji CHAP. II.] THE VOYAGE-TIIE JOURNEY. be sadly me to say 311 by any- it which so roclaim the )t but tliat i more ex- Indeed, it herwise sad iikful heart, before me. should have me), I saw healthy, and LS before me, igh calling," arance. But k back upon icrs and defi- that I ought e my face in bly pray tha^ amiss." CHAPTER II. The Voyage — The Journey — The Arrival — A Cemetery— A Contretemps — The Explanation — A Coincidence. Although a voyage across the great Atlantic, a quarter of a century ago, was a much more important affair tlian it is at the present day; — and although, to a landsmar. like myself, it ex- I iiibited, in a most striking point of view, " the works of the Lord, and His wonders in tl:3 deep ;" yet as such voyages liave i been so often described, I shall only say of mine, that it com- prised all the usnal incidents, but they were moderate in their '\ extent. The gale we encountered, after clearing the cho{)s of the Cliannel, only obliged us to take in our studding-sails ; — the iceberg we saw, off Cape Kay, was too distant to frighten ] us; the fog on tiie banks was not so thick but that we could see the poor fishermen before we were aboard of tliem ; and, during Itiie storm in the Gulf, we escaped being driven ashore either Ion the Bird Rocks or on Dead-Man's Island. In short, our I voyage was, altogether, a happy and a prosperous one ; — never- heless, in the language of the sweet singer of Israel, " We ivere glad when He brought us to the haven wiiere we *vould be." Early on a bright and beautiful morning in the month of uly, 18 — , I set out for the interior of the country, in search f the field of my future labours, which lay about fifty miles rom the port at which I had landed. A sluggish craft, without a deck, called a Durham boat, of bout twenty tons burden, and loaded down to the water's edge, as my wearisome conveyance up one of those majestic rivers Inch abound on this continent, and which would float on their ide waste of waters the whole of the proud navy of England. The first day we made about half the distance : we then put li i ^ I \ a PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. II. ' s ashore, and fastening our bark to the stump of a tree, we re- mained there all nijrht. I selected a dry knoll for my couch, a little apart from the other passengers ; where, after commending myself to the pa- rental care of Him who neither slumbers nor sleeps, I lay down under the clear open canopy of a North American sky, sparkling witii myriads of stars which I had never seen in Europe; and enjoyed the most tranquil repose. I awoke not till the dawn of day, when I arose, and shaking tiie heavy dew from my cloak, aorain went on board the boat. I had for fellow-passengers a country judge of the Court of Kequests, a magistrate, and a colonel and major of militia, all belonging to and residing in my intended mission. Through the indefatigable exertions of some or all of these titled gentry^ in examining the partially defaced directions on my trunks, and questioning not only my servant, but myself also, my name and purpose had been successfully made out before I had been an hour in their company. I was far from being sorry for this, as I received from them the most marked and flattering atten- tions. There are circumstances under which the slightest act of kindness will soothe and cheer us ; and mine were certainly such at the moment. Therefore, after I had somewhat recovered my equanimity of temper, which had been a little disturbed by their pertinacious and, as appeared to me at the time, somewhat impertinent curiosity, I felt cheered and pleased. I thought at first, that, as far as good society was concerned, I had *' fallen on my feet ;" but, alas ! my judge turned out to be a petty shopkeeper, a doler out of drams to the drunken raftsmen ; the magistrate, an old rebel soldier of the United States, living upon a pension of 20/. a year from that govern- ment, as the reward of his treason, and, at the same time, hold- ing a commission of the peace under the one against which lie had successfully fought. The colonel, the most respectable ofl my dignified companions, had been a serjeant in the — regi- 1 ment, and was now living upon his pension of a shilling a day. And, to complete my catalogue, the major Mas the jolly Iand-| lord of a paltry village tavern. These circumstances may appear as trifling to my readers asl th sic sac [CHAP. 11. ^ CHAP. IT.] THE ARRIVAL-A CEMETERY. t from tlie to the pa- I lay down f, sparkling urope ; and ;lie dawn of my cloak, le Conrt of militia, all . Through itled gentry, trunks, and ly name and lad been an rry for this, eiing atten- i ree, we re- i tliey do now to myself; but tliey made a very different iii4)res- sion upon my mind at the time, coupled as they were with the sad disappointment which befel me on reaclung my destination. On arriving at the landing-place nearest the little village I was in search of, I left the boat ; and, not being able to obtain any sort of conveyance for my luggage, or even for myself, I left my servant to look after it, until I could send some one for it. On foot, and alone, I set out for the village, five miles off". I never considered it a hardship to walk five miles on a good road, but on tills occasion, tired and exhausted as I was, it proved a formidable undertaking. I had eaten nothing during the day but a piece of hard sea-biscuit of tlie coarsest description, wldcii I begged from one of the boat's crew ; tlie sun was still high in the heavens, and fiercely hot ; the road was an arid, burning sand, and almost scorched my feet through my thin shoes. The houses I passed were naked and bare ; not a tree within ii mile of them. Hedge-rows there were none, — not a shrub nor bush, nor even a weed, to hide the bare poles of which the fences were made. The grass on the road side had a brown and scorched look, as if a fire had passed over it. Everything, in short, litest act of J even to the unceasing chirping of the crickets, told me I was in a strange land. What my reflections were, during that weary walk, may more easily be imagined than described. A thought disturbed by lof home was naturally the first that occurred to me in my lone- le, somewhat Jpiness. And mournful though it was, it soothed me, andbeguiled the way. But, alas ! that home was desolate. All I had ever .^ jre certainly ? lat recovered 1 as concerned, I urned out to the drunken'! ssociated with that dear word had left me, and gone to a Tighter and a happier home. I knew not how far I had walked, when I came to an old F the United ;ipine-tree, beneath whose shade I laid me down, and wept and that govern- grayed as if my heart would break. And soon I thought I felt le time, hold-|«i strange calm come creeping over me, but I knew not whether inst which he^t was real or imaginary. I thought too that I heard the respectable of|iiOund of friendly voices which had once been familiar to my the — regi-a^ar. I raised my head and looked around, but I could see lilling a day.»othing except the dwellings of the dead. Some of them were le jolly land-anarked out by neatly painted railings round a rude and simple ooden monument, fresh and new, and probably not more evanes- ny readers assent than the memory /a I ■\ . \ 10 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. II. erected them. So, at least, I judged from the ruinous and di- lapidated condition of their companions, which had stood per- haps a dozen winters. jNIany a nameless grave was tiiere, besides the one whicli I had unconsciously made my [)illow. I was, in fact, in the midst of a burying-ground, — not a churchyard ; for there was no ciiurch witiiin fifty miles of the place, nor any human habitation within sight of it. It was, in trutii, a dreary and a solitary s[)ot, far from the haunts of men, in wliich they bury their dead out of their sight, and out of their remembrance too, it seemed, from the careless negligence with widch this lonely cemetery must have been regarded, or it would at least have had a fence, however rude, around it. Exhausted with fatigue and the oppressive heat, for the ther- mometer could not have been lower than l^O" in the sun ; — worn ouc, and faint from want of food and natural rest ; — excited, be- sides, to an extraordinary degree, by my over-wrought feelings ; a hopeless and lonely exile in a strange land, with the wild in- terminable wilderness of woods around me; — no wonder if my reason for a moment tottered on her throne, nor if my imagina- tion wandered into the unknown regions of another world. In such a state of mind, and under the singular circumstances in which I had accidentally placed myself, no wonder, I say, that tlie peculiar and soothing sound produced by the slightest breath of air through a pine-grove, should have been listened to by me with the deepest interest, and that, in my dreaming fancy, I should have half mistaken it for the whispering voices of the dead. The slight noise of wheels in the sandy road restored me, although not entirely and at once, to a proper frame of mind ; but not, indeed, until the person passing by had stopped, and kindly told me he had heard of my arrival, and had gone to the landing-place to meet me and convey me to the village. " Ah ! " he exclaimed at once when he saw me, " you are the minister come out to us from England ?" " Yes," I replied, " I am." " Then I am right glad to see you, sir, j> he said as he got out of his rude carriage, and offered me his hand, which I cor- *O^J \ fHAi'. II.] A CONTIIETEMPS, AND EXPLANATION. 11 dially shook : unci, oh ! what a relief it was to me to meet with }ven tliis slight mark of friendship. Fortunately for my com- fort then, I did not know how valueless it was. lie asked me where I had been, and wondered liow he could have missed me. He told me, too, that several hours had elapsed [since the boat that brought me had reached the landing-i)lace. Ilndeed, I now perceived that the sun had set, and night was com- ling on apace ; already were the tiny flashes of the fireHy seen [in myriads among the pine-trees. I bcfrai. to tiiink I certainly inust have slept ; and I do not know but that I had been dream- ling too. " Your name is Johnstone ?" said my friend, requesting me |at the same time to get into his waggon. " No," I replied, as I paused with my foot upon the step, in Ithe act of acceding to his kind request, " My name is Mus- grave." "That's very strange!" he said ; and after hesitating for a [moment, he added, " Never mind ! Get in." I did so ; and he drove me to the village tavern, as I de- Iclined going to a private house, where he wished most anxiously [to take me. During our drive he several times adverted to my name being I Musgrave instead of Johnstone, as it evidently ought to have been, in his opinion. He clung to this idea with such extra- ordinary pertinacity, that I at length, probably from my con- fused state of mind, began — I must not say, to doubt my own identity, — but to reflect whether or not I was really in my right senses. He seemed to read my thoughts, at least he saw some hesita- tion, and triumphantly exclaimed — " Why, Colonel K " — this was the colonel I have men- tioned as my fellow-passenger — '• said that your servant told him your name was Johnstone." " His own he must have meant," I said ; for it so happened that my servant's mrme was Johnson, and perhaps he might have said, in answer to some question, which he did not see they had any right to ask, that mine was Johnson too ; or they might have mistak^^n his trunk for one of mine, and seen his name upon it. However this might be, on arriving at the inn, > 1 t 1 ', .> s \\ / •^.mm r jm fi 12 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [CIAP. II. when tlie laiuUoni came to the door, my pertinacious guide in- troduced me, by saying, " Here 's the Reverend Mr. Johnstone,! the minister we sent for, and have been expecting up by this day's boat." Tliis somewhat annoyed me, and I immediately declared, with some warmth, tiiat my name was not Johnstone. " Then you 're not the minister appointed to this place." <' Yes, I am." " Then vour name is Johnstone — must be Johnstone." " Well," I said, beginning to feel more anmsed than vexed, *' my name ivas Musgrave before I left England, and I am cer- taitdy appointed as minister in this village and neighbourhood by the IJishop." My guide gave a loud, contemptuous, and long-continued whistle, and tiien drawled out the first syllable of the word Sishop, at the same time laying an absurd accent upon the last — " Be-a-shopp /" adding with a derisive laugh, " We are Bishoped indeed, and the milk's burnt with a vengeance" !* My landlord seemed to feel more reverence for tiie title, and a contest commenced between them, which was too intricate for me to understand, and soon became too hot for me prudently to witness ; I therefore lost no time in making my way into the house. I had no sooner entered than I encountered a comfort- able and portly looking dame, whom I was sure must be the mistress of the inn, and I was not mistaken. I begged her to give me something to eat, with as little delay as possible, as I was nearly starved. This she set about with the more zealous alacrity, in consequence of having got a hint, from what she had overheard of the squabble at the door, as to my now no longer doubtful identity. " Well, well," I heard my quondam friendly guide exclaim, as if deprecating his own want of penetration, *'that I, so long a ruling elder in the church, should have mistaken a prelatical and papistical " something, but I did not hear what, as the door was just then closed behind me. * To the uninitiated in such matters it may be necessary to explain, that ■when milk is boiled it is very apt to adhere to the bottom of the vessel and be scorched, thereby communicating a burnt taste to the whole ; it is then said to be bishoped. rHAP. II.] A COINCIDENCE. 18 I mention this tritlinj;^ incident, not only to show the l)ltter- less of that hostility which for years continued to ainioy me, )ut to enable the reader to understand the cause of the virulent bersecution which I had to endure. ]\Iy predecessor had been dead nearly two years. The mea- Biires taken for the appointment of his successor had of course wen confined to the Bishop and the Society for tiie Propagation )f the Gospel in Foreign Parts, without tiie knowle>'ay, an at- Iternpl was nmde to deprive ns even of (his j)rivileiie. I was very niuoli disappointed at the turn things had thus I taken. I certainly wanted a house very much, but 1 had s<'t my lioart upon a church. However, I do not think I could \\ii\c accomplished it then, nor even afterwards, had not an incidt'ur Occurred which induced my people to exert themselves to the lutniost. lint 1 mnst not anticipate. Until this meeting took place I had been staying- at the inn I where I first went on my arrival ; but now that I ha I li f * CHAPTER IV. The Church — Distressing Difficulties— The Subscription List — A Triumph — A Letter — The Spiritual Church. All my disappointments, all my privations, and, what were worse than both, all my feelings of utter loneliness, were as nothing when compared with the trouble and anxiety, the posi- tive and absolute distress, with which the building of this church overwhelmed me. Many were the sleepless nights I spent in ruminating upon the means of accomplishing it, or rather, upon the means of extricating myself from the pecuniary embarrass- ments in which it had involved me. The subscriptions came in so slowly and so irregularly, that I could not calculate upon them until t'ley were actually paid ; that is to say, I could not anticipate them, and, consequently, could not venture to make any engagements on the strength of them. But the worst part of the business was, that in the first instance I had done so, and this was the main source of all my perplexities. I had, too, some of Job's comforters to remind me, with an air of ill- concealed triumph, that " they had told me that I could not build a church ;" and that " they knew how it would be ;" and that " we had better give it up at once, or we should make our- selves a laughing-stock, if we had not done so already, to the whole neighbourhood." And then, when they saw that this annoyed me, they would suggest, by way of consolation, bitter though it was, some such excuses for my failure as that " I was young and inexperienced, and perhaps too enthusiastic, and quite a stranger to the ways and means of the people in this country." This was from my friends. The taunts and sneering jests of our enemies no way affected me : I could expect nothing less from them. In the midst of all my difficulties a violent attack was made upon the tower of the church. It was strenuously urged that it was not absolutely necessary, and that what was built of it ought [chap. IV. UcHAP. IV.] PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH. 19 \. Triumph hat were , were as the posi- lis church '. spent in her, upon mbarrass- is came in late upon could not ; to maiie vorst part le so, and had, too, Mr of ill- could not be;" and make our- dy, to the that this ion, bitter it " I was and quite country." 3sts of our less from was made ed that it )f it ought to be pulled down, since it was better to have a church without a tower than no clmrch at all. This I would by no means con- sent to ; the whole should stand or fall together — " Aut Caesar, aut nihil !" I could not bear the idea of a church without a tower. " Let us examine the subscription-list," I said, *' and see what amount can be depended upon." This was done, the list divided into five equal portions, and five of my principal parishioners took eacii one to collect, and agreed to be answer- able for the amount. They were all men of credit in the place, and well known ; while 1 was as yet comparatively a stranger. Some brighter hopes began now to beam upon us, and under their clieering influence the work went on with renewed vigour. But. not to weary the reader with further details, it will be sufficient for me to say that, after six months of unceasing toil and exertion, I got the body of the church up, the roof on, the teeple up to the same height, and covered in with a temporary roof, to preserve it from the weather, until we should have time and means to carry it to its full height. When we had got thus far, the whole of my funds, as well from the subscription-list as from my own private means, were exhausted ; and I should have been at a hopeless stand-still, if it lad not been for the munificent grant of one hundred and fifty )ounds from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 'oreign Parts, of which we could now, and not till now, avail urselves, as the Society always, I believe, makes it a condition hat such grants shall not be paid till the outer shell of the build- ng is put up. This relieved me from all my difticultifs, and was source of joy and triumph to me. It was indeed a bold undertaking, and one which, if my know- eflge of mankind and my experience had been greater, I would lot have ventured upon with such inadequate means as were then t my command. They were indeed inadequate. But I thought t the time that my parishioners could accomplish it, and I was etermined they should do so, or I would leave them. They new this, and manfully set their shoulders to the wheel, even hile they despaired of success. The people belonging to the church, although more numerous han those of any other single denomination, were still very few ; nd the first time I administered the holy sacrament of the Lord's c 2 I' 1 %\ i '» * 'I f; - ■I :Mn .') 10 ^fm^^^^m^mmmmmmam^fmm PHILIP MUSGRAVE. mm^ [CHAi». IV. Supper I had only nine communicants. They were also very poor, as new settlers generally are, and this was comparatively, with the exception of the small village, a new settlement ; and yet, strange as it may appear to a dweller in the old country, they were all well off in the world. They had all the neces- saries and comforts of life at their command, and even some of the luxuries. Still they were poor, as far as the ability to pay money was concerned. They had it not, neither could they obtain it without great exertions, and still greater sacrifices ; and nothing else would build tiie church. Some of the work, it is true, could be done by themselves, and they willingly and freely did it. At length, by getting up some temporary windows and clo.sinj; in the rest, by laying down loose planks for a floor, and by settinsj up some rude benches, with other similar preparations, I was enabled to open the church for divine service. And oh ! what a triumphant day of rejoicing it was ! And yet there were some who, like the Israelites in the days of the prophet Ezra, could not restrain their sorrow on comparing this new, and to them a second temple, dedicated to the worship of God, with those more splendid and magnificent ones in which they had been admitted into the mystical body of Christ's holy Catholic Church — temples which, alas ! they never hoped to see again. This feeling was but momentary, and confined to a very few, *' the ancient men of the congregation ;" while among the younger members all might have seen, in their joyous countenances, the cheering belief in the promise of the personal presence of Him to whom this more humble temple was now dedicated : " Where- ever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, and that to oless them.'* The following Sunday was the one appointed for the celebra- tion of the Advent of our Blessed Lord. At a rude altar, tem- porarily raised for the purpose, I had no fewer than thirty coni-^ municants. This was indeed encouraging, and strengthened nie^ in my glorious work. During the winter, with a large stove in| the church, if we were not quite so comfortable as we could havef wished, we were much more so than we had ever been before. | The schoolhouse, at best, was but a miserable substitute for a| church ; and the tenure by which we held our trifling occupation! [chap. IV. wm CHAP, rv.] OPENING OF THE CHURCH. 21 of it, the whim and caprice of the mixed public, made it still more objectionable : but now our bare walls, with their shelter- ing roof — they could boast of little else — were our own, and we felt ourselves at home. A few days after the opening of our church, on calling upon an intelligent and well-educated ei ligrant, who had lately arrived from England, I found him busily engaged in writing a letter to some of his friends, who were very desirous of following him to this country. He wished them, of course, to settle near him ; and to induce them to do so, among other arguments he used the following : — '' We have a church and a clergyman — a regular Church of England clergyman — in the settlement. Not that every settle- ment has one. Far from it. I suppose, indeed, that there is not one for every twenty settlements, as we call them here, although each is much larger and more populous than many parishes at home. And I would advise you, as well as all other well-disposed emigrants, to be careful not to overlook this circumstance in 1 deciding upon your location. Few t';ere are, if any, who come to tiiis country, having never before been so situated as to be unable to attend the public worship of God, however negligent they may have been in availing; themselves of the privilege, that would not feel most poignantly if they were deprived of the I opportunity. Nor would they observe, without some annoyance, the little respect that is paid to that day, set apart for relaxation and rest from the cares and labours of life, even admitting they should forget the nobler purposes for which it was intended, and to which it ought to be devoted, because it would be at least a constant witness to them, on its weekly return, that they were strangers in a strange land. Indeed, I myself, as short a time as I have been in the country, have seen men, whom I knew to have seldom enteied the precincts of the sanctuary, travel what in England would be considered an incredible distance, upwards of twenty miles, to attend divine service, or to get their ciiildren baptized, or to get the clergyman to visit some sick member of their family, or to ' bury their dead out of their sight ;* con>oling themselves, in their affliction, with the idea that there was one \so near. " It is in circumstances such as these that the heart of the h I / / 13P^ ?W!" mm/^^^tm^^ . r; 22 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. IV, exile yearns after his native land. He therefore ought, certainly, to secure to himself, in this the home of his adoption, as many of those favourable features in the home he has left as can pos- sibly be found ; and they will be to him as household gods. They bring with them associations that beguile into the tale of other years. -A.nd if they do not revive in our memory those scenes of pure and unmingled happiness in our bright and buoyant season of youth, they occasionally throw a halo of delight over our existence, by leading us to forget that we are away from them. " Every emigrant may feel assured that, ho'vever anxious he may be to leave his native country, and however much it may be to his advantage to do so, he will retain a painful recollection of | it to the latest hour of his existence. No one brought up in a country liice England, where such order and regularity prevail, can form any idea of the dreadful state of society in many por- tions of these provinces, as well as in the United States ; whereas this part of the country, where I have located myself, might chal- lenge the world for its superior in orderliness and morality." Throughout the monotony of that dreary winter — for such, unaccustomed as I was to the country, it appeared to me — nothing occurred of sufficient importance to be related. Although the progress of our earthly temple tov/ards its completion was necessarily at a stand-still, the building up of our spiritual edifi'^e was, under the divine blessing, rapidly though gradually ad- vancing ; so gradually, indeed, that the careless portion of my J flock hardly noticed it, while the doubting ones attributed it to other causes ; but with the pious, who " hopeth all things,** it was believed to be, as in reality it was, and as it eventually proved, nothing less than the glorious harvest I was so richly reaping from the goome and ccurred, nstances ees of a ell paid, hing of. had to of the bear a en, who and to 3 a tree, »d, after 16 back CHAP. VI.] A MARRIAGE— A RECTOR. 