VeRK€LEy\ LIBRARY I UNIVElSfTT OF j CALIFORNIA J Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/bemockedofdestinOOmcchrich AENEAS McCHARLES, Aet 28 Autobiography in Brief I have been thwarted, disappointed, bemocked of destiny ever since my boy- hood days; nearly all the desires of my heart have been denied me ; and, except for a few short years, the gates of this world's happiness have been inexorably shut against me. But, nevertheless, I have contrived, in one way or another, to snatch from fate perhaps more of the real wine of life than the most of men, and I can still laugh and chat and enjoy myself whenever I chance to meet a congenial friend. I have also succeeded, after a long and desperate struggle, in making a lucky strike in mining at last. But at my age now, and with the most of my loved ones in the grave, it is only the wished for come too late. — Extract from a private letter. Date, July 2nd, igo2. Bemocked of Destiny The Actual Struggles and Experiences of a Canadian Pioneer, and the Recollect tions of a Lifetime By AENEAS McCHARLES What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun 7—Ecclesiastes. Work is the mission of man in this earth. — Carlyle. Author's Edition TORONTO WILLIAM BRIGGS 1908 Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand nine hundred and eight, by William Briggs, at the Department of Agriculture. F1033 A SACRED MOTIVE I BEGAN to write these simple notes of my past life, not with any view to publication at all, but for a private, sacred purpose. My son and only living child was scarcely two years old when his mother died, and of course he would not remember anything about her. Then he has been brought up far away from me, and for over twenty years now we have seldom been together for any length of time. I, there- fore, naturally wished to leave him a short memorial of her, and also a more detailed account of my own life. But, possibly, certain parts of the narrative, if pre- served, may be found to possess a little historical in- terest at some future time, as affording true, if slight, glimpses of early pioneer life in different parts of Canada during the latter half of the nineteenth cen- tury, if for nothing else. A. McCharles. Sudbury, Ont., January 1st, 1901. 030 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. BY THE ATLANTIC SHORE. PAei Birth and parentage — Early home life — My first tramp — Going to school — A remarkable man — A true ghost story — Queer neighbours — The fulling bee — Simple and hospitable — The christening night . 9 CHAPTER II. LEAVING FOR THE WEST. My first work — En route — In the backwoods — My second teacher — A brief glimpse — An odd character — A long walk — Fruitful incantations —A log temple — The heroic side — A veteran pioneer — My sister Mary 21 CHAPTER III. STARTING OUT INTO THE WORLD. An irreparable loss — Quitting the farm — School-master- ing — A dreadful night— A warning from heaven — His unpardonable sin — An innocent abroad — On the wing — The land of Montezuma — A startling incident — Ontario at its best — A great change ... 40 6 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. A SHORT MARRIED LIFE. PAGK Joy and sorrow ........ 60 CHAPTER V. ON THE FLOWERY PRAIRIE. To the North- West — A relic of Burns — An Ayrshire lad — A desperate fight — A grand man — The beautiful prairie — The Red River cart — The Indians of the plains — About the buffalo — A lost art — The Mound Builders of Manitoba — The musk ox — An avoidable rebellion — Up Salt Creek 64 CHAPTER VI. AN EASTWARD MOVE. Under two flags — The oldest canal — A unique heirloom Not a legend — The battle of Seven Oaks — Two no- table Indians — My noblest friend — An historical sketch ......... 83 CHAPTER VII. IN THE SUDBURY DISTRICT. Roughing it again — Odd incidents — The queen of the camp— My right hand man — A sample trip — Narrow escapes — The luckiest man — By the camp fire — Life in a den — All sorts of visitors — A flying trip — Had heard of her buns 93 CHAPTER VIII. THE BOER WAR AND OTHER THINGS. The reasons why — A suggestive contrast — The South African struggle — Dream of the north— Writing under difficulties 117 CONTENTS. 7 CHAPTER IX. PORRIDGE AND THE PEN. PAeB (A short essay on Scottish literature) .... 129 CHAPTER X, THE GREAT MYSTERY OF LIFE. At a glance — A natural mistake — A new brand — Good advice — She never came — About some books — Dis- abled awhile ........ 141 CHAPTER XI. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. The world gone daft — Whither are we drifting ? — The school-master abroad — Caper sauce — The hero of Hudson's Bay 153 CHAPTER XII. IN THE WILD WOODS. A marvellous engineer — A wise bird — With the scientists — A hard neighbour — A demoralizing industry — A haunted place — A talk under the trees — A man and a mine — A sample of Irish wit — The trail of the serpent ......... 165 CHAPTER XIII. THE TYRANNY OF RELIGIOUS CREEDS. Spiritual bondage — Two of a kind — In Vanity Fair — The right stuff — Her tragical end — A sad case — The Ottawa fire — A wild goose chase — The usual toll — As to pioneer life — A wise young man — A correct guess — A remarkable woman ..... 189 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV. SOME FRAUDS OF THE PRESENT DAY. PAGE Specialists and quacks — After many years— The friend of man — An awful winter — Vanity and waste — Faking the public — A real Highlander — Lights gone out — War news 208 CHAPTER XV. MAKING A SUMMER HOME. A new experience — Not inspired prophets — A weird echo — Woman's work — Sleep and dreams — Popular fallacies — A wise man — Not a cheerful tale — A new rosary 222 Copy of Will 240 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY CHAPTER I. BY THE ATLANTIC SHORE. Oh, little did my mither ken, The day she cradled me, The lands I was to travel in. Or the death I was to dee. Birth and Parentage. On the margin of a leaf in the old family Bible, long since worn out, I remember seeing, in father's poor handwriting, that I was born on the 17th day of October, 1844. A very small event, hardly worth recording, but which took place in the quiet, pic- turesque valley of Middle River, Cape Breton, N. S. Parents true Highland Scotch on both sides, and I can speak the Gaelic yet fairly well. My two grand- fathers had crossed the Atlantic many years before then, but whether at the same time or not I cannot say, and settled on bush farms in the Island of Cape Breton, not over twenty miles apart, I should think; father's people near St. Ann's, and mother's people on Middle Eiver. My great grandfather on mother's side had also 9 10 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. come out with them, and he must have been a very old man. For he had wielded his broad claymore at the battle of CuUoden, in 1746, wearing the white cockade in a hopeless cause; and mother told us one thing about him that burnt itself into my young mind. In the wild impetuous onslaught of the Highland clans on that fateful day his right arm had got peppered black with gunpowder, and remained so for the rest of his life. This little historical fact clearly proves that a part at least of Prince Charles' army had fought at very close quarters to the enemy's firing line. She also said that in showing his arm to any one he would only remark that *4t was a hot day when that was done, ' ' — ^the brave old rustic hero. Early Home Life. My parents began their married life on Middle Eiver, but moved in a few years to Baddeck River, and settled on a farm about three miles from the town of the same name. It was a poor enough place, all but the river front, which was excellent hay and pasture land, called interval there. But we did not depend entirely on the proceeds of the farm, as father was a carpenter, and worked at his trade part of the time. Besides, a little money went a long way there in those days. Except tea and tobacco no luxuries were thought of, and so much the better for us. We had good wholesome oatmeal porridge twice a day as a rule, for breakfast and a late supper before going to bed. I liked to scrape the pot best, in a corner by myself, and sitting on the floor, with the milk poured BY THE ATLANTIC SHOEE. 11 into the pot. The bread was almost invariably thin oatcakes, baked hard on a slanting board in front of the open fireplace, and flour bread was looked upon as quite a treat. We killed a beef animal every fall, and also put in a barrel or two of Labrador herrings that would fry in their own fat. Then, in summer, we had fresh cod and other fish. In short, we lived very well, if on plain fare. We wore homespun clothes, and father made our shoes. The only pocket money I ever got the first ten years of my life was a big penny that mother gave me one day when some other boys and I were going to Baddeck town (a mere little hamlet then), to see the launching of a two-masted schooner that father had been working at. I very likely bought fish hooks with it, as all the rivers and streams there were full of speckled trout, and I used to catch many a gad of them, oftenest with a string and a bent pin. There were no bank bills in circulation there at that time, and whatever little money the people had was in gold and silver coins. But a neighbour's son, who had been working one summer in the United States, brought back a $1 bill when he came home, and which was regarded as a great curiosity in its way. My First Tramp. In my fifth year, if I remember right, I was taken to Middle River by my clever aunt ^* Little Ann'' (mother's youngest sister), who lived with us most of the time, to stay at grandfather's place for a while, but I do not know why. It was my first long journey from home, perhaps eight or ten miles, and I was very 12 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. tired before we got to the end of it. We had to cross a little mountain range, and whenever I began to lag behind my auntie would induce me with some promise or story to make a fresh exertion, as she well knew how. For she had a happy way of getting along with children, but it was ordained that she should have none of her own, and her fate was an unfortunate marriage late in life. She was not a mother, but she had a mother's heart. All the incidents of the trip are as clear in my mind yet as on that very day just fifty years ago. Towards evening we called at a farm house near the roadside, where we got something to eat from a big good- natured woman who laughed and talked both at once, and was very friendly to us. But my greatest surprise was in seeing for the first time a mulley or hornless cow, (mulley, from moal^ a Gaelic word, meaning bald), in the barnyard at this place, as I thought she was an overgrown calf. It was after dark when we arrived at grandfather's house, and they put me to bed all alone in a large empty room up stairs, which was new and strange to me, and I missed my little brothers and sisters. There were no children in the house, nor close by, and I had therefore no young companions to play with. But I soon found a good swamp to pick gum in and the best places in the river to fish for trout. My two uncles were unmarried men, and working on the farm at home. One of them, John, was a little gruff and strict with me, but the other, Eory, took my part every time, and was always very good to me. BY THE ATLANTIC SHOEE. 13 Going to School. Sometime iu the following winter father came and took me home, with a smart young horse and light sleigh, to go to school, which is a memorable event in every boy's life. The schoolhouse was on the next farm to ours, and had just been built, on the co- operative principle. It stood on the edge of a beautiful little spruce grove on the slope of a rising hill, but was a mere log hut with an ugly chimney of round field stones on the outside at the one end of it, and the inside furnishings consisted of a few rough benches, a desk and a tawse of seven tails. It is George Eliot, I think, who says that people are not supposed to be large in proportion to the houses they live in, but the disparity in this case was the other way. Our first teacher, and the only one in my time, was a tall long-legged fellow, and his clothes were of the most primitive fashion, and all too short for him. But he was very kind, diligent, and anxious to teach us all he knew, which was not much, and I have still a very grateful recollection of him for the special pains he took to instruct me. He wrote an exceedingly neat round hand with the quill, for steel pens had not come into use there then; nor did we have an unlimited supply of paper to waste, and we had to cross-write all our copies. Even candle light at home had to be economised, and one night as I lay on my back on the floor near the corner of the chim- ney, with my head towards the fire, learning my lessons for the next day, a burning stick fell off the *'dogs,'' and sent a shower of red-hot coals all over 14 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. my face. But a little goose oil cured it in a few days, and no lasting marks were left. Fortunately, there was no doctor near us, or my face would, in all proba- bility, have been disfigured for life! Indeed, I never saw a doctor there, and even women on the most critical occasions were attended to only by their own sex. But some of the ^ ^ auld wives ' ' knew how, and a mishap was a rare thing. A Remarkable Man. We had no libraries, newspapers or other agencies, as now, for the ' ' dissemination of useful knowledge, ' ' and my early reading was confined to the Bible, Shorter Catechism (under compulsion), a few school books, and a volume of denunciatory criticisms of the Presbyterian clergy in particular and the world in general, by a dissenting preacher in the adjoining parish of St. Ann's. His name was Norman McLeod, and he was a man of wonderful ability in his way. He had a large number of devoted followers, who almost worshipped him, though he ruled them in worldly and spiritual matters alike in the most despotic fashion. For one thing, no woman, young or old, was ever allowed to wear a bonnet or any other finery in his church. But some of the girls used to outwit him. They would leave their gay head gear in the woods or at a neighbour's house near the church, and wear plain black silk handkerchiefs on their heads during the service. He lived on a farm, and never took any remuneration for his pastoral work. He finally moved to New Zealand, and many of his adher- BY THE ATLAl^TIC SHOKE. 15 ents loyally accompanied him there. They built a sea- going ship themselves, and went in a body, as a sort of Pilgrim Fathers colony, with him at their head as guide, philosopher and friend in more than one sense. A True Ghost Story. At home one night in winter we were startled by a sudden knock at the door, as of some one wishing to hurry in. My little brothers and I were playing about the room at the time, and I ran to open the door. But as soon as I lifted the latch a big, rough-bearded old man fell in on the floor, and fainted away ! Of course we were greatly alarmed at first, and thought he was dead. But on recognizing him our fears quickly vanished, as it was secretly well known that he used to see ghosts, and had no doubt seen one on his way up the road that night. He was given some hot punch and supper, w^hich put him all right again in a short time. But we could not persuade him to stay till morning, and though he had a horse and sleigh, my sister Mary and I were sent with him for company to his daughter 's place about a mile up the river. I have travelled since then over the greater part of North America, but that was by far the hardest trip I have ever made. It was after midnight, and we had to return home alone. The road lay along a dismal swamp part of the way, and, worst of all, we had to pass close by the new school house (built when the old hut got too small), and in which supernatural lights were often seen after dark ! But we ran as fast as we could leg it, and never stopped to look behind 16 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. us until we had safely got over our own line fence, which was the same to us as crossing the bridge was to Tarn O'Shanter in his famous race for life. Now, strange as it may seem, this trivial incident caused the most serious apprehension in the whole neighbourhood when it became known. Some one there was going to die soon, beyond any dispute, and all sorts of conjectures were made over many a cup of tea as to who it might be. But in the course of a week or two an old man down the river dropped off unexpectedly, which put an end to all forebodings and fears. Queer Neighbours. We had the most peculiar assortment of neighbours around us. One was a little insignificant morsel of a man, but as full of empty pride and vanity as Mrs. Poyser's bantam cock that thought the sun rose so early in the morning to hear him crow ! For instance, he would never leave his bedroom without first putting on high-heeled shoes so as to make him look taller by an inch or two. He had been made a local magistrate, only God knows why, and everybody who met him on the road after that was expected to uncover and bow to him. If any of the school boys neglected to do so he would complain to their parents about it. Girls and women always curtsied to their superiors then, but now a man has to lift his hat to every woman, young or old, who recognizes him on the street, and every time he meets her, too, if a dozen times in the same day. What next ? Perhaps to wink. Three of the others, all old soldiers, had each a BY THE ATLANTIC SHOEE. 17 wooden leg, but they were excellent hard-working people, and managed in spite of their physical dis- abilities to get along on their farms very well. A little farther up the valley there was a queer specimen of the human race. He was very small in every way, and all wind and gab. Then he was a regular tobacco eater, and as the home supply often gave out he was a borrowing pest to those around him. Long after- wards, in the county of Huron, Ontario, where he and his family had migrated to, one of his neighbours, who, like many of the Cape Breton men, was a natural-born wag, objected to his taking a plot beside him when laying out a new burying ground, and for the novel reason, — ^^You would be borrowing tobacco forever from me ! " That settled it. The Fulling Bee. There were no woollen mills nor cloth factories in our part of Cape Breton at that time. The women of the family sheared the sheep, washed and carded the wool, spun and dyed the yarn, and often did the weaving as well. My mother and aunt were specially expert at such work. They made fine beautiful fab- rics for gowns, soft flannels for shirts and underwear of all kinds, heavy cloths for suits for the men and boys, and the best blankets in the world. They also did their own dressmaking and most of the tailoring for the family, too. Just think of it, ye city dames, who complain of your servant girls. Except a wedding now and again, the fulling bee was the greatest frolic of the year. About a dozen of the farmers' girls would gather, usually in the after- 18 BEMOCKED OF DESTIJSTY. noon, at the house where the fulling was to be done. The web of cloth, after being damped with water, was laid out on a rough board table in a big loop or coil, and for several hours the girls, seated around the table, would rub the cloth in a very dexterous way on the rough surface of the boards, to give a nap or finish to it. They always sang appropriate Gaelic songs as a sort of marching music to the motion of their arms. When nearly done, a mad freak would seize the girls and the web would be lifted clean off the table and pounded down again at a great rate, the singing quick- ened to keep time. In the evening the young men of the neighbourhood would come to the dance that took place after the fulling bee in most houses, and to see the girls home. Simple and Hospitable, I do not know how it may be now, but in my boy- hood days the people of Nova Scotia were extremely hospitable in their own homes, and even the way- faring stranger would meet with a cordial welcome at almost every door. The country people in Cape Breton were mostly poor, but there was no want. They were simple-hearted, contented with what they had, and, with few exceptions, every man's word was as good as his bond. Neither locks had they on their doors, nor bars on their windows, But their dwellings wore open as day and the hearts of the owners ; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance. In one family near us there were several fine strap- ping young men, but they only had one jacket fit to BY THE ATLANTIC SHOKE. 19 wear in going to town, and if one of them happened to be away none of the others could leave home until he came back. It was rather inconvenient, but per- haps after all the true philosophy of life is to have as few possessions as need be, and take the world easy. We are all nomads now, and travel too much. In the Scotch settlements neighbours visited each other a great deal, and especially in the long winter evenings. The Gaelic name for such friendly inter- course is to go and ^^ceilith," pronounced kaley, a distinctly social word. Calls, entertainments and parties are meaningless in comparison to it. There was usually a jug of liquor in every house, not whiskey then, but Jamaica rum, and most of the treating was done at home. The ''cup of kindness'' eulogised by Burns was a very different thing from a hurried drink in the bar-room of a hotel. In nearly all farm operations the women helped the men in the field. The hay was cut with the scythe, and the oats and barley with the sickle. "Wheat would grow there, but an insect called the weevil always destroyed the grain in the ear before getting ripe. The threshing was done with the old-fashioned flail. There was very little gardening, except a patch of potatoes and other vegetables. At Hallowe'en the boys would lead the girls blindfolded out to the kail yard, and each girl had to pull up the first cabbage head that she touched with her hand in groping around for it. If it had a short runty stalk her husband would be a small man, and if a long stalk he would be a tall man, and so on. They firmly believed in all sorts of charms and spells on that night, and young 20 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. and old in every Scotch household had a merry time of it. The wiseacres may sneer at such things, but do we not all want to pry into the future? and the Vicar of Wakefield says he ^^ never was much dis- pleased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more happy'' — good, sensible man. The Christening Night. There was a little frame church up the river two or three miles, but for some reason or other the minister who christened the most of us had to be brought from Middle River for this purpose. When the appointed night came, a dozen or more of boys and girls, mostly boys, from several families, were gathered into one house with our Sunday clothes on. We stood in a row in the middle of a large room, like a class in school, the minister in front of us, and the fathers and mothers sitting around the sides of the room. We were first examined on the Shorter Cate- chism, being all of Presbyterian faith. Of course we did not understand what any of the questions really meant, and we had simply to repeat the answers we had previously learnt by rote. In our family we had been reared from infancy under the strictest Cal- vinistic discipline, and though it may have been too narrow and severe in some respects, yet it was far better than the loose home training of the present day. That is one thing I am always thankful to heaven for, birch gad and all the rest of it. But parents should give names to children that they (the children) would like when they grow up. I never liked my own name. CHAPTER II. LEAVING FOR THE WEST, My First Work. From 1850 to 1860 quite a number of people in Cape Breton were induced to move to Upper Canada, now Ontario, and in the summer of 1855 father sold out, and prepared to embark with a party of others for the new promised land in the west. As the two largest families in our settlement were leaving, the school was closed, and the long teacher paid off. But the boat we were to go on could not be got ready to start at the expected time, and I was appointed to keep the school going till we left, some three weeks or so, as I was the most profound scholar in the place. I had gone through the arithmetic from beginning to end; I could parse in grammar, and actually write a letter to be sent by post! I was only ten years of age then, but got on all right, as children there were obedient to parents and teachers, and would do what they were told. I need hardly say that I was paid nothing for it, and I have often thought that this first experience on my own account was indicative of the way my labours have been rewarded the most of my life. 21 22 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. En Route. After sad partings of relatives and friends we were huddled on board, and set sail at last, in the midst of a pouring rain storm, which was looked upon as a bad omen. And, sure enough, before we got out of Bras d'or Bay the boat grounded on a sand bar, and we had to stay there till the rising of the tide. She was a wretched tub of a coasting schooner, and it took us over two weeks to reach Quebec. We had about a hundred souls aboard, with no accommoda- tion except a double row of temporary bunks in the hold below, and the only privacy for women was secured by hanging blankets and shawls in front of some of the bunks. The cooking was done on deck, where two open fireplaces had been made by filling a couple of large boxes with stones and earth. "We encountered a very bad storm in the Gulf, and almost gave up for lost. Some prayed, others cried, and a good many were so seasick that they did not care whether the boat went down or not. We were only two or three days out of sight of land, and the scenery coming up the St. Lawrence River was more than interesting to me. But the French habitants on its picturesque shores remain the same as their fathers before them in every respect ; and it is a very singular fact that the beauties of nature — as exhibited by mountains, hills and glens; leafy forests and green fields; rivers, lakes and running brooks; and the flowery spring and fruitful autumn — never seem to have the least refining influence on the peasantry of any country in the world. LEAVING FOE THE WEST. 23 From Quebec we took steamer to Montreal, and another steamer from Montreal to Hamilton, calling at several points on Lake Ontario on the way up. At Hamilton the party got split up into several groups, some going by one route, and some by another, but all bound for different points in Western Ontario, as it is now called. We and a few others took the Great Western Railway to London — my first trip on the train. We slept in the station in London all night, and I watched the telegraph operator through a side window for a long time, wondering what on earth he was doing. From infancy my curiosity has always been on the alert, and got me into trouble more than once. Next day father hired a freighter with a team of horses and a heavy waggon to take us to Goderich by the ^^ Huron road,'' which was frightfully rough and muddy then. It took us two days and a half to get through, and the charge was $23. The fine Huron district was only being settled up at that time, but the small clearings along the road looked very pretty with the potatoes and pease in full bloom. All our worldly effects were piled up on the one waggon, and the women and children sat on top. The first day a heavy rain came on, and we stopped a while at a noisy, crowded, dirty tavern near the big ravine about a mile north of where the village of Lucan is now. Some distance farther on we slept over night on a shake- down in the stable-barn of a more decent place, and cooked our meals on a little fire by the road side. There was another waggon load of the party with us, 24 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. including some cousins of ours, and we were all as cheerful as could be under the circumstances, and made light of the troubles of our semi-camp life. At Eattenbury's Corners (now Clinton) we turned west to Goderich, and the other waggon and its occupants kept on towards the north. From Goderich we went to Kincardine in a small open boat, keeping close to the shore. Not a house was to be seen until we got opposite Pine Point. My sister Mary took very ill, I think from exposure to the sun, for the day was very hot, and I could see that mother ^s heart was sad and apprehensive, though we were nearing our destination and soon to meet rela- tives and old friends who had come out to the County of Bruce a year or two before them. In the Backwoods. After spending a few months in Kincardine to little purpose, father bought a bush farm in the township of Huron, and thereby hangs a tale; but which is too long and miserable to be told in full. Father was not much of a farmer, and my eldest brother and I were too young and weak at the start — he only thirteen and I eleven — for the terrible work of clearing the land. The inevitable result was that in the next seven years we both almost broke our backs, and were physi- cally used up before we became of age. It was a cruel fate. As a mere instance of the hardships and privations of the early settlers in the backwoods in those days, I often saw the Lewis women in the next settlement LEAVIlSra FOE THE WEST. 25 to ours trudging all the way to Kincardine, ten to fifteen miles, in the hot summer time, each carrying a two-bushel bag of hardwood ashes on her back to sell at the potash works there, so as to get a little salt at ten cents a pound to eat with their potatoes at home. But they read their Gaelic Bibles as they rested their burdens on the stumps and logs by the roadside. When the weather was too wet or stormy to work outside, being handy with tools, we used to make shingles, ox-yokes and bows, cradles (to cut the grain with), snaths, rakes, churns, pails, tubs, milkpans and many other things, in the barn or a corner of the house. Our cxpertness in this way was an advantage, as it enabled us to have more conveniences and imple- ments about us. But we had to do too much of it for others — for nothing of course. Many a night, after chopping hard all day in the woods, some one of the neighbours would come in with a big stick of rock elm for me to make an axe handle of it for him before going to bed. My Second Teacher. We usually tried to snatch a month or two out of the winter to go to school, three miles down the line, in what is called the Lochalsh settlement. The teacher there the first years was a married woman, whose hus- band was a very well informed man, but not inclined to set the heather on fire at hard work. Her name was Christina McLennan, and it fell to my lot more than a quarter of a century afterwards to write an 26 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. obituary notice of her for the press, and from which I may take the following brief extract, — ^^Her education was rather limited, but she was a painstaking and effective teacher, with a special fac- ulty for interesting children in their studies. Only a few elementary subjects were taught in our common schools then, but they were taught in a simple, thor- ough and rational way, and what we learnt there was of some practical benefit to us in after life. * ' She taught the school, and took care of a growing young family at the same time. In subsequent years, her eldest son, Findlay, was one of the brightest gradu- ates of Queen's University, and a young man of great promise. But he studied too hard, and now reposes in an early but honoured grave near the beautiful spot named after him on the north shore of the Georgian Bay, and where, I presume, the mother has also been laid to rest beside her beloved son.'' A Brief Glimpse. We had very good neighbours in our new home. People were helpful to each other in those early days, and though it was all work and no play, we were not unhappy, but far otherwise, as we had few cares, and the doings of the outside world did not concern us. Politics were hardly ever spoken of, and nobody wanted to get into a government office. We had the best of health right along, the little clearings were getting larger every year, and we always had great crops. For instance, one year we took over forty bushels of fall wheat to the acre off a small field of LEAYIISrG FOR THE WEST. 27 newly-cleared land, and at least one-fourth of the ground must have been covered with stumps. Then wheat was selling at $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel at that time. Goderich was our nearest market, twenty-three miles, and the settlers had only ox teams at first. Two or more went together as a rule, taking an axe to cut any fallen trees off the road. We would leave in the afternoon, and travel all night, so as to get into God- erich at the opening of the market early next morning. The road was fairly good in winter, but there were several very high and steep river banks on it to go down and up. After disposing of our little loads, and buying the few things we needed to take home, we returned the following afternoon and night. There is a Highland superstition against burying any one who takes his own life along with others in a graveyard, and particularly within sight of navigable waters, as shipwrecks and other disasters are sure to follow in that case on the adjacent coast. It was prob- ably for this reason that a poor fellow who had committed suicide in the Lakeshore settlement was buried right in the middle of the roadway there (before it had been cut out), and we generally made the oxen run at a lively gait in passing this dreaded spot after dark. An Odd Character. We had two or three joking, light-hearted men in our settlement, but only one real character, old John Mclnnes by name. He could talk in Gaelic with marvellous facility, drink mountain dew with similar 28 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. ease whenever he could get it, tell all sorts of laugh- able stories, and also make a prayer that would scare a thief. * There Avere no churches nor preachers in our part of the backwoods then, and religious meet- ings were held in the school house, by old country elders and others. It was customary in winter for many of the men to wear stogans, made of the untanned shanks of raw hides, and on one occasion when John, though not in high favour with the truly good, was called upon in an emergency to lead in prayer, it is related that among other original things said by him, he besought the Almighty, in reference to the broad way that leads to destruction, to grant that the track of his own moccasin might never be seen on it! (Nach hi larg mo mhogish fhein ann.) A Long Walk. Some of the poor settlers, after putting in their little crops in the spring, would go away for the sum- mer months to work on the Grand Trunk Railway, and the women and children would burn off and clean up the bit of additional clearing that had been chopped down the previous winter. In the Lewis settlement back of us the most of the people were of this class. They were very poor, and unused to the woods, but honest, persevering, and devoutly submissive to the will of heaven in all things. Very few of their original cabins had any floor except the bare ground, with *In Gaelic, — Agus dheanadh e urningh a cliuireadh feagal air an dearg mhearlach. The last two words have no equivalent in English; literally a red thief, but meaning a confirmed, out and out thief. LEAVING FOE THE WEST. 29 only a bundle of straw and some rugs in a corner for a bed. One of them, John McArthur, living on the 5th concession of the township of Huron, when work- ing in St. Mary 's one summer, got a letter from home informing him that his wife was very sick. He walked to Stratford that night, and from there to his home next day, over sixty miles. He told me himself that he trotted most of the way, and was in sight of his own shanty and clearing just as the setting sun lit up the tops of the trees on an opposite hill. In a certain family in the same neighbourhood sev- eral boys had been born, but they all died in infancy one after another. The loss of their children was naturally a great sorrow to the bereaved parents, but they did not know what to do. At last, however, they secretly consulted a wise old woman in that settlement, who had the reputation of being a witch, and was therefore supposed to be in close alliance with the devil. But not so at all, quite the reverse. She advised them to change the name of the next boy to McDonald, his mother's family name, instead of his father's sur- name, which they did, and called him Donald McDon- ald — the double name, I presume, to make sure — and he lived, and grew up to be a man, and for aught I know is living yet. David Martin, on the next conces- sion, got his first name in the same way, it having been an unknown name in the family before then, and he lived after all his elder brothers had died at an early age, and is a prosperous farmer there to this day. Very strange and incredible, some may say, but it 30 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. was only a peculiar illustration of the mysterious influence of a mother's mind upon her children, even before they are born. The so-called old witch under- stood such things, as did Jacob long ago. Fruitful Incantations. For miles on one side of us the people were all Highland Scotch, and on the other side, English, Irish and Scotch, promiscuously mixed up. In the Lochalsh settlement there was a couple who had no children, though married for some years. He was a big stalwart man, very pious, but subject to melancholy spells now and again ; and she was a tall, fine-looking woman with the bloom of youth still on her face. But one night, a mile or so up the creek from this couple's home, an old bachelor living on a farm heard a cow bell in his oat field, and got up to drive her out. It was past midnight, and to his astonishment he noticed a light in a neighbour's house. Fearing that someone there was sick, he went