33 li This settlement was quite a new one ; I myself, indeed, waa the founder of it. The Protestant portion of the Irish immi- grants that came to my neighbourhood always applied to me for advice and assistance in obtaining the grants of land wiiicij the Government, at that period, was in the liabit of mailing. I did wiiat I could for them ; but my endeavours to serve th.om were, eitiier from their own carelessness or other causes, seldom suc- cessful. I therefore applied to tlie Governor, to whom I had the honour to be personally known before I left England, for permission to locate these poor people myself at once, witliout the intervention of any Government agent. His Excellency kindly acceded to my request, limiting me, however, to this par- ticular township, which was at that time a wild tract of country. I immediately got a number of location-tickets printed. These contained the conditions under whicii the land was granted, wliich conditions must be fulfilled before the grantee can get his patent from tlie Crown. I inserted on the ticket the number of tlie lot and the applicant's name, and signed my own, taking care, before I gave them that ticket, to ascertain that they were sober, steady, and industrious men. Tiiis settlement is now in a very flourishing condition, with a church and a clergyman of its own. As to the settlement I have mentioned, in winch I had service so early on a Sunday morning, I shall say notliing further about it iiere, but tliat it rapidly rose into importance, and will occupy a very prominent position in a subsequent part of my narrative. The other two settlements to whicli 1 have adverted were very similar to the one where my head-quarters were establisiied, only vot so populous. They contained a few respectable families, v' ii which I had frequent and friendly intercourse. As to one in particular, there were powerful inducements to a young man, as I then was, to cultivate an acquaintance; and, as I am not writing a romance, I may as well say at once, without further circumlocution, that I married one of the daugiiters. This was an event of the greatest importance to me, not only in a domestic point of view, but also as regarded my professional duties. The family I had thus become connected with was higldy respectable, and very much esteemed by the whole neighbourhood ; it conse- quently had a good deal of influence, and this increased my own. Shortly after this event my mission was erected into a parish. r: ■^.i H i ' • H ; 1 ' ' 1 v'^** T,< .f k. ■ 4 ! m 1 \\ hi J^^ " 34 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. VI. and I was regularly instituted and inducte 1 as the incumbent rector. This circumstance also added something to my influence, and, as a natural consequence, when such influence is properly employed, to my usefulness in temporal as well as in spiriiual matters. Names and titles, however much we may affect to despise them, have more weight even with ourselves than, in our pride and pretended independence, we are willing to admit ; while by the great mass of the people they are held in still higher estimation, notwithstanding they also affect to despise them : nay, even the " free and enlightened citizens " (save the mark !) of the neighbouring republic, strange and anomalous as it may appear, attach more, much more importance to titles than we do. Whatever was the cause, I was more looked up to, and my example more carefully followed, than formerly, as the following instances will abundantly prove. Besides my glebe, M'hich was in a wild state, with the exception of three or four acres around my house, I had a small farm. It was soon discovered or imagined that I had a most perfect knowledge of agriculture ; and my management of it became the practice of the parish. It was also discovered from my servants that I had family prayers in my house, when a printed form was so urgently demanded by my parishioners for their own use, tht.t I got a number printed from the one I used myself, and gave a copy to any one who would promise to use it. I had often before endeavoured to im- press upon them tiie necessity and importance of this duty, but apparently without effect. HAP. VI. umbent Buence, roperly piriiuai ff'ect to than, in admit ; 1 higher 3 tliem : mark !) s it may n we do. and my )llowing lich was 5 around ered or culture ; 'ish. It prayers nded by printed 3ne who d to im- uty, but CHAP. VIT.] A JOURNEY. .3.") CHAPTER VII. A Journey — The Indians — Squaws — Papooses — Bnvk Canoes — A Snag — An Accident — The Encampment— Starvation — The Kelief— Home. I HAVE hitherto spoken only of ray head -quarters station, and of those settlements which were near enough to it to be somewliat regularly visited, without interfering with my duties at my church ; but the more distant settlements wiiich were comprised within my extensive charge occupied a large portion of my time. There were six principal ones, each of which has now a cinirch and a clergyman of its own. Two of these I visited once every winter, and the others once during the sunmier, so that each had divine service only once a year. Tiiese winter journeys were generally so similar to tliose to the less distant settlements which 1 have already described, that I may pass over tiiem without further notice. Not so one of my summer journeys to the most distant station of all, or rather to several, for there were two or three settlements in that section of the country. In tliis journey I had to pass through a wild, uninhabited region, for more tlian seventy miles in an open boat, rowed or pushed up the river with long poles. The passage occupied two tedious days and an equal number of unsheltered nights. It may convey to the mind of the reader some idea of the magnitude of tiiis river, to which I have more than once alluded, when I inform liini that ill broad daylight we missed the cliannel in one place, and got beiiind a point of land, where we worked our way for some miles before wp perceived our mistake. When I reached my destina- tion! married seven couples, and baptized seventeen children and three adults. I was two Sundays absent, during which time I read prayers and preached in schoolhouses and private dwellings eleven times to crowded and attentive congregations. In this section of the country there are now not fewer than four churches and as many missionaries, each of whom has an extensive D 2 11 iM A 26 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. VII. i ; i w 'f\ and laborious charge. It is true tliat tlie country was not near so populous then as it is now ; yet, even at tiiat period, there was an ample field of duty for several clergymen. '^ Tiie harvest truly was great, but the labourers were few ;" and few indeed they Siill continue to be, when compared with the many destitute settlemtnts which have since been formed throughout that track- less wilderness of woods, which, when I traversed it, could hardly boast of a single inhabitant. For the means of returning, I had to depend upon any chance boat that might be going down the river. But not hearing of any, and the week fast wearing away, and being- very anxious to get back to my church before the following Sunday, I took ad- vantage of the return of some Indians from their hunting excur- sion, and after some difficulty secured a passage in one of their small bark canoes. I went on board about five o'clock on a fine summer evening, only a few minutes before the dinner hour at the house where I had been staying. I had eaten nothing since an early breakfast ; my friends, as I then accounted them, neg- lected to give me any provisions. I charitably thought at the time, that this extraordinary and cruel negligence might be ascribed to their want of knowledge of Indian habits and modes of living ; but afterwards, when I knew them better, and found that they had had constant intercourse with these Indians for more than twenty years, I was compelled to impute their conduct to a less pardonable motive. May God forgive them, as I did. Silently we glided along the smooth surface of the water, impelled by the light paddles of the Indians, till we had made about seven miles. We then landed at a little clearing, where there was a green and grassy bank. Here we encamped for the night. The sun had set, and the night was fast approaching. I, of course, had neither tent nor blanket ; and although I was famishing with hunger, they would give me nothing to eat. I wandered about in search of wild berries, which generally abound in such places ; but it immediately got so dark that I could not find any. Indeed, if it had been daylight, I should probably have met with no better success, as it was much too early in the season. On returning to the camp, I was furiously assailed by all their dogs, and they were not a few, until an Indian put his head out of his tent and pacified them. I then wrapped my cloak lAP. VII. jt near ere was harvest indeed estitute t track- i hardly chance iring of xious to ook ad- r excur- of their )n a fine hour at njj since 3m, neg- it at the light be modes id found lans for conduct s I did. water, id made g, where I for the •oaching. sh I was eat. I y abound ;ould not probably ly in the sailed by n put his my cloak CHAP. VII.] THE INDIANS. around me, and laid me down upon the wet grass, for the dew had by this time fallen heavily. I tried to sleep, but for several long and tedious hours I could not. At length — it must have been, I think, but just before the morning dawned — a deep sleep came over me, and my sufferings were forgotten. The sun was up and high in the heavens when I woke. At first I could not conceive where I could be, till, on looking round, I saw my rude companions at their breakfast ; but not the slightest morsel could I obtain from them — no, not by the most earnest entreaties. I offered them money — a dollar for what to them was not worth a hundredth part of it. But, no ! I might as well have offered it to their dogs, for all the notice they deigned to take of me or it. I had now been more than twenty-four hours without food, and the gnawings of hunger began to be acutely felt. Again we started, after a long and tedious preparation ; and they paddled along, in their usual lazy and listless manner, for two or three hours, when some accident befel the canoe which accompanied us ; for there were two families of Indians, and each had one. This untoward circumstance compelled them to put ashore again soon after mid-day, to repair the damage. The squaws, after sticking their papooses* up against a tree, immediately set to work to gather a few dry sticks and light a fire, in order to cook their dinner ; while the men were patching up the hole which a snagf had made in the bottom of the canoe. When their dinner was served up, the sight of food naturally excited me to try and get a share of it, and I made a more * The infants of Indians are so called. They are strapped or tightly bandaged to a slab of wood. This slab is a little longer than the child, and their mothers, when I'ley carry them, sling them over their backs, where they hang suspended by a strap which passes round the mother's forehead ; and when the squaws stop to rest themselves they just stick these boards up against a tree, or stump, or anything else, or hang them on a branch by the strap. t This is an American term for a tree washed up by the roots from the banks of a river, and then floated away, till the root, being heavy with clay and gravel, sinks, while the top, all the branches being generally broken off, floats with the current, and so little above the surface, as hardly to be perceived. 'J'hese snags will sometimes run through the bottom of a steamer. A vessel going with the current generally runs over them with impunity. In our case some rough knot, or the broken remains of a branch, had scratched the bottom of the frail canoe, and torn a bole in it. ''I hi I I ' 38 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. ■»" [chap. VII. strenuous effort to obtain it than I had done before. But aijain I failed, and again I was saluted Mitli tliat cold and scornful laugh which is peculiar to savages. The accident to the canoe turned out to be of a more serious nature than they had supposed, and the damage took them all that afternoon to repair ; so that here we had to remain all night, although only some twelve or fifteen miles from our last night's encampment. The squaws therefore about sunset prepared their supper, when the "^ame cruel conduct towards me was again ex- hibited. I was suffering dreadfully : the gnawings of hunger were painful to a degree far beyond my power to describe. What would I not have given for a morsel of bread ! I was actually driven to violence. I stamped and stormed at them, first in English, and then in French ; but I might as well have done it in Greek for all they cared. Anything was better than their cold and sullen apathy, and I determined to rouse them from it and compel them to notice me. I seized by his lank, black greasy hair a little Indian lad, who >vas sitting on the ground, and pull- ing him over on his back, attempted to snatch from him the remains of his supper ; but the stronger arm of a stalwart savage interfered, and, with the usual scornful laugh, he pushed me aside. Here we remained all night, again under the bright starlit canopy of heaven. To me it was almost a sleepless night ; and the few moments of repose which I did get were disturbed by dreams of feasting, from which I awoke to all the painful realities of starvation.' Before the sun rose the next morning, the Indians were astir and busily engaged in their re-embarkation. They now seemed actuated by an alacrity I never saw them manifest before. This haste, as I found out afterwards, was occasioned by their anxiety to get down before night to the settlement to which I was bound. We moved along more swiftly than we had done before ; the men exerted themselves more, and the current was more rapid. This cheered me with a distant hope of relief. But I could not wait ; food I must have. I had now been more than two days and two nights without it ; and seeing the party at their break- fast, as we glided down the stream, almost drove me wild ; but not a single morsel would they give me. anc be voy the Is is- poi of AV. VII. CHAP. VII.] IIUNGEH. 89 t again cornful serious hem all 1 night, night's :;(1 their ^in ex- er were What ictually first in done it tin their from it greasy nd pull- liim the t savage shed me it starlit ^ht ; and irbed by realities ,'ere astir V seemed e. This r anxiety IS bound, ore ; the »re rapid. 30uld not two days lir break- n\d ; but J watched all their movements during their meal, as may well be supposed, with an anxious and a longing eye. And it was well for mo I did so, as by tiiat means I managed to obtain ^<.m\e little relief from the intolerable hunger under M'hich, in spite of my youth and strength, I must have sunk. A dirty little urchin of a boy had got his portion of their thick maize soup, in an old rusty tin cup. This he ate without a spoon, di[)ping it up with his fingers, casting a furtive glance at me every mouthful he took, as if afraid of an attack similar to the one I had made upon his brother the nigiit before. 1 did not, however, molest him, nor did I feel the slightest inclination to do so. I had repented of my former violence ; but I keenly and anxiously noted ilic gradually increasing depth at which 1 could see the food in the cup. 1 did this in the iiope that he might perchance, after gorging himself, leave a little — a very little — at the bottom, which 1 might obtain either without notice or with- out opposition. When the boy had done, I offered to take the cup from him ; but, no ! even this slight boon was denied me ; and after some observation from an older savage in a language I did not unt t- stand — accompanied, however, with the "laugh" which ivas intelligible — the little wretch, with a grin, set it down at his feet for the dogs. But the brutes were less hungry than I was ; they would not eat it, but merely licked round the sides of the cup, and tl-en left it. And there it stood in the bottom of the canoe, unnoticed and forgotten. I seized the precious treasure, and secured it as my own, with a voracity which excited the laughter and merriment of the whole crew — if, indeed, Indians ever can be said to be merry. I found out afterwards that this extraordinary conduct of the Indians towards me was owing to my going on board without a bottle or two of " fire-water " to present to them. The first habitation I reached, after this sad and perilous voyage of nearly seventy miles, belonged to a gentleman from the Highlands of Scotland, under whose hospitable roof I knew I should feel myself at home. I well remember, long ago as it is — not less than a quarter of a century — when, on passing a point of land jutting out into the river, I caught the first glimpse of his house, how cheering was the sight of the thin vapoury \i I / Jl fi I 40 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [OIIAP. VII. smoke curling- up from liis chimney into tlie blue heavens. And to what a lon<^ and wearisome length were those last reniaiMing five miles extended ; and how much more lazily the Indians, in their phlegmatic apathy, paddled along — their exertions seemed, in my impatience, to decrease as we approached our journey's end. The river here widened out into something like a lake ; and the canoe glided so slowly over the water, that it hardly seemed to move at all, and left not a ripple in its wake. The sun was still high in the heavens, their camp-ground for the night they now could see, and to reach it at his setting was all they cared for. Not so, however, their suffering passenger. Many a long and anxious look I bent upon the shore, and thought we never should have reached it. *' Hope deferred maketh the heart sick ;" and mine was sick indeed before that tedious day was done, for not till then was my foot upon the shore. I offered a couple of dollars to the Indians for my passage, but, with the same hideous laugh I have so often mentioned, they scornfully refused them. I hastened with all the speed my ex- hausted frame and cramped and stiffened limbs would permit to the house of my friend. On my reaching it, my emaciated looks, together with my eager demand for something to eat, convinced my kind and considerate host that I had been suffering from want of food. Before he would allow my request to be complied with, he ascertained from me the fact, that I had been nearly three days and two nights without the slightest sustenance, save the trifling supply I have mentioned. Fortunately for me he had himself once been in a similar condition when deer-stalking among his native mountains ; and he afterwards told me that on his return home he suffered more from the inconsiderateness of his family, in allowing him to gratify the full cravings of his appetite, than he had previously done during the whole time of his distressing privation. The family were just sitting down to dinner as I entered. They expected me down that evening, but in a very different plight, and after waiting dinner for me a long time, had only just given me up. I thought myself most fortunate in arriving at so propitious a moment. But, no ! my host was as bad as the In- dians ; he would not let me touch a morsel. A few spoonfuls of g^vy soup, and about half a glass of wine, he, however, did r < .; i I < H my get my :ap. VII. Ami lans, in eeined, fs einl. ind the med to ► as still ey now red for. iig and should ;" and for not niAP. VII.] IIOME-AN EVENT. 41 ?e, but, d, they my ex- rmit to d looks, nvinced m want }d with, y three lave the le had alking that on eness of of his time of s vouchsafe to give me. I tlien throw myself ui)on the sofa, and instantly fell into a sound and refreshing sleep. After a couple of hours he woke nie, and permitted me to feast upon all the dainties that had been so tantalizingly spread before me during my disturbed slumbers of the previous night. I never shall for- c^et the luxury of that dimier ! On my reaching home the next day, the joyous welcome from my dear wife, if it did not repay me for all my sufferings, made me certainly forget them. Indeed I hardly knew, till now, what it really was to have a home. It is true that for a year or two I had had a house of my own, and this I called my home. But I could not associate with the term any of those domestic enjoyments which had formerly been so inseparably connected with the warmest affections of my heart. It seemed, indeed, a desecration of the term to call it home, when all about it was so cold and solitary. Now, however, the scene was changed, and all was bright and beautiful ; in short, I was no longer a stranger in a strange land. My adopted country had in every sense of the word becon^.e my home ; and if anything was wanting to com- plete the charm, it was supplied, a few months after my return from this fearful journey, by the birth of my firstborn child. : 1 H } ntered. ifferent tilyjust ig at so the In- nfuls of 'er, did 42 IMIILIP MTJSflUAVE. [CIIAI-. VIII. CHAPTER VIII. 'V Attaoliinc'iit to the Church — ^ Discussion— An Incident— A Portrait — A' Methodist Prcaclier— A (;ut''on a Jing — an miises of I can be olio and is mercy *\ whicii id astray ers, into hich ori- led, and ith some regation ien two one day 111 about : tempore lan a set s, that it '• You yoiirst'lf, my good fri«'!id," I nplicd, " may possibly Ik; more to bliimc for this than the despisvd form ;" and I added eniiiliatically, as J laid my hand kindly on his shoulder, " When ye pray, say, "Our Father uhieh art in Heaven.' " '' Well ! well !" he said, after a moment of deep reflection, "' it is eertaiidy very, rm/ strange, that, often as 1 have read the passage, 1 never should have noticed that expression." " Say rather, that m/m/nn/f/,'' was my reply. lie was a j)lain, simple, well-meaning man, with little or no education; but possessed of a sutticient share of good comiuon- se'ise to perceive, and feel, the force of this and other arguments which I made use of. He and all his household are n(»\v, and have been for years, staunch and zealous members of the Church. And, what is better still, the influence of his example has been more widely extended, and more beneficially felt, than could reasonably have been anticipated frc'iu his humble station in life. One Sunday after morning service, as I was riding slowly along through the woods towards one of those distant settlements I have mentioned, where I had an evening service, a strange- looking man on horseback overtook and joined me. He was tall and thin, almost to deformity. His countenance, that index of the inner man, was so warped and twisted, that 1 could not read it. His foreheail I could not see, for his broad-brimmed hat was pulled tightly over it, down even to his rough and shaggy eye- brows. His eyes, the only good feature in his face, were bright, but deeply set ; and, except for a certain cunning sinister expression, they might have been called handsome. His nose was long and straighi and pointed. His ears were large and thick, high up in his head, and bent out underneath his hat. His mouth was pursed up and drawn down at the corners, and had an expression of inordinate self-esteem; and his chin was so diminutive as hardly to deserve the name. He was mounted on what might not inaptly be termed a well- conditioned stout horse, quite competent to bear his weight, and that of his well-filled saddlebags to boot. These last apiiendages, together with his little narrow white cravat, drawn round his long neck with a tightness whicli seemed to threaten strangula- tion, convinced me, at the first glance, that my companion was ? I « , 'ii a / J •I I i; I i m ' f 1 44 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. viir. a Methodist preacher. If I liad entertained a doubt upon the subject, his first salutation would have dispelled it. '* It 's a blessed day, sir, for which we ought to be thankful to Him who maketh his sun to shine upon the evil and upon the good." As much as to say " upon you and me," and almost as plairdy too ; so I made a slight inclinailcn of my head, but made no other reply to his remark, in the hope that if he met with no encouragement to talk, he would pass on and leave me to my own reflections. But, no ! he slackened his pace, and we jogged on together. A long and, apparently to my fellow-traveller, an embarrassing pause ensued. He evidently thought that we must enter into conversation, and that the whole responsibility of commencing, and keeping it up, rested upon himself. At length he addressed me again, by abruptly asking me if I had ever thought anything about my soul. Although somewhat amused and astonished at so extraordinary a question, I gave him an answer in the affirmative; and added, that I thought every one, even the greatest reprobate, must and did sometimes think about his soul. " Nay more," I continued, unconsciously becoming interested in tlie subject, '' the unbidden thought will doubtless sometimes cross tiie mind of the professed infidel, ' that he may possibly have a soul,' and then he must, in spite of himself, reflect upon what its future destiny may be ; so that every man who answers your question honestly, must be compelled to say * Yes !' " '* You seem to be a man of a serious and reflective turn of mind," he replied. I slightly bowed to the compliment, but remained silent ; and he continued his catechetical inquiries. " Pray, sir, may I ask, what means of grace do you attend ?" " If you mean to ask," I replied, "as I presume you do, what place of worship I frequent, I answer, the Church." " I)ut what church ?" he instantly and eagerly inquired. This query was a startling one. I had never before heard of the assumption by sectarians, common as I subsequently found it, of the designation of " a Church ;" and therefore I said, *' Although I do not exactly understand your meaning, yet I will endeavour to answer your question. In tlie Scriptures of the New Testament, no allusion is made to any Church but the AP. VIII. pon the nkful to ipon the Imost as ut made with no le to my 3 jogged eller, an we must t)ility of t length lad ever amused him an ery one, lie about ecoming oubtless he may himself, ery man d to say turn of mi ; and ly I ask, io, what cl. leard of bund it, I said, ng, yet jtures of but the CHAP. Tin.] A CONTROVERSY. 45 one establislied by our blessed Saviour, and his immediate fol- lowers, under three distinct and separate orders in tiie priest- hood ; and the sacred temple, dedicatetl to God and set apart for divine worship in the village yonder, called tlie parish church, and belonging to this Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, is the Church I meant. He dropped his bridle upon his horse's neck as suddenly as if a viper had stung him, clasped his gloveless hands witii their long bony fingers tightly together, turned up his eyes to the heavens and absolutely groaned aloud, as he retorted with no small degree of warmth, ^' What ! Dost thee call tiiat steeple- house yonder," turning half round in his saddle as he spoke, and pointing over his shoulder with his thumb to my cliurch, which happened just then to be visible through an opening in the dense forest — " that glittering gewgaw that preteiideth to raise into the high heavens tlie accursed emblem of herwlio sits entlironed, in the blood of the faithful, upon the seven hills of Antichrist ; that " — " A simple cross,'* I parenthetically interposed, in a de- precating tone and manner, " to remind us " — but he did not permit me to say more — I had started the alarum and it nmst run down. Not however to follow him through his long oration, suffice it to say that he concluded with — "and canst thou bring thyself to call that the Church ?" " In this parish, most assuredly," T replied, somewhat piqued at the contemptuous terms in whicli he alluded to that particular portion of the sacred edifice which I had reared with so much trouble and anxiety ; and turning back to look in the direction he pointed, I caught a glimpse of that glorious spire, with its metal covering glistening like burnished gold in tlie bright sun- shine. At the sight my feelings, which had been slightly ruffled by the rude remark of my fanatical companion, were instantly soothed. " Yes !" I said to myself, " there is indeed that " Tapering spire, That points to heaven .'nd leads the way." " The small body of worshippers," said I, continuing to address him, " which assembles there in Christian fellowship and saintly communion, constitutes a portion of the mystical body of Christ's Holy Catholic Church ; so that you see I am right, in every sense of the word, when I say thai; I attend the Church." \^y ^ \ \S ^ i \ j«ui(rdH|M@r'3g|^p 46 PHILIP MUSGKAVE. [chap. VIII. '/ fl *' 1 fear, my friend." he rejoined in a patronising- tone, " that thou art still wandering- to and fro, like the children of Israel, in the Wilderness of Sin (!) and have not read the Scripture which saith, * that if the blind lead the blind, they will both fall into the ditch.' " I was amused, not only at his mistaking the real name of the Wilderness for a metaphorical one, but also at the violent attack he liad thus unknowingly made upon myself; and I said, inter- rogatively, " You are acquainted, then, with the person who ministers in that Church?" " Oh ! no," he said, " I am not, nor do I wish to be ; for what concord liath Christ or his servants witli Belial?'* As I made no answer to this, he evidently believed that that Scripture had convinced me of the error of my ways, and lie continued, in a lower and more familiar tone, "No! no! the Gospel is never preached there, I can assure thee of that; they know nothing there about its regenerating influences. They believe, indeed, that the new birth consists in throwing a little cold water upon a squalling infant's face ; and all their other heartless forms and ceremonies are just as cold. And, as to true and vital godliness, they know nothing about it. Tlie Gospel, forsooth!" he triumphantly exclaimed, " No ! no ! Thou wilt never hear the Gospel in that place ; and if you wish your soul to be saved, never go there again." " Where, then, can I go?" I inquired with some curiosity. At tliis moment we arrived at a farm-house, where, from my previous knowledge of the sentiments of its occupant, I conjec- tured that I should lose my companion ; nor was I mistaken. In turning off" from the road towards it, he replied, " If thou wilt come this evening, at seven o'clock, to Mr. Ilagar's house, thou wilt hear a Gospel sermon, from a Gospel minister ; and then thou wilt know where thou ouglit to go!" " At that hour, then," I rejoined, " God willing, I sliall be there." He stopped, and I heard him say to tlie farmer who had come out to the little wicket-gate in front of his house to receive him, something about " plucking a brand from the burning." I was well known to this farmer, who saluted me as I passed. After riding on a little way, I looked back, and saw my com- KP. VIII. CHAP. VIII.] A SERMON. 47 , " that rael, in e which 'all into ; of the t attack I, inter- on who or what liat that and he no ! the it; they . They a little nr other s to true Gospel, lou wilt our soul ity. At roni my conjec- listaken. If thou house, md then sliaii be ad come ve him, '. passed, ny com- panion in earnest conversation with him, and as they were looking after me, I naturally concluded that I was the subject of it. I performed my evening service in the public schooUiouse, and when it was over 1 went to a friend's house to rest myself and my horse for a couple of hours, and then rode back to the village. On reaching Mr. Hagar's house, which was about half a mile from my own, I dismounted, and tying my horse to the garden- fence, I went in to hear, from the " Gospel minister, the Gospel sermon " whicii he had promised me. The service had com- menced, and had proceeded as far as the giving out of the text ; I just caught the words as I gently opened the door — they were from llev. xv. 2 : " And 1 saw a sea of glass mingled with fire." Struck as I was with the strangeness of the text, I was much more astonished at the attempt he made to explain it. In a loud and monotonous tone of voice, indicative of self-importance and aiitiiority, he thus began : " Glass, my bretliren, is a clear metal, which giveth light unto man !" And when he had made this philosophical declaration, lie paused, and cast his eye all round the audience, as if to see that this exhibition of his superior knowledge was duly appreciated ; but when lie perceived that I was present, his countenance fell, and his loud and confident rone was changed into nervous stammering. He soon, however, re- covered himself, and went on fluently enougli with his discourse ; which, however, consisted of little else but trite sayings and cant phrases, repeated as often as the wonls composing them would admit of transposition. When I got home I noted down, as a curiosity, one portion of his sermon. After disposing of the " glass," w hich he did rather summarily, he got upon the subject of " fire," u})on which w ord he rung the changes, till all in heaven and earth, and under the earth, was exiiausted. " Fire, iny bretliren," he said, " is a word of awful import. What is more frightful than the cry of 'fire' in a crowded city? But what is that compared witli the fire from heaven which consumed, as in a moment, tlie forty sons of the prophets? When ye burn a slack,* the roaring of the * " A slack " is the term used to designate the completion of the first •work required to be done in making a new " clearing." The brushwood and large trees are all cut down, aud the branches lopped ofl" from the m ! \ I ( m 48 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. VIII. II . « \\<] fire is fearful to hear, and the sight awful to behold ; but what is that compared with the fire which ran along the ground all over Egypt ? The fire of a volcano, like thai, of JEtna or of Vesu- vius, is terrible, but it dwindles down into nothing when com- pared to the fire of the Holy Mount on the issuing of the Law to the ancient people of God. The fiery serpents which set the camp of the Israelites in flames ; the fire that issued from tht bowels of the earth, when it opened to swallow up Corah and his rebellious company ; the fire at the burning of Jerusalem ; the fire at the conflagration of Moscow, or the great fire of London ; — what are they all, my brethren, when compared with the fire which burns before the throne continually, or that * sea of fire,* whose smoke ascendeth up for sver and ever, w here the wicked shall be confined in chains of blackness and darkness, until the coming of the great day, when — " and after running on through many other examples, he wound up all by saying, *' And this, my brethren, is the fire that the Apostle alludeth to, which we can only ' now see through a glass darkly * — ' And I saw a sea of glass mingled with fire.' " After the strange service had been concluded, I went up to the preacher and spoke kindly to him. He attempted something of an apology, founded upon his ignorance of my profession and character, for his talking to me as he had done in the afternoon. I assured him I had taken no offence ; and that the fulfilment of my promise to come and hear him preach was a proof of it ; and " You and your people," I added, " can return the com- pliment next Sunday, and come and hear me." They did so, and some of them continued to attend our services, and became exem- plary members of the Church ; but the preacher himself was not one of the number. Trifling as this incident may seem, I have thus particularly recorded it, on account of its important bearing upon the success of my endeavours to rid my parish of Dissenters. / did suc- ceed ; and by the mildest of means — I let them alone. They abused my Church in their sermons. They even attacked me latter. After they have lain long enough to become withered and dry, fire is applied, which sweeps off everything except the trunks of the trees. These are afterwards piled in heaps, and burned ; and then the land is ready for sowing with wheat or other grain, which only requires to be harrowed in to produce an excellent crop. AP. VIII. what is all over »f Vesu- eii com- ! Law to set the from the )rah and •usalem ; t fire of ompared , or that !r, where iarkness, nning on I saying, udeth to, -' And I ent up to omething ssion and Fternoon. ■ulfilment )of of it ; the com- d so, and me exem- f was not ticularlv le success did sue- e. They icked me CHAP. VIII.] DISSENTERS. 49 personally, especially in their prayers; begs^ing that "God would open the eyes of tiie blind leader of the blind, who had, in this benighted settlement, placed himself on high, assuming the robes of Aaron as a teacher in Israel ;" with a great variety of other compliments of a similar character. But all would not do. They could not provoke me to reply to their attacks, much less to attack them in return. In short I did not give them a chance of making out a case of persecution ; and the result was, as I anticipated, they came to nought. I am sorry to say that these remarks only apply to my parish, properly so called. Indeed the duties we perform at the distant settlements, tend rather, I fear, to increase dissent than to diminish it. These duties are so irregular and so often inter- rupted, that if they be productive of any serious and religious impressions, such impressions are immediately laid hold of, by the indefatigable zeal of dissenting preachers, who are to be found in every settlement, however small. And while they foster and cherish them, they naturally endeavour, and too often suc- cessfully, so to twist and distort them, as, in the end, to make them subserve their own purposes — the swelling of their own ranks. Our people are first led astray by the most artful and insidious arguments, such as the following : — " Surely you 'II go to * meeting' to-day; you have no service of your own; and all the differen«;e between us and your church consists in mere matters of outward form. We are all aiming rt the same end ;" and so forth. They do go ; at first, perhaps, with reluctance, and return with disgust. But the second time they are more easily persuaded to go ; and then the service does not appear so ve,)f different from their own as they at first thought : and thus, after a few months, they begin to wonder how they could ever have been so prejudiced against it. At length a subscription is set on foot for a meeting-house. They are of course called upon, and fancy they must give something towards it ; and they cannot brook the idea that this something should be less than what tlieiv neighbours give : and so the building is erected and finished, and pews appropriated to them, for tlieir liberal contributions. These pews they occupy with their families ; and, in short, become members, to all intents and purposes, of some schismatical and sectarian community. m \ \ Hi 1 II 1 i n 1 jl : Ml ! 1 w r f ,', |h M- 1 1- i .. it i 50 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. VIII. Sometimes these meeting-houses are got up under the most specious pretences of liberality, and are called free churches, that is to say, they are to be open to all denominations. A chapel of this description was erected, and by such means, in one of those neighbouring settlements to which I have frequently adverted. Our people were more numerous in this settlement than those of any other denomination, and therefore it could not well be built without their assistance. To obtain this, they pro- posed that half the Sunday should be appropriated to our occu- {)ation of it, while th^ other half should be divided between all the other denominations who might wish to use 't. The bait took ; our people subscribed liberally, and a large and commo- dious building was erected. But the half — the full half of the Sunday, so generously appropriatec to the services of the Church, was confined to the forenoon, when they knew I would not and could not attend, being engaged with my morning service in my own parish ; while the afternoon, the only portion of the day the dissenters wished to occupy it, was exclusively appropriated to them. The natural consequence was, as the originators of tlie scheme anticipated, that I never entered its doors. So much in proof of the necessity of a resident clergyman in every settle- ment. ■ 'i CHAP. IX.] A HAILSTORM. 51 I \ CHAPTER IX. The Hailstorm — Schools.— Travelling.— Pecuniary AfFairo. I HAVE dwelt on such circumstances and occurrences as are peculiar to a missionary's life, and to tlie field of his labours, in this wild and far-off country ; and I have said very little, per- haps too little, about my regular routine of duties. The only apology I have to offer is simply to state, that these duties, im- portant as they are, and ever have been, and occupying, as they do, nearly the whole of my time, being in fact the labour of njy life, are nevertheless so similar to those of every parish in Eng- land, with some exceptions perhaps in the manufacturing dis- tricts, and consequently so well known, as to render any other than an incidental mention of them not only uninteresting, but tedious and superfluous. In pursuance, therefore, of the course I have adopted, I shall here mention one of th* -se peculiar oc- currences which took place precisely at the pe;iod at which I have now arrived in my narrative. The circumstance to which I allude was one of those violent and fearful convulsions of the elements which people at " home '* suppose to be confined to climates within the tropics, but which do, nevertheless, somet'mes, and not unfrequently, occur in North America. On my way to visit a school in one of my distant settlements, one very hot and sultry day about the middle of July, I was riding very leisurely along the road by the side of the river, or rather of the lake into which it had there extended itself ; T had travelled some four or five miles, when I observed two large black masses of clouds rising up very rapidly, in the north-west and west, to a great height, although the lower part of them still rested on the horizon. When they had attained their ut- most' elevation, they began to advance slowly towards each other, evidently bent on mischief. This I knew from the little angry- flashes of lightning which at intervals darted from them during E 2 n ij . „ I "I » / 4 1 ( ■■"i i ; I f 63 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. IX. their progress. All this time, about half an hour, the stillness of the close and sultry atmosphere was disturbed by lixtle whirl- ing eddies of wind, Mhich here and there swept the dust from the road, and the dry leaves from about the fences, raising them, in spiral gyrations, high up into the air. One, indeed, was of a very different and much more violent description. It tore up by the roots a large elm-tree within a hundred paces of me, although where I stood I felt not a breath of air. These were indications of a coming conflict which could not be mistaken ; and on looking round I perceived that it was not to be confined to the two formidable-looking combatants I have mentioned. There were two other masses of cloud coming up at a more rapid rate, one after each of the two former, which they very much resembled. I was by this time not far from a friend's house, and pushed on for shelter before the collision should take place. I just got within his doors in time. The wind blew, the lightning flashed, the thunder pealed, and in less than one minute the ground was white with hailstones as large as marbles. Then there was a pause in the tempest, only, however, to commence again with redoubled fury. In a few minutes another of the moving masses of black clouds came up, like some gigantic ship of war, to join in the combat. Slowly and majestically it approached to within point-blank range of its antagonist, when crash went the whole of its dreadful artillery at once, and another shower of hailstones of a larger size, which when examined appeared to have an outer layer of ice a quarter of an inch thick around them, came hurtling through the still air with a strange and hissing noise, something like what one hears on approaching a rapid torrent : and now came up the last mass of cloud. The wind instantly rose to a perfect hurricane, — the thunder pealed incessantly, — flash after flash, with increas- ing intensity, followed each other in such quick succession that the whole heavens seemed wrapped in a sheet of livid flame ; and the hailstones, enlarged again with another layer of ice, were driven with such violence against the front of the house in which I had taken shelter, as to break not only the glass of the win- dows, but the frames also, and to scatter them in fragments all over the rooms. I measured several of the hailstones which fell last, and found them from five to seven inches in circumference ; 4 CHAP. IX.] SCHOOLS. 53 ce, were and I heard afterwards that a gentleman who lived on an island ill the lake, to which the storm was nearly confined, found some that measured nine inches round. The storm, as I have said, was confined within very narrow limits, or the damage would have been very great. So narrow and circumscribed indeed were those limits, that when I got home, and went into my garden to see, as I anticipated, my ruined hotbed frames, not a single pane was broken. The storm had not reached my house, nor the village where it was situated. AVithin my mission, the limits of which were not exactly laid down, as it extended indefinitely into the far off settlements in the " backwoods," I had to superintend no fewer than fifteen schools. They were of course widely scattered over this whole range of country, which was badly provided M'ith the means of communication. The roads were miserable ; some of them hardly passable, except in winter. Steamers there Avere none, and ye* I had to travel through all these settlements to visit these schools at stated periods, all at least except three, which were situated in those very distant settlements I have mentioned in a former chapter. These three I visited only when I happened to be on the spot for the performance of my clerical duties. We had no classical or other superior school in the district. All those which were established were entirely confined to ele- mentary instruction, and received some little pecuniary aid from the Government towards their support. Religion formed no part of the system of instruction ; so thpt my duties were cir- cumscribed within limits much more narrowly defined than I could have wished. I had to send a notice to the teacher that I would visit his school on a certain day, when the otiier visitors, selected from among the inhabitants, usually met me. We had to examine into the progress the pupils had made, as well as everything else touching the temporal wellbeing and prosperity of the school. I had also a Sunday-school to establish and to attend to. I could not succeed in establishing more than one, and that was at my head-quarters. This of course was very different in its con- stitution and character from the day-schools, and entirely under my own control and management. Too mucli so, indeed, as I / !2 u ' .' 04 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. IX. was obliged very generally to teach it myself, that is to say, whenever my other duties would permit me. The visiting of these day-schools added not a little to my labours. But there were other duties to which I have not yet adverted, that contributed still more to increase them, and that to an almost overwhelming extent. In addition to visiting the sick and burying the dead, I was sometimes called upon to go from ten to twenty miles to marry people ; and to baptize children that were either too far off to be brought to the church, or were sick, or at least were said to be so. x On one occasion I was called upon one Saturday morning, I well remember it yet, to marry a couple at a settlement fifteen miles off'. I started very early, and got back about five o'clock in the evening ; weary and almost worn out, more ,by the exces- sive heat than by the length of the journey, and was very thank- ful to return to my comfortable home. But on giving my horse, which was about as tired as myself, to my servant, I was informed that a man was waiting for me, and had been for several hours, to go with him twenty-five miles to see his wife, who was thought to be at the very point of death. I directed my servant to give the man his dinner, and got my own ; and then imme- diately set off with him on a fresh horse, and arrived at my journey's end about ten o'clock at night. I found the poor woman very ill, worse indeed than she had been represented to be. I sat up and talked and prayed with her, or read to her, till four o'clock in the morning, when her happy spirit ascended to Him who gave it. I then threw myself on a sofa, which I found in an adjoining room, for an hour or two, and starting again for home, got there in time to take a hasty breakfast, and to dress for church, at eleven. Morning service over, I rode nine miles to one of my out- posts, for evening service ; and then home once more. I was up early the next morning, in order to be off in time for the poor woman's funeral, which was to be at ten o'clock, by my own appointment. As I mounted my horse, my servant, a raw but well-meaning Irish lad, said to me — " An is 't a.T agin ye are ? Sure an the horses '11 be kilt, if the maister hisself is n't." " I cannot help it, John," I replied ; " I must go." CHAP. IX.] TRAVELLING. 55 " Well, well ! " lie rejoined ; " I never seen the likes o' this afore ! lint there 's no rest for the wieked, T see." I cast npon hini a searrhinjjc look, to ascertain whether liis remark was to be imputed to impertinence, but the simple ex- pression of commiseration on his countenance at once convinced me that he meant no harm. I pushed on, for fear of beint^ too late, to meet the funeral at the bnrial-jrround, about three miles from the house of mourn- ing. I was there far too soon, and had to wait several hours. There is an unwilling'ness on such occasions to be punctual, arising, T am inclined to believe, from the fear of being' guilty of an undue and disrespectful haste " to bury their dead out of their sight." It was late in the evening when T got home; and, what with the fatigue and the heat of the weather, and the want of rest, I was fairly worn out ; and so ill as to be obliged to keep ray room for three days. I may appear to dwell too much on these travelling difficidties ; but no one accustomed only to the macadamized roads of Eng- land can form any idea of what we had to contend with here. Freqiiently, for ten miles together, in some of my journeys, the roads would be in such a state as in any other country would have been considered absolutely impassable ; and over these roads I had to travel not less than three thousand miles every year. But besides the labour, these journeyings were necessarily at- tended with heavy expenses ; and pecuniary matters were be- ginning to annoy me. I was constrained to keep two or three horses, and a servant to take care of them. My household esta- blishment had now to be considerably increased : then again there were large sums, large at least to me, which I had to pay towards the erection of the parsonage-house and the church. Tiiese altogether were such a drain upon my pecuniary resources as could not be supplied by my professional income. Fortu- nately, however, I had some small private means of my own, which were somewhat increased by an annuity belonging to my wife ; and therefore, in spite of difficulties, we managed to rub on, and a happier little family could not be found within the broad extent of England's colonies. I) . ilff.l \t\ mm M PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. X, illi ■'^. \ II CHAPTER X. A Clerical Association — Divisions — The Rubric — Visitors— Misfortunes — A Catastrophe. About this period, namely, the commencement of my sixth year in tlie country, I succeeded, after several abortive attempts, in forming a Clerical Association. "We Church Missionaries hjid to go to the metropolitan town every half-year, to draw our salaries, as well as to purchase such things as we required for our families, during the ensuing six months. On these occasions, instead of being dispersed among the hotels all over the town, as had previously been the custom, we all lodged together at one hotel during the two or three days we remained in the town. In the mornings we as- sembled " in the House of God as friends " for prayers, and after- wards "held sweet counsel ' tgether" about our duties, and trials and difficulties. Nor tlid we forget to tell each other of the many encourap^ing instances in which our labours and exer- tions had been bh-s^ed with signa^ and triumphant success. The rector of the parish in which our hotel was situated, always ready to patronise and encourage his brethren in the country, entered zealously into the scheme, and assisted materially in organising the association. This institution, which, alas ! has long since ceased to exist, was at first composed of but seven members, being at that time all the clergy in this part of the country ; — plain, simple pres- byters of a Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church ; all of one heart and one mind, with the Scriptures for our rule of faith, and with the Canons and Rubrics of that Church, which we firmly believed to be in accordance with the Scriptures, as our rule of ministerial practice. Years passed on, and our numbers increased nearly ten- fold. Some of the new members brought " strange things to CHAP. X.] A CLERICAL ASSOCIATION. .•57 »» oiir ears." For instance, they not only endeavoured, hy the most insidious arguments, to shake our faith in the hlt>ssed efficacy of the holy Sacraments, especially that of liaptism, which they asserted did not convey any *' inward and spiritual grace,** and absolutely ridiculed the idea of its being considered in any other light than as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, but which grace was not given at the time, nor indeed afterwards at any subsequent period in the lives of the recipients of this sign, unless they should happen to be con- verted and regenerated. They thus jumbled the two terms of Con- version and Regeneration together, or used them synonymously, thereby manifestly proving that they did not understand their meaning. These men did not even knov/. or at least did not understand, their Catechism ; and yet there is more genuine, good, and sound orthodox theology in that plain, simple, and concise epitome of our faith, than half the world is aware of. The holy Sacrani^nts were thus to be frittered away into mere heartless and insignificant forms and ceremonies, to be observed or regulated it will; — matters of indifference! Per- haps, however, I ought not to say so, but to use their own lan- guage, and call them non-essentials^ regarding which, as they asserted, the faithful and pious Churchman may exercise his own discretion, and extend it to the utmost bounds of latitudinarian licence. " One Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all," had hitherto been our watchword. No wonder, therefore, if we \vere now frightened away, from this arena of controversy and con- tention, by the broaching of such new and, to us, unheard of dogmas. Indeed, when plain palpable matters of faith became the subjects of discussion and dispute, to be decided by a majority of votes, and our friendly association degenerated into a tiieolo- gical debating society, it was time for us to withdraw. "We did so ; and it fell to the ground. Shortly after the arrival in the colony of the party above alluded to, one of their members stopped and spent a Sunday with me on his return from the metropolitan town to his distant home. He read the ante-communiugh now, at the time I write, twenty years afterwards, five or six s-teamers a-day find sufficient employment. He theref Te jot a large cancp from a friend, and engaged two ? rench Caiiadia&s to row tlieui down the river. They all emoarked in it, and glided swiftly and smoothly along the surface of the lake. In this countrj' all the large rivers, as we^l as many of the smaller ones, consist of a chain of lakes, having a narrow channel and a swift current, :f|1 Ji':i ; I It \ HI iU i I 62 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. X. characteristically termed a " rapid," between them. The lake I here refer to is several miles in width. Away they went, all the little ones in high glee and uproar- ious mirth. I could almost fancy the other day, on passing the spot where they embarked, that I could yet hear the echo of their merry laugh, as it rang through the thick woods on shore. I saw them start, and twenty years have not erased from my memory a single incident connected with their departure. I could even yet repeat the simple " chanson " which was sung to a lively air by tlie two rowers ; for the Canadian boatmen can liardly row without singing, certainly not with equal spirit and energy. A little lower down the river tiiere are some very dan- gerous rapid" Tn ijetting into these, one of the boatmen, the poor fellow who came to my house as I have already mentioned, became frightened, and in his confusion suffered his oar to be caught by a boiling surge. Tiiis in an instant overturned their canoe : the three helpless little ones were overwhelmed in a watery grave ; not, however, before the distressed father, who was an excellent Twimm^er, jjad made the most extraordinary exertions to save the youngest. The two oldest, with their mother, he lost sight of tiie moment the canoe upset, and gave eighteen them up for lost ; but the youngest, a child about months old, he caught knold of, when a strong wave broke over him, and somehow or other wrenched the child from his grasp and bore it some distance away from him. He again stretched out to save his boy, and again succeeded in laying hold of him. By this time he had been carried into the most violent part of the rapid torrent, down which, in a state bordering upon insen- sibility, he was hurried \vith fearful velocity. On reaching the comparatively smooth water at the foot of the rapid, he soon recovered hi« i!*enses, but found to his dismay that he had lost his child agaun — hopelessly lost it now. On looking round, he could see nothing but the canoe. It had floated down along with him, bottom upwards, with the two boatmen clinging to it. lie T/as now nearly exhausted, but on perceiving the canoe he roused his sinking energies for one effort more, and succeeded in reachin> * This extraordinary occurrence I mentioned to a brother clergyman soon after it took place. On his return to England soon afterwards, he mentioned it in a sermon he preached at Church, Saflfron Hill, London, and perhaps to other congregations, so that it may be already known to some of my readers. :i u: 'i^ 'if m the men f 64 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. xr. <; ). :■ < HI I CHAPTER XI. Psalmody — Chants — A Confirmation — Housebreakers — A strange Dog- Mode of Computing Time— Reflections. Before I and the dissenting preacher, or, as he was more com- monly designated, the opposition minister, came to the settle- ment, there were no divisions among the people ; and if they were not in reality all of one heart and of one mind, they cer- tainly were so to all outward seeming. They all attended the ordinary services of the Church ; they even had their children baptized by my predecessor. Now, however, there was naturally a great change. A separation immediately took place, and we felt the effects of it, in one particular at least, very sensibly. All who were in the habit of singing in the congregation went out from us in a body, and left us totally destitute of that in- teresting appendage to our service, the psalmody. To that alone I am now referring, and not to any portion of the service itself. The singers were, in fact, all dissenters, with the ex- ception of two or three, who might have been at a loss them- selves to say exactly what they were ; and dissenters in general are much more attentive to their singing than we are. It may be given as the reason for this, that it is actually a part, and a very important part too, of their services. But when we take into consideration the chants and anthems, may not the same, and even more, be said of it in reference to our services ? Also, thousands have joined the ranks of the dissenters, who at first attended their meeting-houses only to hear their beautiful sing- ing : whereas, if the sacred music, so naturally belonging to our services as to constitute an inherent part of them, had not been so lamentably neglected, these same person'- would have heard much more beautiful singing in their own Church. Passionately fond of music as I am, and especially sacred music, it will easily be imagined how severely I felt the loss, and how anxious I was to repair it. I spared neither labour^ nor pains, nor expense. and enec was deed, abou that chun Or Conf This "bac very obtai wish great are sal the wf f__ CHAP. XI.] A CONFIRMATION. 65 I got teachers from a distance, for I could find none on tiie spot. I succeeded, two or three times, in getting up quite a little band of singers ; but, siinehow or other, when tlie teacher went away, they eitlier fell off one by one, or the leader was absent, or they broke down, or something else happened, and the singing was given up. Again and again I attempted to accomplisii this ob- ject, but always failed. My exertions had hitherto been confined to psalmody alone. After my repeated failures the thought occurred to me that I might perhaps be more successful with the chants. I made another effort, and succeeded completely. We first got up the ' Venite,' and then the ' Jubilate,' and afterwards the ' Te Deum,' &c. I discovered the cause of all my former difficulties. These chants being the same every Sunday, every Sunday added to our choir. Many naturally chimed in, as the simple music became familiar to them, till nearly all the congregation united ; whereas, before, while the singing was confined to psalmody, the singers were under the impression that we must have a great variety of tunes— the metres, indeed, require this to a certain extent — and in attempting to keep up this variety they com- mitted blunders occasionally, became abashed and frightened, and at last broke down altogether. But now they were strength- ened by constant accessions to their number ; their confidence was restored, and they sang well, if not tastefully : so well, in- deed, that on the Bishop's holding a Confirmation at my church, about the time they were at their best, his Lordship declared that he had never in his life heard better singing in a country church. On this visit of the Bishop's I had twenty-three candidates for Confirmation, who were approved of, and one who was not. This latter was an elderly man who lived some twenty miles " back in the bush.'