over to see. But in passing the front window of the house (no blinds then), he saw an ^^unco sight" that made him stand back and stare. In the middle of the room our melan- choly friend was sitting over a tub of steaming hot w^ater, stripped naked, his wife rubbing him down, and the old Lewis witch we have already heard of repeating magical incantations over his head. But the sequel is the most surprising part of the matter; for inside of a year from that night the formerly childless wife had twins, and quite a large family in course of time. LEAVING FOE THE WEST. 31 A Log Temple. The first church in the township of Huron was built by the poor Lewis people, and it was such a unique edifice that its fame went abroad in the land. It was built of hewed logs and had eight corners out- side and four inside, or twelve in all. The early settlers did not believe in mortgaged churches; in fact, no one there in those days had ever heard of such a thing, and the Lewis people built this big church with their own labour, and almost without the expenditure of any money. They cut down hemlock trees (no pine there) in the woods around, hewed them on two sides, and then hauled them out through the deep snow. In one case, the man's wife went ahead of the oxen with a sheaf of oats to make them pull right, as her husband did not know how to drive very well. People nowadays want cushioned seats in church, but the seats in this church, as in all churches in the backwoods at first, were made of split basswood slabs, resting on a big log at each end, and some of the old women on crowded days would carry in blocks of wood to sit on in the aisles during the long service, often three or four hours at a stretch. But even this big church was too small for the large audiences at sacrament time, which was the great religious gath- ering of the year, and lasted five whole days, from Thursday morning till Monday evening. Outside people came from far and near, and most of the meet- ings had to be held in a hardwood grove near by. Every house in the neighbourhood was open and free 32 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. to visitors then, and though the chief interest was in the religious services, there was also a good deal of pleasant social talk and entertainment as well in many of the houses. On one of these occasions I chanced to be passing through there, and called at a house not far from the church for a drink of water. A smart young girl opened the door, and invited me to walk in and take a seat while she went to the spring for a pail of fresh water. A number of old Highland women were sitting on the edge of the beds at the far end of the room, and one of them said to the others, — ^'Some of the young folks are getting so proud now they won't let on that they can speak the Graelic any more. Who knows but this young man can speak it, too. ' ' I tried to keep on a straight face, and to interrupt this embar- rassing talk, I asked the man of the house about the state of the road ahead of me. Then he turned to the old women and said, — ^^ There is not a word of Gaelic in his head, his English is so hard!'' (Meaning it has such a clear ring.) I had to make for the door or laugh right out, for my Gaelic was much better than theirs at that time. The Heroic Side. Some one has said that the life of the humblest indi- vidual, if properly recorded, would be of interest to all men. Then the history of Canada so far is mainly the history of the early settler; but it has not been written yet, and probably never will be. His life work was commonplace enough in many respects, but LEAVING FOE THE WEST. 33 there was also a very heroic side to it. For a man, and especially a poor immigrant with a young family and an empty purse, required to have indomitable pluck, self-reliance and hope to go into the backwoods forest before the era of railways, or in fact roads of any kind, and then go through the awful work of clearing a bush farm and making a home. The most of the settlers around us were immigrants of this description, and who had crossed the Atlantic in wretched sailing vessels that took from three to four months to make the trip. Such a mode of travel- ing would have been trying enough under ordinary circumstances, but what must it have been when the cholera or ship fever broke out on board in mid-ocean without a doctor, or medicine, or help of any kind except what they could render each other? Many families were broken up. Take one case. John McRae left Scotland with a wife and five children, two girls and three boys, but the first work he had to do in Canada was to dig his wife's grave at the quarantine station on the Island of Orleans, below Quebec, which was a severe trial on arriving in a strange land. He also had to leave the two girls in the hospital in Mont- real, and one of them he never saw again. She died there. But hushing down his sorrow in his own manly heart, he resolutely pushed on to the township of Ash- field, in the County of Huron, and went to work to make a home in the bush for himself and the rest of the children, and by steady persistent industry and the help of the boys he got on remarkably well. He lived to be over ninety years of age, but retained all 3 34 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. his faculties, and was able to do chores about the place to the end. He did not talk much of religion, but he piously read his Gaelic Bible, and in his daily life and otherwise he literally walked with God, if ever any man did in this world. The last time I saw him was on a stormy winter day. I drove up the ^'side line'' by the farm, and in walking from the barn to the house I met him shovelling the snow off the road in the lane. When I asked him what he was doing out on such a day, he answered, — '^You don't come so often but I might have a path open for you to the house." Margaret, the surviving daughter, got well, and came on after them, alone and penniless. Nor did she know what part of Western Ontaro they had gone to. But the kind immigration agent in Toronto — I wish I knew his name — gave her a free ticket to Wood- stock and some pocket money. From Woodstock she walked most of the way to Ashfield, over one hundred miles, and afterwards was twice married and raised two families of her own, — the brave girl. One of the sons, Duncan McEae, staid with his father on the old homestead after the others had left, and was a man of the noblest qualities of heart and mind. He did not know the meaning of envy, malice or uncharitableness of any kind, and was by nature so friendly, generous, straight-forward and honour- able in every way. But the more he helped those in want around him the more he seemed to prosper, and he had the best farm on the line. There was a rare cordiality in the pleasant, sincere welcome that every- LEAVING FOE THE WEST. 35 body got at his door, and no man could be more hospi- table and social by '^his ain fireside." That settlement will never see his like again. A close relationship was formed in time between our two families by the marriage of Duncan to my good-hearted sister Sarah. She looked after the old man's comfort with more than a daughter's care, and they all lived together in the most perfect harmony that I have ever known in such a case. But the three of them now lie in eternal rest, side by side, in the little graveyard on the next farm, and within sight of their once happy and cheerful home. A Veteran Pioneer. If it is true, as Dean Swift says, that whoever makes two blades of grass or two ears of corn grow on a spot of ground where only one grew before deserves better of mankind than the whole race of politicians put together, then ^^old Murdoch McLen- nan, ' ' as he was called, has done far more for Canada than all the public men of his time. For in his day he homesteaded as a pioneer no less than six different times, which is something that perhaps no other man has ever done in America or anywhere else. He was born in Scotland, but came out to Nova Scotia with his parents when a mere boy, and helped his father clear- the old homestead in Pictou county, where the family had settled. On growing up to manhood he went to Cape Breton, and got a farm of his own on Boularderie Island, by the shore of a beau- tiful arm of the sea. There he was married, and raised 36 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. a fine intelligent family of four boys and three girls. He was personally a tall well-built man, of true High- land type, and his head and face had a most striking resemblance to Gladstone's portraits. His wife was a thrifty, active, industrious little woman, neat and plump and very good-looking, even to the end of her life. In 1852 or thereabouts, he made a trip to Upper Canada, tramping on foot the greater part of the way, and finally located in the county of Bruce, where he took up bush farms for himself and nearly every one of the family, male and female, close to each other in the township of Kincardine, some five or six miles from the town of that name. They all moved there, I think, the following year. Two of the daughters eventually had very large families of their own, about a dozen apiece, but the third one had no children, though she tried to make up for it by capturing three successive husbands of different nationalities, English, Scotch and Irish. The eldest one, Mrs. John Grant, was particularly good stuff. I once saw her binding in the harvest field only three days after being con- fined, besides doing all the house work. But to come back to the old man. He had many peculiarities, and was a notable character in some ways. For one thing, he usually went bareheaded in summer. One scorching day in hay-making time T said to him, — ^^It is really dangerous to have your head exposed to such a hot sun ; ' ' but he only looked at me, and answered, — ''What better thing could it be exposed to?" Then he would just as soon travel by night as in the day time, no matter what the LEAVING FOR THE WEST. 37 weather or the state of the roads might be. In later years he was in the habit of taking periodical tours around to see his old friends, sometimes on horseback but oftenest on foot. He did not care to travel by steamboat or train. He was always a welcome visitor wherever he was known. His talk was singularly entertaining, for both old and young, and he had a spontaneous hearty laugh. He subsequently went to the State of Kansas, but not liking the Stars and Stripes as well as the good old British flag, he sold out his farm there, and moved to Manitoba, where two of his sons and their families had gone in the meantime. There he first located on a homestead north of Portage la Prairie, and again on another place near one of his sons; and where, after all his labours and wayfarings, and the number of expert housekeepers he used to have at home, the last years of his life were passed in a little cabin alone. He lived to be very old, and died in 1883, at his brother's house in Minnedosa. His grave is on a pretty hill overlooking the town and the beautiful valley of the Little Saskatchewan river there. My Sister Mary. One evening on the farm I noticed my sister Mary wearing a light muslin dress while milking the cows. But though I was born gleg, as the Scotch say, I failed in this instance to guess what was in the wind. She was only about seventeen then, and not very big for her age. But that night she quietly went away, and got married to John Potcher, a young English- 38 BBMOCKED OF DESTHSTY. man who owned the adjoining farm, and was keeping bach at the time. They walked to Goderich by the lakeshore road, and back again, twenty-three miles each way — as indeed all young people around there who wished to enter the matrimonial state had to do the first few years, or before horses came into use, and no clergyman being nearer at hand then. But that marriage turned out all right. They began in the ''old log shanty,'' and by their own united industry and good management, they got along as few others did there. He was a man of the most perfect integrity in all his dealings with his fellow-men, and had more than ordinary common sense, with a solid, practical, wise English way of doing things, and the most irreproachable habits of life. He was never known to break his word, and no man in that neigh- bourhood had a better name, or deserved it more. Mary had been accustomed to hard work at home almost from infancy, as she was the eldest in our family and mother's first help. Then she was natur- ally clever, and I have never seen any other woman who could do so many things, and in such a perfect way, both indoors and out. She would pick up new ideas on household work at first sight, and often devise improved methods of her own. From early morning till late at night her nimble hands were never idle, and without any fuss or hurry, but by planning ahead and a wonderful knack she had of attending to several things at the same time, what a deal of work she could get through in a day. She had also a regu- lar genius for making the most of everything, and LEAVING FOE THE WEST. 39 thrift was one of the fundamental principles or! her life. Nothing ever went to waste about the house if she could help it. And yet she was never very strong, and she suf- fered more or less from ill-health the whole time. But she would seldom complain if she could manage to be on her feet at all, and she invariably kept up a bright hopeful spirit. Then, combined with tender womanly sympathies, she had, as if by instinct, the soundest judgment on all the practical affairs of life, or as I once heard a bushman put it, *'she knew the tree that made the shingles," and it was not easy to deceive , her in any way. She had no children of her own to look after and care for, but in a wider sense she was a mother to all of us, and very many others, too, have had good cause to cherish the most grateful remem- brance of her. They left the old farm long ago, and retired to a quiet, beautiful place on the outskirts of the village of Lucknow, to enjoy the fruits of their hard, honest labours until they are called away to their final home. Bj working late and early WeVe come to what ye see. Although we made our bridal bed On clean pease istrae. CHAPTER III. STARTING OUT INTO THE WORLD. An Irreparable Loss. On the home farm we had over fifty acres cleared and under crop within six years after locating on it as bush land. We still lived in the hewed-log house with a big chimney built of stones and clay at one end and a bed room partitioned off at the other end. We also had a large cedar log barn. The cleared land was divided into five and ten acre fields, and well fenced with split rails, mostly rock elm and ash. The big stumps took about ten years to decay so as to be pulled out, but the older fields that were first chopped down were getting freed of the smaller stumps, and could be ploughed very well. The land was remark- ably good, and we had made a fine, clean and highly productive farm of it. But just as we were getting into fair circumstances, and looking forward to better days, mother took ill, and died in a few months. She had apparently been as strong as usual until she was laid up. But the hard work and anxieties of the first years in the back- woods had told upon her constitution and health. For there were eight of us at last to be looked after, 40 STAETING OUT INTO THE WOELD. 41 five boys and three girls, and the cares and burdens of the household had always fallen mainly upon her. Then the way my eldest brother Frank and I had been racked in clearing the farm was a great heart sorrow to her. A mother 's death is an irreparable loss to any well ordered family, and was especially so to us. Her maiden name was Ann McEae. In her family there were two girls of the same name. She had no education except to be able to read the Bible in Gaelic, and she could only speak very little English. But she had been endowed with more than an ordinary share of natural intelligence and sense. In person she was slightly above the average size of women, with a handsome figure, long black hair and a fine Scotch face. She never had her photograph taken, which I have often regretted very much. Her love was of the deep, silent, undemonstrative kind; and though she had to cook for all of us on the pot hooks and hearth of an open fireplace, and make all our working clothes, and also manage so many other things about the house, yet I never saw her patience give out but once, and that was on a washing day ! And how good and amiable and resigned she was on her death bed. But who could write adequately of such a mother without the touch of God's own hand on his pen? Quitting the Farm. My sister Sarah was hardly sixteen years of age when mother died, but she pluckily took full charge 42 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. of the housework, and contrived to get everything done pretty much in the old way. Domestic servants were not thought of in the backwoods in those days except in very rare cases; but she was assisted for a few months at the start by the aunt I have mentioned near the beginning of these notes, and who had loy- ally come out with us from Cape Breton, and has been a special blessing to us throughout all her life. One day as I sat on the bed holding mother's head, she made me promise that as soon as she was gone I should leave the farm, and *'do something for myself now." I took her advice, and went to school five months only when I obtained — very much to my sur- prise — a certificate to teach. But I remained in school the rest of the year, living at home most of the time. It was in the same old log school house of former years down the line. A young man named Andrew Fletcher, a farmer's son from the lower end of the Lochalsh settlement, was the teacher this time, and a very capable teacher he was, too. He had two fingers of each hand webbed together, and also two toes of each foot. There had never been any youth in my life, as I had to jump from boyhood into doing more than a man's work in the bush. But during this brief period at school I found out what intimate asso- ciation with other young men really meant. Four of us formed a small class to stay after school hours in the long summer evenings for the purpose of studying Latin and Greek. We were few, but extremely select! First, the teacher, who was as eager to learn more as the rest of us. Second, William L. McLennan, a STAETING OIJT INTO THE WOELD. 43 bright, energetic, manful, splendid fellow, over thirty, and who had seen a bit of the outside world. Third, Duncan McRae, a young man who had unfortunately lost one of his legs from below the knee, and was try- ing to fit himself for some other kind of work. And fourth and last, my poor self, getting up towards manhood, but very uncertain as to what my future course of life was to be. I do not suppose that the whole four of us had $100 of money in our pockets then — I had none at all — but, nevertheless, our pros- pects seemed as bright as could be wished for, and we were going to do great things by and by. We built all sorts of castles in the air, but forgot to put foundations under them, and what chats and discus- sions and laughs we had there ! And after our lesson in classics was over we would generally end the day by trying who could jump the farthest from a hewed block in front of the door step, and it was often the brave lad with the one leg. But where are they all now? Two of them are in their graves in the United States, and the other two, though living yet, are more than three thousand miles apart from each other, Andrew Fletcher in California and I in the rocky wilderness of Northern Ontario. ' ' We are such stuff as dreams are made of. ' ' School Mastering. The following winter I got a school in the Lewis settlement back of us, and was ''passing rich'' on a salary of $200 a year. In fact, I have never felt so 44 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. independently well off since then. I cut the kindling wood in a patch of green bush close by, and carried it to the school house on my back; I swept the floor as often as needed, and made the fire every morning in the winter months, always before breakfast, so as to have the place warm when the children came; and all for $4 more a year, and which I considered as ample pay. Fully one half of the younger boys and girls who attended the school could not speak a word of English at first, but in less than six months not a word of Gaelic could be heard, even in the play-ground, and their parents, instead of raising a ^^ national cry'' over it, were only too glad and proud to know that their children had learnt the common language of the country, and in so short a time. One woman, to show her appreciation of the way her boy had got on at school, killed a big fat turkey gobbler, and made a special dinner for me, and she would like to have had me eat the whole bird. Every man, old and young, touched his blue bonnet in meeting me on the road, and no parish priest ever had more respect and deference paid to him than I had there. In winter, I opened a free evening class for the young men and young women who could not attend school in the daytime. I had only a second-class certificate at the start, but after teaching in Huron township for two years I went to the Kincardine grammar school for a single term, and got a first. I taught in all for seven years in various schools in the county of Bruce, and I have always considered those seven years as the most useful STAETING OUT INTO THE WORLD. 45 period of my whole life. The work of teaching is necessary in all ages, but it was particularly so in the backwoods at that time. A Dreadful Night, While teaching in the Lewis school I boarded with an old couple on the next farm. He was English and she was Irish, with her head as white as snow. It was a tip-top place to live in, as the house was large and comfortable, and she was an excellent cook. She was good company, too, and had some of the wit of her race. But they did not get on very well together now and again, and I had to act as peacemaker more than once. Their only son (all the family they had) was consumptive, and the second winter he died, on a fearfully stormy night. There was no one but our- selves in the house at the time, as they did not expect the end to be so near at hand. I shall never forget that night. The poor old lady went actually crazy with grief, and carried on in a dreadful way — pray- ing by the bedside and raving wildly by turns. It was worse than an Irish wake. I wanted to have the son's body properly laid out, but the old man would do nothing but sit in a corner by the fire, placidly smoking his pipe. Then the roads were drifted full, and in some places over the tops of the fences. But I took a lantern, for the storm had made the night very dark, and waded through the deep snow to the nearest house. The men in it got up at once, and came over with me. But very few of the Highlanders care to handle the dead, and I had to go up the line nearly a mile before I could get any one to help me. 46 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. A Warning from Heaven. It was in 1867, I think, that I attended the gram- mar school in Kincardine, which was a good, active, prosperous town, and quite a grain market at that time. I made a number of friends there, of the true old steadfast kind, and somehow as I get up in years the new friends do not seem the same as the old ones. Among the first were John McLean and his kind- hearted wife, in whose house I lived while there. Next came Norman Smith and his brother John, two very intelligent and companionable young men. They have both lived in Kincardine for nearly fifty years, in the most contented way, illustrating the old maxim that ' ' Blessed is he that continueth where he is. ' ' Norman and I used to make short trips out among the settlers around there, who were largely Highland Scotch, and doing well. The country way of entertaining visitors is the same everywhere. The first thing is to show the family album, and explain about the friends whose pictures are in it. We looked at many such albums on those little excursions, and at some very fine girls, too. One night in town, two of the school boys in going up a side street saw the skull bone of an ox that some dogs had dragged from a butcher shop, and purely out of mischief, they picked it up by the horns, and flung it on to the roof of a kitchen near by, and then ran away. But it was a good act. For in that very house, it so happened, there lived an old Highland couple w^ho were not mated as well as they might have been. The old man slept in one bed in a room off the STAETING OUT INTO THE WOKLD. 47 parlour, and the old woman in another bed in a small room off the kitchen. On hearing the racket on the roof after going to bed this night the following confab took place between them, as told by the old woman herself to a neighbour's wife next day, — She — Did you hear that awful noise? He — ^Yes; what on earth was it? She — It was a warning from heaven for sleeping as we do in separate beds. You had better get up and come here with me, or a worse thing may be sent upon us. He — No, I won't! But you may come and sleep with me if you like. The warning was on your side of the house, and therefore meant for you and not for me. So the old lady got up, and went to bed with the old man, and they were afraid to quarrel any more. His Unpardonable Sin. My next school was at Stony Island, three miles from Kincardine up the lake shore. I staid there for three years, and had over seventy scholars every win- ter, and almost as many in the summer time. But they were a bright, willing and obedient lot of chil- dren and young people, and the most of them learnt very fast. It was when there that I wrote my first letter to the press; a trivial little note, but the innocent har- binger of the thousands of letters and articles that I have written since then to various newspapers and 48 BEMOCKED OF DESTHSTY. periodicals, and on more subjects than I could begin to tell now. I like to be near the water, and the lake made that settlement of more interest to me. I had really a very good time of it there, though I had to work rather hard with such a large school. But the people were kind and friendly, and as happy as could be. One young man, who had never heard of Lord Chester- field, wanted to be exceedingly polite, and whenever he met me on the road he would ask, — ^^How are you to-day, please?'' Any one who has visited much among the Highland people knows how the good wife looks up to the hus- band as the head of the house. But there are excep- tions to this rule. Back of Stony Island there was a family in which the wife did not show the usual respect to her husband. She was a fine big woman, ''good to look upon," but he was a little, black, ugly runt of a man. The children, by some freak of nature, took more after the father than the mother in both looks and size, and when she happened to get very angry with him, as she sometimes did, she would tell him of his faults, and at last bring this terrible charge against him, cts the climax, or 7ie plus ultra of all his sins, — ''And you spoilt the children on me!" (Agus 7nhill thu clann orm). It is said that a Scotchman never tells his wife he loves her until he is dying, but such reticence would have been excusable on the part of the husband in this case. STAETING OUT INTO THE WOKLD. 49 An Innocent Abroad. ' ' How green I was when I left home on the farm, ' ' said a wide-awake city man to me once in talking over the past. And so was I when I left the backwoods, as to not having any practical knowledge of the ways of the world. But I could not well have been other- wise. The people I had hitherto lived among were single-minded, honest and truthful. Besides, to be suspicious of my fellow men was not part of my nature, and even to this day I hate to mistrust any one. I knew well enough that there were ** queer folk in the Shaws,'' and in many other places, but I had yet to find out, to my sorrow, that men would lie and cheat, and slander each other six days in the week, and then go ostentatiously to church on Sunday with the Hebrew Bible in their hands! It was by such rascally Pecksniffs that I was twice done up and treated in the most villainous manner before I learnt to be as wise in my own generation as I needed to be. These troubles lamed my soul. During the years I had been teaching in the coun- try I was studying up every hour I could spare, and when I had made a little money I decided to go for a term or two to the Normal School in Toronto. But though I was promoted from the second to the first- class department at the entrance examination, for a paper I wrote on physical geography, and some mathe- matical work, I left the school in six weeks, as I had not learnt in that time anything that was new to me except the name of a little branch of the Danube river ! 4 50 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. This visit to Toronto was my first experience of city life. The street noises did not bother me, as I had been used to the racket of driving over corduroy roads in the bush. The only nuisance at my studies was the constant ringing of the door bell from early morning till all hours of the night, as if the house did not belong to the people living in it, but '^mainly to the public and the devil," to use the emphatic language of a modern sage in a like case. At that time (1870) Toronto was not more than one- third its present size, and I could walk out into the country in any direction in half an hour. The principal streets of the city were paved with cobble stones and lit by gas. Only a few leading families had private car- riages, or put on any great style, and the lines in the drummer's story could have been applied to many .a prosperous business man there in those good old- fashioned days, — He lived above his ineome Was (the sad reproiach he bore, Till they suddenly remembered That he lived above his store. I had a rare chance of learning a good deal about city life besides what I saw with my own eyes, as a number of policemen happened to be boarding at the same house. They were all kind, chatty, interesting young fellows, and one of them, William Stark, who was then beginning at the foot of the ladder but worked up rapidly, is now, and has been for many years, chief of the detective branch of the force. He had fine natural abilities that would have assured STAETIlSiG OUT INTO THE WOELD. 51 him of a successful career in almost any walk of life, and also a large fund of pleasant ready wit. We lived on Church street, . the west side, a little above Wilton avenue, and on the other side of the street there was a large private residence with a bit of green lawn around it, which I could look across at from the window of my room. The old lady who owned and occupied this place had a son in Australia, and shortly before then she had gone out to see him. But after making the long trip there and back again without any mishap, on her return home, and just as she was going up her own door steps, she fell and broke her ankle! From Toronto I went to London in the fall, and put in the next year as principal of a business college there. The students were mostly fine young men from the country. Of the city boys, James H. Eoss, now governor of the Yukon region, was my favorite one, and what a bright, cheerful, light-hearted young lad he was, too. But the work was more than my health could stand, and the following spring I had to give it up. My school-mastering days were at an end for all time. On the Wing. In a week or two after giving up my work in the college, I started, in March, 1872, for California and the Pacific coast, and which was not such a common trip then as now. I stopped over in Chicago for a day to see the ruins of the great fire of the previous fall. It was an indescribable sight. I had to pay a dollar 52 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. for the privilege of sleeping on the parlour floor of a new rickety hotel. Two days afterwards we were almost surrounded on the plains by a frightful prairie fire. Towards the mountains large herds of buffalo could be seen from the train, and also bands of wild Indians roaming about on their ponies and sometimes on foot. Crossing the Sierras we were stuck in a tremendous snow bank one day, and the next day we gathered flowers in the valley of the Sacramento river. On reaching San Francisco the first thing I had to do there rather surprised me. The city, notwithstand- ing the good work that had been done by the far- famed vigilance committee a short time before then, was infested with cut-throats and robbers of all kinds. We were, therefore, advised in getting off the ferry boat after crossing the bay late at night, not to take the sidewalks in going up town, but to fill our coat pockets with stones, and walk together on the middle of the streets to the hotels we wished to stop at, so as to avoid the dark alleys and doorways. But ^'Frisco," as it is called for short, was a beau- tiful, progressive, interesting city even at that early day, and, for the west, a very cheap place to live in. Such fruit, and especially strawberries, I have never seen anywhere else. I got my first view of the Pacific ocean from the sand hills behind the city, which were then waste unoccupied lands of no value. I had to get some greenbacks changed into gold and silver at a broker's office before I could buy even a cigar, and I saw over six tons of gold in bars and coins in the sub- STAETIN^G OUT INTO THE WOELD. 53 treasury of the United States there one day. I did not go out much at night, as I had a little money on me. But if a man keeps away from saloons and other disreputable resorts, and guards his tongue, he can go about with perfect safety in any city or other place. I have travelled quite a bit in my time, but I have very seldom been molested by any one, even in the roughest seaport towns and mining camps. \ The Land of Montezuma. From California I went down the west coast of Mexico and Central America to Panama. If Mexico were only under the British flag I would like to live there. The country is surpassingly rich in natural resources, and in the agricultural parts of it from two to four crops a year can be grown. The people are composed of three classes. First, the whites of different nationalities, who are the chief property owners and leading men. Second, the mixed breeds, who are the turbulent element there, as in all Spanish American countries. Third, the Indians, who are still largely in the majority, and do nearly all the hard work at very low wages. In the walls of some of the seacoast towns of Mexico and Central America I saw breaches that were made by the brave and adventurous Sir Francis Drake, and on this account they are called ^^buc- caneer walls'' there. In going from the boat to the railway station at Panama, we had to walk and have our baggage taken between two lines of armed soldiers to prevent our being robbed by bandits and rebels. 54 BEMOCKED OF DESTIKY. The fare across the Isthmus was the highest I have ever paid in travelling by train — $20 in gold for forty-seven miles. A Startling Incident. From Aspinwall I went to Kingston, Jamaica. The beautiful white coral bottom of the Caribbean sea could be seen from the sides of the boat in some places on the way. It was a small squadron of the sea forces of the indomitable Oliver Cromwell that wrenched Jamaica and other parts of the West Indies from Spain, in 1655. Many of the officers and soldiers died of fevers and the sultry heat, and in an old churchyard near the middle of the city of Kingston I noticed a few of their graves, marked by old marble slabs partly cov- ered with moss. The island of Jamaica has some of the most fertile land under the sun. But since the abolition of slavery many of the finest plantations have gone back into jungle and weeds, instead of sugar cane. The darkies will not work on the volun- tary principle any more than they can help, and they loaf about the cities and towns, lying a good part of the time on the grass under the trees that line both sides of the streets to afford a shade from the tropical sun. I saw a new way of making a living there. When- ever a boat arrives at the pier in Kingston, scores oi: the young darkies, wearing only a breech cloth, will jump into the sea like so many frogs, and beg of the passengers to throw five cents or any other small coin overboard into the water, and one or more of them STAETIN"G OUT IJ^TO THE WOKLD. 55 will instantly dive and catch it before reaching the bottom. They hardly ever make a miss, and it is really marvellous how expert they are at this trick. After leaving the West Indies for New York we were followed a day and a night by a Spanish gun- boat, owing to a rebellion in Cuba. Then one fine morning, as we sat on deck admiring the tropical scen- ery of a number of small islands we were passing close by, a young gentleman of a party of excursion- ists from the Pacific coast suddenly jumped up, and snatching a big dirk from one of the crew of the boat, he began to flourish it about like a wild Indian on the war path! The poor fellow had become insane, and we had to confine him in his berth the rest of the trip. His father had been a member of parliament in Nova Scotia at one time, he told me before then. I came back from New York to Toronto by Niagara Falls, and, to finish my tour of the continent, I went to Duluth by the Upper Lake route along the north shore. From CoUingwood to Port Arthur the Sand- ford Fleming and Principal Grant party were aboard, starting on their '^ Ocean to Ocean'' trip by the Yel- low Head pass, and we had a big time. I spent the winter in St. Paul, Minnesota, and returned the next spring to Ontario, my health fully restored, and by working at times in several places as I went about, I had more than paid my way. Ontario at Its Best. After visiting the friends at home, I engaged as a commercial traveller with a Toronto firm, and con- tinued on the road, with one or two short intervals, 56 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. for the next eight years. The work was not so hard, but it required tact, energy, perseverance and a thor- ough knowledge of human nature; and one had to keep on the go all the time without any rest, and live entirely in hotels. But I liked it for one thing; it gave me an excellent chance to learn all about the business affairs and progress of the country, from Montreal in the east to Windsor in the west. I mingled with and talked to all sorts and conditions of people, and exercised my old habit of making a mental note of everything I saw or heard that inter- ested me. Then in driving out to the towns and vil- lages off the lines of railway, I would often pick up anybody I happened to overtake on the road, and question him about the particular locality he lived in, I heard a thing worth telling in another case. On a trip in the lower part of Muskoka, I saw a young man near the road hoeing potatoes in a little patch of land between the rocks, and on asking him if he was not going to have a hard time to make a living on such a place, he straightened himself up, pushed his straw hat back on his head, and answered with a twinkle in his eye, — ^ ' I 'm not to be pitied as much as you think ; I don't own this land!" It is said that if Sir Walter Scott had not talked to and got tales of the borders from every old woman he met, he could never have written the Waverley novels. It was in one of these years that I went to hear Wilkie Collins give a public reading from some parts of his own works, in a hall on Church street, Toronto, on a fine summer evening. He was a good writer, but STAETi:^G OUT USTTO THE WOELD. 