* * He had been there many years ; he was very ignorant, but open to instruction, and eagerly anxious to obtain it. I mentioned his case to the Bishop, who expressed a wish to see him. He did see him, and had a long conversation * Hamlets, or even scattered houses, on all the main roads leading to the great towns, are called front settlements, while those away from these roads are said to be " back in the bush," or *' in the back bush," that is to say, in the wild woods. P I '•') |ll f u I't 'J i I, 1 r- ^M Ji (1 1 \ 66 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XI. with him ; after which the poor man was quite satisfied to wait till the next Confirmation, in the hope, as he expressed it, tlijit " in the mean time he should get to understand something more about it." The inhabitants of the new settlement which I myself had formed, and to which I have frequently referred, embraced the opportunity of the Bishop's visit to lu k for a clergyman of their own. They did not, however, i.idke this request directly to his Lordship, but to me, and not personally, but in writing. The document was certainly a very unique and extraordinary production, the work, I suppose, of their village schoolmaster. I showed it to the Bishop, who was very much amused at it. It commenced with, " May it please your Royal Holiness," and was manifestly meant for a petition, praying that / would speak to the Bishop in their behalf, &c. He could not then accede to their wishes, biit he did so a few years afterwards. This was the third Confirmation that had been held in my parish since my appointment to it. One in the first, another in the fourth, and this in tiie seventh year of my incumbency. About this period I went to attend the sale of the effects of Mr. M , a very respectable farmer, who had died at one of my out-settlements a few months before. He had left a widow, a very amiible and pious woman, and throe children, to mourn his loss. The lone widow thouglit herself unequal to the management of the large farm which he? husband had occupied. She therefore took a cottage in the village where I lived, and was now selling everything off except a little furniture. After the sale was over I went into the house to see her. I congratulated her upon the plan she had adopted, and remarked that she would be much more comfortable, not only in being re- lieved from the cares of a business she could not be supposed to understand, but in a feeling of security, which in her unpro- tected state in that lonely house she could hardly enjoy. *' Oli ! no," she said, " not unprotected ; far from it ! You forget," slie continued, with a mournful smile, " that I am now under the special protection of Him ' who careth for the fatherless and the widow,' and I feel quite confident that He will protect us.'' And He did protect them, and that very night too, in a most extraordinary and wonderful, and, I may add, miraculous AP. XI. Nvait t, that r more (If had ed the f then- ctly to vriting. rdinary ster. I it. It 5S," and Id speak 3cede to 1 in my other in sffects of i at one id left a Idren, to al to the )ccupied. ved, and her. I remarked being re- pposed to p unpro- " Oh ! get," she under the ^s and the us/' too, in a iraculous CHAP. XI.] HOUSEBREAKERS. 67 manner. The farm-house was a solitary one ; there was not another within half a mile of it. That night there was a good deal of money in the house, the proceeds of the sale. The mother and her three young children, and a maid-servant, were the sole inmates. They had retired to rest some time. The wind M'as howling fearfully, and shook the wooden house at every blasts This kept the poor mother awake, and she thought she heard, in the pauses of the tempest, some strange and unusual noises, seemingly at the back of the house. While eagerly listening to catch the sound again, she was startled by the violent barking of a dog, apparently in a room in the front of the house immediately bcmeath the bedchamber. This alarmed her still more, as they had no dog of their own. She immediately rose, and going to her maid's room awoke her, and they went down together. They first peeped into the room where they had heard the dog. It was moonlight, at least partially so, for the night was cloudy, still it was light enough to distinguish objects, although but faintly. They saw an immense black dog scratch- ing and gnawing furiously at the door leading into the kitchen, from whence she thought that the noises she first heard had pro- ceeded. She requested the servant to open the door which the dog was attacking so violently. The girl was a determined and resolute creature, devoid of fear, and she did so without hesita- tion ; when the dog rushed out, and the widow saw through the open door two men at the kitchen window, which was open. The men instantly retreated, and the dog leaped through the window after them. A violent scuflfle ensued, and it was evident, from the occasional yelpings of the noble animal, that he some- times had the worst of it. The noise of the contest, however, gradually receded, till Mrs. M could hear only now and then a faint and distant bark. The robbers, or perhaps murderers, had tiken out a pane of glass, which had enabled them to undo the fastening of the window, when, but for the dog, they would doubtless have accomplished their purpose. The mistress and maid got a light, and secured the window as well as they could. They then dressed themselves, for to think of sleeping any more that night was out of the question. They had not, however, got down stairs the second time before they heard their protector scratching at the outer door for admittance. They immediately F 2 « D I U i -I Hi 111 il W / knJ ,»■ 68 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap XI. opened it, when he came in wagg-ing his .,tisliy tail, and fawning upon each of them in turn, to be patted and praised for his prowess. He then stretched his huge bulk, at full length, be- side the warm stove, close. XII. i Migra- lat some iportant nts. e course upon my duct, by md who servants ley were r master Jea pre- which is ood ser- — I com- Sunday- rt or too :*al, they T. M. or >n aimed I in the iss : and LS, if not I My ob- larsimo- /agance. Iwith his at such be which le. lie of l)v CHAJ*. XII.] A NEW APPOINTMENT. 71 others, ori^inate.' than '^'k- it I divine worship), they would have to do violence to their feelings, and make great concessions and sacrifices : but better this, they prudently though; , than to see their children brought up in a state of utter ungodliness. In short, to [)ray out of a book, as in tfieir simplicity they expressed th mselves, was certainly better than not to pray at all. They diJ in reality try hard to over- come these prejudices ; and in a very short time I had the satis- faction of seeing them give way, one by one, under the system of instruction I had adopted, until few, if any, were left. With the rising generation, where the ground had not been i)reviously occupied, the good seed, with the Divine blessing, had only to be sown, when it sprang up, and flourished, and brought forth fruit. Indeed, all tiie people not only listened to me as tliey wouhl have done to one " who spoke with authority," but they vvatclied my conduct, even j the merest trifles, with a keen anil a curious eye, not for the purpose of finding fault, as is too generally the case, but solely for the sake of following my example ; and this in matters where I could little have expected it. For instance, my barn stood nearly in front of my house. It was a large, heavy, wooden building, forty feet long and thirty wide. I pro- posed to move it back some forty or fifty paces. Every farmer in the settlement came with his yoke of oxen to assist in what they all considered a hopeless undertaking. It was, however, accomplislied : and, behold ! in less than a week afterwards, the schoolhouse, which had been very injudiciously placed at one end of the settlement, was seen moving ort' through the fields to a more central position. I had brought with me a few fruit- trees to plant in mj g ' Jen ; in a few years every homestead had an orchard. I purchased a hive of bees; at that tin e tiiere was hardly such a thing in the whole neighbourhood. ^I; tore long, ever;ybody in the place had one, not even excepting a poor widow, who could not aflbrd to buy one ; but, strange to say, a stray swarm came and settled in her garden. It was soon (lisw,vere(J, or imagined, that I had a most f)erfect knowledge cf agriculture, and my management of my farm became the practice of the parish. A roller, for instance, had never before been seen in the parish ; now there is hardly a farmc ithout one. The turnip had never been cultivated ; now the Agricultural Society t* I 78 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. xtii. ^, i; ' li Mil V' \ of the district award prizes annually to the three best crops of that useful root. They were, in truth, a plain and simple-hearted people, and looked up to me as their guide in all their difficulties. I did not, however, find them quite so willing to follow my example in religions matters. Probably this was more my fault than theirs. My conduct might have been more marked with imper- fections in spiritual than in temporal affairs ; or, perhaps it was owing to the greater influence that worldly interests exercise over the human mind. Nevertheless, the beneficial effects arising from the establishment of the church, and the regular perform- ance of divine service, began to be manifested in the improved moral aspect of the settlement, even before the expiration of the first year. When I commenced my labours among them, some would come into the church without their coats, or sit upon the backs of the pews, and stare about them in a most unbecoming and irreverent manner ; while others would be cutting down trees in the woods, or working at any other of their ordinary daily oc- cupations, or they would be hunting or shooting. But all this, to my great satisfaction, soon passed away. I began with my own servant. On observ'ng, one Sunday morning, very near church time, that he had not his best clothes on, I asked him if he was sick, or what was the reason he was not ready to go to church? He replied, that he had been there two successive Sundays, and that I surely would not insist upon his going every Sunday. This young man would now consider it a great hardship to be kept away from the church, even for one Sunday, and a still greater to be kept away from the Lord's Table. He has now a wife and fafi.ily, with a good farm of his own, and is quite independent, being worth at least a thousand pounds. He had nothing to commence with but the savings of his wages. This is an instance of what the honest industry of a sober, steady, and religious young man may accomplish in this country. With such as never came to church at all, I was, of course, at first, less successful. There was a custom in the place, which I believe prevails among dissenters everywhere, of having a ser- CHAP. XIII.] A FUNERAL SERMON. 79 mon preached at a funeral. This custoni, originating most pro- bably in their want of a burial service, I certainly did not at all like; yet I could not do away with it at once without giving offence. I therefore complied with it at first, and tiiis T did the more willingly, as it afforded me the means of addressing myself to a few scoffers at religion, who never allowed me any otiier opportunity. Among these was a man of some property and in- fluence in the place, a Mr. Wilson — 1 purposely give his name. Sooi. after my arrival we had a great funeral in the settlement, that of poor Captain M , of whose melancholy fate more anon. Every body attended, and this Mr. Wilson among the rest. I preached a sermon which I had written some years be- fore, for a very similar occasion, the funeral of a man who had been murdered at a " logging-bee."* I addressed myself chiefly to such characters as the one I have mentioned. I pointed out to them the godless course they were pursuing ; — I warned them of their danger ; and, warming with my subject, I proceeded with zealous earnestness to apply to their own circumstances the awful lesson before them, concluding with one of those fearful denunciations of Scripture upon the finally impenitent, which can hardly fail to make a sinner tremble. On the solemn ser- vice being concluded, we all went silently away, sad and sorrow- ful, to our homes. As I was walking out the next day I met one of my church- wardens. He expressed his regret that I should have made such a very personal attack in my sermon the day before, and told me that Mr. Wilson was " mortally " offended. " Why ! he says, sir," continued the man, '' that you actiially go* into a passion with him ; and I must acknowledge that you did seem a little angry." " No, not angry," I interposed ; " only earnest, only anxious for his welfare." " Well ! well !" he replied, " at any rate he declares that you shall never have another chance of preaching at him." It was near my own house that this interview took place, and I begged hiiu to wait a moment till I had stepped in. lie did * A " Bee " moans a gathering of the people to help one of their numl^er either to put up a house, or to get in his hay, or to pile logs for burning on a new clearing, called logging, or to do any other work. '4 I I it It * f H I H ^' ^\ ^\ kVt.^ "^U 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) S72-4503 • J^^ ^^> h 84 PHILIP MUSGRAVK. [chap. XI r. lightning had made in the chimney : the mantelpiece, which was of stone, was cracked exactly through the centre. It was in the very midst of this torrent of rain, and when the dusty road before Captain M 's house had become flooded with water, that the frightened family saw a man riding by at a furious rate. If they were right in the person whom they sup- posed it to be, he was a very bad and wicked man, a professed infidel, a scoffer at all religion, nay, even worse than that, an open blasphemer. This mauj whose name was Tom Broadman, was also, as such characters generally are, a wild speculator, and a spendthrift to boot. lie had become involved in debt, had absconded several weeks before, and iiad never been heard of since. I strongly suspect that he did not pass the house that morning at all ; but that some one of their quiet neighbours, hurrying out of the storm, had been transformed by the terrified family into that bad man. In the night after the fearful accident to Captain M , wliile we were watching and praying by the bedside of the poor sufferer, and just before his spirit was released, the loud and rapid clattering of horwe's hoofs was heard on the road, when one of the servants, evidently in a state of great excitement and alarm, suddenly exclaimed, " There goes Tom Broadman again !" They did not, they could not see the person riding past, and it might have been a horse without a rider. Yet, such was the effect of superstitious fear upon their simple minds and over-excited feelings, that every one present, and I suppose there were not fewer than a dozen people in the room, firmly believed, and do so to this day, that it was Tom Broadman. They knew, too, why he was there, as I was told the next day by one of my parishioners, whom I really thought had more sense. It was, he said, because the man had sold himself to the powers of dark- ness, and therefore could not rest while a spirit was being rescued from the clutches of tiie Enemy. I was very much astonished at this exhibition of ignorance and superstition among men in many other respects so well informed ; and yet, after all, it was no unfavourable trait in the character of these simple-minded people, til at they looked upon a man of Tom Broadman's description M'itli such deep h rror. Tiie noises which were heard at the door by the two young men were doubtless caused by an earthquake. lP. XIV. jh was en the looded )y at a ;y 8up- ofessed hat, ail Etdmaii, or, and 3t, had Bard of se that hbours, terrified M , he poor md and i, when itement oadman riding et, such nds and se there elieved, knew, of my It was, 3f dark- rescued ished at n many was no people, on with ~ie door iquake. CHAr. XIV.] EARTHQUAKES. 85 Indeed, one or two slight shocks had been felt the sanie night in other places. This opinion was strengthened, if not confirmed, by that universal concomitant of an earthquake, an extraordinary stillness in the atmosphere. Earthquakes are by no means of rare occurrence in this countr}"^, and they are generally, though not always, succeeded by a violent thunderstorm, such as occurred on this occasion. There have been no fewer than four earthquakes since I have been in the colony. The most recent of these was fearfully vio- lent. It was in the depth of winter, in the month of January. We were on a visit to my wife's brother. The night was ex- tremely cold, and as still as the grave ; there was not a breath of air stirring. My brother-in-law and myself were sitting talk- ing by the stove in the hall ; my wife had just left us, and had gone up stairs to bed ; when all at once we heard a rumbling noise, precisely like that produced by a heavily-laden cart driven at a rapid pace along a paved street. At first the sound was faint and distant, and then came nearer and nearer, till it seemed to pass close under tlie windows ; and as it did so it shook the house violently, and then gradually receded and went off again into the distance. We rose from our seats, and looked at each other in fear and amazement, as we distinctly saw the walls of the house swaying to and fro. My poor wife, in her fright, rushed out of her room to the head of the staircase. Her first impulse, dictated by the inherent principle of self-preservation, Mas to make her escape ; but she recollected that her little daughter and her two boys were in bed in an adjoining room, and the feelings of the mother predominated over her fears for her own safety. After calling to us to know what was the matter, but without waiting for our answer, she ran back to them, and found her little girl fast asleep, but the boys were sitting upright in bed, perfectly bewildered, and wondering what had awakened them. I have said that the noise was like that of a loaded cart passing rapidly along a paved street ; but it was vastly louder, and its duration longer, for it passed very slowly by. No damage was done to the house, save some cracks in the plaster and cornices of the lower rooms. The shock, we found out afterwards by the newspapers, had been felt all over the j ''« i u ii 8G PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XIV. northern parts of tliis continent, as well as to a considerable distance out at sea. I had now been a year in my new mission, during which my duties were so similar to those I have already described, that it is needless to detail them. I had not, however, the same opposition to contend with, for here we had no dissenters. My church was still unpainted ; but I got my house comfortably finished before the winter set in. I established two good schools in the settle- ment. My little farming operations succeeded admirably, and constituted, with my garden, my chief source of amusement. In short, every thing prospered with me, and I had great reason to be thankful. lil U CHAr. XV.] A DROUGHT. 87 CHAPTER XV. I fX A Drought— A Conflagration— A Contribution— An Insurance— The Measles — A New Settlement. I CERTAINLY thought, when I came into this secluded and quiet settlement, among so orderly and inoffensive a set of people, that my life and my labours would be so uniform as perhaps to weary me with their monotony, and that I should have to pursue the " even tenor of my way " during, for aught I knew, the residue of my life, without a single circumstance occurring of sufficient interest to rouse me from the listlessness into which I feared I should inevitably fall. But five years flew by, and each of them had enough of stirring incidents and important occurrences to mark its progress. In the summer of the second year of my residence we were visited by a long and very severe drought. Many of the springs and wells were dried up, and so were several rivulets which never had been known to fail before. In sot.s settlements the inha- bitants suffered much from want of water. In one, which was within a few miles of me, they had to drive their cattle several miles for this necessary of life, until they had deepened their wells or dug new ones. The depth to which the influence of the drought extended was very surprising, I had a well, forty-two feet deep, which was quite dry, and I had to sink it six feet lower before I recovered the water. But these annoyances were mere trifles compared with a great calamity which befel our own settle- ment in consequence of it. Every thing was so drj'^, that people were careful not to set fire to the woods. One settler, however, who had a slash which he was very anxious to burn, imprudently set fire to it. But it was more easily lighted than extinguished ; for, to the terror and dismay of the inhabitants, who all hurried to the spot the instant they saw the smoke rolling upwards in heavy black masses, it did not stop when its intended work was i ) I t * it !'i ! , 1 1 ^1 J !' f I' 88 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XV. I ' ^ 1 I! I iJ'!! (lone, but literally ran along the ground, extending its ravages far and wide. At length it reached a farm-yard, when the barn and other outbuildings immediately caught fire and were con- sumed. They were all built of wood, and as dry as tinder. In spite of the unite(! efforts of the whole settlement to stop it or turn it aside, the fire reached the dwelling-house hard by. Here it blazed up with renewed vigour. This house was hardly half consumed when the cry of fire was heard from the affrighted occupants of the next farm-house, which met with a similar fate ; and then the next, and the next. In short, nothing could stay its fury. It destroyed every farm-stead, house, and fence on one side of the settlement ; and then went off again into the woods, where its desolating path could be discerned, for several days, by the dark cloud of smoke by day, and by the bright streak in the heavens above it by night. Four dwelling-houses and five barns, with a number of inferior outbuildings, were totally con- stimed. And nothing was insured ; not, at least, according t© the common acceptation of the terra. Those simple people knew nothing about insurance companies or their agents ; and yet they were not altogether uninsured either. But, to explain this, I must advert to another fearful and re- cent calamity of a similar nature, but much more extensive. I allude to the great fire at Miramichi, a flourishing little seaport on the shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. That ill-fated town, as well as the whole of the surrounding cleared country, and the wilderness beyond it, was for days one vast and boundless sea of fire, so that the poor inhabitants, in their fright and consternation, had no place to flee to for the preservation of their lives. Many of them were burned to death ; and many of those who, for refuge from the flames, rushed into the great river, were pushed by the crowd beyond their depth, and drowned. When we were made acquainted with their sufierings, we cheerfully contributed to the utmost of our poor ability to their relief. I had the pleasing satisfaction of transmitting to the poor suflTerers a sum of money amounting to nearly twenty-five pounds, all collected within my little rural district. There were few parishes in the colony so poor as we were, and yet not one contributed so much. It so happened that those of my people who had now in their turn become similar sufferers themselves had been among the largest ] f' p. XV. i-:\v. XV.] THE MEASLES. 89 vages I barn con- . In » it or Here y half ighted r fate ; d stay on one woods, 1 days, eak in nd five ly con- iing to e knew et they a.nd re- ive. I seaport town, ind the sea of nation, Many refuge by the made to the [easing [money lin my |ony so It so Ir turn largest contributors ; one of them even sold a heifer to raise money for the occasion. This generous and Ciiristian liberality constituted the insurance I have alluded to. 'i'hey had paid the amount of their policies, and their certificates were ma;'le men, whoso whole capital has been ex[)en(le(l in the first payment for a lot of land, the purchase of a yoke of oxen, an axe, and a few otlier implements, together with a year's provisions. Tiiey also make a little clearing, build a hoiise, and then get married. When a dozen families or more are thus located, they naturally require, and soon obtain, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a shoemaker, and other artizans. 'J'lien, again, when the place has thus assumed a thriving appearance, some married man will come among tliem and build a mill or open a store, or both. In the course of time children are born, and soon grow up and need instruction : then a schoolhouse is erected. Tiiis serves also for a church or a meeting-house, just as some one of our own clergy, scattered so sparingly over this extensive country, or some itinerant dissenting preacher, may chance to pay a pass- ing and occasional visit to the settlement. The next step in their gradual progress is to set on foot a subscription for a church, as they call it, to be open to all denominations — a sort of joint-stock company concern, in which all the '* thousand and one" denominations of professing Christians are to share and share alike. Happily the people generally fail in the completion of this object. They become involved in debt, and then apply to us to get them out of it. We soon succeed in doing so, thanks to the liberality of the two great Church societies at home ; but we take care, first, to secure to our own Church the exclusive right to the building. We cannot indeed do otherwise, if we do anything at all in such cases, however much we may be taunted with illiberal exclusiveness and bigotry.* Thus by degrees a little village is formed, with a sprinkling of farm-houses scattered far and wide around it, and becomes, if the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign • These church-building speculations are not always commenced from dis- interested motives. I knew one instance in which the most zealous promoter, and the most liberal contributor, cleared by the •* specw/a^ion " upwards of 200/. ; and yet he received the thanks of our good bishop, and of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. This individual sub- scribed 25/. ! ! The wood of which the church was built was furnished by his saw-mill, and the workmen were all paid through his '* store," both at nearly 100 per cent, profit, so that he cleared at least the sum I have mentioned. CJIAI*. XV,] A NEW MISSION. on HAP. XV. , whoso >r a lot w otiier ;o nuike ^Vlien a require, er, and issuiiied ig tliem rrow np is serves i of our 30untrv, r a pass- step in )n for a 1 — a sort ■;and and are and npletion 311 apply oing so, ieties at urch the herwise, may be irinkling jecomes, Foreign 1 from dis- promoter, pwards of he Society -idual sub- rnished by e," both at mentioned. Parts have means and missionaries at their command, the head- quarters of a mission, whicii in due course of time is erected into a parish. All this, however, is accomplished, as may easily be imagined, at no small sacrifice on the part of the poor inha- bitants. To a youn^ settlement, such as mine was, the fruitful summer which we now had was an important benefit. Every one had made some little addition to his former clearing; their circum- stances improved, their prospects gradually brightened, and they felt themselves rich in anticipation, at least, if not in reality. Tiiey therefore manfully came forward with open hands and hearts to paint and furnish the church, which at so large a pecuniary sacrifice to themselves they had erected ; so that at length everything connected with the public worship of God could now be *' done decentlv and in order." In short, the Church, in every sense of the word, was firmly established, and my duties assumed the regular and monotonous character of those of a parish priest at home. Yet when this, the object of all my hopes, and wishes, and prayers, had been attained, I was not satisfied. Imbued by this time, probably from the chequered scenes through which I had passed, with a real or imaginary missionary spirit, I thought I could be more usefully employed in again breaking up the new and fallow ground in my Master's vineyard. I therefore became anxious to give up my church and my little flock to some other pastor, and to penetrate farther into the wild wilderness, where, in some destitute settlement, I might be enabled to erect another altar to the true God. It was not long before a favourable opportunity presented itself; so favourable, indeed, that I could hardly entertain a doubt that the hand of Providence was in it A new mission was about to be established in a settlement within the limits of my former one. There were circumstances connected with this settlement which made me take a peculiar interest in it. It was in a neighbour- hood to which, for many reasons, I was much attached. It had been the scene of some of my earliest missionary labours, whose fruits, under the Divine blessing, were now beginning to mani- fest themselves. These might yet be blighted before they were fully ripe, an evil I might happily be instrumental in preventing. In the autumn, during the "Indian summer" which I have ! ii' ] i u I , ii » 94 PHILIP MUSGllAVE. [chap. XV. I t ll attomptwl to describe, tlie Lord IJislioo of the diocese held his trieiiriiul Confirmutioii in my church. I ineiitioiied to him my wish to l)e removed to this new mission, and tiie reasons which intiiienced me. Tiiere were some serious obstacles, it appeared, in the way of its being establisiied. Tiiere Mas neither a clnircli nor a parsonage-house, for instance, and tlie Society now re- quired both before they wouki consent to make any place a missionary station. Having a perfect knowledge of the inha- bitants, and not doubting that their zeal in this good cause would make up for their want of means— for they, like all new settlers, were poor — I got over these difficulties by undertakiuf^ myself to erect both, and thereupon 1 was immediately appointed to my new charge. It soon became generally known throughout my parish that I was going to leave it. Almost every individual called upon us, to express his sorrow and regret at the circumstance. Among the very first of these visitors — and it is gratifying to me to be able to record the fact — were some persons with whom I had, un- fortunately, not been on friendly terms. Whether the fault was mine or theirs, it matters not now. They came with the rest, and begged me most urgently to change my purpose and remain among them. A most affectionate farewell address, couched in terms too flattering for me to repeat, was presented to me. It was signed by all the heads of families in the place, save one, whose displeasure I had incurred, but how I do not at this time remember. I will not attempt to describe the scene in the church on the following Sunday, when I preached my last — no, not my last, but my farewell sermon. I have visited that lonely and seques- tered valley since, but only once, and I felt no desire to repeat my visit. Not that I was disappointed in the reception I met with from my old friends, but because so few of them were left. Several years had intervened, and produced many sad and fearful changes. Those I had left as children were grown up to man- hood, and were married and settled in life, and occupied the places of their fathers : but where were they ? I missed them in their wonted seats at church. In vain I looked for my old friends among the cheerful and happy crowd at the church door after service, who were waiting to welcome me. They were -V. PP^WF [AP. XV. L'ld his lim my I whicli peartfl, clmrcli low re- place a le inlia- II cause all new erlaking ppointed *h that I upon us, Among me to be [ had, un- fault was the rest, id remain juched in ) me. It save one, this time :h on the my last, id seques- to repeat ion I met were left, nd fearful p to man- upied the 3sed them or my old lurch door hey were CHAP. XV.] ABSENT FRIENDS. 95 not there. And faint and embarrassing were my recollections of those who seemed to remember me with su(;li aHVctionate regard. Nor were the old the oidy ones I missed. No less than three young women whom I had left hriihs^ now stood in that crowd widowSy surrounded by their fatherless children. Altogether the interview was a sad and sorrowful one. Of tiie original settlers one only was left — a solitary old man ; and when I went to see him, in hopes that he would cheer me in my loneliness, he did not know me, but began to talk of scenes and circumstances with which he had been familiar some fifty years before I was acquainted with him. "VVith a heavy heart I left the place. I have never since been there, nor is it likely that I ever sliall again. God bless them ! They were kind to me and mine. They forgot their own afflictions in their affectionate sympathy with ours, and from my heart I say again, God bless them ! I il^ '1 m 96 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XVI. CHAPTER XVI. The Migration — The Cavalcade — The Escort — The Bivouac — A Hurricane — Particular Providence — The Journey's End. r. , I WILL not weary the reader by detailing all the occurrences of our long journey. We were only retracing our steps along the same path which has already been described. But the season of tlie year was different. Our first journey was in winter, or rather, which was still worse, at the very time when winter was contending with the spring. Our present one was in summer, in the month of June, the most beautiful and pleasant of all the months of the year in this delightful climate. On our departure tlie whole settlement turned out and accompanied us a considerable distance, and then reluctantly left us with tears and blessings. Our cavalcade consisted, first, of a " sumpter " cart, with the provisions, some necessary culinary utensils, a tent — the one I brought out with me from England — a couple of chairs, a small table, three little stools foi the children, and a basket-cradle for the baby. This cart with a ffood horse was intrusted to the care of an old and con- fidential servant who was well acquainted with all the localities through which we had to pass. It went off at a quick pace, about an hour before the rest of the party were ready to start. Next in order was a rough sort of double Dennet, with a pair of horses. This contained myself, my wife, and the children, and was preceded for the first mile or two by about twenty men on horseback, and followed for the same distance by a whole host of carriages of every shape and form. Tv/o other carts followed with the baggage ; not, however, so heavily laden but that they could go some six or seven miles an hour, and keep up with us. The roads, bad as they are at other seasons of the year, arf^ always tolerably good in this. After driving about twenty miles, we overtook our " avant UAP. XVI. CHAP. XVI.] BIVOUACKING. 97 Hurricane currences jps along the season nnter, or rioter was { summer, of all tlie out and Reluctantly consisted, necessary me from ttle stools This cart and con- I localities lick pace, ly to start. a pair of Idren, and y men on ole host of s followed t that they p with us. are always ur u avanl courier^* who had pitched the tent under the wide-spreading branches of a huge butternut-tree, and lighted a fire on a (jrassy knoll, at the foot of which bubbled forth a pure fountain of living water. The horses were immediately taken out, unhar- nessed, and tethered to the fences by the roadside, where there was a profusion of grass. All that we required for our bivouac was soon unpacked. Our meal was prepared and quickly dis- cussed, and with no little zest, by tiie hungry travellers. Our beds were made upon the ground on buffalo robes, to preserve them from the effects of the damp earth, and the sun had scarcely set before we were all fast asleep. The next morning at early dawn we were all in motion busied in preparing breakfast, wiiieli was soon over, when we packed up and were off' again. By 11 o'clock, A.M., our day's work was done, and by this means we escaped the extreme heat of the sun. All this Mas repeated, with little variation, for four successive days and nights, during which we had a bright and cloudless sky, and not a drop of rain. On the fifth we reached our journey's end. This last day, although we had only ten miles to travel, we had started earlier than usual in consequence of our anticipating a hot and sultry day, and such it proved to be. The sun rose hot and burning bright, like a fiery furnace. Tlie air was per- fectly hushed and still, and we all felt that something fearful was about to happen ; — but what, we could not tell. While we were discussing whether it would turn out to be an earthquake or a thunder-storm, we saw, about half a mile aiiead of us, a dense cloud of dust mingled with dried leaves, and small branches of trees whirling with terrific violence across our path. " A hurri- cane ! See the hurricane !" was shouted forth from front to rear of our cavalcade, for on that day we all kept together. It was indeed a hurricane, and a most terrific one too! but by the merciful interposition of Providence we all escaped uninjured, although at one time it was within a hundred yards of us. These fearful visitations are very different things from a vio- lent gust or storm of wind, whicli, nevertlieless, is often impro- perly and vaguely so designated. A hurricane is a whirlwind which has a progressive motion, as swift as it is irresistible, as well as a whirling one. Of these hurricanes I myself have witnessed three, the first of H I ' i- '. »■ Ui .1 'i i 1 li I- ij' I ' 1 1,%' M PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. xvr. i '. which was most destructive. In its course it attaclced au iron- foundry, a large and well-constructed brick building, and re- duced it to a perfect ruin. There was, fortunately, at the mo- ment but one solitary man in it, who, when he saw the roof carried away, and the walls toppling down about his ears, crept into a large oven ; but the oven was covered with rubbish to such a depth that he could not get out again, nor was it until the next morning that his cries for help were heard, and he v/as ex- tricated from his narrow prison, much exhausted, but uninjured. After destroying the foundry, the hurricane opened a way for itself through a thick forest. It was as if a mower had cut a swath through a field o£ standing corn. Every tree was either twisted off, broken down, or torn up by the roots, leaving a regular open space of about thirty paces in width as far as the eye could reach. Its progressive motion was from nearly south- west to north-east. To the philosopher there was one remarkable feature in the hurricane, that, as it passed on in its fury, not the slightest effect of its power eould be perceived beyond the narrow limits of its desolated track. To the Christian there was another, not less etriking, inasmuch as it was evidently under the merciful control of Him who " rides upon the whirlwind and guides the storm ;" for, in two or three places, had it deviated a few yards to the right or to the left, the consequences would have been most fearfully fatal. In one part of its course it swept past a densely peopled village, and moved the schoolhouse, a solid log building, eight feet from the place where it stood. A little farther on it demolished a large barn, recently built ; some of the shingles of which were afterwards found nearly twenty miles off. I saw them myself, and knew them to be the same. They were made in a very peculiar manner by a machine invented by the proprietor of the building. This machine did not answer, and consequently, after making a sufficient quantity for the roof of this one barn, it was taken down and never used again. On this occasion another wonderful proof was afforded us of an overruling Providence, of a Hand unseen, that guides our motions, and shields us from danger and death. A young gentleman, who was residing in the house of a clergyman in the neighbourhood, went out into the field behind the parson:^, with a book in his mm vV. XVI. 1 iron* iid re- le mo- le roof ;pt into ;o such ifil the v/as ex- injured, way for id cut a is either aving a ir as the y Bouth- e in the est effect its of its not less 1 control storm ;" ds to the jell niost at densely building, her on it lingles of saw them nade in a >roprietor equently, one barn, 1 us of an r motions, mau, who )Uihood, )ok in his CHAP. XVI.] AN OVERRULING PROVIDENCE. 99 hand, the morning being oppressively hot. lie sat down at the foot of a large maple tree, and he read for an hour or two. At length he got up to return home. At that very moment the hurricane caught the tree, and with an astounding crash it fell at his feet. He was studying for the Church, and among many other points in which he required instruction, his tutor had taken some pains to impress upon his mind correct notions and ideas of the particular interposition of Providence, a doctrine he could not bring him- self fully to believe until this practical illustration of it. One ' fact was, in this case, worth more than a thousand arguments. After the hurricane the atmosphere became as cool and as fresh as it always feels after a thunder-storm ; and we reached our journey's end in comfort and safety, after an easy and plea^sant drive, very different from what we anticipated when we started in the morning. u2 r i,l- I i n ]\i f i| t ;t ■ r 1 r 1' L a ' fj 100 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XVII. CHAPTER XVII. f i 01(1 Friends— Building a House — A Fatal Accident — A Liberal Education — A Death-bed Repentance — A Funeral— An Old Camlet Cloak. Arrived at the village which had formerly been a home to me for several years, I made it a temporary one now. Not being able to obtain a house at the settlement which was to be the head-quarters of my new mission, I rented a cottage here until I could get one built. However pleasant it might be thus to reside once more among my old friends, from whom I met a most affectionate reception, yet it was a great inconvenience to me to be sixteen miles away from my duties ; and what made it more so, was the state of the roads, which were execrably bad, as those leading to a new settlement generally are. Besides, I had also to attend to the building of my house. I had not the means at my command to get it erected and finished by contract. Indeed, that is not the way we build churches or parsonage- houses, nor even a common farmer's cottage. We are obliged to occupy them in a very unfinished state, and get them com- pleted gradually, bit by bit, just when and how we can. There was another inconvenience which, with my limited means, was still greater to me. This consisted in my having rent to pay for a house, and to buy everything we consumed in it, even down to our fuel. I therefore lost no time in purchasing a small farm near my head-quarters, and, in the following spring, commenced building a house upon it. This was a serious un- dertaking in itself, but, connected as it was with a disastrous reduction of my salary, it proved to be one of the most important transactions of my life. I engaged a number of labourers, some of whom I set to work to dig the cellar. This is an indispensable requisite in this climate. I set others to quarry stones, and draw them to the spot. I then hired a couple of second-rate masons to build me p. XVII. Lcation — k. e to rne )t being I be the 3 until I thus to I met a ience to made it ibly bad, lesides, I not the contract, irsonage- obliged im corn- There jans, was nt to pay it, even lasing a g spring, rious un- isastrous mportant t to work in this m to the build me CHAP. XVII.] BUILDING A HOUSE. 101 a lime-kiln, and set some of my men to cut and draw wood to burn the lime with. When all this was accomplisiied, I got a carpenter and more masons, and commenced tlie walls of my house. It will easily be imagined how necessary it was that I should superintend all tiiis work myself, especially in a new country like this, where it is so diflicult to find good and trust- wortiiy workmen. I accordingly got a room in a small log-hut, the best lodgings I could obtain, in wliicii I put my beaudette. The other furniture consisted of a small table and a single chair. The woman of the house boiled my kettle for me, swept out my room, &c., but she was no cook, she could not even boil a potato, so that I hal to bring my supply of provisions from home, and generally ready cooked. In iliis maimer I managed to 1. ; for three months, or thereabouts, and was thus enabled not only to look after m^ »,orkmen, but to attend to my clerical duties much better than when residing so many miles away. Nor did the looking after my workpeople interfere with the performance of these duties, as it was not necessary that I should always be on the spot. It was quite sufficient that I was somewhere near, so that they could never be sure of my absence. My superintend- ence was, however, chiefly beneficial in getting them to their work in good time in the morning. To accomplish this I had only to get up and show myself, which I always did by sunrise or before it, when the lazy hands, and I had several, took care, for more reasons than one, not to be caught lagging behind the rest. During these three months the work went on rapidly, and I was seldom called away on occasional duties. There happened, fortunately, to be no sickness in the parish at the time, except one solitary case ; but this was a very extraordinaiy one, and gave me much trouble and anxiety. There were some Government works being carried on in the neighbourhood at the time I am speaking of. They were " given out by the job," as it is termed, and a fine handsome young Englishman, some near relation, the nephew I believe, of the famous engineer, Smeaton, who erected the Eddystone lighthouse, took a large contract on such advantageous terms that he was supposed to be making his fortune, when, in an idle hour, he unfortunately get to wrestling with one of the soldiers in the !M I 11 I 102 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XVII. hf 1 ' barracks, who threw him across the edge of the mess-table, and literally broke his back. On being taken to his lodgings, sup- posing himself to be near his end, he sent for me to administer the sacrament to him, under the impression that this was all that was necessary to secure his salvation. Such ignorance, in this young man, surprised me the more, as he was otherwise well informed. He had received a good English education, at least what would be so designated in the phraseology of the London University, as well as in that of those liberal patriots here who are making such strenuous efforts to exclude all religious instruc- tion from our provincial colleges. He lingered on for nearly six weeks in the most dreadful condition that it is possible to conceive, his lower extremities being in a state of putrefaction. Throughout the whole of this period I visited him daily. My interest in his fate became day by day more intense. From the very first he was aware that there was no hope of his recovery, and this conviction naturally led him not only to lay bare to nie his inmost heart, but to listen to my instructions with the utmost anxiety to prof t by them, and to unite with me in prayer ; and I had the great satisfaction of believing that if ever there was a death-bed repentance so sincere as to avail, through the merits of the Redeemer, for tlie pardon of a sinner, this was one. Poor fellow ! the last time I saw him, he said, as I left his room, " I have no desire to live, except to manifest in my future life and conduct the sincerity of my repentance, by faithfully devoting myself, body and soul, to him who died to redeem me from sin, and misery, and death." I have little faith, I must confess, generally speaking, in a death-bed repentance. The case of the thief upon the cross, so often adduced as an argument in its favour, conveys to me no proof of its validity, inasmucli as the poor dying culprit might have been for months, for aught we know, a mourning and sin- cere penitent, with hardly a hope, up to the last moment, of being accepted : and this, indeed, may stiongly be inferred from the very terms in which he preferred his humble prayer — " Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." One morning, during the time that my house was in progress, I was awakened at a very early hour by the man in whose hut 1 lodged. He informed me that a person had come from a distant CUAf. XVII.] DE VTH OF A DRUNK AKD. 103 settlement and >vi:shed to see me on some pressing business wiiich would not brook delay. I rose instantly, and found that the messenger was cliarged with a request that I would go and bury Mr. T that morning at eleven o'clock. This Mr. T Mas the village doctor ; he was a determined drunkard, and had, it appeared, died of delirium tremens the day before. At the proper hour I set off to ride sixteen miles to the funeral ; but I had not proceeded above a couple of miles before it came on to rain heavily, and I arrived at my journey's end completely Met throusfh. About half an hour before T reached my destination I passed a strange-looking object by the roadside, at M'hich my horse shied so suddenly as very nearly to unseat me. All I could make out M-as an old camlet cloak of faded blue, with here and there a tattered rent in it, covering something or othe;*. I could not tell what ; but the noise of my horse's hoofs, or perhaps the Mords of chiding which I addressed to him when he started, induced the apparently inert object beneath it to manifest signs of life and motion. One corner of the cloak was partially lifted and turned aside by a thin and shrivelled hand, nearly of the same colour with the cloak, as if to see who or what was passing. In that bony hand I noticed that a bottle was firmly clutched. I saM' neither form nor face, and, but for that hand, I could not have known what living thing was there. The scene made a deep impression on my mind, I could not forget it. Whether it was owing to the excitement from the startling fright it had caused me, or from the object of my journey, which was to bury anotlier drunkard, or from the horror just then more particularly excited in my mind at the revolting and beastly vice of drunken- ness so generally prevalent in this country, or perhaps from all these causes put together, I could not prevent that shrivelled, livid-coloured hand, that death-like grasp of the vile poison, from being connected in my imagination with somv^ haggard face and form, which haunted and tormented me, sleeping or waking, throughout all that livelong day and the following night. When I got to the house of mourning, T foinid it filled with people who had come to the funeral. They were conversing together in groups with great earnestness, some about their ordinary business, while others were settling in their wisdom the f! 'I: r- 104 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XVII- 1 1 f'j affairs of the State, and one was proving-, to a knot of eager and indignant listeners, how unjustly some lawsuit, in which he was concerned, had gone against him. I attended for a moment, first to one conspicuous sj)eaker and then to another, in the hope of hearing some remark or observation, however trite and threadbare it might be, a little more in keeping with the occa- sion of their visit. But, alas ! there was not a word, nor appa- rently a thought, about the dead. My heart sunk within me as I pondered on all this. I passed onwards into an inner room, where I knew I should find one true mourner — his poor discon- solate widow. She grasped my hand, but did not speak, she could not. Her two little orphan boys were playing on the floor at her feet, too young to feel their loss. Their joyous gambols and their merry laugh contrasted sadly with her speech- less misery. All her earthly hopes of happiness, whicii the determined abstinence of her husband from his besetting sin during the last two months had somewhat revived, had been suddenly and unexpectedly destroyed, and for a time no conso- lation, not even that of religion, could overcome the bitterness of her grief. Many long years have passed away since then, but, faithful to the memorj' of him she loved, she is a widow still. Wet, and oppressed in spirit as I was, I waited, and so indeed did everybody else, nearly five tedious hours ere the funeral pro- cession left the house. Something or other was not ready ; other friends, who were expected from a distance, had not arrived, and no one liked to be the first to manifest impatience. At length we moved away, and soon reached the burying- ground. Here further difficulties awaited us. The grave, which had been dug very deep in a loose and sandy soil, had caved in from both sides, and we had to wait until it had again been cleared out. Then it was found to be too short for the coffin, and had to be lengthened : then there was the rough shell in which the coffin was encased. Of this rather unusual adjunct the sexton had received no intimation, and the grave was too narrow at the bottom. In short, the sun was setting ere that tedious funeral was fairly over. Our twilight, in this latitude, is much shorter than it is in England, so that by the time my foot was in the stirrup, darkness was actually setting in. There was no moon, and I had twelve T CHAP, xvii.] A VIOLENT COLD AND FEVER. 105 miles to ride to my house, chiefly througli the lonely wilderness, over the most execrable roads, made .still worse by the late rains. I went to my house, because it was nearer by four miles than my temporary residence, from whence I had come. Faint and weary, and worn out, I arrived at my journey's end about nine o'clock at night. The happy surprise my unexpected arrival occasioned, and the affectionate welcome I received from my wife and little ones, made aii'ends for all I had endured that day. The children had been in bed some time and were fast asleep, but were awakened by the violent barking of my dogs. They all got up and came down to see me, as much surprised as if I had dropped down upon them from the clouds. I was very hungry and ate a hearty supper, and immediately went to bed ; but I could not sleep. A nervous restlessness came over me, succeeded by aches and twitching pains throughout my whole frame. It was evident that I had caught a violent cold from the wetting I had got in the morning, or ratiier from being obliged to allow my clothes to dry upon me. When at length I fell into a dozing slumber, it was so disturbed with feverish dreams, that it did me no good. These dreams were chiefly about that old and faded camlet cloak, and the mysterious being hid beneath its folds. The opening I had seen now seemed wider and higher up, so that I could plainly see the face. It was the very face^of him I had consigned to his cold grave the day before. There was such a fiery brightness in his bloodshot eye, and such a ghastly hue upon his distorted countenance, as if suffering under the infliction of some unearthly tortures, that I awoke trembling and affrighted. Again and again the same figure haunted me until late in the morning, when I fell into a dreamless and refreshing sleep. The feverish action left me ; youthful and robust health and an unimpaired constitution pre- vailed, and I awoke at sunrise nearly in my usual health. I hurried off to look after my workmen at my new house. On passing the spot where I had seen that old, faded camlet cloak, I naturally and instinctively looked with some vague and unde- fined expectation of seeing it again. And sure enough there it was ! not, however, exactly in the same place nor in the same state as it was before. There was manifestly less arrangement in its folds, and no motion beneath it, no drawing aside of it u f> 1 Ml '1 -11 lU ^ tl 109 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XVII. 1 > l) < I now. My dream of the nig-ht before recurred to my mind, and I half thought, as the object first caiight my eye, that I was dreaming^ still. Near tlie place there was a small steep gulley. It commenced close to the road, or, more properly speaking, a slight bend had been made in the road to get round it. At tlie bottom of this gulley was a beautiful limpid fountain, close to the side of which lay the old faded cloak. I got off my horse, tied him to a stump, and went down to examine it. Nothing M'as visible under the cloak. I turned it a little aside, and then again I saw the clutched bottle in the long bony fingers. I dropped the cloak in horror and disgust, and turned to go away ; but it then occurred to me that tlie poor wretched being might have been there all night, and was now, perhaps, in a dying state ; sol turned again and once more lifted the covering a little higher than I had done before, till I could see the face, which I recog- nised at once as that of a drunken, ill-conducted woman in tlie neighbourhood. The lustreless eyes were dreadfully bloodshot, and seemed starting from their sockets, and the pallid and ghostly hue of the countenance was just as I had seen it in my dream. I was much shocked, and dropped the cloak instantly. I saw that she was dead. I again mounted my horse and gal- loped off to her house, which was not more than two hundred paces distant. I communicated the melancholy tidings to her husband and children ; I then rode on to a neighbouring house and sent them assistance. It appeared from the evidence at the coroner's inquest, which was held immediately, that the deceased had gone, at about eight o'clock the morning before, to a shop in a village about four miles off to make some little purchases, and among other things a quart of rum. The bottle she had taken to put it in would not quite hold that quantity, and she had drunk the over- plus, which was a little better tiian a wine-glass full. No one had seen her afterwards except myself: when she was found, the bottle was nearly empty, but carefully corked. It was supposed she had staggered to the fountain to cool her parched and burning throat, when her feet becoming fixed in the quicksand, and being incapable of much exertion, she had sat down and gone to sleep with her head fiilling upon her knees, her clothes saturated with rain and her feet immersed in the cold KiPM ?. XVII. id, and I was pulley, king, a At the jlose to ' horse, fotldng rid then rers. I ) away ; 5 miglit iQT state ; 3 higher I recog- n in the oodshot. tllid and it in my nstantly. and gal- undred rs to her itr house ruAP. XVII.] DEATH OF A PENITENT. lo: 1 at re whicli about about ng other put it in the over- No one )uud, the .spring water. She had drunk a quart of drugged and poisonous rum ; no wonder slie was dead. The poor unfortunate creature did not belong to tlie Cinireh, and therefore I had not!iing to do with the funeral. I was, how- ever, detained several hours to attend the inipu'st and give my evidence. The sun vas just setting when I reached my rude and iKiniely lodging. While my dinner Avas being made ready I walked out to my workpeople, to see how they had been getting on, intend- ing afterwards to visit my poor dying penitent, the young man with the broken back. In this, however, I was disa])pointed. Harassed and worn out with what I had suffered and seen * -.1 !'• 1 i ? 114 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XIX. CHAPTER XIX. Visitors — A Disappointment — A Presentiment of Evil — A Sudden Death — The Asiatic Cholera — Lo Fearful Ravages — The Haunted House — Au Old Soldier. My new house was rapidly progressing, and I had plenty of leisure to look after it. There was not a single person sick in the whole parish. The weather too was beautiful, as indeed it always is in this climate during the summer and autumn, that is to say, from May till November, with the exception of a day or two now and then. My family frequently came to see me, bringing me fresh supplies of provisions. One of my little boys stayed with me during his summer holidays, and several of my people came occasionally to visit me, and were pleased with the prospect of my being able to get into my abode before the com- mencement of winter. This indeed I had set my heart upon, and so had my wife, and such of our little ones as were old enough to understand anything about it. But our plans, well devised as they had been, were doomed to be deranged, and our hopes and expectations to be disappointed : so that instead of getting into our new house the coming autumn, we did not do so till two long years had dragged out their weary length in sickness, mis'^ry, and death. Coming events are said sometimes to cast their shadows be- fore ; and if they ever do so, they did so now. One bright and beautiful Sunday evening, after all my duties for the day, as I supposed, had been concluded, I returned to my humble lodging in the hut I have mentioned. I threw myself upon a rude bench at the door to rest myself, and watch the gorgeous hues the sky assumed around the setting sun. While I was thus occupied, or rather, I perhaps should say, whilst thus unoccupied, I know not how it was, but a sensation of oppressive melancholy came over me, " forboding ills I knew not of." This gathered and grew to such a height, that when I p. XIX. Death- use— Au lenty of sick in ndeed it I, that is a day or see me, ttle boys a of my with the the com- irt upon, were old loomed to ppointed : autmnn, eir weary idows be- I my duties jturned to I threw land watch Itting sun. Ihould say, la sensation Tills I knew lat when I CHAP. XIX.] THE ASIATIC CHOLERA. 