57 a poor reader, even worse than the average country parson. At the appointed hour, a dapper little man with a round projecting forehead, came out upon the platform, and began at once. His voice was lifeless and monotonous, and the strange peculiarity about his reading was the way he paused between every two or three words, somewhat in this style, — ^^When I awoke — in the morning — I found — a sturdy old man — with a fiddle — sitting on — one side of me — and two — performing dogs — on the other. ' ' — From '^Armadale.'' In the twenty years from 1860 to 1880 the Province of Ontario was at its best in every way. The fine western counties bordering on Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay had been cleared and brought under cultivation, and were yielding large crops. The prices of all kinds of farm products, including stock, were very remunerative, and farm lands were at their highest value. Most of the original settlers of that section of the province were still able to work and manage things in the good old thrifty, careful way; and their families were grown up, and nearly all living at home and helping to work the farm. A bet- ter rural population in every respect than Ontario, east and west, had at that period would have been hard to find anywhere else in the world. Then, the old log houses and barns had been replaced to a large extent by substantial brick and frame buildings, and the whole country had a trim, fresh, clean and pros- perous look, ^ ' busy men with their pious, steady indus- tries making all things green and fruitful." The 58 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. villages, towns and cities had also been improved in the same way. A Great Change. But during the last twenty years of the century, from 1880 to 1900, a great change has taken place in the older parts of Ontario, not only in the condition and appearance of the country, but also in the people as well and 'their habits of life. The beauty of the landscape, though dotted all over with orchards, and planted in some places with shade trees, has been tamed down and lessened by the almost total destruc- tion of the original forest, leaving the country with bare if not bleak look. There was no finer belt of hardwood bush on the American continent than in the lower Ontario peninsula between the lakes. And such a variety of plant life as grew there, too, in the wild state — over fifty different species. But where now are the majestic elms with their spreading, grace- ful tops ; the maple sugar bush, where we used to have so much fun; the tall clean beech trees with their sweet little nuts ; the big gnarly oaks, the yellow birch, the white ash and so many other kinds? Even the small patches of timber left on the rear ends of the farms for wood are nearly all gone. Then as to the people, the rising generation as a rule do not for one thing rise so early in the morning as their fathers and mothers did, and they sit up later at night. I doubt, to begin with, if they are made of the same genuine stuff. Besides, a spirit of restless discontent, extravagance and empty pride seems to STAETING OUT INTO THE WOELD. 59 have possessed almost everybody of late years, in town and country alike. But, to come right down to the root of the matter, our much-lauded school system is primarily to blame for it. Our boys and girls are not being educated for the real purposes of life in this age. By the time they leave school, too many of them want to leave the farm, and as they cannot all find employment in our own towns and cities, they rush off to the United States by tens of thousands every year. This constant exodus of our young men and women is the main reason why the population of Ontario, and in fact of Canada at large, is not increas- ing at a faster rate, if at all, and the progress of the country is so slow and unsatisfactory in many respects. One has only to read in the press the obituary notices of the old pioneers of Ontario as they die to see where the most of their sons and daughters are living now — not in Canada but across the interna- tional line. The apathy of our public men in regard to this important matter would have put the Seven Sleepers to shame. But we are evidently waking up at last to a better appreciation of the grand heritage we possess, and its capabilities, in the rugged northern half of the American continent, and this new impulse has been given to our patriotism almost entirely by the Boer war in South Africa! It is John Euskin who says, — ^ ^ Nothing can avail any race or condition of men but the spirit that is in their own hearts, kindled by love of their native land." This fact is forever true. CHAPTER IV. A SEOBT MABBIED LIFE. For till in partiitii'ons oft divide The bounds where good and ill reside, And naught is perfect here below But bliss still bordering upon woe. — Burns. Joy and Sorrow. How little things often lead to the most important events in life. One day in the London college a stu- dent from the country showed me a photograph of his eldest sister, and on the impulse of the moment I gave him some flowers I had in my hand at the time to send to her. This incident had vanished from my mind, but when travelling on the road after my return from the west, I called at the village of Drumbo, in the county of Oxford, on one of my business trips, and met my old student friend there. In 'the evening he took me out to his father's house on the edge of the village for tea, and introduced me to this same sister, Emily Anne Muma by name. It was a large frame house on a side hill, with an orchard and flower garden in front, and a pretty grove of small pines and other evergreen trees on the west side — not in any way unlike other farm houses of the better class, though now entwined with such 60 EMILY ANNE McCHARLES Died March 23rd, 187S "The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited iomhs."— George Eliot y ifi ^^ Adam Bede." A SHOET MAEEIED LIFE. 61 varied memories to me. The ^^old folks" were not at home, and we had a merry tea party of young people, and a lively social time. I left next day. But I had found out on that short visit, rather to my surprise, that there is a subtle dis- tinction in man's relation to woman that singles out one to love, perhaps at first sight, while many others may have won his respect, and even his admiration in a general way. I was haunted with the image of a fair young lady of more than ordinary personal attractions, and her free mirthful laugh and sprightly talk kept echoing in my ears, as they still do in many a lonely hour. In short, I had ^^met my fate'' at last, as kind nature orders it, and within eight months from that night we were married, on June 16th, 1875, in the old farm house on the hill. A little while after- wards she handed me, with a happy smile on her clear beautiful face, the bunch of flowers I had given her brother in London to send to her four years before then. Her father was of German, and her mother of Irish extraction, and she had inherited some of the best qualities of ,both races. But in being the eldest daughter in a large family of five boys and only one other girl, the second youngest of them all, she had to do most of the house work, as is usual in almost every such case, and her health and strength had both been impaired in this way.* The first few months of our wedded life were passed *That large family old and young, are all gone now, except two of the sons. The young went before the old. 62 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. in Ottawa, and that city is therefore associated with some of the happiest days I have to look back upon now. "We had really hard luck at the start. She was unwell part of the time, and in addition to various disappointments and troubles, I was laid up with typhoid fever for several weeks, and I can never for- get how anxiously she nursed me through it while striving to hide all her sad apprehensions from me. But on my recovery, and after having spent over a year and a half in a fruitless endeavor to get estab- lished in some business that I could be at home at, we finally settled down in Toronto, and I resumed my old work of travelling on the road again. By her remark- able skill as a housekeeper, and for which she was noted among her lady friends, my poor income was sufficient to keep us very well, and also provide against a rainy day. I was as rich as a king, but did not know it. Indeed, I more than doubt if any husband ever does rightly appreciate a true, good and amiable wife until it is too late. For my blindness in this respect I have often thought that I fully deserved to suffer all the miseries of my weary homeless way of life for so many long years since then, baching alone or camping out in the woods the most of the time. But I know what a woman's work is now. Our first baby, a boy, was about six months old when we set up our little home in Toronto, and he was of course a new and infinite joy in her life. Every- body knows the untiring interest and delight of a young mother in her first-born, and especially if it is a son. She was probably as happy at this time as A SHOET MAEEIED LIFE. 63 any woman could wish to be. Her youngest brother was living with us, going to school, and to be company for her, as I was so much away from home. She did all the housework, with the help of a charwoman once a week. So the days and the months went by, and the future looked bright and promising for us in every way. But, alas, this fond hope was destined to soon come to a tragical end, and inside of two short years she was laid in her long silent home in Mount Pleasant cemetery, back of Toronto, with her second baby, also a boy, lying beside her on her left arm. And I put the following inscription, from one of Charles Dickens' works, on a monument at the head of her grave, — ' ' The kindest and gentlest heart that ever ached on earth has passed in peace to heaven.'' I was bewildered at first, and did not realise the full extent of my loss for some time. But such a great and bitter sorrow is not to be put into words by any pen. She gave me the love of her life, and I have been true to her memory ever since then, as I intend to be to the end. But the tender grace of the days that are gone Will never come back to me. CHAPTER V. ON THE FLOWERY PRAIRIE. To the North-West After the loss of my wife and the closing of my home, I knew that the sooner I got to work again the better for me. In any case, there is never any use in giving up and lamenting over one's fate. I there- fore started out at once, and kept on the road almost constantly for the next three years. I then tried to locate in Berlin, where I ran a small factory for a few months, and of all towns in Ontario I liked this the best. But I had lost my anchorage in the world, and did not have any definite aim or purpose in life for a long time, except to care for the boy that was left to me. So in the fall of 1881 I was easily induced to^ leave Ontario and go to "Winnipeg, to try my luck in the real estate boom that had suddenly flared up like a straw fire there that year, but as quickly went out again, leaving many a man ruined for life. It was the maddest scramble I had ever taken any part in, and, though endeavouring to be on the cautious side, I of course got left with the rest. Winnipeg is a fine, growing and prosperous city now, but for some years after the boom its progress was very slow, if 64 ON THE FLOWEKY PKAIEIE. 65 any at all. Everything was in a half -paralyzed state, and my poor investments there and in other parts of Manitoba have yielded me nothing but taxes and thistles, which are not very profitable, though very regular crops. The Canadian North- West is going to be a great and populous country some day, but for several reasons it has not been settling up fast enough so far. The climate is severely cold for three months in winter, but delightful the rest of the year, with fewer changes of weather than in the east. One of the main draw- backs of Canada as a whole is the geographical fact that its southern boundary is at least five hundred miles too near to the north pole. But for all that the North- West will be thickly inhabited yet, and with an energetic and hardy race. A Belie of Burns, I remained in Winnipeg for seven years, striving to get on my feet again, and, as correspondent for a number of eastern papers, I did my full share in trying to free Manitoba from railway monopoly, and to attract settlers to it. I lived the first year at a lodging house, kept in first-class style. Any new- comer had to give a bank reference to get into it. The landlady was a very stout old Scotch dame of the real genuine kind. She was remarkably shrewd and clever, itoo, in her own way, and had a big helpless family to look after and provide for. In the spring of 1882 J. W. Bengough, the well-known cartoonist, went up to the North- West on a lecturing tour, and 5 66 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. I got him to stay with us at this place while in the city, or off and on for six weeks. He was excellent company, and we had plenty of witty, interesting talk and a great time. Then after he left he sent me a pencil drawing, true to life, of the group around the family table we used to sit at. The old lady was slightly ruffled at first because she was made to look her full size in it, but when I said to her, ^'You know there never was a Venus with a small waist, ' ' she for- gave him, and took this compliment at its face value. Such taffy goes down with all of us. She had a little brass kettle that once belonged to Robert Burns, for boiling water in to make toddy, and as a mark of spe- cial regard she would invite me into her private room now and again to have a ^^cup of kindness" that had been prepared in the same way. An Ayrshire Lad. Many others besides the speculators were attracted to Winnipeg at that time, and notably a large number of lawyers, journalists and professional men of all kinds, mostly fine young fellows beginning life. Among the journalists, David K. Brown was a *^ bright particular star," with a special faculty for gathering news. He formed one of our select party at the big house, and had a great fund of anecdotes that he could tell in a very crisp and humourous way. He was from Ayrshire, of good family, but for certain reasons had from early boyhood to make his own way in the world. He tried his hand at various things, but never got on very well. He had the clear- ON THE PLOWEEY PEAIKIE. 67 est mental insight, broad views on all public affairs, and there was no cant, meanness or duplicity about him. In person, he was a handsome compact little man, fair-haired, and with a kind, intelligent Scotch face. The next year there was a paltry election in Kee- watin, which was then part of what was called the ^'disputed territory," and claimed by Manitoba, and I sent him down to Rat Portage to bring in some miners to vote. But the poor fellow caught a bad cold, and died in a few days. I have the last letter he ever wrote. He was buried in the new cemetery back of that town, and some of his Winnipeg friends put a memorial stone at the head of his lonely grave with the following extract from one of his letters on it: ''The beauty of this Lake of the "Woods pervades me." He v/as the most intimate companion I ever had in the North-West, and how much I missed him. A Desperate Fight, Besides writing up the country as a desirable field for settlers to go to, I also had the satisfaction of doing at least one good turn for Winnipeg while there. The city had borrowed a large amount of money on debentures the first two or three years after the boom, for public improvements of different kinds. But some of the works were not being done right, and the ratepayers suspected that more or less boodling was going on. As I was going up street one day in the fall of 1884, with this matter simmering in my mind, I met 68 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. one of the large property owners of the city, and our little talk then and there was the beginning of a movement that had very important results. In a short time a Citizens' Committee was organized for the pur- pose of reforming the municipal affairs of the city. I was appointed secretary, and for the next seven weeks I had all the work that any man could wish for and some to spare. It was a desperate fight. We held on an average two mass meetings a week in crowded halls. Even old campaigners said they had never been through the like of it. But we put a full ticket of candidates in the field, and literally swept the city, electing the mayor and eleven out of the twelve aldermen, with very large majorities in the most of cases. We had an excellent committee of about sixty mem- bers, but they got hopelessly stuck on one thing that was of great concern to us. We wanted to get up a written platform of reforms that would deserve the hearty support of every honest elector in the city, and to be as short and comprehensive as we could possibly make it. After they had all talked over the matter one evening for several hours to no purpose, I suggested that each one of them should write out his ideas on paper at home that night, and then we could take all the points on which there would be most agreement, and get over the difficulty in this way. Next morning they brought me over one hun- dred pages of notes, as divergent as the poles on almost every point, and talked away again till noon without any result. When they were leaving for ON THE FLOWEKY PEAIEIE. 69 dinner I asked one man to wait a little while, which he did, and after the rest had all gone I locked the door, and pitched all their papers into the stove! I very likely made some emphatic remark at the same time, but, like Sancho Panza, I *^ forgot it on purpose, '^ and in any case, I would not care to print it. Then we sat down at a table, and in a very few minutes I scribbled off the platform that carried the election ; and without consulting anybody else, except the chairman, J. H. Ashdown, for his signature, or altering a single word in it, I had it published in all the city papers next day. But it set the heather, or rather the prairie, on fire, and no one found any fault with it. A Grand Man. In the years before and after the boom — for in Winnipeg all things date from that event — the most prominent man in the whole province of Manitoba, next to John Norquay, was W. F. Luxton, editor and virtual proprietor of the Winnipeg ^^Free Press. *' He had come there from Ontario in the early days, and after teaching school for a few years in what was then Fort Garry, he started a little weekly paper, which he gradually developed into one of the best daily papers in Canada in every respect. He was an able, decisive, energetic, straightforward and large- hearted man, and we used to look upon him as the George Brown of the North- West. His publishing business latterly brought him in a very large income, and his hand was always ready to help anyone in 70 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. need. But by some misfortune or other he lost every- thing, and is now, I believe, in the United States editing a paper there. When I was on my way to British Columbia in the summer of 1895, I stopped over in Winnipeg a few days, and one evening I met him on Main sitreet in front of the post office. As we shook hands I repeated Shakespeare's lines, — ''Oh, that our loves and comforts may increase, Even as our days do grow, ^'— and said that this wish was evidently not going to be realized by him and me. But such is life. The Beautiful Prairie. During the seven years I lived in Winnipeg, I spent a part of every summer in travelling all over Mani- toba and portions of the North-West territories, partly by train, but mostly with a buckboard rig or on foot, to examine lands, search for minerals, and learn all I could about the country in every way. The prairie is never perfectly level over any large area, but undulating more or less, and in some places even hilly. For several months of the year whole stretches of the country are covered with wild flowers of various kinds, and it has then a distinct and special beauty of its own. The prairie trails, when dry, are the peerless roads of the world, and a span of native ponies will make from fifty to seventy miles a day, and live on the wild grasses without any oats. I do not know of anything more exhilarating than to go pirring along on a good trail in this way. ON THE FLOWEKY PEAIKIE. 71 Alt that time, though the buffalo was gone forever, the whole country was stocked with any quantity of other game, such as the elk, in herds and always on the move ; the jumping or mule deer, with his peculiar leaping gait when alarmed, and his long hairy ears; the antelope and the moose; all of which could be killed for meat; while the bear, the coyote or prairie wolf, with his fine bushy tail, which he uses to cover his feet and nose like a wrap when he curls up for the night in cold weather, or to have a nap; the badger, the lynx and the gopher afforded plenty of sport. As for wild ducks, prairie chickens and rab- bits, there was simply no end to their number; and every lake and stream was full of good fish. I have seen the Indians selling rabbits for a cent apiece, and the finest black mallard ducks for five cents each. The whitefish from the northern lakes of Manitoba is the best fresh water fish in America. It has a delicious flavor and is very fat. When I first went to the North- West I could buy in the Winnipeg market a different kind of venison or wild game for every day in the week. I knew Ernest Seton-Thoi^pson when he was in Manitoba learning about the wild animals there. The Bed River Cart, Neither was it lonely travelling on the prairie and western plains in those days. For besides bands of roving Indians here and there, a number of ''freight- ers" would be met on any leading trail almost every day. The railway has destroyed the business of this n BEMOCKED OF DESTHSTY. class of hardy men in the North- West. They would leave Fort Garry or Winnipeg in the early summer, and go to Prince Albert, Battleford, Edmonton and other remote points, carrying all kinds of merchan- dise for the Hudson's Bay Company and the private traders, and be back again by fall. Hardly any man ever went alone, but with a number of others, and every man would have from four to six or more loaded carts, each cart drawn by a single ox harnessed like a horse, only in a simpler way. When the trail was good the oxen and loads would go on leisurely ahead in a string, and the men walked in groups behind to talk. In some respects it was a very pleasant and easy life. They knew all the best camping places on the trails for wood and water, and the oxen fed on the prairie grass. The Eed River cart is also fast becoming a thing of the past. It was made entirely of wood, by the natives themselves, and without a particle of iron in it. There were no tires on the wheels, and the box was a mere frame of little upright sticks like a crate. But still this primitive vehicle was very strong, and lasted for a long time. The axles were seldom greased, and its creaking melody could be heard afar off, sometimes for miles in the level country and clear air. If the load was light, as in going home from town or returning from a trip, the native ox, gener- ally a small, lean and tough animal, would trot like a pony, and I have seen American tourists, on arriv- ing in Winnipeg, hire a passing half-breed cart, and drive up and down Main street in it for the novelty ON THE FLOWEEY PEAIEIE. 73 of the thing. On one such occasion the ox took fright at the noise of a street-car and ran away with only two girls in the cart, the ox roaring and the girls screaming at a great rate. The Indians of the Plains, The Indian has never been understood by the white man. The ^^ noble red man" has been degraded and ruined by the vices of civilization and all the wrongs that he has suffered at the hands of the con- quering race. The whole country belonged to him and his fathers to roam over at will from time imme- morial, but now he is confined to narrow reserves, and the game, which was his natural food, is nearly all gone. At the time of my first trip across the plains the Indians lived in abundance, and were comfortably and well, even tastefully, clad. They had plenty of good Hudson's Bay blankets, shawls and flannels, and a North- West squaw is a better judge of such things yet than the average white woman there. On gala days they would paint their faces in various colours, and dress up in picturesque style. The Indian thinks and lives in a world of his own, and it is not essentially so different from our world either. Even in the pagan condition he has faith in a future state, where he hopes to be happy just as we do. He has the dignified bearing and deportment of a prince, great fidelity if treated right, tender domestic affections, and other fine qualities of many kinds. I would rather trust an Indian than a half- breed any day. In camping near small bands of 74 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. them on the prairie, some of the squaws and children would watch us cooking, but just as soon as we sat down to eat, they would all walk away out of polite- ness, and sit on the grass at a distance with their backs to us until we got through, no matter how hungry they might be. In one party, a tall, fine- looking squaw had two lithe, active, graceful boys, and I made the interpreter ask her if they were all the family she had. She said that she had lost all the rest of her children — four, I think — and while she talked about them silent tears ran down her kind motherly face. The squaw is not a slave, as many white people suppose, but far from it. The separate duties of man and wife are more clearly defined among the Indians than with us. A squaw would despise her husband if he undertook to do any part of her work ; and what a blessing it would be for the world in the present chaotic state of our kitchens and the servant girl question if the most of our white women would only follow the example of the poor squaw in this respect and do their own housework. The squaw does not use a cradle, and always carries the papoose on her back, strapped to a short board with a bow fastened to the upper end of it, and over which, if travelling, she throws a shawl, or a piece of cloth, to protect the young one from the cold, the sun or the flies as the case may be. When she gets to the end of her journey, or sits down to rest, she takes this simple baby carriage off her back, and leans it up against a building, tree or log; and ON THE FLOWEKY PRAIEIE. 75 though swaddled tightly in this way, all but the head, and in winter as a rule with dry moss that the thoughtful mother gathered for this purpose in the fall, Indian babies are seldom if ever heard to cry, and their chubby little faces are the picture of health and good nature. About the Buffalo. The wanton destruction of such a valuable animal for many human uses as the wild buffalo of the plains was an awful crime. And it was all the reckless work of the white man. For the Indians killed only as many every year as they needed for food, and they paid for clothing and other things they had to buy mostly with furs. The French half-breeds in the North-West also took more to hunting than to the quiet life of a settler on land, and it was they who mainly supplied the Hudson's Bay Company with pemmican and skins. They usually hunted in large bands, start- ing in the early spring, and keeping out till late in the fall. The women and children went, too, as the buffalo was plentiful then in what is now Southern Manitoba, and they did not have far to go. One such party that left Fort Garry in 1840 comprised no less than 1,630 persons of all ages, and had the following equipment for the season's hunt: 1,240 carts, 486 draught oxen, 655 cart horses, 403 hunting ponies, 1,240 butcher knives, 740 flint-lock guns, 150 gallons of powder, 1,300 pounds of ball, and 6,240 gunflints, besides all their provisions, blankets, dishes and tents. 76 BEMOCKED OF DESTIKY. The buffalo was of migratory habits, and kept on the tramp the year round, going north in summer as far as the Athabasca river, and south in winter into the United States. Their principal runway in the Canadian North- West was between Medicine Hat and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, as shown by the thousands of their old trails that may still be seen there. The buffalo cow used to remain in one place for six weeks after calving, not for safety, but until the calf should be strong enough to swim the rivers with her on the tramp. The young bulls always drove the older ones out of the herd, and the latter would afterwards wander about in pairs or groups alone, and were easily shot. The buffalo is the only animal that turned his head to the storm, as his neck and breast were better protected than any other part of his body with long shaggy hair. They were easily frightened into a panic, and would then stampede over the roughest country at a fearful rate, some- times leaping over high cliffs and breaking their necks. A Lost Art. As the tanning of buffalo robes by the Indians, or rather by the squaws, is a lost art, I may as well describe it here. After the day's hunt by a mixed party, if any white man wanted to get a hide tanned to take home with him, as was often the case, all he had to do was to give a dollar to one of the old squaws, and he would have a perfect robe the next day. The first thing' she did was to stretch the hide 01^ THE FLOWEEY PEAIKIE. 77 on the ground with the flesh side up. Then she would take a knife and scrape off all the fat there might be left sticking to it, putting the scrapings into a pot at the same time. When this part of the work was done, she folded the hide, and left it out for the night. In the morning, she pinned down the one end of it to the ground, the hair side out, and propped up the other end with two sticks, giving it the slant of a roof, and facing the direction of the wind. The next step was to build a little fire close in front of the hide to heat it, and hang the pot of scrapings over the fire, after adding some herbs she had gathered on the prairie around the camp. Then for several hours she rubbed the hide with the hot mixture of grease and herbs, and in another hour or two the robe was dry and ready for use. The process was very simple, but no white man could ever tan a robe as well. I could always tell the difference after that in merely handling a robe, for if tanned by the Indians it would be soft and pliable, but if tanned by a white man it would be hard and stiff in some places, and make a crackling noise on being folded up, or in putting it around one's legs on a drive. When an Indian took sick or was seriously hurt, his friends and the medicine man of the tribe carried him to the nearest sacred place belonging to the Great Spirit, and if he was cured they said he *'got a new life." In their belief the reason that some of the Indians live to be so old is simply because they get several new lives in this way, and which is not a bad idea at all. 78 BEMOCKED OP DESTINY. The Mound Builders of Manitoba, All that tread the globe Are ibuft a handful of the tribes That slumber in its bosom. It is claimed by antiquarians and others that the American continent was inhabited by another and much superior race long before the present Indian tribes took possession of it and roamed over the plains. The name of Mound Builders has been given to this prehistoric and unknown race because of certain earth-works built by them, the remains of which are still to be seen in many places. Some of these people, whoever they were, lived in Manitoba and the North- West. They are supposed to have been white men, wearing beards, and they evidently had more or less knowledge of the arts and ways of civi- lized life. Their fortification mounds were con- structed at the most strategical points along the rivers, for watching up and down stream for the approach of any of their enemies in canoes. Like all primitive races, they were probably at war with each other most of the time. Their burial mounds were sometimes built within the military enclosures, but oftenest on pretty spots near any rapids or falls in the rivers. From the number of their sacrificial mounds they must have had a regular priesthood, but what form of worship they practised no one can say. None of the three kinds of earth-works left by them could have been very high or imposing, and their remains are now worn down to a few feet above ON THE FLOWERY PRAIRIE. 79 the surface of the land. The burial mounds, no doubt built in honor of their chiefs or great men, are the most interesting, as more ''relics'' are generally found in them than in the others, such as spear and arrow heads, pipes ornamented with figures of vari- ous animals, shell and stone beads, pottery and tubes manufactured out of clay, and axes, hammers, mallets and other implements made of stone and the bones of wild beasts. I dug into several of these mounds in the hope of discovering some record of the origin and history of the people who built them. But the only thing I found, besides the usual assortment of relics, was a little hatchet made of red pipestone, and with the outlines of some extinct mammal, not unlike a masto- don roughly scratched or drawn on both sides of it. I also found a remarkably large stone hammer, weigh- ing thirteen and a half pounds, and more than well made. Calf Mountain, in Southern Manitoba, is mainly an artificial mound, and the biggest of them all there. One of the old fur traders wrote of this mound in 1806, — ''This spot appears to be the height of land in the Pembina Mountain district, and in the centre of it stands a round hillock in the shape of a beehive, on the top of which the Assiniboines and the Crees are very particular to make sacrifices of tobacco and other trifles there every year, and they also collect a number of buffalo bulls' heads, which they daub over with red earth and deposit on the summit of the mound, the nose always pointing to the east." 80 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. This last act was their way, I suppose, of painting the town red, and the concluding performance of the great annual pow-wow of these two wild tribes of the plains. I have one of those buffalo skulls and some other relics that were taken out of the so-called mountain just eighty years after the above notes were written about it. The Musk Ox. This rare animal is peculiar to the Canadian North- West, and is found nowhere else in the world. It inhabits the barren plains around and west of Hudson's Bay, and seldom comes farther south than the sixtieth parallel of north latitude. It lives chiefly on herbs and lichens, and will climb the most precipitous cliffs in search of its food. It has very curious horns. They cover the whole brow, and touch each other at the base, then curl down between the ear and eye almost to its nose, when they turn up in front with a sharp curve. Its hair is silky and long, falling even with the ankles all round, with an under fleece of fine wool to protect it from the severity of the climate. It has the shortest tail of any rumin- ating animal. Its color is dark-brown, and, like the buffalo, its forequarters are much heavier than its hindquarters, and it runs very fast. Its flesh is coarse-grained, and smells of musk, like the Thibet ox, hence its name. An Avoidable Behellion. In the winter of 1885 I was sent to Ontario, with headquarters in Toronto, by one of the railway com- 0]^ THE FLOWEEY PKAIEIE. 81 panies in Manitoba, to work up a colonization scheme. I laboured very hard for several months, but in the spring, just as I had over two hundred families ready to start for the West, and special trains arranged for to take them there, the second Eiel rebellion broke out unexpectedly, and all my work and outlay came to nothing in one night. Intending settlers were afraid to go to any part of the North- West, and even to Manitoba that season, and I returned to Winnipeg about midsummer by the lakes. If Louis Eiel had only been hanged after his first rebellion and the murder of poor brave royal Thomas Scott, as retributive justice clearly demanded, Canada would not have had to suffer the consequences of his second rebellion or the expenditure of millions of dollars and the loss of hundreds of valuable lives. Up Salt Creek. In business matters all my life if one thing failed me I immediately tried something else, practically following Mark Twain's advice, — ''Never cry over spilt milk, but take up your pail and go for the next cow.'' I had in previous years explored the greater part of Manitoba for economic minerals and to study the geology of that new and interesting field. I afterwards embodied the results of my work in this line in a paper on ''The Footsteps of Time in the Eed Eiver Valley," which was published first by the His- torical Society of Winnipeg, and then by the Smith- sonian Institution in Washington, U. S., though I thought very little of it. 6 82 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. In the early days nearly all the salt used in the country was made by the natives from salt springs that occur on the west side of Lake Manitoba, and when the rebellion proved disastrous to my coloniza- tion scheme, I made an effort to get up a company in Winnipeg to manufacture salt, which was rather dear there, as it had to be imported from Ontario with very high freight rates to pay on it. But just at that time everybody in Manitoba fully expected that the proposed Hudson's Bay railway from Win- nipeg to Fort Churchill was going to be built in the near future, when Liverpool salt could be brought in at low cost, and so my new project literally went up salt creek. Note. — I forgot to mention that I once tried hard to have Goldwin Smith nominated for the Dominion Parliament in a rural constituency in Manitoba. But the most of the electors at the meeting did not appar- ently know anything about him, and chose a fifth- rate Winnipeg man, who sold out before election day to the candidate of the Conservative party! Served the ignorant blokes right. CHAPTER VI. AN EASTWARD MOVE, Under Two Flags. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet the only alternative is for Mahomet to go to the mountain, and try to climb to the top of it. I liked Winnipeg better than any other city in Canada to live in, and even yet, when the summer comes round, I long for a sight of the prairie once more. But in the spring of 1887 I left Manitoba, and pitched my moving tent a day's march nearer home, in Sault Ste. Marie, on the Michigan side. It used to be one of the prettiest spots in America in summer for natural scenery, but is now getting spoilt in this respect by factories and other industrial works. There was no railroad into that part of the northern lake region then, and after the closing of navigation, or virtually for six months of the year, the people of the twin towns on both sides of the river there and in the surrounding country were cut off from the rest of the world. The only way to get in and out in winter was to walk or drive, when the roads were not blocked with snow, to Mack- inaw, about seventy miles to the south, and the mails were carried by stage or dog-train on the same route. But that fall two railway lines, one on the Michigan, 84 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. and the other on the Canadian side, were extended to the ^'Soo/' and connected by the fine international bridge across the river at the head of the rapids. This event was duly celebrated by the whole community as a big thing that they had long been waiting for. One old residenter on the Michigan side, with a flow- ing beard like a Hebrew prophet, drove out ten miles to the end of the track one day as the road was near- ing the town, and when he saw the construction train, he raised up his hands, and exclaimed, — ^^Now let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation ! ' ' But as soon as he got home the same day he took a gun and camped on a corner of his land near the town to keep the engineers from laying out the line through it unless the railway company would pay him an extortionate price for the right of way ! I remained at Sault Ste. Marie for two years, and got on very well there. My business was partly on each side of the river, so that I lived under two flags at the same time. But in this matter, though I admire the enterprising, wide-awake people of the United States, I felt like the Irishman who wanted to be buried between his two wives *^with a slight cant towards Biddy,'' his first one. Even the ground seemed more friendly to my poor bones on the Cana- dian side when camping out on it. An old Scotchman who was a great Shakespearean scholar worked in an office near me, and in the evenings we had any amount of good instructive talk. Some time after- wards he was left a fortune by a sister at home, and got as far as New York city on his way back to Scot- AN EASTWAED MOVE. 85 land when all trace of him was lost, and I could never find out what became of him. But my favorite companion at Sault Ste. Marie was Edgerton M. Stenabaugh, a young German Canadian of the very best kind. On the day of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, the 20th of June, 1887, we crossed over to the Canadian side, and walked to the military road built by Col. (now Sir Garnet) Wolseley, on his expedition to the Red River to put down the first Riel rebellion; and standing on the middle of this road, we took off our hats in a downpour of rain and sang ''God Save the Queen," and gave three hearty cheers for the grand old girl. The Oldest Canal. There is no other place at which one can get such an adequate idea of the vast internal commerce of the great lakes as at Sault Ste. Marie, in watching the traffic that goes through the ship canals there every season. The first and oldest canal on the Ameri- can continent was built at this point in 1798, by Sir Alexander Mackenzie of Arctic fame, to take the fui traders' boats across the neck of land between the St. Mary's river and Lake Superior on the Canadian side, where the water power canal is now. In the summer of 1888 I discovered the location of the vanished lock at the foot of this old canal. It was in the edge of the bay a few feet out from the present shore. Three of the planks that had formed one side of the lock stood up about two feet from the bottom, but under water, and I broke off several piecQS with 86 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. my hammer, two of which I have yet. The timber was white pine, but still as sound as the day it was put in. I also found a number of other relics close by, including a four-pound weight made of native copper by hand, and probably by the early Jesuit missionaries in the latter part of the seventeenth cen- tury, as there is a neat little cross on the upper side of it. A Unique Heirloom. It was at Sault Ste. Marie, too, that I got the big snuff-box from an unfortunate Scotch tailor whom I had befriended there. He and his thrifty, hard- working little Irish wife had a single room near my office in the same block, and which they used both as a workshop and to live in. They had seen better days, but he was a sort of Mark Tapley in his way and as cheery as ever. Before leaving for Chicago, where he had got a situation at his trade, he gave me the snuff- box. It is made of the finest pair of Highland sheep horns that are perhaps to be found in the world. He assured me that it was over one hundred years old then, and that it had an interesting history as the snuff-box that the representatives of the Scottish clans used at their annual meetings in Glasgow for at least fifty years. I therefore hope that it may be kept in our family for a long time. I would not take any money for it. Not a Legend. About the year 1813 the son of an Irish gentleman was on his way by the Lake Superior canoe route to AN EASTWAKD MOVE. 87 serve under Lord Selkirk in the Eed River settle- ment, when, stopping over at Sault Ste. Marie for a few days to rest, he fell in with the family of an Indian chief, married one of the daughters, and remained there. Several of his descendants are in that vicinity yet, though dying out. I met one of the sons of this couple, a very intelligent and even well- read old man, and learnt a few things from him. His squaw or half-breed wife was apparently older than himself, and as wrinkled and brown as a bag of leather, but he would always address her as *'my child,'' which sounded very funny when you looked at her. In talking about the Mound Builders, some of whose works were to be seen along the rapids and the banks of the river at Sault Ste. Marie, he said that they were not a distinct race at all, but the ancestors of the Indians, and also that it was the Indians, and not the Mound Builders, who first worked the copper mines on the south shore of Lake Superior, in what are called the ** ancient diggings" there. The finding of remains of fur skins and other things in these old copper pits, he explained, was due to the fact that when an Indian took any copper out of the mines he had to leave a pair of moccasins, or a bear or other skin, to propitiate the Great Spirit, to whom the mines belonged, or the latter would be angry with him, and he need not come back another year, as he would have no luck. If an Indian took out only a little copper any season he only left a small gift, such as a mink or fox skin, but if a large quantity, 88 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. he left a more valuable gift, such as a beaver skin, and so on. His grandfather, he said, had worked in the mines in this very way not over one hundred and fifty years ago. The copper was taken down south by the lakes and the big traverse trail, to exchange for tobacco with other tribes who lived by cultivating the land. The Battle of Seven Oaks, I also got a very interesting historical document from this same half-breed, in the shape of a long letter written (on blue foolscap paper with a quill pen) by an employee of the Hudson's Bay company at Rat Portage to this man's father at Sault Ste. Marie in 1817, 1 think. There has been a long-standing dispute as to which of the two great rival fur-trading companies was responsible for the battle of Seven Oaks, near Winnipeg, in which Governor Semple of the Hudson's Bay Company and about twenty others were killed. A monument was erected on this spot some years ago, but more, I fancy, to fix the location of the battle ground than to commemorate the event, as only one of the seven oak trees that were there then is left now. The letter referred to gave a full and detailed account of the fight by an eye-witness, showing that it was precipitated either by the acci- dental discharge of a gun, or by one of the men of the North-West Trading Company. I sent the letter to the Historical Society of "Winnipeg, but what they did with it, if anything, I have never heard to this day. AN BASTWAED MOVE. 89 Two Notable Indians. At the foot of the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie, on the Canadian side, two notable Indians, named Peter and John Kagiosh, had cabins on the very outermost point of land there, to fish in the summer time. In winter they went back to the remnant of the tribe up on Goulais Bay. Peter was a big stout man with a chest on him like a barrel, while John, the older of the two, was short but very strongly built, and, though getting feeble and not able to work much any more, he was as nimble on his feet as a squirrel. They had both been with Dr. Rae, of Edinburgh, on his overland trip to the Arctic regions when he found the remains, or whatever relics they were, of the unfortunate Sir John Franklin. The party ran out of provisions on the way back and some of them starved to death. These two Indians were the only survivors then. John had a great stone pipe that the chiefs of some of the western tribes smoked at the big pow-wows on the plains. I wanted to buy it from him, and said that I would make better use of it by giving it to a museum after a while. But he shook his head, and answered, — ^^No; pipe Indian, me Indian, better for me. ' ' Then he filled the pipe and smoked it with me to seal our mutual friendship and good-will for all time, his frail old squaw looking on with some inter- est from her bed in a corner of the cabin. 90 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. My Noblest Friend. He'll hae misfortunes great and sma', But aye a heart aboon them a^ When I first began to travel as a commercial man, I made my home while in Toronto now and again at the Green Bush hotel there. It was a little old brick building on Yonge street, with some of the original forest trees still around it, as indicated by its name, but has long been replaced by the present Russell House, on the same site. I found it a very comfort- able place to stay at then, and, besides, I have always disliked big noisy cheerless hotels where no one can live in a proper human way. But the memory of the little old hotel will abide with me as lon^ as I live. For it was there, on my return to the city one Saturday night, that I first met Thomas McGlashan, and from that night till he die'd he was my dearest and most intimate friend in this world. I have never met any other man like him. He was pure gold without a single particle of alloy. He would give his last dollar to anyone he knew that needed it. He was true and kind and generous by nature, and, though he had his own share of the ups and down of life, he remained the same noble-hearted fellow to the end. He had also lost his wife shortly after they were married. I intended to have him with me prospecting in the Sudbury district, but just as I was going to send for him, I got a telegram at Sault Ste. Marie from his brother in Toronto, informing me of his untimely death there of typhoid fever. He AN EASTWAKD MOVE. 91 is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, n^ar the scenes of his childhood that he loved so well, a few miles farther up Yonge street. Ah me, as a man gets up in years the loss of the friends of his youth, one after another, till so few of them are left, if any at all, is one of the most painful experiences of life. An Historical Sketch. The first white man of whom we have any record, to penetrate as far west on Canadian territory as Sault Ste. Marie, was John Nicolet. He had previ- ously been trained among the Indian tribes on Lake Nipissing in all the hardships and mysteries of savage life, and was sent by Champlain from Quebec, in 1634, to explore the region and lakes west of the Georgian Bay, for the double purpose of finding the long sought for passage to China, and also to nego- tiate a treaty of peace between the Hurons of Lake Simcoe and the Winnebagoes, or '*Men of the Sea,'' on the west side of Lake Michigan. He was accom- panied by seven Huron chiefs as ambassadors and guides. The little party coasted along the north shore of the Georgian Bay, which was then covered with gloomy forests and inhabited by hostile tribes, and finally arrived at Sault Ste. Marie in their birch bark canoes, the forerunners of the large fleets of ships and boats of every kind that carry on the immense commerce of the upper lakes at the present day. They encamped the first night below the foot of 92 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. the rapids on the American side of the river, and found a small band of Algonquin Indians living there. After a short rest they proceeded on their journey to the land of the Winnebagoes, on Green Bay, and passing through the straits of Mackinaw they discov- ered Lake Michigan, which no white man had ever seen before then. On arriving at their destination, so sure was John Nicolet that he was approaching the ,far east, instead of the middle of the North American continent, that he arrayed himself in ^^a large garment of Chinese damask sprinkled with flowers and birds of different colours.'' In this assumption he was of course mistaken, but he accomplished the other objects of his mission, as might be expected from such a brave and clever man, and returned the following year by the same route, except that they took the south side of the Mani- toulin islands on the way back. CHAPTER VII. IN THE SUDBUBY DISTRICT, Roughing it Again. I thought when I left the old farm in the county of Bruce that I was through with rough pioneer work. But the hardest struggle of my life was to be in the wilds of Algoma long afterwards, and to last for nearly twenty years. But who knows what is before him to do or to suffer? For besides the miseries, privations and weary tramps inseparable from the work of prospecting in such a rugged coun- try, it fell to my lot (perhaps for my sins) to have been at the head of a never-ending agitation against the restrictive policy of the Ontario Government in regard to mineral lands, and in favour of a proper mining law. The first discovery of mineral in the Sudbury dis- trict was made in 1883, during the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway through that part of Northern Ontario. But the ore deposits there were at first supposed to be copper mines, and it was not until some years later on that the still more important discovery was made that the ore in these mines car^ ried nickel in paying quantities in addition to the copper that was in it. The right name for them is 93 94 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. nickel-copper mines. During the intervening years very little progress had been made in the development of the mines, as the copper alone in the most of the deposits would not pay to work, and not much inter- est was taken in them by mining men. In fact, it was not the nickel mines that first drew public atten- tion on a wide scale to the Sudbury district as a new and remarkable mining centre, but the discovery of the Vermillion gold mine, in the township of Denison, on the main nickel range, in the fall of 1887, and which created the wildest kind of a speculative min- ing boom there for the next year or more. Hundreds of claims were taken up through the winter with four feet of snow on the ground, and the following season the district was literally overrun by all sorts of people, but mostly tenderfeet from the cities and towns of older Ontario, looking for gold mines. But the Ver- million mine was proved to be the exceptional mine oi the whole mineral belt, and was subsequently found to contain, besides more or less gold, a body of nickel-copper ore of a very high grade, and also in an overlying bed of loose material and gossan, a considerable amount of platinum in a new form, some silver and a little cassiterite or tin ore. No mine like it has so far been found there, nor indeed anywhere else in the world, as to the combination of different minerals in it. Odd Incidents. Some queer things were said and done in the Sud- bury district in those early days. For instance, in m THE SUDBUEY DISTEICT. 95 one case, the head man in a party of working pros- pectors was a Methodist, with his head full of diluted moonshine on religion, and happening to find a little free gold on a claim they were opening up, he took out of his pocket in the evening a hymn book that he always carried with him then, and began to sing, pray, cry and laugh by turns? and to thank heaven for their good luck, until the others had to lead him back to the tent and put him to bed. During the night he got up and went through the same per- formance again. But the property turned out to be, not a gold mine at all, but a great nickel mine! In another case, a lawyer from Toronto, in starting out to search for mines, took an extra packman with him to carry his personal baggage, consisting of a large bath tub, sponges, towels, night shirts, a shav- ing case and shoe brush. There is a prospecting outfit for you ! But he only made one trip. The Queen of the Camp. The last year of my stay in Sault Ste. Marie, I was mainly engaged in prospecting in the Sudbury dis- trict, and in the spring of 1889 I moved my head- quarters there, in order to be nearer to my work. For the next four years my home was at Whitefish (such a name, but I could not get Van Home to change it), and where through all the disappointments and fruitless efforts of that period a number of us had the good fortune of being looked after by Mrs. Arthur Gordon and her family, in the old log cottage in front of the railway station there. She was a woman 96 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. of rare qualities, not only as a matchless house- keeper, but also in many other respects; and for general intelligence and good common sense no other woman that I have ever seen could surpass her. We spent the evenings, as a rule, in the little cozy parlour in one corner of the house, and the friendly, cheerful, social talk that we enjoyed together till bed time made us forget all the troubles and vexations of the day. My Bight-Hand Man. In the prolonged struggle with the Ontario Govern- ment over the mining law, my best co-worker beyond any comparison was James B. Hammond, then living in Sudbury, but now in Nairn Centre. He was an educated man and in the prime of life. After teach- ing school in Canada for several years, he went to Germany with little money, and mainly by what he earned there as private tutor of English to foreign students he managed to take a course of lectures on chemistry and other subjects^ which was a very credit- able feat, to say the least of it. He was naturally a bright intellectual fellow, and narrowly escaped being a genius. The most original sayings and criti- cisms would flash out of him like sheet lightning when discussing any matter that interested him, and even in his common talk. He had his own troubles and disappointments in the Sudbury district, but finally settled down in Nairn Centre, the site of which belonged to him, and where he has made a fine home for himself and his wife, and helped in various ways IN THE SUDBUKY DISTKICT. 97 to build up a smart little town. He has also shown a great deal of public spirit and enterprise in placing settlers on the surrounding lands there. We met with the usual slandering and ** contra- diction of sinners'' in our patriotic work, but we had the approval and support of a majority of the mine owners and prospectors, and in fact of the com- munity at large. What we wanted was a simple, just, well-defined and permanent mining law, and particu- larly to get rid of a discriminating royalty that had been put on some of 'the mines while others were entirely free from such a tax. We succeeded at last in getting the law somewhat improved, and also in having the obnoxious royalty abolished, after ten long years of deferred hopes, and everything in the district sinking steadily as if towards absolute ruin. The very recollection of that portion of my life is like a horrible nightmare dream to me yet. A Sample Trip. Northern Ontario is one of the hardest countries in the world to explore. There are no roads nor trails that pack horses can be taken on, and the canoe routes are few and far apart, and seldom convenient to the mineral ranges. All supplies and outfits must be carried on men's backs through the trackless woods and swamps and over rocky hills to no end. The season for such work is very short, being only about four months of the year, leaving out fly time, when 'it is a positive torment to stay in the bush. Then in the spring the low ground is flooded with water from 7 98 BEMOCKED OF DESTHSTY. the melting snow, and during the rest of the season the undergrowth of bushes, ferns and wild grass is so thick that no one can see where to step half the time, and the heavy dew keeps it wet till noon. In short, more poor fellows have lost their lives trying to find mines in the Sudbury district than have made fortunes there. It is rarely that one man goes out alone prospect- ing except for very short trips. At least two men are needed to go together in order to carry the necessary camping outfit and enough grub to last a single week. I have had several good assistants at this work, and some very poor ones. The best man I ever had out in the woods was Russell Cryderman, a young Canadian of German descent. He was strong, will- ing, companionable and a first-class all-round pros- pector and miner. And, furthermore, he had the good sense to marry a Scotch girl for a wife. In the spring of 1899 I wanted to do some prelim- inary development work on the North Star mine, which I had discovered the previous fall in the town- ship of Snider, ten miles southwest of Sudbury. I was anxious to begin the work as early as possible in the season, and we both started out with our heavy packs one fine morning in the latter part of April. We took the railway track for the first three miles, then for the next four miles we followed one of my old trails, mostly over brule, or burnt country, but on which the patches of green pine had recently been cut, and if there is anything else in the world that is IlSr THE SUDBUEY DISTKICT. 99 harder to get through than a lumberman's slash I would like to see it. The day was very hot, and the sweat was rolling off us. At noon we halted for an hour at a little blue lake to have a bite to eat, and rest a bit. We were now at the edge of the green bush, where the snow was still two feet deep, chilling us, and the swamps were covered with water and slush like a lake. It took us five hours to make the remain- ing three miles. At first we tried to keep our feet dry, but soon found that we had to ''frog it," that is, to wade right through, and be very careful not to fall on account of the packs. In many places there was ice on the ground under the water, and as slip- pery as glass. It was worse than crossing the Alps with Bonaparte. When we got to the camping place on the mine near dark, my feet were bleeding at the heels, and I had hard work to get my boots off. The water around a nickel mine is in most cases so impregnated with mineral as to be unfit for use. But for the first five weeks that we were working on the North Star mine, we got over this difficulty in a novel way. We tapped a small white birch tree near the tent, and for the next five weeks we got three pails of sap a day out of it, as cold and clear as spring water, the frost being in the ground under it. We used the sap for cooking everything, from porridge to making tea, and we found the food to be more palatable and nourishing than if we had been using the best water in the world. Nor did we see a single person in the woods there from the day we went in 100 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. till we came out, or for six weeks, though so near the town, and only a few miles from where hundreds of people were working at the Copper Cliff mines. Now a railway line runs across our old camping ground. Our next trip was over twenty miles each way, and right in the middle of fly time. But we had a simple plan of our own to keep the mosquitoes out of the tent at night and have a good sleep. The black flies are far the worst in the daytime, but, as if more con- siderate than the wicked of mankind, they cease to trouble with the going down of the sun. One evening we camped beside the Vermillion river, and being tired of eating salt pork, I wanted, if possible, to have fish for supper, and with a hook and line that I always carried in my haversack, and a bit of the red flannel lining of my old coat for bait, I pulled out at the first throw a pike that would probably weigh three pounds. We had only two big potatoes left, and some bread and other things, but in exactly forty minutes after the fish was taken out of the water, we sat down 'to one of the best meals I have ever had in the bush. The Sudbury district is not much of a place for game, and in prospecting, when two or more men are going together through the woods, they talk and make too much noise to get any deer. But we had many a pot of bouillon or partridge soup that was fit for a king or anybody else, as I usually bagged from 100 to 300 birds every fall. In one sense we lived on the fat of the land, but it was fat pork all the time. IN THE SUDBUEY DISTEICT. 101 Narrow Escapes. I could tell of some rather thrilling experiences on the Sudbury nickel belt, for I had more than one close call for my life there. For instance, one fine sum- mer evening my packman and I were following an old portage trail to get a crossing on an overflowing creek in the township of Fairbanks, when I stepped right into a big steel bear trap ! Fortunately, I had my heavy shoepacks on, and hearing a suspicious click, I jerked my foot up, and the savage jaws of the trap only caught on the heel and sole of my boot, and I was able to pull my foot out. An Indian had set two traps on the trail, one on each side of the creek where a big fallen tree crossed it, and covered them over with leaves. The carcass of a large moose was placed between them for bait. I got caught in one, and my excellent dog, that had been my sole companion on so many trips, got caught in the other at the same time, breaking one of his legs clean in two, and, to end his sufferings, I had to put a bullet through his head, and which was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in that way. On another trip, when climbing a steep high rock bluff, a big log that I was getting over rolled down to the bottom of the hill, taking me with it, and how I escaped with only a bad cut on the back of my neck I never could tell. The cut was made by the hammer of my rifle, which was the strangest thing of all, as I was not carrying it on my shoulder but on my arm at the time. I bled very badly. But after that I seldom went out on any long trip alone. 102 BEMOCKED OF DESTIKY. The Luckiest Man. The Sudbury district is not a poor man's camp. A few big companies are going to make all the money there is in mining there. It takes large capital to work nickel mines, and if a prospector happens to find a good body of ore, the only thing he can do with it is to try and sell it. The luckiest man in the district from the very start was Eobert J. Tough, a young Canadian of good Aberdeen stock, and his success was due far more to natural shrewdness and the faculty of catching on than to anything else. The most remarkable thing in his case was the fact that he never went out pros- pecting for a single day, and often bought and sold properties without even going to see what they were like. He was personally a handsome, attractive man, and the best company in the world in a general way. He could relate an incident or anecdote with the finest dramatic effect, and was full of light bantering fun. He loved music passionately, and could sing his favorite Scotch song very well. But under all this outward levity he had a very keen regard for the practical business of life, and also a kind, tender, good and even serious heart, and was very much attached to his friends. He seemed to be always happy, and his bright mirthful talk was like sunshine on a cloudy day. m THE SUDBUKY DISTEICT. 103 By the Camp Fire. How few people know how to camp out. Summer tourists have usually too elaborate outfits, and not one in a hundred of them can cook anything in the proper way. But after all, it is a very simple matter to live well and comfortably in the woods. My man and I take with us a six by eight canvas tent, weigh- ing only seven pounds, two double blankets and an ordinary comforter to keep the cold out. A brush bed, if made right, is the best and healthiest thing that any man has ever slept on. We also made a little cellar wherever we camped for any length of time, by digging a round hole about two feet deep and half as wide in dry ground near the tent, and then lining it with birch or cedar bark, to keep butter, fresh meat, canned milk and other such things cool in during the hot weather. This idea was my own, and I have never seen anyone else provided with a cellar in the bush, though only a few minutes' work. A good handy fireplace is easily made, and a piece of tin or sheet iron to put over two square stones in front with a small fire under it, will be a great advan- tage in cooking meats and other things in a pan. Then we flattened two logs, and put blocks under them for a table, and over them and the fireplace a slanting roof of bark to keep the rain off on wet days. All these little convenient fixtures can be made in one evening after supper. I invariably got up at five in the morning so as to have breakfast ready in good time. The flies are bad in Northern Ontario only 104 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. from the end of May till the middle of July, though a few of the mosquitoes stay on in the swamps till so late in the fall that they have to leave on snowshoes, the prospectors say. All sorts of preparations are made by druggists and others as fly oils, to use on one's face and hands, but the best thing I have ever had out for this purpose is made as follows, and a twenty-five cent bottle of it will last two men the whole season, — camphor gum, five cents; sweet oil, ten cents; and carbolic acid, ten cents. It is also clean and has a pleasant smell. In the evenings, after the day 's work was done, we had our leisure hour, sitting on a log by the fire out- side to smoke our pipes and have a talk. I had a French habitant with me for a while opening up a new mine, and a good worker he was, too. One night as we sat in this way, he took the pipe out of his mouth and said, — ''It bee tam for 'noder Christ to come and put t'ings right in de worl'. De rich mans get everyt'ing now, and de poor mans get not'ing but work, work lak slave. I work hard, me, ever since I am so beeg as de cricket; firs' in de shaintee I help for cook; affer dat I cut de cordwood on de bush and mak de tie for railway track, but only get poor leeving, dat's all. Wen I grow up I get farm for my own, and build me leetle house. Den I go on my knee and ax God for good wife, but I t'ink it was de devil dat sent me wan, for she mak troub' troub ' all de tam. I have de bad luck for sure. ' ' And it was all true. IlSr THE SUDBUEY DISTKICT. 105 Life in a Den. On moving from Whitefish to Sudbury in 1894, I decided for more than one reason to bach it there, but mainly because I was in and out so much, and often leaving early and coming back late. I prac- tically camped in the middle of the town, with the only difference that I could not make a fire outside to cook on. I had my office, bed and all my traps in one small room twelve by twenty, and prepared my meals on a box stove. I also did my own washing, as the laundry would spoil my flannel shirts and under- wear in no time. But in this '*den," as I called it, I had more comfort and independence than I could have had in the best hotel in the place, and I was at liberty to come and go as I liked. My good old aunt at eighty years of age was still as expert at knitting as ever, and she kept me over-supplied with the finest socks that ever a man put on his feet. I usually had about twenty pairs ahead, all made of the softest homespun yarn, and in such beautiful patterns and colours. In putting them on, I often raised my hand and blessed heaven that one true unselfish woman's heart had continued to love me nearly all my life. Then I had a good warm bed, as I always sleep in blankets the year round. Cold damp cotton sheets are one of the curses of the world now, and cause more rheumatism than all the rains and fogs and the east wind. In the winter of 1895 my friend, J. B. Hammond, staid with me part of the time, as his wife was away. 106 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. and the actual cost of our provisions was only $8.34, and we lived well, too. The items were as follows, — Bread and cakes, $1.10 ; potatoes, turnips and onions, 65 -cents; meats, $1.69; fowl (two geese), $1.80; fish, 55 cents; butter, 60 cents; tea, coffee and sugar, 90 cents; preserves, oranges and nuts, $1.05. Prices were high, too — potatoes $1 a bushel, and poor at that; butter, 30 cents a pound; meats, fowl and fish, 10 to 15 cents a pound. Milk was 10 cents a quart, so we did without any. The following two winters a middle-aged English woman had a restaurant in the same block, and in winter she cooked an excellent dinner for several of us. All we had to do was to make tea or coffee in our rooms, and then go down, each with his own plate, and get enough meat and vegetables put on it for 10 cents! There was no one in the town that could cook roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with her, or pork pies. I used to pity her, working so hard, and would now and again take an hour to split wood and kindling for her, thinking she was poor, but it turned out that she had more money than all of us, and which was invested in annuities in England. The third year she sold out, and went back home. I made my own preserves, of an equal quantity of cranberries and apples, to which we gave the appropriate name of '^combination sauce." We sel- dom had any other dessert, and of course the better for us. People eat too many things now, and espe- cially in our towns and cities. The usual talk as to the benefits of a variety of food is mostly nonsense. IN THE SUDBUEY DISTEICT. 