11.5 observed a man riding furiously along the road, I said to myself, before he turned in at the gate leading to the hut, " That 's a messenger with evil tidings, and his errand is to me." I was not mistaken in my conjecture. I'l a few moments the man was beside me, and exclaimed, in a hurried voice, " John l^ainbridge is dead ! and we want yon to come and bury him immediately." " Impossible !" I replied, in great bewilderment : " Why, I saw him myself not three hours ago at church, and in perfect health." '' True, sir ; but he was taken ill immediately after service, and in an hour more was a corpse. And," added the man, con- sternation marked in every feature of his face, which looked unnaturally pale, " his coffin is ready, or will be by the time I get back, and he must be buried to-night." " To-night," said I, hesitatingly, for I was very tired. " Yes, yes, to-night, sir ; the corpse won't keep till to-morrow ; it is turning black already." This seemed a mysterious circumstance, and I questioned him further on the subject ; but he knew nothing more, he said, than what he had told me. I therefore set off with him on the instant, "without another word. As we rode along together, I made some remark upon the uncertainty of life, and the necessity of always living in a state of preparation for such an awful event as had just happened. " Yes," the man replied, " you may indeed say so, now that this dreadful judgment has really come upon us." *' Judgment !" I exclaimed ; " what judgment ? What do you mean ? Pray, my good friend, explain yourself." This urgent inquiry had more reference to his agitated and confused manner than to his words, alarming as their import was. " Why, sir, the cholera! — didn't you know that it was here?" and the poor man's voice faltertid as he spoke. — Poor fellow ! that day was his last ; I buried him the next morning at sunrise. This was the first I had heard of the cholera being in the country. It appeared that a young wom^n. a passenger in the ship which brought the fell destroyer to our shores, had come directly to the place, and brought the contagion with her. But, strange to say, while those who came in contact with her caught the disease '^nd died, she herself escaped, not only with life, but without even being attacked by the disease. i2 W \ i 'A 116 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XIX. > I Fhysicians, in their wisdom, may say what tliey like about its not being epidemic : my experience leads me to believe most firmly t^iat it is. I do not mean, however, to assert that it is as much so as the small-pox or the plrgue, since iii the cholera those who are attacked must liave some predisposition to take it. Yet it must be by contagion that it is convoyed froni place to place, from country to country, widely separated as those are, and with the broad Atlantic betwixt them. After its first introduction, it may so extend its ravages, and spread its poison, as to infect the air we breathe, and thus become endemic too. The hurried funeral was soon over. I paused a moment beside the grave, wondering why they did not fill it up, when I was in- formed that it was left open for the widow of the deceased. She had died while we were performing the burial-service. They were poor labouring people, and had nothing but a little cottage scantily furnished. They left two young children, orphans now, in the most comprehensive sense of the word. These poor children were kindly taken charge of by two of the families in the place, L^ter having been stripped naked and washed, and their clothes thrown into the doomed cottage of their deceased parents, when it was immediately set on fire and burnt to the ground, w ith all that it contained, in the vain hope of staying the plague. The next morning, only three or four of my men, who lived at a considerable distance, and had not heard of the cholera, came to their work ; but they would not stay. Indeed I did not wonder at their going home again ; especially as there was a rumour abroad, which was subsequently found to be true, that seven others, besides my poor messenger of the evening before, had died during the night. These were all Roman Catholics. I had, consequently, nothing to do with their burial. Indeed it was a very singular fact, that the great majority of those who fell victims to the pestilence were of that persuasion, although their numbers altogether did not amount to '> third of the total population of the settlement. The few Protestants that were attacked I of course visited, whenever I had an opportunity of doing so, and as long as I was able. One man, in particular, I went to see about half an hour before he breathed his last. He was in the last stage of the disease, and writhing under the most excruciating tortures. Before I left him, he was turning as black a p. XIX. 3ut its ! most it is as a those . Yet > place, id with luction, o infect it beside was in- id. She . They ; cottage ans now, ese poor imilies in and their i parents, und, with ffue. o lived at era, came ; did not 2re was a true, that ig before, latholics. Indeed it ;hose who although the total that were irtunity of [rticular, I last. He |r the most Ig as black CHAP. XIX.] RAVAGES OF THE CHOLERA. 117 as if decomposition had commenced its ruinous work upon his frame. Tlie hand of death was upon liim, and ere another hour had elapsed I had consigned liim to liis grave. Quick indeed was the transition from life to death. After the funeral I felt rather unwell myself, and the slightest indisposition under the circumstances was alarming ; I therefore immediately rode home to my family, and it v-as fortunate for me that I did so. I was taken serously ill that very night, and with several of the symptoms of that fearful disease. Indeed the physician, who was instantly sent for by my distracted wife, said, the moment he saw me, that I had certainly caught it. Whether he was rigiit or wrong in his opinion, the prompt and effective treatment he subjected me to, aided by a sound constitution, under the blessing of God, saved me from the fatal termination which every one around me anticipated. But it was nine weeks before I could leave my room, and some considerable time longer ere I could resume my wonted duties. During the time I was thus laid up, it was very distressing to me to see so many poor people f.njed [away from the door, in sorrow and disappointment at not being able to obtain for those who were so dear to them the last consolations of religion, nor the last sad rite of Christian burial. There was indeed a brother clergyman not very far off, who always attended to these duties for me when he was able. This was, however, but very seldom, his time, almost night and day, being fully occupied with his own, as the disease was raging with equal if not with greater violence in his own parish. In the neighbouring market-town it was more fearful still, as will appear from the following extract from an account published by my friend the rector shortly afterwards : — " It was a pestilence whose nature was unknown to the phy- sician, and which set all remedies at defiance. It was not by separating ourselves from the infected that we could hope for exemption from its ravages ; for the very air we breathed was filled with its poison ; and its desolating hand found its way into the bedchambers of the rich, as well as into the hovels of the poor. No man could feel security in any precaution, nor could he flee from its presence ; for where would it not have found him out ? It was unlike any other pestilence : it was not confined to II I -1 I li in I m ( •■ ''I \ u 1 ,* ; 118 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XIX. the noisome atmosphere of a few filthy streets, nor yet to the bounds of towns or cities, but spread abroad in the more hei'tliy and less populous country. Neither the mountain witii its pure air, nor tiie valley stored with nature's ricnest treasures and watered by the refreshing stream, could claim any exemption from its ravages. The sun shone as brightly and as warmly as ever ; but it conveyed not its usual cheerfulness to the heart, for each one looked upon it as the last sun which might shine upon his earthly pilgrimage. The blue vault of heaven displayed its shining and twinkling glories as resplendently as ever ; but for us they possessed no charms, for all feared to purchase the delights of a summer's night walk at the dreaded expense of in- haling the breath of the pestilence. And then, how horrible was the disease itself! how loathsome, how frightful its appearance ! how rapid its progress ! how appalling its ravages ! In one short hour the hapless victim was reduced from perfect health and strength to the helplessness of infancy, or of the most de- crepid old age ; and in a few, a very few hours more, was hurried into eternity. For some time no sound of business was heard in our streets, but that which was occasioned by the removal of the sick to the hospitals, and of the dead to their graves ; and the most busy scenes of man's labour were only to be witnessed in our cemeteries, where the most active exertions were often insuf- ficient to prepare the last resting-place for the mortal remains of those who were carried there in crowded and rapid succession. The universal gloom was not even varied by the long and decent funeral train of sorrowing friends or of mourning relatives. The cart, with its frequent load of mortality exposed to the public gaze, and the oft-repeated appearance of the unattended hearse, gave fearful evidence of the dealings of the ' King of Terrors.* In ten days, more than three thousand had been smitten, and nearly one thousand had perished ; and in the space of three short months one-tenth of our population was swept away by the deso- lating scourge. On the 19th of June, on entering the burial- ground at six o'clock in the evening, the spectacle which met my view was truly appalling. The grass was strewed with coffins ; about twenty men were employed in digging graves ; and a few mourners stood in groups of three or four, apparently stupified with fear, or absorbed in mournful contemplation of the scene. IMMM i,-- -rT^- '^sm. I 1^ , XIX. ► the b'thy pure ; and ptioii ily as heart, shine )layed ; but se the of in- le was ranee ! [n one health ost de- iiurried eard in I of the and the issed in 1 insuf- lains of cession. I decent IS. The ; public hearse, terrors.' en, and ee short he deso- ! burial- met my coffins ; nd a few stupified e scene. CHAP. XIX.] RAVAGES OF THE CHOLERA. 119 They all gathered around me r some looked, and others ijiaid aloud, 'What shall we do? — where will all this end?* After havins: consigned all the bodies that were there to the grave, I proceeded to the gate with the view of leaving this scene of death, supposing this part of my labours for the day to be ended ; but the appear- ance of three or four carts in the road, each bearing its load of mortality, induced me to return. The same scene was repeated again and again, until the shades of evening began to close around us. With the gloom of this world's daikness comes fre- quently the gloom of the mind. The number of deaths had been daily and fearfully increasing, and both of my colleagues were suffering under the prevailing malady. It is not easy to describe the feelings produced by such a consciousness, in such a place, and at such an hour. I sat down at length on a newly-covered grave, and gave vent to my overcharged feelings, in which 1 was joined., I believe, by all present, not even excepting the grave- digger, notwithstanding a fifteen years* apprenticeship in his heart- hardening trade. I buried fifty-three on that dismal day." The anxiously wished-for winter came at last. What a thank- ful cheerfulness beamed upon every countenance on the morning after the first severe frost ! The gloom which had hung over every one seemed to be dispersed at once. The plague was stayed. The blessed fiat had been issued : " Stay thine hand ; it is enough !" The flaming sword of the destroying angel was sheathed, and a remnant was saved. The ravages of this fell destroyer extended throughout the whole length and breadth of the continent of America. The inhabitants of the great towns had been actually decimated ; and in many of the country settlements, if we had possessed the same means of accurately ascertaining the number of its victims, they would, I have every reason to believe, have been found quite as numerous. In some places there was hardly a house in which some one had not died. I knew one house in which, out of a family of eleven souls, only one had been spared. He was an old man of ninety years of age, the father and grandfather of the victims. After this fearful catastrophe he went away, none knew whither. He was never heard of afterwards. His house was left to Ijim desolate indeed ; nor would any one live in it afterwards. It therefore 5 ! .J 1 i ! ' 120 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XIX. I 'i soon fell into decay ; and the plough has since then passed over the «pot. There was something mysterious about this old man's disap- pearing in the way he did, and connected as it was willi some strange rumours which were bruited abroad in the neighbourhood at the time, and were most firmly believed by the common people. It was said that a spectre haunted his deserted dwelling ; but I suspected from the first that the poor broken-hearted old man was the real spirit so often seen, and who doubtless came out from his hiding-place, wherever that was (most likely in the wild woods), to visit and weep over the graves of his children. They were buried on the spot where they died, as many of the cholera victims were ; and most probably he continued to come out in this secret and stealthy manner, till sickness or death — perhaps a violent one, as was generally believed — put an end to his visits, his sorrows, and his life together. I felt deeply interested in his fate. There were, indeed, many circumstances in his little history which contributed in no small degree to create this feeling. He was a Saxon by birth, and came out to this continent during the American war, as a serjeant in the German Legion. He had been in a great many hard-fought battles, in which he had been wounded five times. He was with General liurgoyne when he surrendered at Saratoga. He knew poor Major Andre, and was one of a party who made some futile attempt to rescue him. On one occasion, when straggling beyond the outposts in the dusk of the evening with a comrade, he was taken prisoner by the enemy. In consequence of not being in their full uni- form, they were considered to be spies, were tried by a court- martial, found guilty, and condemned to be shot. Until the following morning, when the r/vful sentence was to be carried into execution, they were put into a barn, for want of a more fitting place of confinement, and were guarded by two sentries. In the middle of that night, which was to have been their last, they resolved to make an attempt to escape. " We could, you know," the old man would say when he came to this part of his story, " but be killed a few hours before they intended to murder us, and it would have been murder, as we were not spies ; and so, hopeless as the attempt was, we determined to try it." ff ;si.«u^ iV. XIX. (I over disap- 1 some urhootl people. ; but I Id man me out in the hildren. r of the to come r death an end t deeply tances in ;o create ontinent Legion, i^hicli he lurgoyne r Andre, o rescue tposts in prisoner full uni- a court- Jntil the B carried ■ a more sentries, heir last, ould, you irt of his o murder )ies ; and CHAP. XIX.] AN OLD SOLDIER. 121 They shouldered each a louf^ mullen-stalk,* which they found among tlie rubbish in the ohl bain. Tiio doors being fastened on the inside, they easily managed to open one, and sallied fortii, very stealthily, till they got close to the sentry who had been placed there to guard it. Ilim they charged with their mock weapons ; — the night was so dark he could not distinguish them from real ones — and tiireatened to bayonet iiim if he] made the slightest attempt to give the alarm to the other sentry, lie submitted to their demand, yielded up his firelock, and they took him prisoner. Being now really and effectively armed, tiiey easily mastered the other soldier, and, with their two prisoners, after many "hair-breadth 'scapes," they arrived in safety within the British lines. The truth of this story in all its particulars was fully confirmed to me by an old otlicer of the same regi- ment. After the war was over the Legicm was disbanded, and he came, with many of his companions in arms, into these pro- vinces ; got married, purchased with his hard-earned savings a little farm, and proved a worthy, honest, and industrious settler. Such was his stirring and active life ; but his death, as I have already said, was wrapped in mystery. " Years flew by," and the ghost, and the old man, and haunted house, were alike forgotten, or rather, like a thrice-told tale, they had ceased to interest any one ; when a circumstance oc- curred which brought them all again most vividly to our remem- brance. Some alarm had been excited by a report that a cata- mount, or American panther, had been seen in the adjoining woods. The report, however, was so vague that few people believed it. At length all doubts upon the subject were solved, for it was actually killed by an Indian. In its den were found some relics of a human being, some broken bones, several buttons, and some decayed fragments of clothes ; enough, in short, to remove all doubt as to what the fate of the poor old man had been. * This is a weed which is peculiar to '.his country. It grows sometimes to the height of ten feet, when its stalk is as thick as a good-sized walking- stick. w ■f ■ J 123 PHILIP MUSGUAVK. [chap. XX. CHAPTER XX. 1 1 i I I m i A Sad Disappointment — Heduction of Salary — Government Grant— The Church — Ivoyalty— A New Era -The Cholera again— A New House — The Garden — An Ice-house — My Uogs. The following spring came out upon us as bright and beautiful .'IS if tiiat fierce and fearful scourge, the cholera, had never come within our borders. Those that were left unscathed commenced tlieir busy summer life again, and the deat! seemed all but for- gotten. Time soothes every sorrow, and so it appeared to do in the present instance. I myself became as busy as the rest. I commenced again as strenuously as ever with my house, and was getting on most prosperously. I had a whole summer before me, and I confidently expected to get it so far completed by tlie end of it, as to be ready for the reception of my family ; when all my troubles and annoyances, and they were not a few, would )e at an end. But, no ! I was doomed again to be dis- appoin^^ed. I had resumed my work but a very short time, when I re- ceived a letter from the secretary to tiie Society for the Pro- pagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, informing me that, in consequence of the sudden and unexpected withdrawal of the Government grant in aid of its funds, it was under the painful necessity of reducing my salary to one half of its original amount, and every other missionary on the Society's list in these colonies received a similar intimation. This came upon me like a thun- derbolt, for I had hitherto considered my salary as perfectly secure as if it had arisen from any church endowment in Eng- land. When I entered into the service of the Society its income arose from three distinct sources — voluntary contributions, its funded property, and a grant from the Government. The first, of course, from its very nature must be fluctuating ; but the second would have been amply sufficient to prevent such fluctuation from 11 \\\ xx. CIIAF. XX.] A REDUCTION OF SALARY. 123 nt— The [louse — sautifiil 3r come nienced ►ut for- to do in rest. I iiid was ' before [ by tlie ; when a few, be dis- n I re- he Pro- that, in I of the painful amount, colonies ) a thun- 3erfectly in Eng- me arose s funded »f course, id would ion from affecting our wihiries wliile the third continued to be paid, of which tiiere could be no reasonable doubt. 1 have tlicreforc no iiesitation in asserting', and I shall be borne out l)y nuinbcrU'ss authorities in (h>in(r so, tiiat it was a gross and an iniipiitous breacii of faith on the j)art of the (iovernment to withhuhl that grant. Tliere was certainly no pledge given that it shouhi be permanent. On the contrary, it was neither intended by the Government, nor expected by the Society that it shotdd be so. lint it was expected by the latter, and no (U)ubt intencUid by the former, tliat this grant should not be withhekl witiiout due and sutficient notice, liut no such notice was given, and the measure was as prematurely as it was liarsidy aih)pted. Tiie opposers of every administration, even Mr. Hume idmself, aibnitted, when tile subject was brougiit before tlie House of Commons, that tlie grant, strongly as tiiey disapproved of it, ought to be continued during tlie lives of the present incumbents, whose salaries, to a certain extent, depended upon it. Yet, notwithstanding all parties in Parliament were perfectly willing that it should be continued durin^^ a limited period, that economical administration, disregard- ing the high-minded, generous, and truly Christian principles which had shed such a lustre upon the British name, and exalted it to the very highest pinnacle of glory in the eyes of all the nations of the earth, did at once withhold it ; thereby reducing a hundred and sixty poor missionaries to want and degradation — and for what? Merely for the sake of enabling the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer to show to the House of Conmions ai.\l to the country, that they were carrying out tht principle of economy to which they had pledged themselves before they got into power, by making a reduction in the expenditure of the North American colonies, amounting to sixteen thousand pounds a year ; a reduction which had this especial merit in their eyes, that as not a murmur was likely to be heard against it in Eng- land, it would probably be inferred, not only that it was neces- sary, but that no one suffered by it. No ! it only affected a faw poor hardworking missionaries, thinly scattered over the new and remote settlements in the backwoods of these wild and measure- less regions, whose complaints were never likely to reach the sacred precincts of St. Stephen's. This reduction was not to extend — and here was the most i ii * 124 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XX. '■ jt unfair thing in the entire measure — it was not to extend to tiie grants made by the Government to tlie bishops, nor to the arch- deacons, nor even to the rectors of the large commercial towns ; all these salaries, amounting to some ten thousand pounds a year, were to be continued during tiie lives of tiie present incumbents. It would not have answered their purpose to have meddled with these salaries, because it never would have appeared, either to the House or to the countr}', that any saving had been effected ; inasmuch as they were paid by the Commissariat out of the Military Chest. Had such a saving been really expedient, it surely would have been but just and fair that the reduction should have fallen equally upon all the clergy in these colonies who received any portion of their emoluments from the Govern- ment. It would then hardly have been felt, and certainly never objected to : instead of which, a few poor missionaries, many of them with large families, were thus, with cold and heartless cruelty, singled out to be the only sufferers. And yet, in the end, it was no saving after all ; for had the Society continued to be supported, as formerly, by the Govern- ment, its number of missionaries would have been so much in- creased, as to have created and secured an influence over the great body of the people, sufficient to have prevented the rebel- lions of 1837 and 1838, and thereby saved the Government a million of money. I am borne out in this assertion by the fact, that not only were there no Church of England men among the rebels, but that they all rose, en masse^ to put them down. To the same niggardly policy may indeed be ascribed the loss to the mother-country of her other North American colonies, now the United States. The Loyalists, almost to a man, were members of the Church ; and the contest, as far as the popula- tion was concerned, was a contest throughout between the Church and loyalty on the one side, and treason, and dissent, and infidelity, on the other. There cannot be a doubt, but if the venerable Society, which had been specially established for the very purpose of propagating the Gospel in these colonies, had been cherished and supported by the Government, as it ought to iiave been — had it had even three missionaries where it em- ployed but one — and it ought to have had at least twenty — that brightest gem in England's crown would never have been torn CHAP. XX. d to the ;he arch- [ towns ; s a year, umbents. Ued with either to effected ; t of the sdient, it reduction colonies Govern- tily never , many of heartless • had the I Govern- much in- over the he rebel - rnment a ' the fact, mong the wn. d the loss colonies, nan, were le popula- ;ween the issent, and )ut if the 3d for the )nies, had ; ought to ;re it em- ;nty — that been torn CHAP. XX.] A NEW ERA 1 or. from it. Wiiat a waste of blood and treasure too, some triHinir annual grant from the Government to the Society would thus have prevented ! The people at home may believe it or not, the fact is no less certain, that the principal if not the only bond of union between these North American colonies and the mother-country is the Church ; and although trampled upon, robbed and despoiled, and all but proscribed, as she is at the present moment, she will always continue to be so. Indeed her whole constitution and polity are intrinsically monarchical, and therefore conservative. It has lately been the fashion, even among statesmen, to talk about these colonies following, in time, the example of their neigh- bours, and throwing off the yoke of British rule, and setting up, as a republic, for themselves ; and they adduce the late outbreaks, as they are called, as decidedly symptomatic of the approaching consummation of such an event ; whereas these same outbreaks only proved the strength of our attachment to that empire of which we form an integral portion. No ! the connexion cannot be severed. The Church, with her five bishops and her four hundred priests, with the thousands and tens of thousands of her firm and devoted adherents, would alone be a safeguard against so deplorable an event. Unless the mother country unnaturally turn her back upon us, and cast us off, they may as well talk of Yorkshire and the other northern counties in EnjHand hoistinjir the tri-coloured flag or the " stripes and stars,*' as that we should separate ourselves from the mother country. To us here, at least, the one appears not more absurd than the other. The loss of half my income produced, as may well be supposed, a sad revolution in my little establishment. I may say, indeed, that a new era in my life, as far as its common and ordinary affairs were concerned, now commenced. I had, in the first place, to forego all hope of linishing my house. I therefore covered it in, boarded up the windows and doors, and left it, with the intention of selling it, as well as the little farm on which it stood, as soon as I could find a purchaser. But where I was to live, how I was to pay rent for a house out of a hundred a year, or how I was to support my family, or to educate my children, I was utterly at a loss to discover. I sold one of my horses, shot two of my dogs, discharged my servants, took my boys away m 'i\ !l . » < L 12G PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap, XX. from school. In short, I did a great many things hastily and very foolishly, instead of writing to the Society, as I did at last, and giving them a plain and simple account of all my difficulties and troubles. They promptly replied to my letter, directing me to draw upon their treasurer for fifty pounds to aid me in finish- ing my house, and at the same time communicated to me the cheering intelligence that our salaries would be again made up to within fifteen or twenty per cent, of their original amount. This, although it would bear somewhat hardly upon us, would not certainly be attended with that distress and ruin which must have ensued had the first reduction been continued. I should be guilty of the most heartless ingratitude were I to pass over, without the strongest expression of gratitude, this instance of the generous liberality of the Society, so considerately extended to me at my utmost need. Bnt wlnt return can I make ? They already have my prayers and niy blessing, and I have nought else to offer. They must look, as I know they do, far beyond this world for their reward. In consequence of this favourable change in my prospects, and with ample means at my command, granted expressly for the purpose, I resumed my building labours at the commencement of the following summer, in order that I might get into a residence within the precincts of my new mission. This was my third attempt, in so many successive years, to accomplish this most desirable object. My being so far away from my parish duties, besides the fatigue it occasioned, was a source of great ?)nd con- stant annoyance, and I had met with so many obstaelf;;^ in my way, that in again commencing my work, I did it ui' ie'* the fearful apprehension that some new misfortune or other .vould again compel me to relinquish it, and perhaps for ever. Happily, ho vever, under the blessing of Providence, my anticipations of evil were not to be realised, although I certainly thought at one time tiiey would have been ; for the cholera, after a whole year of respite, broke out again ; but it did not rage with anything like the same violence which characterised its former visit ; nor did people look upon it with the same horror and consternation now that they had become somewhat familiar with it. The im- pressions it was doubtless intended to produce upon men's minds were neither so deep nor so lasting as before. " When he slew W . 