107 Nearly one-half of the whole human race live, and are in better health, either on boiled rice, as in China and Japan, or on ground corn and fruit three times a day, as in most tropical countries. A philosopher has said that all a man wants as the real necessaries of life, and procurable at little cost, is a simple cook- ing outfit, a clean bed to sleep on, a bath tub, plain wholesome food, and plenty of smoking tobacco. Even Mahomet lived the most of his days on barley bread and water, and also mended his own cloak and shoes. But he did a notable work in the world and knew no rest till he got to his grave. All Sorts of Visitors. I had a greater variety of callers than of grub in my den in Sudbury, often more than I cared for. But a welcome visitor always was G. Martin Byres, local manager of one of the banks there. He was an active young Scotchman who had worked his own way up. He had been in the Hong Kong bank for some time, and had a thorough knowledge of the world and its devious ways. In that period of seven lean years in the Sudbury district, a good many people there suffered more or less from what was locally called the ^^ financial cramps," and his posi- tion was not an easy one. But when the perplexing day's work was over, he liked to come in occasionally and have a chat and a pipe or cigar with me. There was not a particle of vulgar nor even banker's pride about him in any way. His chief peculiarity was a free, genuine, explosive laugh, which is always a good 108 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. sign in anyone. I missed him when he left the town. Lord Douglas, now Marquis of Queensberry, was another of my visitors, and I did some expert work for him in connection with some mining deals he had under way, but which did not go through in the end. His brother, Lord Sholto, a little fellow, but good stuff, was often to see me. I cooked a partridge for his dinner in the bush once and didn't he relish it ! When Thomas A. Edison, the famous electrician, visited the Sudbury district in the summer of 1901, he used to call at my office or den almost every day for a week or more. His father was a Nova Scotian, and his mother a Scotch woman, Elliott by name, but he was born in the state of Ohio. In his manner and talk, and especially in his quiet repose, he had very little of the typical American character, and was a big, well-made, handsome man, with a fine large intel- lectual face, but rather deaf, and one had to speak loud to make him hear. I have never met a more interesting man to talk and listen to. When thinking, he would look down and begin to pull his right eye- brow with his finger and thumb in an abstracted way, as if he did not know that he was doing it. He hated snakes awfully, and nearly the first thing he asked me was if they were numerous in that part of Northern Ontario. He was very glad to hear that we had only a few harmless garter snakes on the nickel belt. He told me that he had not made very much out of all his work, and also that his greatest invention was the incandescent light, which is now in use in all the cities and towns of the whole civilized world. IJSr THE SUDBUKY DISTEICT. 109 I must have written over a thousand articles and letters to the press about the Sudbury nickel mines in the last fifteen years, and such a threshing of straw as that was on a rocky floor. I spent the most of my Sundays at it. Among the rest, I was special correspondent for the Engineering and Mining Jour- naly of New York, the most of the time, and I finally persuaded the late K-. P. Rothwell, editor and pro- prietor of that paper, to visit the district and see the great nickel mines for himself, which he did about five years ago, I think in the summer of 1898. He was born and raised in Ontario, but found his life work in the United States, as so many of the best Canadian young men do, the more is the pity. I sold the North Star mine to the Mond Nickel Co. in the spring of 1902, through Dr. Bernard Mohr, the London manager for the company, and he generally came out once or twice a year to see how things were going on at their mines and works in the Sudbury district. As his name indicates, he was either a Ger- man or an Austrian, and I have seldom met a finer man. He was a regular caller at my office for some years, and mainly on business, but there was some- thing about him that made one always glad to see him for his own sake. During our fight with the Ontario Government for a better mining law, Archibald Blue was Director of the Bureau of Mines in Toronto, and though he and I were at variance on this subject, and had some lively bouts through the press, we were personally the best of friends the whole time, and when in Sud- 110 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. bury he would invariably call to see me. His faculty was a rare one. He excelled in the compilation and handling of dry statistics, and for his ability in this respect he was subsequently appointed to take charge of the Census Department of the Dominion Govern- ment at Ottawa. He was a pungent writer in any public controversy, but a most genial and interesting man in private life. He could talk the Gaelic very well. But should auld acquaintance be forgot in these notes? By no means, and of my endless visitors the man I liked to see best was Malcolm Macleod, for many years a commercial traveller in Northern Ontario. He had been one of my scholars at Stony Island in the old days. His mother, Kate Macleod, was a superior Highland Scotch woman in every way, but had her own full share of the trials of life, and her only son was one of the finest young men I have ever seen. His father had brought the son up to Sud- bury for a trip in the summer of 1899, I think, and the latter spent a good part of the time at my den. For his age he had a wonderful grasp of things in general, and any amount of common sense. That fall he went out to Victoria, B. C, where his grandmother, already mentioned, and some other relatives had moved to; and after being employed for a season as purser on one of the boats trading from there to China, he left to look for other work in some of the border states. But in getting on a train one night somewhere in Montana, he slipped, and got one of his legs crushed. He was left on the track part of the m THE SUDBURY DISTRICT. Ill night, and died while being taken to the hospital next day. But in this dreadful state his chief con- cern was for his mother far away in Ontario, and he desired that she should not be informed of his tragic end, as she was neither strong nor well, and it might kill her. He was a real young hero. His body was sent back to Victoria to be buried there. Donald Chisholm Bayne was another traveller who often called on me. He was an educated man and quite a Greek scholar, but by some perversion of fate he spent a great part of his life in taking orders for tailor-made suits from the shantymen in the lum- ber camps. He was a big stout man, always nobbily dressed, and had a distinguished air. In his opinions and talk he was somewhat positive, but Scotchmen as a rule seem to think that they are the wisest and most intelligent people in the world. I did him a friendly turn once, and I am very glad of it now, as the poor fellow died suddenly at Massey Station, on the Spanish River, a few weeks ago. (Added note of 1902.) George R. Mickle, a local mining engineer, was another of my special visiting friends. He had been for several years in Germany, to complete his college training in this line, and subsequently got a wife there. But what made him of more interest to me was the fact that it was his grandfather who wrote ' ' There is na Luck Aboot the Hoose, ' ' one of the very best of Scotch songs. This grandson had not inherited the same poetic faculty, but he could write very good little prose titbits in a mildly satirical vein, had some 112 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. real humour, and was besides a fine companionable man. I also had several calls in later years from Alex- ander R. Macfarlane, of Duluth, Minn., U.S. He came out from Stornoway, I think in 1873, a quiet, modest, unpretentious young man, with the aroma of the heather still clinging to him, to seek his fortune in a foreign land. But he soon made friends in his new home, and especially among the numerous Scotch Canadian folk there. He began at the foot of the ladder, and is now the manager of a bank and a highly respected man. Duluth was then a small, dull place, but has since grown to be a very large and prosperous city. But I have no time to tell about scores of other visitors of all kinds to my humble den. A Flying Trip. For many years I used to take occasional trips across the line, to try and interest American capital- ists in the development of our nickel mines, and in the summer of 1894 I made a flying trip to some of the western mining states and territories for this purpose. I took the boat up Lake Superior to Port Arthur. They got up a sort of concert on board at night, and I read one of Eudyard Kipling's tales as my part of it. Next day, sitting in a quiet corner on deck, I wrote a long article for some paper or other, chiefly to pass the time. At Savanne, in Western Algoma, I saw my old college friend, John Harkness Campbell, for a few minutes. He was a telegraph IN THE SUDBURY DISTEICT. 113 operator, and had charge of the station there. But for real intellectual faculty, general knowledge of literature, and sterling qualities of every kind, very few men in the highest positions in Canada could equal him. At Eat Portage I staid three days to examine some mining properties on the Lake of the Woods and visit poor D. K. Brown's grave. I got off at Brandon for one day to see my sister Isabella and her three clever little boys. She has worked hard all her life, but has very little for it. At Medi- cine Hat the train halted long enough for us to go and take dinner at a hotel near the station; and, to my surprise, as I sat down at the table who should be directly opposite me but Joseph Bell, one of our old neighbours in the backwoods, and whom I had not seen before for over twenty years. His father had been an elder of the Presbyterian church in the old log Temple of the Lewis people in the township of Huron, for the English part of the congregation, and for whom a short service was held after the long Graelic service. He was a solid, compact, medium- sized North of Ireland man, but he had such a big head and dry bushy hair that he could never get a cap or hat in any store large enough to wear, and both had to be made at home for him. In fact, the women in the most of families there in the early days made good straw hats for the men and boys at little or no cost. But economy and thrift have unfortu- nately gone out of the world now, even among the poor. There was a party of American tourists on the 8 114 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. train, and we visited Banff Springs and the glacier on the way. I left them at Revelstoke, and went by boat down Arrow Lake to see the new mining camps of the Kootenay district. On Dominion Day at Nelson they had great sports and races, and one man rode into a barroom on horseback to have a drink. I met some Highlanders from Nova Scotia and other places there, and on asking one of them if he could speak the Gaelic, he said, — ^*No, but my mother's tongue was Maclean." A new dialect. In Vancouver, which was a smart young city of some 13,000 inhabitants then, I met a number of old Winnipeg friends. From there I went by boat to Victoria, and by another boat from Victoria to Tacoma. On the latter trip a funny thing happened to me. I caught a bad cold in my throat and lost my voice. It was rather awkward, but I got all right again in a short time. Oregon is a fine rich state, but through Idaho across the barren sandy plains along the Snake river was very disagreeable, as even the food we got to eat was filled with sand. Some of the passengers on the train were robbed one night. But in places it is a great fruit country, and at the little way-stations we bought the finest peaches for 25 cents a basket from rough, poor-looking farmers. At Pocatello the sale of a part of the Indian reserve on which the town is built was going on, and all the hotels there were crowded with speculators and gamblers, including a number of squawky American women, buying town lots. My next stopping place was Butte m THE SUDBUEY DISTEICT. 115 City, which is the greatest mining camp in the world. I then came back by Minneapolis, visiting some of the iron and copper mines in North Michigan on my way, and on arriving at Sault Ste. Marie, on the Canadian side, I interviewed Hon. (now Sir Oliver) Mowat, who was rusticating there, on the absurdities of our min- ing law, as a fit and proper ending of my trip. Had Heard of Her Buns. In the worst of times we contrived to have what little satisfaction we could out of life. The best fun was at our public meetings, as the talk and arguments of most of the speakers were generally more loud than logical. The selection of a judicial seat for the dis- trict of Nipissing was left by the Ontario Govern- ment to a vote of the people, in the winter of 1895, which set the three rival towns contending for it, Mattawa, North Bay and Sturgeon Falls, by the ears. I took an active part in the campaign in the interests of North Bay, as being the most central place, and after two hard contests we won in the end. Another man and I went down to Cache Bay to attend a meet- ing one night, and while there we staid at a boarding house, kept by a Mrs. John Jessup, who was a noted cook, and also a friendly, talkative old body with a great fund of light diverting wit. She told us some good stories that night after the meeting, and this one about herself. A gentleman from Ottawa when he came to her house for the first time, said on being introduced to her, — ''I never had the pleasure of 116 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. meeting you before, but I have often heard of your buns!'' Not a bad compliment to be paid to any housewife in these days. In spite of our boasted enlightenment in this age the ignorant, purchaseable voter is as numerous as ever, if not more so. After another of our meetings where I happened to create some fun, a big French- man came to see me next morning, and said, — '^I was go' to vote for Mattawa. But I hear you talk las' night ; you mak me laugh ; I like dat ; now I vote for Nor' Bay." And he did. CHAPTER VIII. THE BOER WAR AND OTHER THINGS. The Reasons Why. If any one ever reads this poor narrative of my wayfarings and obscure struggles in life, he will probably wonder that I mention only a few personal friends and relatives in it, and such as I could speak well of as a rule, when I could have told so many things about the different kinds of other people that I have met in my wanderings over half a continent for more than fifty years. But as my main object was to give a true, if fragmentary, account of pioneer life in Canada, I could not do any more than insert a brief notice or sketch of one here and there, even of the special friends and acquaintances I made in the various places where I had lived for any length of time. Then I would rather say a good word of any man than an ill word, if I could truthfully do so. It is simply pitiful how we misjudge each other at best in this world. As to what I have written about a few of my own kindred, I had far more regard to the plain facts and lessons of their lives than to the sense- less apology that is usually made in such cases, — **If I say it who shouldn't,'' and which ought to be, — '*If I say it who should," if ever used at all. We natur- 117 118 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. ally expect every man to speak well of his own people, and parents of their children. There will always be plenty of others to speak ill of them, no matter how good they may be. For what Hamlet told Ophelia in their parting scene is only too true, and applicable to all of us, — '^Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure, as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." Who can, then? Nor have I said a single word about the public men and politicians I have had to do with in one way or another during the past thirty years. For I was a strong party man in my younger days, God forgive me! But at that time the most of men, and especially of young men, who took an active interest in public affairs in Canada, worked solely for the triumph of their principles, and not for boodle or office. In fact, until within the last fifteen or twenty years we could proudly claim that Canada was far above the United States in this respect. But, alas, the politics of both countries are nearly on the same low degrading level now, and can only be described in plain language as ''the kingdom of the devil made manifest,'' I am very sorry to say. As to all the greedy, unscrupulous knaves and fools I have met with in business and otherwise, they are not worth telling about. My worst experience was with men I had placed the fullest confidence in, but who went back on their word the first chance they saw to make a grab. I helped more than one man in the Sudbury district to get a start in life, but my reward, though ample of its kind, was not very encouraging THE BOEK WAR AND OTHEE THINGS. 119 from a philanthropic point of view, and consisted mainly of ingratitude and abuse in every case! Perhaps one should not expect anything else. The cat is surprised that it has a tail on, and I have often noticed that a little unmerited success is liable to affect some men in the same way, and they get inflated with silly vulgar conceit of themselves over it. But there is an approximate justice in this world that accomplishes itself in the long run, happily for the human race. It also came in my way to keep three different men from bidding farewell to life before their time, as they were determined to do ; the first owing to loss of money, the second because of the ruin he had brought on his family through drink, and the third on account of a faithless wife. They are all living yet, and doing well now. A Suggestive Contrast. Strangely enough, there is just as much difference in several respects between the most of the people in Northern Ontario, and the early settlers in older Ontario, as there is in the physical character of the two great divisions of the province. For instance, we had no lawyers, nor any need of them in the backwoods of the county of Bruce for at least the first ten years. The settlers there had no quarrels nor differences that required to be adjusted in courts of law. But in Northern Ontario the settlers in many places are eternally at loggerheads over roads, schools and all sorts of petty matters; and the com- 120 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. mand to love one's neighbour is oftenest interpreted the other way. Even the poor habitants, who natur- ally have a dread of law, are just as notorious for troubles of this kind, and especially wherever a few Irish or other mischief breeders may happen to get in among them to live. The result is that besides the regular judges, who complain of being overworked, there is a stipendiary magistrate in almost every important town, who is kept busy with criminal and other eases. In Sudbury there are no less than seven or eight lawyers, and they are all doing well. Then, in older Ontario, we never had a lock on any door, of house, barn or other building, and nothing was ever stolen or missed. But in the Sudbury dis- trict, of which I can speak from personal knowledge and experience, it is not safe to leave a cabin in the woods, or in fact any place, even for a single day, without some one to watch it. The lock was broken, and everything in my camp on one mine taken, in- cluding the stove and the hinges on the door ! When quitting work on another mine in the fall I had to dig a hole in the ground to hide the tools in, and cover it over with logs and brush to look as if made in clearing the land. I fooled the rascals that time. A fine old man I met in Sudbury once gave me a strange account of his experience in this line. He said that when he first came out from England, as a young man, he went sailing on the lakes, and seeing the beautiful scenery at many points along the shores of the Georgian Bay, he made up his mind that as soon as he got a little money ahead he would get THE BOEE WAE AND OTHER THINGS. 121 married, and settle down at some desirable place there; which he did near Parry Sound in Muskoka. But in course of time other settlers came in, and their bickerings and slanders became so intolerable to him that he sold out, and decided to go back into the wild woods, away from everybody, and where he could live alone and have peace. So he moved with his wife and his only son and the latter 's wife and children, to a lake about forty miles north of Bis- cotasing and near the height of land. They raise some crops, but no cattle, not even a cow, and live mostly by hunting. They get their supplies in once a year with canoes by the river, and bring out their furs in the same way. But except a few towns and mining centres, the whole of Northern Ontario is evidently going to be French like Quebec. In this connection there is a very singular fact that is worth pointing out. The Scotch have put their mark in broad lines on nearly all the British colonies, and they usually retain their national identity like granite rock. But in Canada, wherever the Scotch have been mixed up with the French, as in the Eastern Townships, Glengarry and other places, they are being absorbed, so to speak, by the latter right along; and when even a big stalwart Highlander marries a little black-eyed French girl, he may as well take off his blue bonnet and put on a tuque, or his own children will not know him. There is no instance on record in all history of a weaker race getting the better of a stronger race in such a way. 122 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. The South African War. The hideous disasters and mistakes of the South African war at the start caused the same profound disappointment in the Sudbury district as in all other parts of the British Empire. I had a flag-pole at the end of my den, and on the receipt of any bit of good news, up would go the Union Jack, but I gener- ally had to pull it down the very next day. When we heard of the relief of Maf eking a great bonfire was made in the evening, and the whole town, men, women and children, turned out to celebrate the welcome event, and also to listen to the patriotic oratory that floated from a little temporary stand like the wind that shakes the barley. As to the war, there was very bad generalship, everybody admits, in some cases. But it should not be forgotten that no other military nation in Europe has ever had such a difficult task to perform during the last two thousand years. The Eomans conquered the whole world, but, as any reader of history ought to know, they could not subdue, nor in fact do any- thing at all, with the ancient inhabitants of Scotland, who were very much like the Boers in power of en- durance, swift movements and fighting tactics; and both countries are of the same rough, hard physical character to get over. The Romans tried in vain for more than four centuries to bring the Picts and Scots under their rule, but they could not even keep the latter from making raids across the border, although they had built several chains of forts and great dykes and walls between the two countries for this purpose. THE BOEE WAR AND OTHER THINGS. 123 But the South African war was practically finished in one year. In the United States all sorts of foreign immigrants are assimilated and become good loyal American sub- jects in one generation, and chiefly because they have only one language and one school system. But in Canada, after one hundred and fifty years of indul- gent British rule, the line of cleavage between the French and the rest of the population is as strongly marked as ever, if not more so, and owing almost en- tirely to two great mistakes — dual language and sepa- rate schools. I, therefore, felt it to be my duty some time ago to write to the Hon. Joseph Chamberlain and call his attention to these significant facts, in the hope that the same mistakes might not be made in South Africa in the case of the Boers. *' Language means mothers, and mothers means kids,'' as my friend J. B. Hammond would tersely say. But the most horrible thing about this awful blotch of a war from first to last was the shocking, blasphemous hypocrisy of old Paul Kruger. He quoited scripture, preached on Sundays, and almost claimed the gift of prophecy. But at the same time, having no Balaam's ass to reprove him, he never ceased from cursing the British Government and army; and finally, instead of remaining at his post as the head of his people, and, if need be, dying for his country, he grabbed up all the stolen gold he could lay his dirty hands on, and, like a greedy, sordid coward, ran off to Europe with i/t! So far from being a hero, he proved himself before the whole world to be the arch-hypocrite of his age. 124 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. Dream of the North, On my first arrival in the Sudbury district my pet ambition was to build a city ! I saw that there were mines enough, if worked on an adequate scale, to support more than one good town and even a city, as in many other mining regions of less note. After looking around for a while I took up a central place in the middle of the main nickel range, and laid out a portion of it into town and park lots. It was made by nature for a town site; with the land high and dry, and sloping to the south; a fine lake in front, dotted in part with islands and teeming with fish; one of Algoma's famous springs of ice cold water flowing out on it at the foot of a hill; an excellent water power on the Vermillion river on one side of it, and a large valley of good farming lands on the other; and, as for beautiful picturesque scenery, no other spot in all Northern Ontario can surpass it. The railway also runs through it. But what are the greatest natural advantages or individual enterprise and efforts any more in such a case, when towns and cities even in the older parts of the country are to a large extent at the mercy of the big companies, trusts and corporations, who want to monopolize the whole earth nowadays; and in the newer districts the industrial centres are located by them solely to suit their own selfish purposes, and without any regard to the health or convenience of the public. Then, of all organizations of business men for practical work, mining companies often do the stupidest things, and use the least common sense. THE BOER WAE AND OTHER THINGS. 125 Northern Ontario abounds in lakes, rivers and run- niiig streams, but not a single mining or smelting plant in the whole Sudbury district has been properly lociited for water or dumping ground for the slag. When I started my city twelve years ago, the accountant for a poor mining company that built a sort of experimental reduction works there, but soon failed, was a fine, manly, athletic, well-informed Eng- lishman, full of vim and life, and named Walter Betts. The failure of the company and the broken promises of the so-called manager of the scheme left him without a dollar of his wages, and stranded on the rocks in a double sense. But Mrs. Arthur Gordon of Whitefish and I befriended him while out of work. He died two years afterwards in a rather tragical way. He was a Freemason, but as he had not joined the local Sudbury lodge, and was behind in his dues, I had to bury him decently at my own expense, to keep him from being put into a pauper's grave. Some members of the fraternity went to the funeral, but without their little aprons on, like girls in a tailor shop! I sometimes long to be back to my own native pro- vince by the sea, where the few happy years of my boyhood were spent, and I could fish for speckled trout in the old rivers and brooks. Ah, yes, and then the land you were born to lies lighter on your bones. But I am attached to Ontario by sacred ties, and of all places in it my pretty town site among the rocky hills of Algoma is the spot I like best, and I may yet end my days there. My personal wants are simple. 126 BEMOCKED OF DESTmY. and easily supplied. I have made a lucky strike in mining at last, but what is money to a lonely, home- less, wandering, sorrow-stricken man with no living heart to love him any more in this world. It has been truly said that the wealth of a man does not consist of material possessions at all, but in ''the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.'' I have lived in many ways, but my choice of a house for real solid old- fashioned comfort would be a log cabin with a large open fireplace in it. The door of my stove is never shut in my den. The only luxury I care for, and must have except when out in the bush, is a cup of good fresh cream from the previous night's milk for my porridge every morning, which I cook in my own way. I must also have my tobacco and pipe. No one can tell but a lonely old man What comfiort there is in a smoke. Writing Under Difficulties. The foregoing eight chapters of these notes, except the last paragraph, were written, under rather unfavourable circumstances, in the winter of 1901. I was partly laid up in my den in Sudbury with a combined attack of grippe and rheumatism in addi- tion to the general miseries of life. But to keep from wearying — and I must always be doing something — I determined, if possible, with my head aching so badly and my right arm nearly used up, to try and get this long-deferred task off my mind in some way. So I locked my front door, prepared my own frugal but THE BOEE WAR AND OTHER THINGS. 127 wholesome meals, and looked after myself without the aid of a doctor or anybody else. If the fruit is ripe all one has to do is to shake the tree, but there is no use in forcing nature in the mat- ter of writing any more than in other things. My memory was as clear as ever, but I had to lie down on top of the bed most of the time, and could only write a little while every day. I had given a private knock to a few special friends, so that I could tell them from others rapping at my door, and let them in to see me. But in spite of all precautions, I was often interrupted by the usual variety of talking idiots who call at a mining office. Still, by dint of perseverance, I managed to get on pretty well. But in two weeks after I had got fairly started, and my work planned out, the sudden death of Queen Vic- toria cast its world-wide shadow even over my poor den, and for several days I could not write a single line. She was to me the best and noblest woman of the nineteenth century, and what I particularly revered her for was her faithfulness to the memory of her beloved husband. Prince Albert, through all the long years. He died just two weeks before my mother, and I can still remember how the news affected us in the old home on the farm, with a similar impending sorrow of our own so heavy on all our hearts. But who is so fortunate as never to have followed someone he has loved to the grave? Then I had hardly got to work again when the loss of two old friends in Kincardine, Mrs. John McLean and Norman Smith, almost in the same week, brought a 128 BEMOCKED OF DESTIi^Y. new cloud of sadness upon me, and soon afterwards the smallpox broke out in Sudbury, to the terror of everybody in the town. I intended to write a longer account of my life, but for these and other reasons I had to condense the whole narrative, and leave out far more than I have been able to get into it. I also dislike to write about myself, but could not do otherwise in this case. CHAPTER IX. PORRIDGE AND THE PEN* Burns. In speaking of Scottish literature, the first and foremost name, of course, is that of Robert Burns, the most popular of all British poets. The genius of Shakespeare was of a far higher order, but Burns is the poet of the people. The anniversary of his birth is celebrated wherever the English language is spo- ken as no other man's is, or will likely be for long centuries to come. But grand and inspiring as some of his larger poems are, it is his matchless songs that have endeared him to the hearts of his countrymen, and to millions of others all over the world. He has so enriched the song literature of Scotland that there is no other anywhere to be compared with it. *' Scots Wha Hae" is unquestionably the best war ode ever written by any pen. The very spirit of national liberty breathes through every line of it. For Burns was a patriot above all things, and loved his native land. Then I once heard a very pious old lady declare *Iii (the winter of 1900 my friend James B. HJammond and others in Nairn Centre got up a concert there in aid of the patriotic fund for the South African war, and at his request I went down and gave the following short address as my part of it. 129 9 130 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. that if anything we sing here should be sung in the hereafter, it would certainly be *^Auld Lang Syne/' but in a slightly revised form ! And how little he could have thought when writing it in his humble cottage, and perplexed with many cares, that it was to become the chief and permanent social song of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. He was also the first of modern writers to proclaim the universal brotherhood of man, and ''A Man's a Man for a' That" has helped many a poor man to hold up his head in self- respect and to be reconciled to his lot. Burns had the true poet soul. He did not have to seek for great themes to kindle his muse, but saw beauty and significance in the common things around him. Nor did he have to compose by rule, and, as it were, manufacture his poetry, but wrote when the impulse was upon him, and often, as he tells us, to find some counterpoise to the struggles and miseries of life. The reason his songs have taken such a firm hold on the heart of the world is simply because they express so truly and tenderly all the dearest feelings and sentiments of our common human nature. Then it must be remembered that he virtually wrote in a foreign tongue, the Broad-Scotch, and I do not know of any other case where a mere local dialect has been made classic by the genius of one man. But Eobert Burns had capabilities for much higher work than the writing of lyrical songs. His portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, the only one he had ever taken, shows a strong heroic face, with every feature perfect, and the eyes large, candid, fearless, POEEIDGE AND THE PEN. 131 and as if luminous with celestial light. For in valour, intelligence and noble qualities of every kind he was fit to be a king of men, instead of having to toil at obscure drudgery all his days. But in spite of the hard conditions of his life, and without knowing it, he accomplished the real work appointed him, and that was, to interpret Scotland to herself and to the world. A brave, taciturn, imaginative, but deep- meaninged people, after waiting long, had found an adequate spokesman at last, and the kind destinies willed that he should be born in a hut and reared as a poor ploughboy. One little thing in this connec- tion is worthy of note. In these loud vulgar times, nearly all births, even of eommon brats, are announced in the newspapers as events of public interest; but, though endowed with the brightest intellect of the eighteenth century, Bums so modestly says of his own advent upon the earth, — There was a lad was born in Kyle, But whsaA, 'na day or what 'na style, I doubt it 's hardly worth the while To be ®ae nice wi' Robin. The general opinion thajt his life was a continuous, unbroken struggle, as of a slave, I do not agree with at all, and I go further and maintain that he had more freedom and independence than the most of poor men in the same circumstances then, and even the average business or professional man of to-day. It is the lot of such gifted souls to suffer in one way or another in this world. Homer was a beggar and Dante an exile. But do we not all know the bitter- 132 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. ness of life? The false and discouraging reception that Bums got from his fellow-men was not what he deserved, and if he had lived longer he would no doubt have written more, and probably greater things. But ill-health and other misfortunes came upon him, and he died broken-hearted at an early age, ^^the stifled echo of his melody audible forever more, as one other note in that sacred miserere that rises up to heaven in all times and lands." Byron, too, was Scotch, the head of the Gordons, and with the impetuosity of a real Highland Celt. He had great poetic gifts, and was master of the keenest satire, unhappily turned sour. Burns was a peasant, uneducated and very poor; Byron, a lord, with all the advantages of his high station in life. But his career, though manful, was only half victorious, and after all Burns has acquired a wider and far more enduring fame. They had much in common, but there was one great difference in the two men. Byron hated, or rather affected to despise, everything under the sun, and finally wandered into self-imposed exile ; while Burns was full of the tender est sympathy and pity for all things, even for the fate of the moun- tain daisy when crushed by his plough, and for the unlucky mouse whose little winter nest had been ruined in the same way. To go back for a moment into the dim past, what- ever may be said as to the authenticity of the ''Poems of Ossian,'' no one can dispute their wonderful beauty and interest; and where in all pagan history is there a nobler character than grand old Fingal? POERIDGE AND THE PEN. 133 Nowhere that I know of. If James Macpherson com- posed them himself, as some of his critics assert, he deserves far more fame than if he had merely gath- ered and translated them, for it would stamp him as an original poet of the very first rank. In either case he has done a great thing. England has been fighting the battles of the world for a thousand years, and is the mistress of the seas, but the best naval odes of the British Empire have been written by Scotchmen, — ''Ye Mariners of Eng- land," by Campbell, and ''Rule Britannia," by Thomson. A few lines of the former ode are appro- priate to the present time in reference to the South African war, — The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn! Till danger ^s troubled night depart. And the star of peace return. The names of many other immortal Scotch poets could be mentioned, if I had time, but they are all well-known to the general reader. Carlyle. Then Scotland has been equally productive of great prose writers. At the head of the list stands the name of Thomas Carlyle, the most remarkable thinker, philosopher and literary man of his age, and in some respects of all the ages. He was Scotch to the very marrow of his bones, but lived the latter half of his life in London, and his principal works were written there, except "Sartor Resartus," and 134 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. some of his finest essays. His ** French Eevolution'' is considered the book of the nineteenth century, and may be called a historical prose-poem. It is noted for clear insight, accurate statement of fact, and the graphic force and splendour of its style. But Car- lyle's special gift as a writer of history was the marvellous power he possessed of summoning all sorts of people from their graves, not as phantoms or ghosts, but as real men and women, and making them act their several parts on the world's stage just as they had done in life. He brings the dead past before us as a living present again. His next great historical work, ^^ Oliver CromwelPs Letters and Speeches, ' ' is generally regarded as his most valuable and satisfactory book, as it has vindicated the charac- ter and memory of one of England's noblest heroes. The ^^ History of Frederick the Great" is the com- plete political history of Europe for the eighteenth century, and the writing of it involved an incredible amount of preparation and labour for thirteen long years. But it is superior in literary workmanship and philosophical reasoning to any of his other works, and contains a whole gallery of historical figures, executed with the skill of a master hand. Among his lesser works, ''Past and Present" is of imperishable interest and value, and ''Heroes and Hero Worship," though only an enlarged report of a course of lectures, is a veritable mine of biographic lore and the most vivid portraits of great men. The "Life of John Sterling" is perhaps the most beau- tiful little biography in the English language, and POKEIDGE AND THE PEN. 135 it was written mainly as a tribute of affection to a lost friend. His essay on Burns is the true '*Life of Burns/' and no one need ever attempt to surpass it. But Carlyle's fame does not rest on any single one of his works, but on the teachings of his whole life, by tongue and pen, and ii: may be said without any irreverence that he spoke as one having authority, and not as do the scribes. He promulgated no new theory or creed, but exposed in the most scathing and fearless way all cants, shams and hypocrisies of modern society, and endeavoured with all his powers and influence to promote the cause of righteousness and truth. In the blind worship of material pros- perity men had forgotten the higher interests and aims of life, and the heart of the world had been corrupted io the core. All science had become mechanical, like everything else in these sordid ages, and even art had forsaken truth and gone wool- gathering after '* ideals." But the chief end of man was not to make money and spend it, nor yet to seek for happiness, which was a poor, selfish, delusive thing as a life purpose, but to seek wisdom, to do honest work, not sham-work or the mere pretence of work, and to be faithful in the discharge of every duty. ^* There is a nobler ambition," he told the Edinburgh students, ^^than the gaining of all Cali- fornia would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now." He belonged to no political party, but he saw that under democracy the control of government was getting more and more into the hands of *' eloquent speakers," who are sel- 136 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. dom or never wise statesmen, but mostly wind and tongue; and he poured out his scorn upon the public men of his day and their doings, always excepting Sir Eobert Peel, whom he greatly admired in every way. For the same reason he regarded the growing influ- ence of lawyers in parliament, and their manipula- tions in all our affairs, as the blackest curse that ever fell upon the human race. Then he saw wealth accumulating in England and other countries as never before, but poverty and the boundless miseries of the toiling classes had not been diminished to any extent, and the economic and moral conditions of their existence, if not improved in many ways, could only lead to anarchy and ruin in the end. His essay on ^^ Signs of the Times'' was his first grand proclamation of the greatness of the soul of man, and he continued to lament the decay of sincere religious belief in the people of all Christian lands. ^'If they abolish God from their own bewil- dered hearts, all or most of them," he said, ''there will be seen for some time, perhaps for several gener- ations, such a world as few are dreaming of." And some of his predictions on this point have already come true. For the nineteenth century, with all its boasted improvements, has also brought us the demon of greed, the plunder of the earth, and the arming of the nations, besides many other gigantic evils. It is no wonder, then, that in fiercely denouncing such a false and contradictory state of social and political matters, Carlyle and his writings were not popular at first, nor even for a long time. But gradu- POEEIDGE AND THE PEN. 137 ally his transcendent genius and high moral purposes came to be recognized, not only in England, but the world over, and he was in the thoughts and talk of all men. He cared nothing for money, as other men do, nor for public honors of any kind, and he would not accept either a pension or a title when Disraeli proffered both to him. It is not generally known that he was of royal ancestry, and that the head of the house of Carlyle was married to a sister of the fam- ous Kobert the Bruce, the best and greatest of Scottish kings. But for over a century the family had been reduced to the peasant state. Though celebrated and much sought after by the highest circles of London society, his personal habits remained as simple and unchanged as the day he left his father's house. Dukes and peeresses vied with each other for the honour of entertaining him at their great mansions, but he preferred to spend the most of his holidays at the old farm home in Scotland, and among his own kindred. From the time he began to earn any money by his pen, he was more than gen- erous to all his brothers and sisters, and always open-handed to everyone who appealed to him in want, though spending so little on himself, except for books, tobacco, paper and ink. He did not care in the least what kind of clothes he wore, and his wife had to look after his wardrobe. '*You will have to get me some wearing apparel when you come home," he wrote to her once, * ^ or I shall be naked altogether. Think of riding most of the summer with the aris- tocracy of the country, whenever I went into Hyde 138 BEMOCKED OF DESTHSTY. Park, in a duffel jacket which literally was part of an old dressing gown a year gone. Is the like on record r' But he believed there was some nobleness for a man besides what the tailor imparts to him. Then his love for his mother was the religion of his life. It exceeded the love of sons, and his last letter to her on her death-bed is very fine, as the following brief extract will show, — *^My poor mother, weak and sick and dear to me. Surely God is good, and we ought to trust in Him, or what trust is there for the sons of men? Let it be a comfort to you that you have done your part honourably and well. For if there has been any good in the things I have uttered in the world's hearing, it was your voice essentially that was speaking through me. May God reward you for all you have done for me. I never can.'' She was no prouder of being his mother than he was of being her son. In his marriage, too, Carlyle was more fortunate than the most of literary men, though so much has been said and written about the discontent of his wife. She was a lineal descendant of John Knox, also remarkably clever in her own way, and a thrifty, perfect housekeeper as well. But she had no chil- dren, and her health was often bad. Then he was so absorbed in his tremendous life task as to appear at times to be blind or indifferent to her little troubles and trials. Besides, she was intensely proud of him and his fame, and therefore more sensitive to any want of consideration with which he might seem to treat her. But in reality they were both made for POKEIDGE AND THE PEN. 139 each other, and in a truer sense than is usual in such cases. She looked after him for nearly forty years as probably no other woman in the world could have done so well, and if she happened to be away from home, he felt like a forsaken child till she came back. He was always reluctant ito speak of his grati- tude for all the sacrifices she had made for him, but in his great, noble, loyal heart she held the first place, and when she died he attributed all his success to her, and mourned for her as if the light of his life had gone out. I have already taken up too much of your time, and I can only refer in the briefest manner to a few other eminent names on the roll of Scottish prose writers. Lord Macaulay, of *' History of England'' fame, was of Highland Scotch parentage, and needs no praise from anyone. The ^^ Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith, a Dumfries man like Carlyle, is the standard authority on the natural laws of trade. The late John Ruskin has had no rival as a writer of pure English prose, and his life and works are an eloquent protest against the degrading material- ism of the present age, and an inspiration to all true reformers who look for the dawn of a better day. Hugh Miller's works on geology and other subjects are among the finest of English classics. Boswell's **Life of Dr. Johnson" is the most complete bio- graphy we have of any literary man, and Boswell was a poor Scotch laird. In fictitious literature, also, Scotland is to the fore, and after the lapse of over a hundred years, 140 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. Sir Walter Scott^s works, the Waverley novels, are as popular as ever, if not more so. William Black's works are nearly all above the ordinary level, and his ''Princess of Thule'' touches high-water mark. Of the works of the new school of Scotch novelists, ''Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush," by Ian Maclaren, and the simple story of "Rab and His Friends,'' by Dr. Brown of Edinburgh, have a peculiar interest and beauty of their own. But, after all, perhaps the grea4:est thing that Scotland has ever done, on the practical side, is to have taught the whole world and his wife to eat oat- meal porridge for breakfast every day. It is, there- fore, to be hoped that some other countries, and especially Canada, may yet show the same produc- tive relation between porridge and the pen. CHAPTER X. THE GREAT MYSTERY OF LIFE, At a Glance, I think I have already told enough about my experiences in life to show that the title of these rambling notes is not an inappropriate one. I was bemocked of destiny at least five different times, and the sixth time is to come yet. 1. — In the ruin of my physical strength before arriving at manhood on the backwoods farm. It has been a continual misery to me ever since. But why should any living man complain, when suffering is the price of life for most of the human race? 2. — In being robbed and vilified by men I trusted on my first leaving home and going out into the world. But I often fancy in looking back on this misfortune that the man who fell among thieves on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho did not return that way, and neither have I, as one such experience is enough for a lifetime. 3. — In the loss of my wife and baby just when I had begun to hope that the worst of my troubles were over, and better days ahead of me. I am a home-loving man, but never had a home except for three short years. 141 142 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 4. — In being ruined financially/ as many a wiser man was, by the crazy Winnipeg boom, and worse still, in having been sent adrift from a fixed course of life by it, but not always as the proverbial rolling stone that gathers no moss. 5. — In having some money flung at me, as if with a careless hand (though due to my own hard work), when I am too old to get much good out of it. To merely acquire wealth has never been my ambition, but to try and do something, if ever so little, for the benefit of my country or a small part of it, and also to be a free independent man, whether rich or poor. There is not much difference, and I believe the poor man gets, or might get, more real satisfaction out of life than the millionaire, after all. 6. — ^And, finally, the accumulated fruits of all my labours may not be appreciated, nor used right, after I am dead and gone. For '^who knoweth whether he shall beget a wise man or a fool," and especially in this distracted and wasteful age. A Natural Mistake. In prospecting and working out among the rocks and tangled woods of Northern Ontario, one has to wear rough old clothes, if he wants to have any com- fort. A new suit would get used up in one trip. I tried everything from a hunting jacket and moleskin pants to common ^^ ready made," but I found that good Canadian tweed was by far the best for this purpose in every way. I wore shoepacks with heavy soles on, and weighing both 4 3-4 pounds. When car- THE GEEAT MYSTEEY OF LIFE. 143 Tying a pack, ten miles a day is good average walking at such work. A man steps, up and down hills, about two feet, or 2,640 steps for each mile. I lifted 2 3-S pounds every step, or 6,270 pounds a mile, and for the day or ten-mile tramp, over 31 tons, which is nearly as much as a man can lift in shovelling with his hands in a day. After I had been in the Sudbury district for some years, it so happened that a married cousin of mine came to live at Copper Cliff. She called on a neigh- bour's wife one day, and enquired if a man of my name lived anywhere around there. On being told there did, she asked, — ''Is he a proud, dressy man'' (as in the old days) ? The woman laughed, and answered, — ''No, indeed, you ought to see him when returning from the woods." On hearing this account of my wearing apparel, she was quite disappointed, and said, — "Well, then, he can't be my cousin at all." She therefore made no more enquiries for me, and lived there over a year before I knew it. This cousin Jessie was a farmer's daughter, and a good sensible woman. She looked after her house and husband and children very well, and she could also do one thing that few women can ever do, that is, drive a horse with a firm steady hand, and without staring around as if conscious that people on the street were looking at her. She did not care a rap. A New Brand. The world is full of excesses, but I never could understand why so many men of all kinds drink too 144 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. much. I very seldom go into a hotel bar, but I like to have a social drink now and again with a friend in my den for the sake of the talk. I have tried sev- eral times to reform young fellows of their drinking habits, but all to no purpose. We have just had a turmoil in Ontario over a referendum vote on the liquor question, but if the well-meaning temperance advocates would only spend the same amount of talk and effort in a systematic endeavour to check some of the other evils in the world, they might have better success, and do a great deal more good. When in Winnipeg we had in our little select party, mostly writers for the press, a sort of half-genius who went by the name of * * The Khan, ' ' and was well known among Toronto newspapers as a writer of pathetic rhymes. He could not leave drink alone, and to try and cure him, I got him a situation or work on a cattle ranch in the North- West, where a prohibitory law was in force then. But he came back in a short time looking worse than ever. Meet- ing him on Main street on his return, I asked him why he had not remained longer out on the plains, and he simply answered, — ''They make it there,'' meaning whiskey. Then on asking him what they made it of, he stretched out his right arm, and dra- matically replied, — ''As far as I could judge, they make it of strychnine, chain lightning, the wrath of God, and old rye!'' A new brand of liquor, but the vile poisonous stuff that was peddled by smugglers along the Canadian Pacific railway line during con- struction was nearly as bad. THE GEEAT MYSTEEY OF LIFE. 145 Good Advice. Cervantes makes Don Quixote say a beautiful thing on his death-bed, — **The sins of men cannot obstruct the mercies of God/' But, on the other hand, how men obstruct each other in all sorts of ways in this world, and it has been well said that man has (to struggle not only with his work, but also with sin and folly in himself and others. I tried for years to get a proper mining law for Ontario, and partly succeeded at last, but even some of the Sud- bury prospectors, who would be benefited the most by it, were opposed to me. Then again, as I had in the true interests of mining, and for the protection of the honest investor, which is the most important thing of all in this matter, to expose through the press the delusive schemes of knavish promoters and fakirs, I came in for a great deal of abuse and slander from them and their friends. But I never took the slight- est notice of such vituperative talk, except to put up in my office the following verse from the truest of books, — **Also take no heed unto all ithe words (that are spoken, lest thou hear thy servant curse thee; for oftentimes thine own heart also knoweth tharf; thou 'thyself likewise hast cursed oithers. ' ' Very good advice for all of us. She Never Came. Who has not wondered that no one ever comes back from the invisible world to tell us about itf 10 146 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. Mankind has produced some great religious teachers in different ages and countries, but not yet the genius who could lift the veil of life and give us a clear, unmistakable glimpse into the land beyond the dark river and the future state of the human soul. After the loss of my wife these questions first haunted my mind. I tried to solve the mystery by doing things that some orthodox persons might regard as very foolish, if not even silly. But no matter. I knew that if ever a woman was allowed to revisit the earth after death, she would assuredly come to see me. I therefore left the door of my tent open on clear moonlight nights in the bush among the trees, with a bright fire before it, and lay awake for hours, smoking my pipe and longing for — The touch of a vanished hand. And the sound of a voice that is still. I took solitary walks in the evenings in many other places in the hope of meeting her. I also when alone at my meals in camp, and sometimes in my den, set the table for two, and placed a seat for her. But she never came, and for over twenty-five years I have only dreamt of her once, which is a stranger thing to me. I do not believe that death can possibly dissolve the love ties of this world. In the wailing pit of woe in Dante's Inferno human nature is not extinguished, and poor Francesca takes some womanly comfort in knowing that her lover will never be parted from her. The following exquisite lines from a short THE GEEAT MYSTEEY OF LIFE. 147 poetic gem, said to have been written by a girl under twenty years of age, describes so truly and emphati- cally what a woman's heart, even in heaven, would prompt her to do, if she could, to come back, — You kissed me! my heart And my breath and my will In delicious joy For a moment stood still. Life had for me then No temptation, no charms, No visions of happiness Outside of your arms. And were I this instant An angel possessed Of the peace and the joy That are given the blessed, I would fling my white robes Unrepiningly down, I would tear from my forehead Its beautiful crown, To nestle once more In that haven of rest — Your lips upon mine, My head on your breast. If anyone ever does come back, it will likely be a woman, and not a man or an angel with or without wings, if there is any truth in the story of Eve and original sin. The starry firmament and the sense of right and wrong in man were the two things a noted philosopher was most astonished at, but the greatest and most divine thing in this world, if not in the whole universe, is love, and especially a mother's love. About Some Books. I have been a voracious though discriminating reader all my life. The common, trashy, so-called 148 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. literature with which the world has been deluged in the last fifty years I could not look at except with sorrow and detestation. It is the main source of the increasing evil, baseness and infidelity of the present age. The first book of history I read in my young days was Josephus, but I got no permanent, nor in fact, any good from it. The Jews were certainly a tough, indomitable race, and they had early attained to what may be called intellectual maturity. It is this fact that accounts for their having produced, small as they were in numbers as a nation, so many great men of different kinds; and in religious matters all the Christian nations of the world have been living on the cream of Jewish thought to this day. For it was from the Jews that we got the Bible, in which man can still find light and nourishment for his soul as in no other book. The twelve commandments were written by Moses in the solitude of the mountain side, away from the distractions of the noisy encamp- ment in the wilderness; they were transcribed from the great moral principles in his own noble heart. But how the Jews have degenerated from their once high spiritual state, and the modern insatiable greed for money has been fostered more perhaps by their sordid influence and example than by any other cause. The mysterious disappearance of the ten lost tribes of Israel is one of the strangest things in his- tory, and the pity is that the other two tribes were not lost at the same time! Have you ever felt sorry that you had read a book THE GEEAT MYSTEEY OF LIFE. 149 because you would never again have the pleasure of reading it for the first time? Well, that is exactly the way I felt after reading Herodotus, from whom I got a better idea of the ancient world than from any other writer. Don Quixote, on the other hand, is a book that one can read over and over again with equal if not even more interest each time. It is one of the wisest and best books we have, though written in such a mirthful vein. Nearly all the proverbs in current use the world over are to be found in it, and the proverbs of Sancho are far more practical than the deeper pro- verbs of Solomon. The discovery of America is due to Spain, but that was in reality a small matter as compared with having produced Miguel de Cer- vantes. She lost her American possessions after the most abominable record of cruelty, bloodshed and treachery to the natives, and all done in the sacred name of religion; but Don Quixote is a possession of much greater worth that she can never lose. — And here let me turn school-master again for a moment, and point out, but not in a pedantic way, that this word Quixote is seldom or never pronounced right even by professors in our colleges. In Spanish, it is Ka-ho-ta, a fine soft rhythmical name. It was in Mexico that I first learnt of this little mistake of my teachers in Canada, and of the same with some other words, too. The other day a man came into my den while I was mending a tent, and on seeing my work said I was quite a tailor. I answered that I ought to be after 150 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. reading Sartor Besartus so often! I got some good out of this wonderful book, in spite of its peculiar style and awkward German names. But neither in it, nor in any of Carlyle's other works, is there a single ray of new light to be found on the great unsolved problem of the mystery of life. He takes you away from the beaten paths, but only leads you into the barren, trackless desert of transcendental philosophy, without even a trail, and leaves you there to find your own way out again. In alarm at modern tendencies and the growth of democracy, he fell into several grave errors on the doctrine of force, the supreme importance of heroes, and the eternal blessedness of work for every man. This latter pre- cept is of course indisputable within certain limits, but one has only to look at the present state of our industrial classes to see that the gospel of work has been preached long enough, and that it is high time to begin preaching the gospel of leisure a little more in their case. Then, alas, on looking back into the past, what a futility is all the labour of man which he taketh under the sun. Where countless millions toiled sorely for unknown centuries, and mighty empires ruled the v/orld in ancient times, archae- ologists are now digging for remains of their once proud cities. England is probably the best cultivated spot on the face of the globe to-day, but if neglected for only a few short years, it would become a tangled wilderness, rougher than an old lumber road. But to return. Of all Carlyle's works, and every one of them has a distinct character and merit of its THE GEEAT MYSTEEY OF LIFE. 151 own, I like the Life of John Sterling the best, for the unique chapter on Coleridge and the short bio- graphical sketch of Eward Sterling, John's father, as the Thunderer of the Times newspaper. They are both unsurpassed in English literature for graphic delineation and personal interest. Carlyle's life and teachings are referred to more fully in another part of these notes. He was, in short, the prophet of his age, but his message is only for those who have ears to hear it. My favorite book of all is EcclesiasUs, and I do not know of any other bit of writing, in or out of the Bible, to be compared to it. Young men and some college-made preachers may regard it as a little too pessimistic in tone, but to older men of practical experience in the world there can be no truer picture of man's life, which is always a strange combination of wisdom and folly, and also too often a vexation of spirit from beginning to end. But I do not believe that Solomon wrote it at all, though ascribed to him, as the most of the Psalms were to David, which was the custom then. Indeed, I never could understand how Solomon has attained so wide and lasting a reputation for wisdom. What did he do to deserve it, as compared to Moses and many others ? Even the building of the Temple was entirely due to the great preparations made for it by his brave, energetic father, David, the man after God's own heart, but who, unlike some church-going people of this age, was very conscious of his many shortcomings and sins. Solomon, by his own 152 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. choice, was entangled all his life with a horde of wives and concubines, and we are also told that he ^' loved many strange women/' who got the better of him at last, and, forgetting his sublime prayer at the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem, he fell into idolatry in the end, and even sacrificed to heathen gods on the surrounding hills. In his day the Israelites had reached the climax or flowering-out epoch of their history as a nation. But the intellect that wrote Ecclesiastes was of a deeper and more profound type than Solomon has shown in his proverbs and songs. Poetry has gone out of the world since Tennyson left us. Eudyard Kipling is only a patriotic rhymer, — And better just tban want aye, On ony day. In the winter of 1902 I got the thumb of my right hand badly crushed, and for three months I could not write much with it, except what I had to do on business matters of various kinds. The rest of the year I was busy working on my mine in the spring until I sold it, and afterwards in attending to several other things. I therefore had no time to add to these notes, but now, in the first week of 1903, I have written chapter X. during my leisure hours, in the same old den. I was sick part of the time, and in any illness or suffering, if only a mere cold, the most of men are apt to complain like babies, but I prefer to consume my own smoke then. CHAPTER XI. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. The World Gone Daft. I am not a very old man yet, but I can easily remember the time when there was only one reputed millionaire in the United States, A. T. Stewart, a dry goods merchant in New York, and as for Canada, no one outside of a lunatic asylum dreamt of possessing such wealth. But now to be a millionaire is nothing at all, and some men count their wealth by ten, twenty, and even one hundred millions or more ! In the wise old fable, when Midas prayed for gold, he offended the gods, but they gave him the gold, and also a pair of long ears with it. An awkward thing for Midas, but a worse appendage is often given with money now, and that is, an unsatisfied craving for more. Then, in recent years, huge combines and trusts have been formed, and the process is still going on, to try and control nearly all the industries and busi- ness of the whole world. Like many other evils of the present time, they originated in the United States, and may be defined in plain language as *' bands of colossal thieves," who begin by taking the devil into partnership with them, and end in robbing 153 154 ^ BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. the poor helpless public. American enterprise is admirable in some respects, but the selfish, reckless haste of the present generation there to turn all the natural resources of the country into dollars in a day, regardless of the future, threatens to destroy the industrial life of the nation before long. It is estimated that one-fifth of the people of the United States own four-fifths of all the property and wealth of the country. Such a condition of things would not be so bad under the old feudal system, but under democracy, where all men boast of being born free and equal — which happily men never are, by the way, but very unequal — is the greatest satire on mod- ern civilization. In all their cities fabulous wealth flaunts itself in the face of abject poverty, and the strife between capital and labour never ends, and is almost as ruinous as a civil war. The proper function of journalism the world over is to gather and disseminate the truth, but the party and even so-called independent press in all countries, and especially in the United States, comes far short of this ideal standard. At a dinner of newspaper men in New York two years ago, one of the speakers, Whitelaw Reid, editor of the Tribune of that city and a noted man, made the following remarks on this subject, — '^ There is no such thing in America as an inde- pendent press, unless it is out in the country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares express an honest opinion. If you did you would know beforehand that it would SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 155 never appear in print. I am paid $150 a week for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am asso- ciated with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of a New York jour- nalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to per- vert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same thing, his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery it is to be toasting the independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks. They pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possi- bilities, are the property of other men. We are intel- lectual prostitutes.'' What a terrible indictment of American journal- ism, and by one of their own distinguished editors. But it is only too true, and looking at the matter on the wider scale, the press has done another and worse thing for the world at large. It has destroyed the sacred privacy of home life. The hearthstone has been exchanged for the housetop, and the evil deeds of men, and of women, too, are published broadcast for our children to read. The kingdom of darkness literally displayed to view. A veritable revolution has also taken place in all our social and domestic affairs. There is no such thing as master and man any more, nor mistress and 156 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. maid. The old order has been reversed, and the man is boss now, and the maid in the kitchen rules the whole ranch. How to get even the food we eat pro- perly cooked is out of the question. The only effective remedy I can see for it is to allow every man, as in Turkey and other eastern countries, to have two or more wives instead of but one. Then such an arrange- ment, besides doing away with the servant girl trouble, would give the old bachelors, who are getting too numerous everywhere now, a chance to make up for lost time ! Men earn higher wages than ever before, but owing to waste and the want of thrift the most of them are kept poor and in the same hand to mouth state through life. Worse still, the time-honoured dread of being in debt has gone, and very few of them lose any sleep now over their unpaid store bills. The young of both sexes have taken to frivolous amuse- ments, and in many cases they no longer care to look after their parents in old age. A mad world, my masters, and going madder every day. Whither Are We Drifting? The materialistic spirit of the age is getting some hard knocks from Marie Corelli and a few other independent writers, but their only reward is a chorus of abuse and ridicule from the general public and the press. Christianity has evidently broken down and lost its former power over the daily lives of men. The different agencies and influences to which this wide-spread result is attributable may be SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 157 disputed, but of the fact itself there can be no doubt in the mind of any unprejudiced observer of the course of events and the signs of the times. The world has broken away from its old moorings, and is completely adrift on a dark, tempestuous, unknown sea, without any compass or guiding star. The prophets cry in the desert to-day, and there is no answering voice. We are admonished by Christianity not to care for the things of this life, and to walk humbly with God, instead of proudly with the devil. But the whole world and his wife are grasping after money now as never before, and worship ^'success" in acquiring it as the chief merit in anyone. Then we each and all persist in mocking providence by hypocritically pray- ing for our daily bread! The Church has been crippled by being split up into so many branches and sects, and each sect con- tends that it alone has mapped out the only sure trail to heaven for anyone to take. But it is the press that has given the pulpit the worst blow, and the '^gospel according to the newspapers" is the popular modern creed of all men. What else do we read, believe and act upon any more? Science may be blamed for undermining religious belief more or less, but science only affects the few, while the decay of faith is almost universal, even in the most enlight- ened Christian lands. Secret societies and the craze for sports and amusements have also weakened the hold of the Church upon too many of our young men. It is an ominous time. 158 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. In my sad private reflections on this matter, I often regret that Christ had not written down his great message to mankind, instead of proclaiming it to the wretched Jews and Samaritans, as in that case there could have been no misinterpretation of any part of it, and we would know clearly what it was from his own hand. Both would have been still better. The memories of all men are faulty, and not to be relied upon. He could write very well, for we are told that he once wrote on the ground with his finger. How interesting it would be to know even what he had written then, but no one seems to have remem- bered it. Mahomet, on the other hand, could not write at all, but amidst the strife and confusion of the battle field he dictated his sacred book, and called it the Koran, or ^* thing to be read," a very appropriate name. Behold the result. For more than twelve centuries now fully one-fifth of the whole human race have regarded it as a message direct from heaven and the light of their life. The Koran is read, studied, believed in and venerated by the Mahommedans far more fervently than even the Bible is by us. We have lately got into the easy way of doing our good works by institutions of various kinds. Our children are taught in Sunday schools, and not by their parents at home, and organized charity looks after the poor, and does it well, too. But one may safely predict that if the world is ever to be regen- erated, and brought back to a right course again, it will not be done either by institutions, dead churches. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 159 or the press, but by a man sent for this special task. Happily the world is not its own engineer by any means, and there is a divinity that shapes our ends in the long run. The Schoolmaster Abroad. The people of Ontario are specially proud of their public school system, but the results are not propor- tionate to the money expended yearly upon it. The system was very good at the start, but its efficiency has been greatly impaired by too much tinkering with it and the almost total employment of female teachers during the last twenty years or more. A boy at school gets both his mental and masculine qualities better developed when the teacher is a man, and has ability, courage and sense. In coming back from a trip in the bush some years ago I called at the Vermillion mine, which had been closed down a short time before then, and where I found three women from a neighbouring set- tlement visiting the caretaker's wife. They had gone in by the waggon road, but were told that a bear had lately been seen on it. As I had my rifle they pro- posed to come out with me for protection by the old trail, at the other end of which, right beside the rail- way line, there happened to be a stalwart Pinlander on a farm, and, like the most of his countrymen, he was a strict, consistent Lutheran by faith, and also an honest, ingenious, hard-working man. When we came in sight of his well-kept place I called their attention to the difference between it and the poorly 160 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. cultivated farms of the French habitants, and said that he was a genuine son of old Luther in all his ways. Then one of the women, who had been born and brought up in Ontario, and I do not know how long at school, answered as innocently as could be, — ^'Oh, was that his father's name? I never heard it before ! " I did not laugh, but merely suggested that we had better hurry on as it was getting near dark. Another case in the village of Whitefish was still worse. Two rather important men there at that time had small accounts against each other, respectively for $18.09 and $16.50, and in trying to settle the mat- ter, one of them claimed that there must be $2 coming to him anyway, as $16 from $18 left $2, but how to take the fifty cents from nine cents? They were stuck, and actually had to send across the road for Walter Betts, an expert accountant, to go over and show them how to do it! While on a visit to Toronto a few winters ago I was invited out one evening to a social party in a very respectable house there, and as I sat in the quiet corner of a room with an old German woman, talking about various things and drinking coffee, a very attractive young lady was brought over and intro- duced to me. On hearing where I was from she sat down with us, and asked me if Sudbury was in Can- ada or in the United States. I told her that it was in the wilds of Northern Ontario, and only 220 miles from Toronto as the crow flies when hungry or going south in the fall. Then she wanted to know if we had ^^any good families in the town" (meaning SIGN'S OF THE TIMES. 