1I —II •^ CHAP. XX. CHAP. XX.] A NEW HOUSE. 127 ■A them, then they sought him, and inquired early after God." But no sooner had the destroying- angel stayed his hand and sheatheci his sword, than their fears were allayed, and all their resolutions of amendment were entirely forgotten. " They remembered not His hand, nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy." After some trouble 1 succeeded in convincing my men that they were as much under the superintending care of a gracious Providence while attending to my work, as they possibly could be elsewhere, and therefore they did not leave it ; and by the following Christmas I succeeded in getting my family into the house, or rather into a portion of it, for it was not more than half finished. Although we were very much cramped for room, and destitute of many little comforts and conveniences, yet we were again together, and happy in each other's society. The first thing we did, on the opening of the spring, was to make a garden. This was a matter of more importance to our comfort than can well be imagined in an old inhabited country like England, where vegetables can be purchased almost at every one's door, and where, even if they could not, the want of them would be less felt than in a hot climate like this. Here, in country places at least, there are none for sale. Finishing two or three more rooms in my house, building a barn, stables, an ice-house, and a dog-kennel, occupied the whole of the summer. The mention of an ice-house and a dog-kennel may surprise my readers ; but in such a climate as this an ice- house is almost indispensable to the comfort of a family ; and even if it must be termed a luxury, it is one which is here ob- tained at so cheap a rate, that were I reduced to earn my daily bread by the sweat of my brow, I do not think I should be dis- posed to forego it. As to the dog-kennel, it is absolutely neces- sary in this country to keep dogs, to guard not only the house from thieves and pilferers, but the sheep and fowls from wolves, foxes, and other vermin. Besides, to speak the entire truth, I am passionately fond of dogs, and have all my life been so, although I never was a sportsman. I have at the present moment a Newfoundland dog, a foxhound, a Spanish pointer, and an English setter, all fine specimens of their respective breeds. If I wanted a more plausible and utilitarian excuse for keeping i| I' 128 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XX. them, I might advert to the h'gh estimation in which they are held by the whole settlement, ir* consequence of the great benefit the people derive from their active and unwearied exertions in killing or driving away the obnoxious animals I have r^^ntioned. Before I came to reside in the place neither turkeys nor common barn-door fowls could be kept with any safety. One farmer lost twenty-se/en turkeys in less than a week. Dreadful havoc was also often made among the flocks of sheep. Five wolves were seen near one of my neighbour's houses in broad daylight. Another had thirteen sheep killed by them in one night. But now, from the instinctive fear which the cowardly wolf has of the dog, the flocks are perfectly safe, a change as gratifying to me as it is to the settlement at large^ and all through the instru- mentality of the fine, powerful, and courageous race of dogs which I have brought into the settlement. KQt^ CHAP. XXI.] THE SUBSCRIPTION LIST. 129 I CHAPTER XXI. The Subscription List — The Foundation Stone — The New Church— The Burning of the School-house — Troubles and Annoyances — The Liberality of the Two Venerable Church Societies — A Judgment — A Revolting Incident — Fearful Visitations — A Squatter — A Strange Story — An Over- ruling Providence. The building of my house was not the only thing in which my wishes were thwarted and my expectations disappointed by the untoward and melancholy circumstances which I have men- tioned. Previously to the breaking out of the cholera the first time, I had commenced a subscription for my new church. I met with the same difficulties which I had to encounter in a similar undertaking at my first mission. They did not, however, appear to me so formidable now as on that occasion, and conse- quently gave me much le.«5s annoyance. I doubt, indeed, whether I should ever have undertaken the task at all, had I not felt convinced that my past experience would save me from the dis- tress and actual suffering I then endured. It is true that now, as before, I was laughed at for attempting what appeared to them to be impossible. The very idea was declared to be per- fectly absurd. " To build a church, and in a back settlement too ! I must be totally ignorant of the limited circumstances of the people I had to deal with, or I must be " The speaker paused, and I concluded the sentence for him — " Mad, you would say ; but never mind, my good friend, here is a plan of the church ; look at it." They did so. " "What ! steeple and all ? " they exclaimed in utter amazement. " O yes," I said, " the tower would not cost more than fifly pounds ; that is to say, merely the bare walls with a temporary roof, till we can raise funds to finish it." " Fifty pounds !" one of them exclaimed ; " why, you will not be able to get subscriptions to that amount in the whole set- tlement in three years." K |i i I n J 130 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XXI. 't»' I' il I produced my subscription-list and spread it out before them. The heading contained all the particulars of what I wanted to accomplish. My chief parishioner (he was a worthy, good man) dipped his pen in the ink to sign it, and to put down the sum he intended to give. The money was to be payable in three equal annual instalments ; but he was evidently startled when he saw that the first payment was not to be at the expiration of twelve months, but at once and on demand. " Oh ! " he cried, " this will never do ! INIoney on demand i It is impossible ! All the money in two years?" " Yes," I said, laughing ; "if you will set us the example, we will get the money, or at least the sub- scription for it, and that is the same thing, in two minutes. Come, take me at my word," I continued, as I saw he was in- clined to assent to my proposal ; " sign away at once, and do not keep me waiting till all my two minutes are expired." I knew he would give more than any one else in the settle- ment, and therefore wished to have his name at the head of my list. He knew this too, as well as I did ; but still he hesitated, and at length handed me the pen and begged that I would sign before him. I consented, but left the first line for him, and put my name down on the one below it for twenty-five pounds (it was before the reduction of my salary). He looked at me with a smile, as much as to say that I had out-generalled him, but at once put down his name for forty pounds. The train was fired ; the impulse was given, and every one subscribed nobly. " Well," said Mr. P , the giver of the forty pounds, " if this is the way you mean to go to work, there is no doubt about your building the church." " Steeple and all? " I inquired. " Yes, steeple and all ! We were just talking about it," he continued, " when you came in, and we had all settled what we would give — Mr. D five, and Mr. N five, and I ten ; and that you would be not only satisfied but astonished at our liberality : we had also put you down for five." He looked again at the list for a moment to add up the sums, when he exclaimed, " Why, here is more than a hundred pounds already, beside the Society's seventy -five pounds. When do you think we should begin with it ? " " We," I said to myself: the word was music to me, for hitherto I had seemed to stand alone AP. XXI. e them. 11 ted to >d man) sum he le equal he saw ' twelve d, " this All the you will the sub- minutes. 3 was in- and do »» lie settle- id of my hesitated, ould sign , and put bunds (it ; me with m, but at vas fired ; ' Well," his is the out your ut it,'* he what we id I ten ; ed at our the sums, ed pounds en do you yself: the ;and alone CUM'. XXI.] A NEW CHURCH. 131 in my arduous undertaking, but now, at once, it became a com- mon cause. The three long and tedious years of sorrow, sickness, and mis- fortune, which I have already detailed, passed by before we could begin to build our church ; but early in the spring, after my first winter's residence with my family in tiie place, tlie foun- dation-stone was laid with great rejoicing throughout the whole settlement, in which people belonging to other denominations appeared cordially to participate. "When once we had got fairly under way with the building, I went round again among the people and got my subscription-list considerably increased. Some would not subscribe before, because they thought the schoolhouse might do well enough, and that in a new country like this it was out of the question to expect we could have things the same as we had at home ; while others refused because the project appeared to them wild and chimerical. But when they saw the work really commenced, the walls gradually rising higher and higher, and its goodly proportions beginning to de- velop themselves, affording a fair prospect of its being com- pleted, they became of a different opinion, and subscribed cheer- fully and to the utmost of their ability. The shell of the building was completed before the winter set in. We then put a stove in it and proceeded with the inside work. In short, by the middle of the succeeding summer, every- thing was finished, pews and all, except painting. I have only been speaking, however, of the body of the church. The steeple was left, as I proposed, in a very unfinished state. It remained so for some years, and might have done so to thig day, but for a misfortune, strange as it may seem, that befel the settlement, and which was turned into a blessing as far as the church was concerned, and added considerably to our funds. But to explain how this occurred I must advert to a circum- stance which took place some two or three years subsequently to the period of which I am now speaking. The schoolhouse I have so frequently mentioned was used at stated periods as a court-house for the trial of small causes. On one of these occasions judgment was given against a man of a very vicious and reckless character. In his opinion, as will easily be believed, the decision was a very tyrannical and unjust K 2 t "i w u i i '■ \ l' J A 132 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XXI. one. On the night after the trial the schoolhouse was set on fire and entirely consumed, with all the things which were in it, amongst which were some valuable school-books belonging to ray boys, and the whole of my Sunday-school library. The wretched man was apprehended, sent to gaol, and stood his trial for the capital offence ; but the evidence brought before the court was not sufficient in the eye of the law to convict him, and he was accordingly acquitted and turned loose again upon the community, although quite enough was elicited to satisfy every one of his guilt. The schoolhouse had of course to be rebuilt ; but how the means were to be raised to accomplish this object I could not see. We, I mean the Protestant Episcopalians, had expended all we could well spare upon our church. The Presbyterians (for the schoolhouse belonged to all denominations) had still more recently done the same thing upon a chapel they had erected for themselves : the Methodists were similarly circum- stanced. I therefort applied to the Society for a grant of twenty-five pounds to assist us in our difficulties, and they promptly acceded to my request. Very shortly after I had got this money, a bill was brought before the provincial parliament to alter the Act under which these elementary schools had been established, so as to prevent the clergy from exercising any control over them. The enemies of the Church prevailed, as they generally do in these colonies,* and this bill passed and became a law. I immediately wrote to the Society to inform them of the fact, and recommended that this money should rot now, under these altered circumstances, be applied to the puipose for which it had been granted. At the same time, I begged that they would permit me not only to expend this sum upon my church, but that they would add twenty-five pounds more to it for the same purpose. My wishes were instantly complied with. Indeed, I never made a request to either Society which was not granted. * This is unfortuna'.aly the case, notwithstanding a majority of the mem- bers in the House of Assembly are, professedly at least, members of the Church. But some of them are, unfortunately, what are called " Low Churchmen ;" while others are heedless and lukewarm in their attachment to the Church, and a few, perhaps, in reality are not Churchmen at all, except in name. '\ p. XXI. CHAP. XXI,"I THE CHURCH SOCIETIES. 133 stood before it him, ; upon satisfy 3W the lid not pended rterians ad still ey had 2ircum- rant of id they brought r which prevent enemies (lonies,* he fact, er these it had would but ;he same Indeed, granted. the mem- rs of the ed " Low ttachment en at all, rch, The happy consequences were, the finishing of our church, steeple and all, and the payment of all on*- debts. It must not be inferred, from my silence on the subject, that in accomplishing this great work I had neither troubles nor difficulties to contend with. I had, indeed, just as hard a task to perform as in building my first church, and met with as many annoyances. One thing, indeed, pressed much more heavily upon me in this instance, than any on tlie former occasion. This was the difficulty I felt, in my reduced circumstances, in meeting the demand upon me for the amount of my own subscription. But I look back upon this trouble with pleasure now ; for my great object has been attained ; the church has been finished. And a pretty little church it is,— a neat and well-proportioned building, with lancet windows and a sightly tower. One can hardly find its equal, as a new settlement church, throughout the whole length and breadth of the land. There it stands — and long may it do so — a monument of the zeal of my poor people for the establishment of their Redeemer's kingdom upon eurth. And here, before I dismiss the subject, I must not fail to record my humble but heartfelt gratitude to the two great and venerable Church Societies at home for their very kind and liberal assistance. The one gave me seventy -five pounds ; the other fifty, and ten pounds' worth of books for my Parochial Lending Library, as well as seven pounds' worth to replace my Sunday-school books which were destroyed in the schoolhouse when it was burnt. This Society also gave me a splendid set of service books for my church. I must now advert to circumstances and occurrences of minor interest. When I first came to this new settlement, I found everything in confusion. The schoolmaster was an open and habitual drunkard. I got him turned out, and had a decent sober man put in his place, whom I also made my parish-clerk. I then established a Sunday-school, and took great pains in col- lecting a little money, and purchased a small library for it, which, as I have already mentioned, was unfortunately burnt. And this reminds me of the judgment which came upon the incendiary, probably for this very crime ; and so soon after it too, as to lead people to think and to say that he was rightly punished. His wife and he had both been drinking at a tavern ; she was ' 1 • i 134 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XXI. ■ ' I just a.s bad and wicked as himself. They had a violent quarrel, and he beat her most unmercifully. Shortly afterwards they returned home, and he went to bed, while she sat broodin*^ over some scheme of revenge for the treatment she had received. Wiien he was fast asleep, she took a carving-fork, went softly to the bed-side, plunged it into one of his eyes, and literally tore it out of the socket. She was taken before the magistrate the follow- ing week and committed to prison. There she remained nearly twelve months before she could be brought to trial, her husband not being sufficiently recovered to be able sooner to appear against her. Indeed, for some time his life was despaired of; or I am afraid I must say, to speak more correctly, that hopes were entertained by his neighbours that he would not recover, but that the settlement would be delivered from such a monster of iniquity. I have said that a week elapsed between the woman's crime aad her apprehension. This was owing to a dreadful accident that happened to one of her chililren the very next morning. A boar belonging to one of the inhabitants had most impro- perly been allowed to go at large upon the village green, where the child, almost in a state of nudity (it was in summer, and the weather vvas warm), was playing with some other children. I believe they had been teasing the ferocious animal. At any rate, it made a rush at them, when they all ran away ; but it soon overtook the hindmost, which happened to be this poor little boy. With one stroke of his tusk it made such a gash in the child's side, that a portion of his entrails instantly protruded. I was immediately sent for, there being no surgeon w ithin fifteen miles. On my reaching the house, I directed them to send off for one immediately, and they did so. I knew, however, that if the child remained unattended to until his arrival, nothing could save it. I therefore carefully replaced the intestines, after em- brocating them with olive-oil, and then carefully bandaged up the wound : all which I was very glad to find that the doctor ap- proved of; for I felt that my responsibility was great. The poor child died, after lingering five days and nights ; and it was not till after the funeral that the wretched mother was taken into custody. I do not know anything about the trial : perhaps I did at the lAP. XXI. [is they wiT over eceived. softly to y tore it B follow- :1 nearly husband ) appear d of; or »pes were »ver, but ouster of woman's dreadful ^ery next st impro- iu, where and the Idren. I At any but it this poor a gash in )rotruded. lin fifteen send off er, that if ing could after ein- red up the octor ap- The poor t was not taken into lid at the |\ y; CHAP. XXI.] PKEVALENCE OF DUUNKENNESS. 135 time, but I do not recollect it now. I only remember that the woman came back to her husband, and their one only rf niaining child, which was an idiot, and that they have been living together ever since, apparently in peace and tranquillity. Perliar i those fearful lessons contributed somewhat to bring about this partial change for the better in their conduct and deportment towards each other ; — I say partial change, for tliey still continue to be in all other respects the same i)ests to society, the same reprobate outcasts, they ever were. We had, unfortunately, a number of others in the settlement almost as bad as this wretched couple. Drunkenness, which is indeed the prevailing vice, the besetting sin of this whole con- tinent, was so rife in our little village, that one could hardly walk quietly through it, especially on a Sunday evening, without being shocked or insulted. Some idea may be formed of the extent to which this vicious habit was carried, from the fact that one-third of the houses in the place were taverns. Now, however, we have happily less than half the number we had at that period ; and, what is better still, there is hardly a drunkard in the settlement. It cannot be doubted that the establishment of the church tended greatly to improve the morals of the people, and to promote the interests of true religion ; and I would fain hope that my humble endea- vours had some share in producing so beneficial a change. There was something so very extraordinary, and the hand of Providence was so conspicuously manifested in the means by which we got rid of these drunkards, that T must give the reader some account of it. They all, save the two wretched beings I have mentioned, and another who really reformed, either came to sudden and untimely ends, or were dispersed abroad as outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth ; some of them with the indelible brand of a Cain upon their foreheads. Two in a fit of drunkenness murdered their wives, and ran away, and have never been heard of since. One, in the same state, insulted and abused a young woman he met with on his way home from a tavern, and the poor victim of his villany was found dead the next morning where he left her : he was hanged for the deed. Another, attempting to cross the river on the ice, \ I I ( ,1 ■ I 136 PHILIP MUSGUAVE. [chap. XXI. missed his way and fell into an o[)en place, where the current was so rapid that the water is never frozen over, and was drowned. Two more came to a similar end, while fishing for shad during the spring freshet. But my calendar of extraordinary events is not completed yet. Another fell over a {)recipice of some eighty or a hundred feet, and was killed on the spot. 1 myself saw the crushed and maijgled body before it was removed from the spot. It appeared, from the evidcuoe before the coroner, that this unfortunate man had been drinking in a miserable log-hut hard by with its proprietor. The hut was of the poorest description. The walls were of rough unhewn timber, and the roof of bark. It belonged to a " squatter," * and was situated on a piece of waste land between the road and the precipice, so near the latter, and so limited in extent, that the legal proprietor had never paid any attention to it, not considering it worth fencing in. When the unfortunate man left this hut. most probably in a state of intoxication, the night was far a'' 'ced and very dark, and he must have gone a few steps, a ver) . .. , out of his way. The fate of the squatter himself was equally horrible, and still more mysterious. He was a lone old man ; apparently of a re- tired and unsocial disposition, as he was seldom seen in company with any one. He seemed to have no occupation, and no appa- rent means of obtaining a livelihood. His dress and appearance were those of a labouring man of the poorest class of Irish ; and yet he always paid in ready money for whatever he bought at the stores. He was frequently absent for weeks together ; but where, or for what purpose, no one knew. None ever saw him depart or return. The only indication of his absence was an old rusty padlock at the door of his hut, and a rough bass-wood slab before his solitary window as a shutter. This was securely fas- tened, somehow or other, from the inside. There was also, on such occasions, a similar slab placed over the top of the chimney, or rather, the hole in the roof which served instead of a chimney, so as effectually to prevent any one from peeping into the rude * Squatters are persons who settle on vacant or ungranted lands without any real authority to do so. They are so numerous that the law has made some provision in their behalf. When the lands are sold they have the right of pre-emption, or if the land goes at a higher rate than they choose or are able to give, the purchaser must pay them for their improvements before he can turn them off. AP. XXI. current •owned, during ventsi is ! eighty saw the le spot, iiat litis ut hard Tiption. of bark, piece of e latter, d never cing in. bly in a ry dark, is way. and still of a re- iompany 10 appa- iearance sh; and it at the t where, n depart tld rusty )od slab rely fas- also, on himney, hiraney, ;he rude s without las made haye the choose or Its before CHAP, xxi.] A MYSTERIOUS SQUATTKK. 137 hut. No oin' was ever known to visit iiini, exctpt tlio poor unfortunate man of whom I iiavo just spoken. And yet tiie old man was not altogether alone eitiier : lie liiui always witii iiim, whether at iiome or abroad, one eonstant eoni|iunion. Tills was a dog of enormous size, and gaunt as a wolf, but more from want of suiiieient food tlian from his natural conformation. Inch'*"', from his black ears, and his muzzle of the same colour, a well as from his long shaggy coat, as fine as silk and as wliite as s.'ow, it was evident that lie was a pure and perfect specimen of a species of the Newfoundland breed which is not known in England ; at least, it was not known a quarter of a century ago, when I left it. They are so rare, even in this country, that 1 have never seen more than half a dozen of them. There was, in short, a mystery about the man and his dog which no one could penetrate ; and mystery, in the eyes of the common people in all countries, begets fear. So generally lid this feeling prevail in this instance, that few cared to pass his lonely dwelling after sunset. Besides, there wa::i some story abroad of his having shot a man in his native country, for having offered a higher rent for his "shieling" than he had himself been willing to give for it ; and that he had fled to this country to escape the consequences of an act which he, in his mistaken ideas, looked upon only in the light of retributive justice. But the avenger of blood was immediately behind him on his trackless path across the wide Atlantic. At least it was whispered in the neighbourhood that two sons of the murdered man came out in the same ship with him, but lost sight of him on their landing ; and, after a long and fruitless search, they at length discovered their victim in this solitary hut. One of these brothers was the man whom I have already said was found dead at the foot of the neighbouring cliff. He was an idle, drunken vagabond, certainly ; but his death was no longer considered as accidental. The other brother, although a poor man, was sober, steady, and industrious, and seemed to be a permanent settler in the place. After the funeral of his brother, he was no longer seen at his usual occupation, which was that of a cooper ; and, upon inquiry, it was found he had left the settlement and gone no one knew whither. It "was also discovered about the same time, that the Solitary's hut was silent and tenantless, except that the fierce gaunt dog 138 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XXI, m was always there. Weeks thus passed away before it was dis- covered that his murdered master's body was in the hut, and that the faithful dog who guarded it, although famishing, had never attempted to touch it. Of course the common people have ever since considered the place haunted : and I really do not wonder at it. With all my philosophy I must acknowledge, although not without some degree of shame, that, although I would not go out of my way to avoid it, yet I have never since passed the burnt and blackened remains of that old ruined hut in the night without uncomfortable feelings. The wild and desolate spot, associated as it is with a recollection of these dreadful and mysterious events — the edge of that fatal cliff where the two strong and powerful men must have been engaged in their fearful struggle for life and deatii, brought back to my memory, despite my better judgment, all the horrors of ghost and barghaist, of fairy, wraith and goblin, so deeply imprinted upon my mind in early childhood. Ye careful and affectionate mothers — and mine was both — ye have indeed a difficult task to perform in saving the susceptible minds of your darling offspring from being contaminated with the foolish tales of the nursery ! Do what you can, impressions which ye know not of will inevitably be formed there, impressions whicli in after-life can never be totally obliterated. Whether the incidents T have mentioned in the life of this Squatter be true or not, and some of them I give only upon the authority of mere rumour, his dreadful and mysterious end made a deep impression upon the minds of all seriously disposed people. They looked upon it as an additional link in the long chain of evidence which proves the perpetual existence and the unvarying influence of an unseen and overruling f)0wer that " ordereth all things both in heaven and earth," and whicli proves also the eternal truth of His word, who saith " Whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." BAP. XXI. CHAP. XXTI.] COLONIAL POLITICS. 