161 upper ten). I assured that we had, and lots of them, too; that one Frenchman had no less than 13 chil- dren, a Scotchman 10 ; and that twins were a common sight on the streets. She blushed a little, and looked at me in a sort of quizzical way, but I excused her ignorance of the geography of her own country, as she was dressed as if she had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Caper Sauce. In the present distracted age even the old moral and religious maxims that we were taught to believe implicitly in will have to be revised in order to become at all applicable to the new conditions of society. One of the old copybook headlines of my early school days, for example, was '*He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." This maxim was probably true enough at one time, and is yet in some cases ; but, as a general rule, it would be more correct to say now that he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the devil. For the whole world has lately gone into the pro- fession of begging. The 'tramp is denounced as a lazy vagabond, but he is not the worst pest of modern society by a long way. People come to my door almost every day asking for money; women col- lecting funds for dead, mortgaged churches; boys and girls, as if to develop cheek and impudence in them, selling tickets for fake entertainments of all kinds, but ostensibly for charitable or religious pur- poses. Men also come with different tales to tell of 11 162 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. financial trouble, but mostly lies, or with schemes by which they hope to transfer money from your pocket to their own without having to work for it except with their tongues, or giving any value for it. I had my wisdom teeth cut long ago in this respect, but I get caught now and again all the same. The other day, as a single instance, a working man came into my office with a new and very ingenious story, as it turned out. He said that he had lost his wife some months ago, and then began to cry and blubber out, — **I loved her, oh, I loved her!" He did not have all the money to pay for a tombstone he had ordered to put at the head of her grave. The sight of him crying weakened me, and I gave him what he wanted, but never expect to be paid back, as I have since been told that the old scoundrel had actually tried to induce a young girl to marry him even before the death of his wife. But the big deadbeats are the hardest to look out for. One Sunday morning there was a gentle, timid rap at my door, and on opening it, a well-dressed matron of the town kindly invited me to come and have a turkey dinner with them at home. The very- next day her husband met me on the street, and asked me for a loan of $150, *'just for a few days,'' to meet a note in the bank. But I thought that even a turkey dinner was rather too dear at such a price, and I have politely declined all similar invitations ever since then. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 163 The Hero of Hudson's Bay, We have perhaps more shallow talkers among the public men of Canada than in any other part of the British Empire. They seldom get above village ideas, and are often below the average citizen in general intelligence. They cannot take a broad view of any matter, great or small, and some of them have pet fads. A colonial legislature in this respect is a new thing under the sun. A few weeks ago, for instance, a bill was introduced into the Dominion Parliament by one of the Toronto members to change the name of Hudson's Bay (not Hudson Bay as so often miswritten), to the *' Cana- dian Sea,'' on the grounds that *^it was necessary for Canada to assert her supremacy over the territory adjoining Hudson's Bay," and that if we did not do so the Americans would! He apparently did not know that England had established her rights to Hudson's Bay and the surrounding territory in 1713, and surely two centuries of undisputed possession ought to constitute a better title than a mere change of name. Besides, it was an English navigator, Henry Hud- son, while in search of a northwest passage to China, who in 1610 first discovered both the Strait and Bay that now bear his name. After exploring the Bay very carefully, Hudson and his men passed the long winter near its southern extremity, but next season, in returning along the east coast of the Bay towards the Strait, the most of his crew mutinied, and sent 164 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. him and his son and seven of his men adrift in a small open boat. They were never seen again, nor has any trace of them been found to this day. Only six of the crew followed him at first, but as the grand old mariner, ill and distracted, was for- cibly lowered into the boat, a young sailor leaped down after him, declaring that he would loyally share his masiter's fate. This heroic act, connected with the discovery and name of Hudson's Bay, deserves to be held in long remembrance, as doing more honour to human nature and the heart of man than senseless bills and speeches in parliament are likely to do till doomsday, and it should also have a place in our Canadian school-books. CHAPTER XII. IN THE WILD WOODS. Man Not Made Bight. When tramping through the woods prospecting for mines, the usual way of crossing a river is to make a temporary raft of a few dry logs, and I have often thought while at this work that as more than one- half of the surface of the earth is covered with water, man should have been made amphibious, and ready to swim like an otter without any risk of ever being drowned at all. Man is also to be pitied for the many serious defects in human nature. If we had only been created at the beginning with less selfish- ness, ambition, greed and pride what a different world we would undoubtedly have made of it. The wild animals do not kill each other except for food, and very seldom their own kind, but man has polluted the earth with crimes against his fellow-man, and even the highest voice ever heard in this world has failed, after the lapse of nearly two thousand years, to bring the promised reign of peace and good will. Look, for instance, at the so-called Christian nations of Europe to-day. Instead of a noble rivalry to improve the physical and moral condition of man- kind, and especially of their own poor, ignorant, 165 166 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. helpless, down-trodden population, they are mainly concerned in keeping up vast armies and navies to fight one another and plunder the earth. The most of the nickel from the Sudbury mines is used in making implements of war. Such a bodeful spectacle has never been seen before under the sun; and at the same time the preachers of all the churches are inces- santly boasting of the improved state of the world and the spread of the gospel in heathen lands ! The lower animals, wild and tame, can nearly all swim, and they have another great advantage over man, in being so finely clad by nature with a coat of fur, hair, wool, feathers or something else, and which is renewed every year, while man has to spend much of his time in getting such bits of clothes as he can to wear, besides the eternal bother of keeping them half clean, and of putting them on and off every day. In the case of the animals, too, the male is gen- erally, if not always adorned the most, and in past times man used to wear more picturesque garments than woman, but she has lately appropriated every- thing in male attire, leaving man no distinctive article to wear any more except a mere necktie. The comparison of the lily of the field with Solomon in all his glory would have to be made now with the queen of his harem or perhaps her gorgeous handmaid. Some of the wild animals can also live far longer than man without any food, and retain their strength. Last fall we caught a large owl at my camp, and put it in a cage fastened to a tree. Then we had some m THE WILD WOODS. 167 fun. On hearing it scream a number of its friends came and perched on the trees around the camp every night, and they all kept up a lively hooting concert till morning. But a red squirrel I killed for it was the only thing it would eat, and on the sixth day we let it out, thinking it was too weak to fly away. But it simply flapped its wings, and rising above the tree tops, was soon out of sight. The eyes of the owl are fixed in their sockets, and it has to turn its head when looking around or to one side. Then, unlike mankind and the other animals, all the feathered tribe close their eyes when dying, and which is always to me a pathetic sight. Finally, the wild animals were on the earth before man, and will likely be here after him for a long time. It is better adapted for them than for the human race. Even in the essential matters of health and climate only a very few parts of the earth are fit to live in at all. A Marvellous Engineer, The beaver is the national emblem of Canada, but I am afraid we will soon have to substitute a more noisy, frivolous and stupid animal for this purpose. The industrious beaver works hard all the time, and mostly with his four long yellow front teeth, while too many Canadians of the present generation prefer to work with their tongues, and talk about politics, religion, temperance and other fads. The beaver works at night, and the darker the night the better he likes it, even when felling trees. 168 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. He is a marvellous engineer and builder by instinct, and what dams he has constructed ''out of his own head" ! I have walked over hundreds of them in the Sudbury district alone, and some of them of great length and originally very high. He uses his tail for carrying earth and mud when building a house or dam, and also to give a sharp loud tap on the water to notify the others of approaching danger. But sticks and all such things he holds under his chin as he swims along, or pushes them before him. The dam is not completed to its full height the first year, but by adding to it every season, as more water is needed for his growing family, perhaps for several years. The object of it is to raise the water of a creek into a pond of sufficient depth as not to freeze to the bottom in winter. For a supply of wood must be stored under the water to last till spring. He lives on the bark of poplar and other trees and the roots of the yellow lilies that grow in the ponds. The house is built of sticks, brush and earth on the face of the bank some feet above the water, and two under- ground passages are made to it from the pond, the lower ends of which are always below the ice. No other animal takes so much trouble as the beaver in making a home, and his female companion helps him assiduously at all the work. There may be two or more pairs of them living together in the same house, but they do not quarrel, and are not bothered for the want of servant girls. The otter is the natural enemy of the beaver, but they are both practically extinct in many parts of m THE WILD WOODS. 169 North America now. Very few are left in the Sud- bury district. When wounded or caught in a trap the beaver cries like a child in distress, and an old Hudson's Bay trapper told me that he never could kill one caught in this way but the despairing look of the poor creature went to his heart. A Wise Bird, The loon or northern diver is a wise bird ; he always has a wife. If he loses one, as often happens, he gets another as soon as he can, and is quite heedless of old Weller's distrust of widows. But he does not believe in polygamy, and only has one wife at a time. It would naturally be supposed that in such a free, simple conjugal state the loon ought to be a happy bird, and perhaps he is, but his weird quavering bugle cry, uttered at intervals day and night, and even when on the wing, sounds very mournful, and is loud enough to be heard over a mile. There is no other wild bird or beast whose cry is so much in har- mony with its lonely, desolate surroundings, and especially when heard across the waters of a lake or a river at night. His morning salutation, or *'cry for wind," as it is called, is a sort of harsh mocking laugh, the small lakes being very calm then, if not covered with fog. Like the wild duck, robin and other migratory birds, the loon goes south in the fall, and returns by easy stages in the spring. He has a long stretch of wing, nearly five feet, and can make about fifty miles an hour, flying at a greater height than most other 170 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. birds, and in a straight line. He strikes violently with his head, and can knock a dog out with one blow. His legs are short and so far aft that he can hardly walk at all. But he is the swiftest diver in the world, and can remain under water an incredibly long time. He lives mainly on fish, reptiles and insects. The loon helps his wife in making the nest. It is merely a few sticks covered with weeds and grass, and always close to the shore. She lays two large greenish-brown eggs and no more, as if she had imbibed Yankee notions on the family question in going south. The young birds take to the water as soon as they are hatched, but they cannot digest raw fish for the first two weeks. Nature has, however, provided a unique way to get over this difficulty. The parent birds swallow the fish, and when partly digested in their own stomachs, they pass it up again for the hungry little ones. The loon is to be seen on nearly all the lakes of Northern Ontario, and as I often camped for water close to his favourite haunts, I had every chance to study his habits and mode of life. There were two special reasons for our being good friends. We were both early risers and had no permanent home. With the Scientists. Burns wrote a fine song in praise of the girl who made the bed for him, and if a bed I once made has not been celebrated in this way, it caused any amount of local comments of approval at the time. m THE WILD WOODS. 171 But this little incident comes at the end of my story, which relates to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and whose members, though so learned and sedate, I found to be very pleasant, cheerful and interesting company as a rule. I met two different batches of them on their excursions to Canada, one in Manitoba long ago and the other years afterwards in the Sudbury district. On the latter occasion I was specially deputed to show the mining section of the visiting members of the Associ- ation a nickel property in the township of Denison, now the Victoria mine. We had altogether about a dozen of them on this trip, including William Roberts- Austin, director of the Royal Mint, since knighted, and now dead, and also his wife, who was the only lady in our party. He was a dark, slender oldish man, a great chemist, but somewhat irritable and short in the grain, while she was a large, plump and good-looking blonde, not more than half his age, and, I think, his second wife. She probably married him for his social position, which is the religion of a great many of the English people, and unfortunately in all countries the satirical hit in one of the best of Scotch songs is only too true in the present age, — Women wad marry auld Nick, If he'd keep them aye braw. We took the train to Ranger siding, and from there we drove in through the unbroken wilderness, on a rough new road in common lumber waggons, four miles to a small lake, and crossed over to the 172 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. property in a flat old skiff. I had charge of Austin and his wife in one of the waggons, and I seldom had more fun on any trip. But it took all my best jokes and anecdotes to make them enjoy the ride over such a road, partly corduroy, and in so primitive a rig. At every jolt of the waggon she, being the heavier of the two, would shove him against the edge of the seat, nearly throwing him off more than once, which always made him mad. But she was very patient, and did not seem to mind his rather emphatic pro- tests. I sat behind them, and kept a close watch for fear he might fall out and break his neck. We got back to the siding without any mishap an hour before train time. They were both pretty well shaken up. I did not care so much for his case, but I felt a good deal of sympathy for her, and I there- fore took an armful of newly mown hay out of the bottom of the waggon, spread it on the ground beside a fallen tree, and put a big fur robe over it. Then I made her take off her hat, a little against her will, and lie down on the novel bed (for her) to have a rest, while the log and the end of the robe for a pillow. She went to sleep at once, and when I woke her up on the arrival of the train she declared that she had never slept on a more comfortable bed in all her life. A Hard Neighbour. No other country in the whole civilized world has a harder neighbour and road companion to live beside and get on with than Canada has in the United States. We are never without some boundary or other m THE WILD WOODS. 173 dispute, and in all such international troubles Uncle Sam always wants to have the reciprocity all on one side. This grasping disposition on the part of our next-door neighbour is hard enough to bear, but what is far more discouraging is the apparent willingness of British statesmen to sacrifice the interests and even the territory of Canada in order to keep on what they call friendly terms with the United States, though a more senseless delusion would not be easy to conceive. The people of Canada are loyal and patriotic to the core, but it is safe to say that nine out of every ten of the thinking men from one end of the country to the other have this latent, regretful and at times indignant conviction away down in their hearts. We cannot help it in view of the experience of the past on this score. In dealing with such matters with the United States it has often seemed to me as if England were like an old maid who gets stuck on some young fellow, and always makes a fool of herself whenever she meets him. English diplomacy is better adapted for the old world than for the new American continent. But its failure in this case is partly due to its very merits, namely, to its candour, truth, and total freedom from duplicity of any and every kind. But there is an inexcusable want of foresight about it. If, for instance, England had looked ahead a little, and taken Alaska as a quid pro quo at the close of the Crimean war, Canada would have been rounded off on that side, as intended by nature, and the present tangle over the boundary question there would never have 174 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. come up. Anyone can easily predict how this latest dispute will end, and if the process of clipping away one piece after another of the country goes on much longer, Canada will soon present a rather strange figure on the map. Our own governments are also to blame for not adopting a more resolute and independent course in dealing with the United States on the tariff, the alien labour law and many other things. The Dominion Government has passed a sort of weak-kneed Act on the alien labour question, but it has never been put into force, while the authorities on the United States side of the border treat Canadians in this respect even worse than other foreigners. As a simple illus- tration, we allow American companies in the Sudbury district to import men for all the good positions in the mines and works. But when a young tailor from Sudbury went over to the Michigan ^^Soo" to look for work at the same time, he was immediately sent back, and merely because the customs officials there saw a pair of tailors' shears in his overcoat pocket! The ** great American nation'' can do very small things, as the people of Canada know only too well. If the meek shall ever inherit the earth one nation of unscrupulous grabbers will be completely wiped out. A Demoralizing Industry. The pine timber business is the leading industry of Northern Ontario. Thousands of men are employed in the woods, and millions of logs are taken out every year. The Sudbury district is the centre of the IJSr THE WILD WOODS. 175 largest and best white pine belt on the American continent now. Before lumbering operations began on it, and even as late as fifteen years ago, one could tramp for days through an unbroken pine forest, interspersed with small white birch ridges and tam- arac swamps. The scenery along the river banks and around some of the lakes, with clumps of tall pine trees coming down almost to the water's edge, was exceptionally fine. The solitude, too, was impressive. About one-third of the whole belt had been burnt over in patches here and there in the great fire of 1872, an incalculable loss, but the rest was all green bush. The lumbermen are the vandals of North America, and in the past ten years the greater part of the tim- ber has been stripped off the whole district between the Georgian Bay and the height of land, forty miles to the north of Sudbury, leaving either a tangled slash or black dirty burnt land growing up with thick scrub, and, at the present rate of cutting, in twenty years from now Ontario will have very little pine left. The Jew principle of getting the last dollar out of the pine for revenue purposes, by selling it to the Yankees to build up American cities, is regarded as a wise policy on the part of the Government, but unborn generations of Canadians have rights in this grand heritage of timber, and the country will need it very badly indeed before long. More fortunes have been made in the lumber business in Ontario, and in a shorter time, than in any other industry, and mostly by poor men at the start. 176 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. A prairie fire is a tame little thing as compared to a bush fire in a pine belt. Many years ago I camped once over Sunday on the big bend of the Spanish river in an open patch of brule by a spring creek, and near the edge of the green pine. In the afternoon I took a walk around a bit, and on looking back from the top of a high rock bluff, I saw that the forest was on fire, and burning towards my camping place. I hurried back as fast as possible, but by the time I got there the fire was within ten rods of my tent. The best way in all such emergencies is never to get into a panic, and after wetting the tent with a pail of water from the creek, I managed to beat the fire back with a long brush till the dew fell. But the sight of the burning woods was terribly grand. Clouds of black smoke darkened the sky; immense sheets of flame broke off and flew upwards for hundreds of feet; and the frequent loud crashes of hollow trees falling were the only thing that could be heard above the deafening roar of the fire. When the owner wants to take the timber off any limit, the first preparation is to build one or more camps on it. All lumber camps are pretty much alike in every way. About a dozen log cabins of various sizes, including stables for the horses, are rushed up in an acre or two of roughly cleared land by a creek or lake. From fifty to one hundred men work in each camp. The men are well fed on substantial food, and I can testify from personal experience in my pros- pecting trips that lumber camps as a rule have a free, open, generous hospitality of their own. The m THE WILD WOODS. 177 foreman is usually an energetic, indomitable man, and has one of the hardest jobs in the world. He must be out on his rounds looking after the men and the work from early morning till late at night, and also keep a close watch on everything about the camp. There is a sort of limited vocabulary that is peculiar to this industry. For instance, the road maker is the ^^buck beaver"; the road repairer is the *'guipe," implying a low down job ; the foreman is the * * push, ' ' a most appropriate name ; the little store of supplies for the men in one side of the office is the '*van"; and so on. The most of the shantymen in the lumber camps of Northern Ontario are Frenchmen and even boys from the province of Quebec. They have no superiors at all kinds of work in the woods. The rest of the gangs are mostly farmers' sons from older Ontario, down the Ottawa river way. They come in the major- ity of cases from good Christian homes, but too many of them get demoralized by the bad influence of a few American blackguards and thieves that are to be met in almost every camp, and the old hands that have been broken in; and the filthy, blasphemous talk in the *^ sleep camp'' at night is frightful to hear. They are not allowed to talk at their meals, not on this account, but for the sake of peace and order. Then, after working like slaves all fall and winter in wet and cold weather, when they come out in the spring they literally throw away their hard-earned wages in the hotels and dives of the nearest towns, as if they were a parcel of lunatics running at large. The earn- 12 178 BEMOCKED OF DESTHsTY. ings of six to nine months are often gone in as many days, and they even vie with each other to see which can spend the most money in the shortest time ! And they do this right along year after year till they become physical wrecks and go to the dogs, except some of the French boys who marry and settle down on little farms, being more under the control of the church. In fact, the lumber industry is beyond doubt a moral curse to the country, and considering the large number of young men that are ruined in this way, it would have been better for Ontario never to have owned a pine tree. A Haunted Place. The other night a young English lad came into my den in Sudbury with a frightened look on his face, and asked me if I had ever seen a mysterious visitor in the upper fiat of an adjoining block in which I used to have my office some years ago, but which is now a boarding house. I looked at him in surprise, as I had lived there all alone for two or three years, com- ing and going at all hours of the night and day from my tramps in the bush, and no ghost ever came near me that I know of, though I am as curious as old Samuel Johnson to see one. The young fellow said that one evening lately when he was washing his hands and face after his day^s work, a strange man in a blue suit appeared beside him and as suddenly vanished out of sight. When he told the people in the house about it one of the girls began to cry, and said that she had seen the same m THE WILD WOODS. 179 thing several times, and that it spoke to her once, but only two words, — ''Be careful," which I thought was very good advice to give any girl. Now, to go back a bit, I well remember that a young gambler had died of typhoid fever in the very corner room in which the ghost has been seen, but refused to the last to have a priest to bother him at all. He asked the doctor on the night of his death, ''Am I trying to catch flies with my hand? For if I am the jig is up." And that is just what he was doing, though there were no flies in the room at the time. A sure presage, they say, in cases of fever. In the next room on the same flat another man tried to end his days with laudanum while on a prolonged spree, and the rest of the flat was occupied by a scamp of a lawyer for some years, but who disappeared one night, leaving his wife and debts behind him, and he has not been heard of since then. The only question is, therefore, which of the three men the ghost represents ? Most probably the lawyer, as the worst sinner of them all by a long way. A Talk Under the Trees. On a bright fall morning very early two prospec- tors and a packman left Sudbury for a special trip to the north, and after a hard day's tramp of more than twenty miles, partly on a rough old lumber road, they camped for the night at the end of a small lake in the green bush. It was nearly dark when they got there, but the moon was up and shining through the tops of the trees. No one appreciates the moonlight as the 180 BEMOCKED OF DESTHSTY. prospector does. It is often his only available lamp. They had bagged some grouse on the way up, and were to have a pot of grateful bouillon for supper. A fire was soon made, and in less than ten minutes the cook of the party had three of the birds skinned, drawn, perfectly cleaned and put into the pot. But he had done the same thing hundreds of times before, and well knew how. It was an ideal night in every way, and not a sound could be heard except the sharp, plaintive cry of a solitary loon now and again at the other end of the lake. After supper was over and the bed made, they sat around the camp fire with their backs against the nearest trees and smoking their pipes. Someone men- tioned Tolstoy's name, which started a lively discus- sion that lasted till bed time, but only a brief summary can be given of it. They all agreed that Tolstoy, a man of rank and wealth and literary genius, trying to lead what he regards as the primitive Christian life, was a terrible satire on the present age. No one could help admir- ing him. But he wanted to bring back the past, which could never be done. The world must go on towards new and higher developments in religion as in everything else. The churches were still the most potent moral agencies in society, but they had got out of touch with modern thought to a very large extent. The recent departure, in too many cases, of preaching on temperance, philanthropy and similar fads, was in the wrong direction, and like throwing water into the sea. Even political discourses were occasionally m THE WILD WOODS. 181 delivered from the pulpit, and it was not a rare thing to see people cheering, laughing and clapping hands in church. What would our pious grandfathers have thought of such doings in the house of God on the Sabbath day, or any other day? The packman of the party, who was an Episco- palian, had been silent for some time, but just then he looked up and said that his church never interfered either with politics or religion ! The others laughed at this innocent remark as heartily as Sancho Panza had done at the sight of the fulling mills. The poor fellow only meant that the Church of England did not meddle with party questions nor the affairs of other churches. But he did not believe in apostolic succession, nor in any preposterous claims of that kind. When some more wood had been put on the fire, the dismal failure of civilization from the beginning down to the present day was the next topic that came up. The Chinese were the oldest existing nation in the world, but they are physically a weak inferior race, and morally below the wild Arabs of the desert. The most of them are petty ten-cent gamblers, and their ruling classes, though highly educated, rob and plunder the common people. But unfortunately we had enough political corruption and scandals of our own in Ontario, and could not throw stones even at China on this score. One would naturally expect that the New World ought to be some improvement on the Old World in this respect. But is it ? In the United States, where liberty is shouted from the very house 182 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. tops at least once a year, the people are under the rule of the political ^^boss'^ and the money kings. In their case democracy has not tended to elevate the human race, and since the landing of the humble. God-fearing Pilgrim Fathers from the Mayflower what a falling off has there been ! Then South America under clerical Jesuit influence is the disap- pointment of the modern world. At this point the howling of a pack of wolves near at hand stopped the talk for a few minutes and gave it afterwards a new turn. The wolf, they said, was a mean, cowardly thief, and did not have a single friend among all the other wild animals in the woods. But, nevertheless, the most of our kind, useful, loyal dogs have descended from him, and man has not yet been as fully reclaimed from the savage state. In this connection, how many of our greatest benefactors have been forgotten, even their names are unknown to us. Take, for instance, the first man who brought home to his hut a buffalo calf and tamed it into a domestic cow. But who was he? No one knows or cares. It was probably a woman who first learnt to make butter and cheese from milk. The birch bark canoe of the Indian is still a wonderful piece of workmanship to have been made originally without any tools except a bone knife. But who built the first sailboat? Ask of the east wind. Oblivion was his destiny, as for the most of us. The highest achievement of man, however, in all ages and coun- tries, has been the invention of the letters of the alphabet and the art of writing. Much of the past m THE WILD WOODS. 183 knowledge of the world is lost, and nearly all that has been preserved of it is simply and solely what is recorded in books. Then they wound up their watches, a thing that must not be neglected in the bush, and went to bed. A Man and a Mine. There are many important mineral belts in Canada, but very few great mines have so far been found on any of them, except in the Sudbury district. One cold raw day in the fall of 1885, Henry Ranger, the veteran prospector, while on his last tramp for the season, with his camping outfit and bit of grub on his back, climbed a high granite ridge in the south- west corner of the township of Snider, and so discov- ered right before him, in a low wet mossy flat, the largest and most valuable deposit of nickel ore in the known world. It is now called the Creighton mine, and estimated to be worth at least $10,000,000, but by the manipulations of other parties and the defects of our so-called mining law in Ontario, he was done out of his interest in it. Henry Eanger is an exceptional man in several respects. He was born and brought up in the back- woods of the Ottawa river, but is a gentleman by nature, and has the easy, graceful deportment and the polite ways of the best of the French race. No one can beat him in building a cabin in the bush, and he can travel unerringly through the wild woods to any desired spot. But his fame as a prospector he made by the discovery of the Vermillion gold mine. 184 BEMOCKED OE DESTINY. The best cabin I ever had in the bush I built in three days, with an axe, a saw and an auger, and one man to help me. The total outlay in cash was only thirty-eight cents, for two pounds of wire nails and hinges, latch and padlock for the door. I got a small window out of an old abandoned hut on the trail, and carried it four miles through the woods without breaking any of the glass in it. I made the bunks, table and other furnishings of the cabin from split cedar on wet days. A couple of French scientists from Paris had dinner in it with me once, and were greatly astonished when I told them that ^^dis leetle house,'* as they called it, had only cost two francs. One of them wrote a description of it in his private note book. The earth is rock-built, but what beautiful things are produced by it. In travelling about in the woods I have often stopped to admire little patches of wild flowers growing unheeded in the most secluded places, and many of the ponds are covered with large water lilies. Some men are hard on themselves in their work, and I am one of them. For whatever I have to do I cannot rest day or night until it is done, and it must be done as well as I know how. Then I always get through before the time I figured on at starting, and never behind in any case. I was physically used up in my boyhood days — ^what a loss — and I have to work mainly with my will now, and not with any strength I have left. But my good Highland legs have never failed me yet, and I can still tire out the most of m THE WILD WOODS. 