139 CHAPTER XXII. Politics— The Rebellion—The Battle— The Marauders— The Burnirg of the Steamer " Caroline " — A Colonel of Militia— Restoration of Tranquillity, I FEEL very unwilling to mix up in my narrative anything' relating to the politics of the country, and yet I perceive that I cannot well go on without arlverting 1o the public events which have lately taken place in this colony. But I have neither the ability nor the inclination to enter into any long and elaborate discu!!ision, and my remarks upon the subject will therefore be as concise as possible, and strictly confined to such matters and measures as had a direct bearing on my own history. During the last half-century, which carries us back almost to the very infancy of these colonies, there has always been a violent and bitter contest between two conflicting parties or factions, or rather, between a party and ix faction. These have respectively been designated as Tories and Whigs, but without the slightest resemblance to their prototy '^s at home. The misapplication of these terms, trifling as it may at first sight appear, has been attended with very serious and important consequences. It led the British Government into mistakes and errors in the adminis- tration of our aflfairs, which resulted in rebellion and bloodshed. The Tories, as they were called, comprising nearly all the wealth, intelligence, and respectability in the countrj", were in reality not Tories, but Conservative Whigs ; while the Whigs — save the mark ! — could scarcely count upon a man in their ranks who was not a traitor and a rebel. And consequently the con- test between these Destructives and Conservatives has ever been, not whether *his or that system of politics should prevail, — not whether this or that party should be predominant, but whether we should continue to constitute an integral portion of that glorious empire which extends its sway from pole to pole, or should be thrown into the grasp of a neighbouring republic, whose arms are so an/iously stretched out to receive us. ( . PHILIP MUSGRAVE.. [chap. XXII. Thus V hen the AVhigs in England obtained the ascendancy and got into power, they, as a matter of course, sent out Whig go- vernors to this country, who, on tlieir arrival, being misled by the misapplication of these terms of "Whig and Tory, immediately attached themselves to the former or rebel party, thereby skiving them an importance and an influence which, fiom the insigni- ficancy — not of their numbers, for they had the whole rabble rout of the country at their heels, but — of their real weight and power, they otherwise could not have expected to obtain. The natural and necessary consequence was — a rebellion — a civil war. How it was carried on, and how it ended, are matters of general his- tory, and belong not to my personal narrative. I shall therefore speak only of such circumstances connected with this important and fearful event as concerned my people and myself. The leaders in this faction, from the countenance and support they thus unexpectedly received, instead of the attitude of humble and respectful suppliants for measures which they ought to have been well aware could never be conceded to them, assumed at once one of a more determined aspect. They had recourse to threats, and they appealed to the worst passions of the people, that they might be enabled to carry these threats into effect by physical force. Their followers flew^ to arms. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. Military law was proclaimed, and the whole country was instantly thrown into a state of confusion, consternation, and anarchy. My people, as well as those of every other religious denomi- nation in the place, rose en masse as one man. We applied to the Government for a supply of arms. Our request was gladly acceded to, and two hundred and fifty firelocks were put into the hands of our young men. About a hundred and fifty more had fire-arms of their own. Thus equipped we set oflPin high spirits to join a small detachment of regular troops which had been ordered to march into the very heart of the disaffected settle- ments, where the rebel forces had taken up a very advantageous position. They had among them a man * possessed of some know- * This unfortunate man, after his forces were dispersed, hid himself in a ditch. His pursuers, however, were upon his track, and found him. When he saw them approaching to take him prisoner, he drew a pistol from his sash and shot himself. Five hundred pounds had been promised for his capture. p. XXII. cy and ig go- led bv d lately afiving nsigni- le rout power, natural How ral his- lerefore portant support humble ught to issumed 3urse to I people, fFect by Habeas ed, and nfusion, ienomi- )lied to i gladly into the ore had 1 spirits id been settle- tageous 8 know- iself in a When from his for his CHAP. XXII.] THE REBELLION. 141 ledge of military tactics, which he had acquired in actual service in the petty warfare so long and so fruitlessly carried on in the South American republics. Under this man's instructions they fortified their position and barricaded the approaches to it with fallen trees and other timber, and succeeded in rendering it some- what formidable. Ecclesiastics in the olden time frequently laid aside the cowl and the cassock for the hauberk and cuirass, and why not now, when our altars, our hearths, nay, our very existence were at stake ? Although I may not presume to class myself with those heroic and warlike Churchmen of old, I considered it no less my imperative duty to share with my people the imminent peril whicL I had induced them to encounter. At the commencement of our march an incident occurred which would have satisfied me as to the propriety of my conduct on this occasion, if I had entertained any doubt concerning it. We had not proceeded beyond the house next to my own, when we were joined by three stalwart young men, the only children of their aged parents. The poor mother was wringing her hands at her cottage door, and loudly bewailing her bereave- ment, as she considered it. I accosted her with all the soothing words I could think of, to allay her grief. My eif^rtj were unheeded for some time, and when they did attract her notice, instead of producing the effect intended, they seemed to add gall to the bitterness of her overwrought feelings. " It 's all very fine," she said, " for the likes o' ye to raise the whole country side to go and fight for ye, while ye're sittin quietly, and safely too, by ye're own fireside, God forgi'e me for speaking so to your reverence ; and my poor boys — " " Not so fast, my good woman," I replied, interrupting her, " you are quite mistaken. There shall no danger befal your sons in which I myself, unarmed as I am, will not share ; and if possible I will restore them all again to you, alive and unscathed." *' What !" she exclaimed, in perfect amazement, " you do not mean to say that you 're going with them ? " " Yes ! " 1 replied, " most certainly, I do say so ; \ am going with them." " Oh ! if that 's the case, I 'm satisfied," she said, her counte- i ii •■ \ 142 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XXII. nance suddenly lighting up with a gleam of satisfaction, which as suddenly vanished ; and she added, after a slight pause, " But no ! it cannot be ! What? you leave your parish, your family, your dying child (one of our dear little children was dangerously ill at the time) ! No ! no ! " she continued, " you only say so to pacify a poor heartbroken woman." One of her sons now came and whispered a won^. in her ear, when she instantly exclaimed, " Well, well ! I wouldn't have believed it! Oh yes," she continued, "my boys shall go with you to the very end of the world, and God bless you for ever !" She then turned her tearful eyes upon her sons, and attempted to say something to them ; but the mother's feelings overcame her, and she could not speak. She ^-onveyed to us her meaning, how- ever, just as distinctly as words could have done, by a motion of lier hand, in the direction of our march, as she re-entered her cottage, as much as to say, " Go on !" And on we went, re- ceiving fresh accessions to our little band almost at every step, till it gathered and grew into a force of full fifteen hundred men, all with effective arms, and willing hands to wield them. After marching several miles, we came up with a company belonging to the regiment, which we were aware had pre- ceded us. We now halted and bivouacked for the night ; and a cold night it was, the thermometer being nearly down to zero : we managed, however, to keep ourselves tolerably warm and comfortable by means of large fires, which we made out of the timber of the numerous log-fences in our immediate vicinity. To me, and to many more besides, that bivouac was indeed a novel and romantic scene. I could not sleep ; or, if sometimes I fell into a dose, the "All 's well" of the sentries, which ever and anon was uttered close beside me, would rouse me up again to listen as the word was caught up from point to point by the other sentinels. In the morning we again pursued our march, until we came to a rude barricade thrown across the road by the rebels. It was formed of logs and fallen trees, through which we could easily have cut our way in a few minutes, as it was not defended ; but we had to lose some time in reconnoitring the woods on either side, lest we should fall into an ambuscade. No enemy, however, appeared to defend it, although small parties of them were seen p. XXII. liich as " But family, erously ' say so ler ear, 't have iTO with ever !" ipted to me her, ig, how- otion of ;red her ent, re- 3ry step, :ed men, company had pre- and a to zero: arm and t of the vicinity, indeed a )metimes ich ever up again t by the came to It was Id easily led ; but >n either owever, ere seen CHAP. XXII.J A BATTLE. 143 on the heights of the adjoining hills. They had no apparent motive for thus showing themselves, except to watch our motions, and then to fall back again upon their main body, from which they had doubtless been dispatched for this purpose. They retreated as we advanced, and toolv good care, according to their ideas of distance, to keep beyond the reach of our arms. But we had a few men with long rifles, whose range they had not measured correctly. These got a sliot or two at them, wiiich showed them their danger, and made them keep at a more re- spectful distance. At length, without further obstruction, we reached a populous village, where we were met by two regiments of regular troops and a brigade or two of artillery. Here we also came up with the enemy. They occupied a well-chosen and rather formidable position, and were evidently determined to make a desperate stand. Our arrival was the signal of battle ; and we had no sooner taken up the position assigned to us by an aide-de-camp than the fight began. The roar of artillery and musquetry, the clashing of sabres and bayonets, the shouts of the combatants, the groans of the wounded and dying, the murdering charge of tlie cavalry, altogether, as might naturally be supposed, gave rise to feelings in a novice like myself which it would be impossible to describe. I may say, however, that these feelings were very different from what I had supposed they would have been before the action commenced. Fear and apprehension prevailed then ; partly for my own personal sa/ety, but more, I think, from some other cause, I hardly know what, unless it was the suspense, the death-like stillness which prevailed before the battle began, during which minutes seemed hours. But the moment the first shot was fired the spell was broken, the oppressive weight was removed from my mind, and all was excitement and triumphant exultation, as I saw my young men so fearlessly and so resolutely rush upon the foe. The battle lasted several hours : the rebels fought at first with more cool and determined bravery than wo had given them credit for possessing ; and even afterward.',, when all but dis- comfited, they fought with desperation ; their leaders at least did. One of them, whose means of escape were cut off, refused quarter as the price of his surrender, and fought alone till he was ac- \ % • ! I I tr 144 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. xxit. i f in 1 7 il^B^VI pi i iJH R ui tfi ^H ' w tually shot down. Another shot himself, to avoid being taken alive. A great many of the poor deluded wretches were killed upon the field of battle : many, as they were running away, were deliberately shot by such of our men >is had rifles. I myself heard one man boast of having brought down three of them, just as if they had been so many wild beasts of the forest. Several of our own men were wounded, and some few killed ; but how many I never could ascertain. The horrors of that fearful day were by no means over, as we supposed, when the victory was achieved, and we had turned away on our homeward journey from that doomed village. Be- fore we were out of sight every h^u»e was in flames, and in a few hours more it was a heap of ruins. On the evening of the following day, to the unspeakable delight of our families and friends, we arrived safe and unharmed at our several homes. We were under the firm impression that the rebellion had now been entirely suppressed ; and so indeed it was, but still we were not allowed to rest in peace. Bands of marauders from the neighbouring republic, under the specious but flimsy pretext of sympathy in the sufferings of an oppressed people struggling for their liberty, but actuated in reality by the vilest motives, made frequent incursions into our now otherwise quiet settlements. These inroads, made under the cover of night, were generally stained with blood and rapine, and always accompanied with plundering and conflagration. Other attacks, however, were made by larger bodies of men in open day, and in defiance of the whole force of the country. We had indeed several hard-fought battles with them. Although invariably defeated, nothing seemed to deter them from these vain and preposterous attempts to liberate us from what they termed " the bondage and tyranny of monarchical institutions." In two instances our troops killed or captured the whole party. The ofliicers were either hanged or transported, wliile the men were sent back to their own country without the slightest punishment ; let loose, as it were on purpose to commit fresh and, if possible, more horrid out- rages. In another instance, when these marauders had taken possession of an island in one of the lakes, a gallant little party of our men cut out from one of the harbours of the republic a steamer, the Caroline, that supplied them with provisions, ^,r,., "•^■WW^ilpr* :*> HAP. XXII. ng taken re killed I'ay, were I myself hem, just Several but how er, as we d turned ge. Be- rind in a ig of the lilies and mes. had now we were from the retext of gling for es, made tlements. generally lied with er, were ce of the 'd-fought g seemed empts to tyranny »ps killed r hanged heir own LS it were trrid out- ad taken tie party ipublic a ons, <^,on ; now, resources pon them are often im. circum- h depend - •mined to CHAP. XXIII.] ANOTHER NEW CHURCH. 149 erect a church in this township, or to make the attempt at least, and I immediately got a subscription set on foot for the pur- pose. Connected with the buihiing of my first church, I have in an early part of this volume entered fully, perhaps tediously, into a detail of all the particulars. It did indeed appear to me at the time a most arduous and fearful undertaking ; and such, in fact, it proved to be. Of the building of my second church I have said very little ; and of this my third I shall say still less ; and for this simple reason, that the history of tiie two last, in all its more important features, would have been a mere transcript of that of the first : with this difference, however, tiiat in the two latter instances the difficulties and obstacles in my wuy were en- countered without fear or apprehension, while the aimoyances I had to endure were submitted to with more patience and resigna- tion than on the first occasion. A demand for money, for in- stance, which I could not promptly meet, did not now, as for- merly, distress me so much as to deprive me of a night's rest. Although, as I feared would be the case, I did not obtain any assistance from home towards this church, yet I managed, with the blessing of God, to get it completed, or nearly so ; not, how- ever, without incurring some debts, which I do not see how we shall ever manage to pay, unless the Societies should yet be able to help us, which we well know they will do if they can. This church is a very neat and well-proportioned stone* building, fifty- five feet long by thirty- four wide, without the tower. The tower is thirteen feet square and forty-two high. We intend, when we can raise funds for the purpose, to finish it off with a spire about twenty-five feet high, to be covered with tin. In attending to the building of the church, as well as to all my duties in the township in which it was situated, I had to cross a large and rapid river. In the winter this was easy enough, as during that season the ice is seldom less than two feet thick. In the spring it is impassable in this particular vici- nity for more than a month, during the continuance of the freshets, when it rises to an enormous height, sometimes as much * Many country churches here are built of wood, more perhaps than of any other material, and some are built of brick. My first was o:' this latter material, but my two last were of stone. J } i'l^ 150 PHILIP MUSGKAVE. f V [CIIAP. XXIU. as iiiiM'tccn feet ; on oni* occasion it exceeded even that liei<^]it by several feet, and it then left a nienunito of the extraordinary circunistancc which remained for more than twenty years. In the midst of a violent rapid, some sixty miles higher up the river, there stands a small i)illar-shaped rock, twenty-two feet hij^h sibove the " low-water mark." On its top, which is not more than ten or twelve feet scpiare, is, or rather was, a small birch-tree. Against this tree, upon the top of this isolated rock, a mast, a large pine-log, about four feet in diameter at the butt- end and about eighteen feet long, was left by that stupendous flood. I saw it myself in one of my excursions to some far off settlement in the neighbourhood. There were no other means by which the log could possibly have been deposited there. In the summer and autumn the communication was convenient enough by means of a ferry. A young man and his sister have kept this ferry several years, during which they have performed many acts of heroic benevo- lence, and have rescued numbers of their fellow-creatures from a watery grave. One of these had so much of perilous adventure in it, that I shall make no apology for giving some account of it, the more especially as I was myself one of the trembling and anxious spectat^ivs of the whole scene. A raft of timber on its way down the river to the nearest port was dashed to pieces by the violence of the rapids. There was the nsual number c " men upon it, all of whom, except two, were fortunate enough to get upon a few logs, which kept together, and were comparatively safe, whilst their two poor comrades were helplessly contending with the tumbling waves, almost within reach of them, but without their being able to afford them the slightest assistance. After a minute or two, and when one more would have been their last, a long oar, or sweep, be- longing to the wrecked raft, came floating by. They instantly seized it, and held on till they were carried down more than a mile, loudly calling for help as they went along ; but what aid could we render them ? No craft, none at least which were on the banks of the river, could live in such a boiling torrent as that ; for it was during one of the high spring freshets. But the ferryman was of a diflTerent opinion, and could ^ot brook the riiAi'. XXIII.] ANOTHER GRACE DARLING. 161 thought of tlieir (I vinj'- bcftire liis ovos without his niakiny: a siny-le effort to save them. " How couhl 1 stand idly huikiiii^ on," he said to me afterwards, '• witli a touj^ii ash oar in my hand, and a ti<^ht little craft at my feet, and hear their eries for help, and see them drowned?" He determined at all risks to try to reseue them from the fat«; whieh seemed to us inevitable. lie could not, however, go alone, and there was not another man on that side of the river within half a mile of him. His sister knew this, and courageously, like another Grace Darling", proposed at once to accompany him in his perilous adventure. From being so often on the water with her brother, she knew well how to handle an oar. Often, indeed, without him she had paddled a passenger across the ferry in her little canoe. He accepted her proposal, and we had the satisfaction of seeing the light punt put off from the shore opposite to that from which we were idly and uselessly looking on, and go gallantly over the surging torrent towards the sinking men. We feared, hov ever, that it would not be in time to save them, as their cries for help grew fainter and fainter, till each one, we thought, would have been their last. We siiw that the oar, with the drowning men clinging to it, was floating rapi lly down the middle of the stream, which in this particular locality is more tuan a quarter of a mile in breadth, and would, inevitably, in two or three minutes more be in the white water among the breakers, when their fate must be sealetl, and the boat, if it followed, be dashed to pieces among the rocks. This was the principal point of danger, and they had to run down within a most fearful proximity of it in ordcT to cross the course down which the drowning men were driftir.g, and, as they did so, to seize hold of them without losing their own headway ; for there was not time for that. They sucoefxled in shooting athwart the current, rapid as it was, just below the men. With breathless and painful anxiety we saw them execute this dangerous manoeuvre. We saw the ferryman lean over the side of his boat for a moment, as it passed them, while his sister backed water with her oar. " They are saved !" some one said, close behind me, in a whisper so deep and earnest that I started, and turned to look at the speaker ; when another, who heard him, exclaimed, " No, No ! they are gone ! they are lost ! the boat has left them." And L 3 P / 1 w 7 152 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. xxui. sure enough it had. But in an instant afterwards, just as we thought they were about to be driven into the fatal breakers, they turned, to our inexpressible delight, as if drawn by some invisible power (the rope the ferryman had attached to the oar was, indeed, invisible to us), and followed the boat. The ferryman and his sister had yet to pull a fearful distance for the time they had to do it in, to get out of that part of the current leading to the breakers. And they acromplished it. The man had the bow oar, and we could see- the tough ash bend like a willow wand as he stretched out to keep the head of the boat partially up the stream. His sister, too, " kept her own," and the little punt shot out rapidly into the comparatively quiet stream^ beyond the influence of that fearful current, which was rapidly driving them upon the breakers. When this was accomplished, our fears for the safety of the noble-hearted brother and sister were at an end, and we took a long breath ; it was, indeed, a relief to do so. Still we continued to watch their furth' r proceedings with the deepest interest. The moment they got into a less rapid current, which, they knew, led into comparatively still water, they ceased rowing, and allowed the punt to float down with it. The young ferry- man now drew up tie sweep alongside, and succeeded in getting the two unfortunate men into his boat. While he was doing this his sister went aft, and used her oar as a rudder to steer the boat. At the foot of the current, which they soon afterwards reached, there was no further danger. But we watched them still ; and we saw them row ashore, on their own side of the river. One of the poor fellows was so much exhausted that the ferryman had to carry him on his back to the nearest house, where he soon recovered. Twelve months after this took place I had the satisfaction of presenting to this worthy ferryman, in the presence of above five hundred men, a beautiful silver medallion, sent out to me by the Royal Humane Society, to which I had transmitted an account of the occurrence. Nor was the heroine of my story forgotten. A similar medallion was given to him for his sister. She could not, with propriety, be present herself, as it was the annual muster-day of the militia in that locality. lo- CHAP. XXIII.] ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY. 153 A concise account of the particulars of the transaction, beautifully engrossed on velhini, and signed by his Grace the Duice of Northumberland, as President of the Society, accompa- nied each medallion. I need scarcely add, that the old and widowed mother of these young people, who lives with them and is wholly dependent upon tiiem for lier support, was a proud woman that day. \ > ■ 5 m ■'■mM \ :4 ./f 154 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XXIV, CHAPTER XXIV. The Spring —The Aurora Borealis — A Dry Summer — Dreadful Conflagra- tions — Benevolent Contributions — Domestic Afflictions — Conclusion. The inhabitants of more temperate climates can neither under- stand nor appreciate the feelings of delight with which we welcome the first approach of Spring. After the whole face of the earth has been covered with snow to the depth ox two or three feet, during four or five long and weary months, no wonder if we hail with Joy the first glimpse of the green and smiling fields, the bursting buds and the sweet odorifercis blossoms. No wonder if we gather the earliest wild flowers with childlike and enthusiastic pleasure, and are enchanted with the thrilling music of the " woods and forests green." I love the spring. It harmonizes so perfectly with all my hopes of life and happiness, and peace both here and hereafter. And how many pleasing associations and events does it bring along witlrit. First in importance comes Easter, that great and glorious festival, so wisely and so appropriately celebrated during this vivifying and exhilarating season. Then, again, it is the line of demarcation between the two grand divisions of the year, for in this country we can hardly be said to have more than two, winter and summer : it is the harbinger of a change from all that is lifeless and gloomy, to the bright and glorious summer, when all nature is renewed in life and vigour. The Spring of this year was marked by one of those extraor- dinary exhibitions of the Aurora Borealis, which are seldom witnessed even in this country, and never in England. One evening wiien there wjis no moon, and just as the sun had set and the twilight was coming on, a bright light, like that which precedes the sun's rising, was seen in the east. This light, after remaining motionless for a few minutes, assumed a columnar appearance and ;i fiery red colour, and began to dance and VP. XXIV. onflagra- isioD. ■ under- lich we face of )r three )nder if 5 fields, s. No ike and ^ music all my reafter. bring eat and during tlie line ear, for in two, cm all immer, xtraor- seldom itin had ie that ' light, lumnar 36 and CHAP. XXIV.] AURORA BOREALIS— CONFLAGRATIONS. M^r^ flicker, and shoot np into the cloudless sky, like the flames from one of our mountains when on fire,* whilst a hissing noise was distinctly audible. Tiiis continued only for a few minutes, when other fires seemed to rise, one after another in quick succession, on either side till the horizon all around was in a blaze. Tiie liglit they emitted was beautiful and bright, so bright that one could see to read by it. The flames shot up their serpent tongues fiercer and higher till they approached the zenith, where they all met together, and formed what might have been compared, from its deep red colour, to a coronal of blood and fire. At lengtli all these rapid flickering motions cease^l, and al- though the light continued, it was motionless ; at the end of a couple of hours it gradually faded away. I was very much surprised the day following to find that nearly the whole neighbourhood had been in a dreadful state of fear and consternation. At first they tiiought the time had come " when the earth and all that is therein " was to be burnt up. And then, when the fires, as they suj)posed them to have been, were extinguished, and they saw and understood what it was that had thus frightened tiiem, they fancied it to be the portentous forerunner of some dire calamity — the cholera, perhaps, or another rebellion, or a war with the United States. This last supposition brought back many an old man's tale of the won- derful northern lights which were seen immediately before the great . '»rican war in 1776. and which the superstitious fears of the multitude turned into hosts of livinj^j beings fiercely con- tending in the sky. The dry and hot summer wliich succeeded was marked by several fearful and calamitous conflagrations. One very large * Many of the moantaans in this country are covered with dense forests. The leaves which fall e"^ry autumn accumulate, sometimrs for years, until •we have a particularly dry summer, when, somehow or other, either by acci- dent fir k'sigii. tiiev are always set on fire, and burn sometimes for several days The moostuns m one of the States of the neighbouring Republic are «i fire at this very moment while I am now writing, and have been burning fbr more than a week, and we can distinctly see the red glare in the sky above them, although, from their great distance, even the tops of the moun- tains themselves from whence the flames arise are beyond the limits of our horizon. f-'-'i m v>i r i'\ ir)6 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [chap. XXIV. I i town in the United States, near the frontier line, was almost totally consumed. A space of sixty acres of the most densely peopled portion of it became one mass of ruins. In one of our own small towns the church and about two hundred houses were burnt ; and in Quebec two thousand houses were destroyed, and twelve thousand persons reduced, in a few hours, to houseless beggary and destitution. In all the towns and villages, as well as in all the scattered settlements throughout this country, a great majority of the houses are built of wood ; they are consequently, in this dry climate, very liable to take fire, and, in a long drought, such as occurred during this summer, they become so inflammable, tiiat the slightest spark of fire, even from a pipe (and nine people out often of the whole population smoke always), is sufficient to set a whole country side in a blaze ; so that the wonder is, not tiiat such fearful conflagrations should happen once in every ten or fifteen years, but that they should not occur much more frequently. The [)ublic, both here and at home, readily and generously re- sponde8 PHILIP MUSGRAVE. [CJIAP. XX I fear that it would consist only of a wearisome detail of affli( ing and distressing incidents, arising* partly out of my reduc circumstances, and partly from the infirmities of age, whicl feel are gradually creeping upon me. 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