185 young men on a tramp. I do not need to follow prospecting any more, but I cannot quit the bush. I love to be among the hills and the trees and the rivers and the lakes in their primeval state. Indeed, I sometimes wonder how anyone who has ever camped out for any length of time, and kindled a fire with birch bark once, can be satisfied afterwards to live any other way. Like J. B. Hammond, the bard of the nickel belt, I can truly say, — Ho, foT the life in the woods! The charm of the forest is on me. A Sample of Irish Wit. A little incident in this connection is perhaps worth relating. Some time ago I was partly laid up with a combined attack of grippe and a severe cold. I have always had a horror of hospitals ever since I was laid up in one with typhoid fever, and so I deter- mined to nurse myself in my den. One day I got up and went over to the next street to get a bottle of good Scotch whiskey as the recommended cure. A number of men were standing around in the store, and when I went out one of them said, — '^The old man is done for, I am afraid; he looks very bad.'' Then the proprietor, Larry O'Connor, a clever, ener- getic, intelligent young business man with an excellent wife, and both true friends of mine, answered in a very emphatic way, — '^Not much! You ought to know what that man has gone through in this country; he is as tough as tanned leather, and six months after he is dead you will see him coming 186 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. out of the woods with a pack on his back ! ' ' There is where the Irish wit came in. I continually strive, even when heart sick, soul sick, body sick, to do something every day. A hope- ful, resolute spirit will carry a man over many a difficulty on the rough trail of life. I have seen men discouraged with mere trifling things that should only be laughed at. Hard luck is the common lot, but it can be overcome in many cases by perseverance and a fixed determination to succeed in spite of everything, as I have found out. Life is short, but we will all be dead a long time. Let us, then, be up and doing. With la heart for any fate. The most of young men in Canada lack the spirit of enterprise, and too many of them are satisfied to remain as they are, making a mere living, rather than to strike out on a new, independent course of their own, and rough it as their fathers had done in the early days in the bush. The young American, on the other hand, has far more ambition, and is not afraid to go anywhere and strive to get on. And yet the young Canadian is the best pioneer in the world. But he does not get a fair chance in his own country at all. Our antiquated land laws ham- per him at every turn. In the United States, the timber, minerals and everything on and under the ground, goes with the land, but in Canada all these things are reserved, as under the old feudal system, and the poor settler gets nothing but the surface m THE WILD WOODS. 187 rights and a chance to starve. Then the Canadian capitalist does not care to invest any money in the development of our mines or other latent resources, and prefers to get interest on s/tocks and mortgages that he can lock up in his safe. And so the progress of the country is kept back. To Darn His Socks. There are numerous motives for getting married. Our friend Terence Mulvaney said that in his day **a man got married by nature when he became a man. I once knew a very smart girl who married a one-legged tailor because, as she said, it would make a sensation among her lady friends and be published in the local town papers. The selfish, grasping spirit of the Yankee is detest- able, but his dry, fantastic humour is one of his redeeming traits. A young fellow from New York State, who was employed in getting out wood for a mining company in the Sudbury district, went away last fall and soon returned with an active little wife. On being asked why he had so unexpectedly jumped over the broomstick, he answered that he had worn holes in about fifty pairs of socks in travelling in the bush, and that he had to get a wife to darn them for him! The Trail of the Serpent. One summer not very long ago, a young married couple from some place in the United States came to Sudbury to live. He was an engineer on a new rail- 188 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. way line, and a fine little man. She was a meek, innocent-looking and rather pretty woman, with a lisp in her tongue and a sweet musical voice. She was also very religious, and went regularly four times a day to the Catholic church to say her prayers, but not likely to confess her sins. For at the same time she was, for pocket money, plying among some of the married women of the town, and even young girls, a trade that has no name. But fortunately her hus- band lost his job in a few weeks, and they had to move away, or the people of Sudbury would not have to furnish any more accommodation for children in their school-houses for a long time to come. CHAPTER XIII. THE TYRANNY OF RELIGIOUS CREEDS. '*0h, thou wha in the heavens dost dwell, What as it pleases best thyseP, Sends ane to heaven and .ten to hell, And a' foT thy glory, And no for ony guid or ill TheyVe done afore thee/' — Bums, Spiritual Bondage. From a volume of sermons I have lately read for their independent criticisms I may take the following extract on this point: — ^^That day may not be so far away as we imagine, but yet it must sometimes seem to us as if we were still in Egypt, as if no deliverer from spiritual bond- age had ever come to lead us out of captivity. When I think of all the poor and oppressed souls working out with pain and trouble their inner lives under the tyranny of their religion — I might say, under the tyranny of their religious teachers, were it not that the teachers suffer often as terribly as the taught. **They are crushed to the ground of their heart by the terrible image of their God, and of all He requires of them, being told that unless they believe with their whole soul a string of doctrines framed by the intellect alone in its austerest hour of scholastic 189 190 BEMOCKED OF DESTmY. logic, they will be lost; that unless they confess the necessity to salvation of certain rites and ceremonies they can have no communion with God at all. They are terrified, even the best and gentlest of them, by the thought that God is watching for their fall, and ready to pounce upon them. They are made miser- able with the idea that there is no certainty, and that their final happiness with God is little better than a chance — for how do they know that their belief is quite right? ^^They are sometimes lost in questioning, sometimes distracted with doubt, sometimes despairing; and the better they are, the more delicate in conscience, and the more spiritual in imagination, the more tor- mented. They have small freedom in love, little peace in life, troubled even in death.'' In my own case, I had to abandon the narrow, strait-laced teaching of the churches long ago, and get up for myself in the bush a simple, definite creed that I could believe, and stand upon against the world and the devil; namely, one God, of justice, truth and love; the source of all power and wisdom and goodness, not merely on the earth but in the whole universe; the God that makes the trees and the flowers grow, the sun to shine, and who has mercy and forgiveness for the wayward, erring children of men. The lines from Burns at the head of this article give perhaps the clearest definition ever written, in prose or. verse, of one of the fundamental doctrines of the Calvinistic creed. In my early childhood THE TYKANlSrY OF EELIGIOUS CKEEDS. 191 years God was represented as a sort of ogre, whose chief business was to punish bad boys, and if I only picked a few berries to eat in our own garden, or whistled on Sunday, there was no salvation for me. This was the one extreme, and partly wrong, but the other extreme of careless instruction and discipline is even worse now. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, I should have been a very wise boy. If I go to church, which I seldom do any more, it always jars me to hear men preach so much about the '* sufferings" of Christ. He was the greatest hero and teacher ever produced by the human race, and did not ask for pity from anyone. *' Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." The poor women have done their share of weeping in this world, and yet the sea is not filled with their tears, though it might well be by this time. Then again, if there had been any irregularity or miracle about the birth of Christ, the village gossips of Nazareth would have certainly known it. But what did they say when he came back to preach among them? ''Is not this the car- penter's son?" And as such, the highest type of man and genius, and not as a god, we ought to be able to love and reverence him the more and not the less. He taught the religion of humanity, but our creeds and churches have given a symbolical or double meaning to nearly everything he said. In short, I cannot believe in worshipping several Gods, or what is called the Trinity, nor in making a 192 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. god of the ''son of man," and much less of the Holy- Ghost or any other ghost. That would be idolatry to me, and whatever in such a case a man finds to be incredible to the light of his mind he should not pretend to believe to the peril of his soul. One day some years ago a travelling missionary came to my cabin down the range, and began to talk parrot-like on religion. ''Polly wants a cracker." He was going to reform the camp in no time. The prospectors and miners would have to quit drinking and even using tobacco. I listened to him for a while, and then said that as far as I could understand, the two sins that Christ denounced in the severest terms were covetousness and hypocrisy, and that these were the very two sins that characterized the so-called Christian world of to-day. I also told him that one reason for my heartfelt admiration of Christ was because he went, not with the rich and ruling classes, but among the poor common people, and ate and drank with them whatever they had in a friendly sympathetic way, and never preached any fads. The very next season a modest, sincere young Presbyterian student came to the same camp, and staid with us for several months. We all liked him, and when he left we scraped up enough money to put him through Knox College in Toronto another term, for which he was ever so grateful to us. Two of a Kind. The Catholic Church from the Pope downwards is bitterly opposed to the Freemasons and other secret THE TYKANNY OF EELIGIOUS CEEEDS. 193 societies, but it is itself the greatest secret society in the world. The Freemasons, with all their pretensions, are not the salt of the earth, nor even the cosmic dust of the sky, and the mutual antagonism of these two self -guarded organizations is very much like the kettle and the pot calling each other derisive names. There is an annual excursion from Sudbury to Ste. Anne de Beaupre, some twenty miles or so below Quebec city, on the north side of the St. Lawrence river, and two years ago, as I wanted to go to Mont- real, I went down all the way to the famous shrine, mainly for the cheaper fare. But it was well worth going to see for its own sake. I have rarely seen a more beautiful church. The services were attended by a vast crowd of pilgrims, all in earnest, and some of the sick expecting miraculous cures — a pathetic sight. The music was particularly good, and I could not help watching a middle-aged Frenchman with a long reddish beard singing in the procession to beat the band. It was altogether one of the most inter- esting trips I have ever been on. Orleans Island is directly opposite this place, and within view across the north branch of the river. At night, in a very good hotel kept by a clever young widow, apparently more Irish than French, I lay a long time thinking of the poor Scotch immigrants who are buried at the quarantine station on the other side of the island, old John McEae's wife for one. Next morning at breakfast we got, at my request, a pitcher of cream with our porridge at our table, and someone hinted that the little widow was setting 13 194 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. her cap for me. Nothing of the kind. But she may have thought that a prospector in Northern Ontario was like Mungo Park in Central Africa, — No mother has lie to fcring him milk, No sister to grioid him oorn. In Vanity Fair. Oh, wad some power the gif tie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us. In the summer of 1881 I spent a few holidays in Grimsby camp, which was in its infancy then, but probably more interesting than now. Among others, George E. Foster was there at the time as a temper- ance lecturer, but who has since proved himself to be one of our best and ablest public men. He and I sat at the same table, side by side, and discussed various matters in a friendly way, eating with iron knives and forks, as I have been doing almost ever since then in the woods. To help pass the time, I wrote short reports of the events in the camp to several papers every day. I also raised some money for a poor lame young fellow who kept the little postoffice for his board, so as to get bathing in the lake for his leg. The place was full of young ladies of all kinds, but the '^ belle of the camp'' that season was a tall Dundas girl with rather high airs. Her father was a plain, quiet man in some government office, and her mother a very showy dame with a powdered face even at the religious services. The family had a separate THE TYEAITNY OF EELIGIOUS CEEEDS. 195 table for themselves at the hotel. I next saw the daughter in Winnipeg, a newly married bride in the upper ten regions of Vanity Fair. A special car had to be provided for her wedding trip. But why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? For, some years after- wards, I was driving out from Calgary one fine sunny morning, and there, near a little wooden church on a lonely hill, the wild prairie flowers were growing on her grave. The Eight Stuff, When I lived in Toronto in my own home a young- looking Irish woman came to the door on a cold win- ter's day, and asked if we had any washing or scrub- bing to do. I invited her in, and led her back to the kitchen. She was in person as lithe and shapely as a swan, but very poorly clad, and I gave her a glass of hot brandy and water to warm her up a bit while a hasty breakfast was being prepared for her. It was a kind providence that sent her to us, for she was the best worker we ever had, and such a witty, fluent talker at the same time. Her husband was a worthless, drunken loafer, though she did not expressly say so, and the only complaint she made of him was really taking the blame on her own sex, — ' ' Shure and the women are all fools about the men. ' ' She had five children to keep, and she told my wife that she never had a doctor or a nurse in confinement, but went to her room alone, and looked after herself and the baby every time! When advised to be more careful in future, and not to risk her life, she only 196 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. said, — *^ Indeed there is no danger; they are a bad breed. '^ She had a sixth child the next year in the same way. Her Tragical End. . When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray. In my school-mastering days in the county of Bruce a Highland Scotch girl in a certain town there was noted for her dash, cleverness and beauty. I never meet a deer in the bush without being reminded of her large open eyes. But, oh frailty, thy name is woman. She was ruined by a villain of a married man and suddenly disappeared from the town. Ten years passed, but on one of my commercial trips, while talking to a customer at the door of his shop in a village in Western Ontario, I noticed a lady walking up on the opposite side of the street. I could not see her face, but I knew her lively gait. I enquired of the man where she lived, and he pointed out the house to me. After I had got through my business I called upon her, and found her as bright and talkative as ever, but with a sad, forced smile on her face. She had three beautiful little girls, and she said that their father was away on the Pacific coast. Twelve more years passed, when in crossing the river at Sault Ste. Marie on the ferry one stormy fall night, I heard a clergyman sitting near me say that he had just come from the village referred to. I THE TYEANISTY OF EELIGIOUS CKEEDS. 197 asked him if he knew such a lady there. He said he did very well, but that she was now in the land of the leal. Some cruel-minded person had informed her husband of her past mistake and he had left her. She took the matter so hard to heart that one of her eyes had actually worn out with weeping, and she was dead in bed for some time before anyone knew of it. Her sin had found her out. The man who wrecked her life was high up both in politics and business at that time. But a relentless nemesis soon got on his sinful trail, and the last time I saw him years ago he was a drunken bum on the streets of Toronto, without a dollar or a friend. Truly the way of the transgressor is hard. A Sad Case. We are like ships that pass in the night. For, with all our talk about philanthropy, if a woman falls we do not stone her to death as the old Jews did, but we send her to perdition just the same. Society is cruel on that side. Not many years back I was tramping along a newly constructed railway track in the foothills of the Rocky mountains, with my gun and pick and a light pack. Towards noon I wanted to get some speckled trout for my dinner in a creek near by, and I tried to catch a few grasshoppers for bait. Pres- ently, a young woman about thirty, but looking much older, came out of a log cabin a little farther up the line, and walked not very steadily down my way. I never had any truck with ** disreputable females," 198 BEMOCKED OE DESTINY. and I did not wish to be bothered with her. I saw that her tattered clothing had a shabby-genteel air, and when she spoke I was greatly surprised at her refined language and cultured voice. She sat there while I caught a string of fish, and I offered her some of them to get rid of her. She thanked me politely, but did not leave. Then she asked me where I came from, and I told, from Nova Scotia originally, but now from Sudbury, Ontario. All at once she burst out crying as if her heart would break, and said between her sobs that she was from New Brunswick, and had been brought up in the highest circles of society at home and in Ottawa, often attending Governor-Generars balls and receptions at the latter place. When she told me her name and who her parents were, I was struck dumb. I asked her why she did not give up her present degraded life, but she only shook her head and said it was too late now. In meeting me she was likely reminded of the days of her innocent girlhood down by the sea. The Ottawa Fire. In the spring of 1900 about eighty of the mining and other men in the Sudbury district chartered a special train and went in a body to Toronto to protest against a new export tax the Ontario Government proposed to put on nickel ores and matte. We left Sudbury in the evening, and on the way down through the night several parties came to me on the train and said that there would be no speeches made THE TYEANNY OF EELIGIOUS CKEEDS. 199 at the interview with the Government, but that I would get a chance to address a mass meeting in the city at night. I answered that such a procedure had never been heard of as interviewing a government or anybody else without more or less speaking. I pro- mised, however, to keep mum, though I twigged what was up. The following day at noon we were ushered into a large room in the Parliament Buildings, with Premier Eoss, several of his colleagues and a score or more of the members of the Legislature, which was in session at the time. I kept back, and the only seat I could get when I went in was at the end of a big table in the middle of the room, and the Premier sitting at the other end of it. After the resolutions we had prepared and taken with us had been read, and well read, by T. J. Eyan, mayor of Sudbury then, Premier Eoss whispered something to one of his colleagues beside him, and then asked a simple question. I did not intend to say a word, but as no other person would answer, and the silence became rather awk- ward, I got up and threshed out our side of the matter in short order, condensing everything in my mind rapidly as I went along, and giving it out red hot. Some of the would-be orators of the occasion had primed themselves a little too much before leav- ing the hotels. As we were going out, John Loughrin, our member for Nipissing, who had introduced us with a few appropriate words, and is personally a free, affable, big-hearted fellow, eame to me and said, — ''Good boy, if they don^t give us what we 200 BEMOCKED OF DESTmY. want, we'll tear the chimney off the house!'' He no doubt meant in a Pickwickian sense. Next day J. B. Hammond intimated to me that he and I would have to go to Ottawa on another depu- tation, to ask the Dominion Government for a bonus for the Manitoulin and North Shore railway. "We took the night train, and arrived in Ottawa early next morning. I have stated already in these notes that the first months of my short married life had been spent in that city, and at the sight of the old places we used to stroll in a great sadness fell upon me that I couldn't shake off all day. The past came back to me in vivid hues, and then **I suddenly felt that I was in the grave, but not resting there; I was touching the hands of the beloved dead beside me, and trying to wake them." So that with these and many other things passing through my heart about her, I did not do as well as I wished to in the interview with the Government when it came to my turn to speak. Just as Sir Wilfrid Laurier had got through his short reply, he happened to look out of a window near him, and said, — ^^ There is the worst fire that Ottawa has ever had." We all rushed out and over to the edge of the hill, where a large crowd had gath- ered to witness the fire. The town of Hull was all in a blaze, and the flames were sweeping wildly across the river and through the immense lumber yards and mills and all the houses and other buildings on the Chaudiere flats. It was an awful spectacle, never to THE TYEAN^N'Y OF EELIGIOUS CEEEDS. 201 be forgotten by those who saw it. But no lives were lost. The gas and electric plants by the river were both gone and the city at night was pitch dark. Men in the Kussell House, where we were staying, had to go to their rooms each with a tallow candle in his hand. The Canadian Pacific Railway station and part of the track were burnt up, but about midnight we got a train by another route, and reached home again the next evening, very tired of the double trip. A Wild Goose Chase, All the tramps a prospector has to make for nothing! But he must never get discouraged, no matter what his want of luck may be. During the senseless gold excitement in Northern Ontario some years ago, I was instructed by an American capi- talist to go to the Wahnapitae region, and try to find '^a gold property that would bear investigation and have real merit." It wasn't there. But I went. That part of the Sudbury district is more than half- covered with lakes, and one day the sun was so hot that the backs of my hands were blistered in paddling ten miles. On an island in one of the lakes where some fool work had been done with a rock drill, a Frenchman asked me, — ^^You know de man wid de horns ? He live in Sudbury. ' ' I told him that I did not know a man anywhere with horns on. He meant the old divining rod that some persons still use in trying to find mines. There is nothing in it, and neither is the dip needle a reliable guide, even in iron. 202 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. At the head of Maskinonge lake, a young prospector had a cabin and a garden patch in one of the pret- tiest spots on earth. He kindly invited me to stay with him for the night, but I had to go another way. The poor fellow is in the asylum now. The Usual Toll, The prospectors have to pay their full toll of the harvest of death that goes on everywhere the world over. In the Sudbury district there have been several drowning fatalities among them. In one case, the head man of a party of gold seekers was crossing a lake near their camp in the fall, before the ice had got strong enough, and went down. He was fished out after a while, and his partners carried his body through the woods for some miles, and then left it over night standing up against a tree frozen stiff. A team brought him out next day. In another case, a sort of nondescript French trap- per, who lived most of the time on a beautiful island in Trout Lake, started to come down the Vermillion river one spring morning in his canoe, but was never seen again. His dog was found in his cabin starved to death. He offered to show me a mine once for a bottle of whiskey. I should have taken that offer, for he knew about a number of good nickel properties on the north range, but did not place any value on mines, and preferred to catch pelts. The worst case of all was on Wahnapitae lake, where two men were drowned by the swamping of an overloaded canoe only a short distance from shore. THE TYEANNY OF EELIGIOUS CEEEDS. 203 As to Pioneer Life. It must be admitted by any impartial reader of this short but truthful narrative of my work in life, that for one thing, at all events, my struggles and experiences have been varied enough, and sometimes very hard. I have travelled and laboured on the frontiers of civilization for more than fifty years now, both in the woods and on the prairie, and almost from sea to sea. But after all, pioneer life has its advantages and even charms for any man who does not have to whistle in the dark to keep his courage up. I have lived a great deal in the open air and sunshine; I have roamed at will in the bush among the trees I love, and also on the beautiful plains; I have had soft water to wash with every day of the year; I have been away from the sick noise of life in cities and towns ; I did not have to dress to please others, mainly fools; and, above all, I have been a free man, and not a slave. The early settlers and prospectors in all the col- onies and new countries belong to what Kudyard Kipling so aptly calls ^Hhe army that has never been listed.'' But their battling is with the obstinate forces of nature, reclaiming the wilderness and mak- ing it subservient to the uses of man. Canada has enormous areas of good agricultural lands still unoc- cupied and lying waste. But Northern Ontario will never be a great farming country like Manitoba and the North- West ; and the winters are too long for stock- raising, and feed too scarce and dear. There are 304 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. some large patches of fairly good land in the Sud- bury district, and mostly settled on from ten to twenty years. The mines and lumber camps furnish the best market on the American continent for all kinds of farm produce. But we have to send outside for hay, oats, potatoes and other vegetables, butter, eggs, cheese and nearly everything else, even chicken feed. Some old Ontario farmers would make inde- pendent fortunes in a few years if they had the same chance. A Wise Young Man. Of all the younger men in the Sudbury district, the prospector who has done the best, and in the shortest time, is a wise, intelligent, hardy, compact, medium-sized fellow by the name of Foster Shields. He had from early boyhood w^orked hard for others, both in lumbering and mining, with little for it. Then he started out for himself, and got well fixed in three or four years. No other man of his age has done more tramping in the woods, often sleeping out in the middle of winter on the snow, when estimating timber limits, at which he is an expert. He is seldom idle if he can help it, while other prospectors in too many cases prefer to loaf about town the most of the time, and never think of making any provision for their old age, nor even for the inevitable rainy day. A Correct Guess. In one of my journeys in Southern Manitoba, over twenty years ago, the second day out, as I was trudg- THE TYEANNY OF EELIGIOUS CEEEDS. 205 ing along on an old buffalo trail, I saw a lot of rigs driving to a farm house in a valley by a spring creek, and I went over to see what was up. On asking an old man who was sitting in front of the house under some trees if I could get any dinner there by paying for it, he ^^ guessed" my chances were rather slim, as one of the girls was to be married that afternoon, and the women were all upstairs dressing then. I moved on, and after passing through seven miles of waving grain fields — for on the prairie there is nearly always a gentle breeze, like the trade winds on the ocean — I called at another house and met with the kind welcome of the West. The owner was bach- ing it, and doing well. But the very first thing that a settler on the lonely prairie, or anywhere else for that matter, needs is a good, sensible wife. The same day, farther on, I met a sprucely dressed man in a village hotel, who said that he liked Mani- toba because he never got the '* suicidal blues'' there as in Ontario. He also told me that he had run for parliament once in the county of Carleton against Sir John A. Macdonald, and I thought that a man who would do such a foolish thing as that was liable to have the blues the rest of his natural life. The Pembina mountain district is a beautiful stretch of high rolling prairie. One evening on this trip, as I stood on a hill admiring the scenery for miles around, a stumpy little man came over where I was, and, calling me by name, said he was awfully glad to see me. He had failed in business in Ontario, and I was the means, he declared, of making him go 206 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. to Manitoba, where he had prospered finely. He and his two sons owned three good farms, and they had over four hundred acres in crop that season. I had to go and spend the night with him in a very com- fortable home. A Remarkaile Woman. On the 14th day of February, 1904, St. "Valentine's day, my good old aunt, who was best known by her maiden name, Annie McEae, died in Lucknow, Ontario, at the advanced age of eighty-three years. But though her life had been full of sorrows, disap- pointments and hard work, yet she never complained of her lot, and there was not a wrinkle in her face. Even the ailment that took her away at last she had suffered from more or less for over thirty years, but nobody else knew anything about it. Indeed, she was a remarkable woman in many respects. Her memory, for one thing, was simply wonderful, and she could relate, to the minutest detail, events that had occurred from fifty to seventy- five years back. She had also a special faculty of talking in a clear, logical, idiomatic way in Gaelic, her mother tongue, and everything she said, except in bantering gossip and satire, was sure to be wise and true. Of native Highland pride she had an abundant share, but mainly in regard to the good name and honour of her own kindred. No one would be able to point the finger of scorn at any of them if she could help it. Above all, she may be said to have freely devoted her whole long life to the welfare of THE TYEANNY OF RELIGIOUS CEEEDS. 207 those most closely related to her, and especially our family, to whom she acted a mother's part. No trained nurse could equal her in caring for anyone in sickness or trouble, and which she was always ready to do, no matter who it might be. What she was to me as my best and truest friend on earth, no words are adequate to express, nor the void her loss has left in many a heart. And the brave little woman died as she had lived, in cheerful submission to God's will and without any fear. It was the end of a useful life. CHAPTER XIY. SOME FRAUDS OF THE PRESENT DAY, Specialists and Quacks, In any business, trade or profession, mere general knowledge will not avail a man any more. He must be a specialist, or at least pretend to be, which is oftenest the case. The real American specialist, and notably in medicine and surgery, is away up, and has few superiors anywhere else in the world. But for every such skilful and distinguished specialist in the United States, there are scores, if not hundreds of ignorant, dishonest, wretched quacks, who advertise as specialists, and prey upon the sick and suffering portion of the public in the most rascally and heart- less way. The same fraud is practised to some extent in Canada, too. It is a quack-ridden age. I have, unluckily, had a little experience in this matter. About two years ago I met with an accident in getting over a slash in the woods. One has to take all sorts of risks when out on prospecting tramps, and it was an instance of the pitcher going once too often to the well. I wrote to a doctor in Toronto, who claimed that he positively cured such troubles with an electric belt, and I got one, but I might as well have worn a piece of an old rope for all the good it did me. I then tried two different specialists in the 208 SOME FEAUDS OF THE PEESEISFT DAY. 209 United States, but to no purpose, except that some of my money had been transferred to their pockets. At last, by good chance, I found the right man, and after a very simple operation on me, kind nature did the rest. In a wider sense, quacks and fakirs of every description flourish in the present age as never before in the history of mankind, and there seems to be no protection from their nefarious work. After Many Years. When I first left the old backwoods home in the county of Bruce, in 1870, and went in the course of a few weeks from Toronto to the smaller but very pleasant city of London, Ontario, I soon got well acquainted with the Advertiser ^ people there — ^the Cameron family. One of the sons, William Cameron, or *^Will," as he was oftenest called, was the office manager of the paper, and a neat, active, chatty, intelligent and fair-haired young man of medium size. He had also a wise, practical turn of mind, knew the ways of the world, and was a perfect gentle- man by nature. From our first meeting we gradually became very intimate friends, and years afterwards when I got married it was he that stood up with me. But, alas, how little we anticipated on that day, while we talked and laughed as on such occasions, that within a very few years both he and my happy bride would be silent in the grave. His memory is sacred to me yet, for he was the first true friend I made after leaving home, 14 210 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. A younger brother, Lud. K. Cameron, a big, kind- hearted man, went to Winnipeg in the boom winter of 1882, with his clever little wife and two children. He and I worked together for a while publishing a real estate paper, which subsequently developed into the Nor 'west Farmer. But he returned to Ontario in two or three years, and is now King's Printer in Toronto. "While in Winnipeg he and his wife did me a special kindness that I shall never forget, in nurs- ing me through a severe attack of Eed River fever. They took me from a barn of an hospital to their own house, and, I believe, saved my life. When I got strong enough to come down stairs, I noticed that their little girl baby, about three months old, was a very pretty and interesting child with a bright look in her face. I took a great liking to her, and this week, after the lapse of nearly twenty-three years, I got a letter from her father, telling me that she is a B.A. graduate and gold medallist of Toronto Uni- versity, and soon to be married to Melville Bertram, of one of the leading families in that city. Lucky young man. For Euth Helen Cameron, though highly educated, is not a ''blue-stocking" at all, but in every respect a genuine Canadian girl of the very best kind. The Friend of Man, Of all animals the dog is by far the best and truest friend of man, and if taken young he will grow up to be just like his master in disposition and general habits. If his master is lazy or of a cowardly spirit, SOME FEAUDS OF THE PEESENT DAY. 211 the dog will be the same ; and if active and brave the dog will be so, too, every time. I knew a lame man whose dog actually limped in the same way. On the other hand, again, a man who keeps a bull-dog or a vicious dog of any kind is usually of a kindred nature, and I never want to live near such a man. It is hard to keep a good dog in the bush up north. If he isn't stolen he is liable to get caught in a bear or other trap, or to come across poisoned meat put out for wolves and foxes. I have lost more than one dog in this way. For various reasons I prefer a spaniel, but the Scotch collie (from cullan, the Gaelic name for a young dog) is by far the wisest and most intelligent dog in the world, as he ought to be! He is more useful, however, with stock on a farm than in town or the woods. My next-door neighbour has a fine collie dog that can almost speak. His master used to bach it and take milk every morning from the dairy man. But on getting married and going to live in another house, the milk waggon went to go past the next day without calling as before at the old cabin, but the dog ran out ahead of the rig, and to the driver's surprise, made it stop on the street. I had one dog that often made me wonder if he did not have an immortal soul. Many a hard trip we made together, and how true and loyal he was to me. I was never lonesome in the woods when he was with me. If the grub ran low I would sometimes kill a rabbit and broil the two hind legs of it for our dinner on a flat stone before the fire. The prospector who 212 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. does not know how to cook without dishes when out is not up to date. I talked to him often as we tramped along over rocky hills and through dirty- swamps. ^^Gollaring" is the expressive Scotch word for such one-sided talk to a dog. He cannot answer back except by wagging his tail. But, like a woman, a dog shows his love with his eyes. An Awful Winter. The winter of 1904 will long be remembered in Canada both for its severity and great fall of snow. It began about the middle of November, and con- tinued stormy and cold for nearly five months. The railways were blocked a good part of the time, and especially in lower Ontario, which lies between the lakes, and being almost entirely denuded of the old forest timber now, the winds sweep over it even worse than on the open prairie, and the snow is piled up into very high drifts in many places. About the first of February I got a message in Sud- bury that my aunt, who had been ill for some time, was sinking fast, and I started the same day to go and see her. But after reaching Guelph the next fore- noon, it took me five long anxious days to go from there to Lucknow, a little over one hundred miles. The train was stuck in a snowdrift for two days in one place, with no fire in the passenger cars, and we were in danger of starving if some neighbouring farmers had not very kindly brought us food through the storm and walking on top of the snowdrifts. It was a fine act of humanity, and they would not take any pay from us. SOME FEAUDS OF THE PEESEKT DAY. 213 I afterwards went over to Chicago on business, and the railway ferry had very hard work to get across the Detroit river with the ice. Near the end of the journey a big, blustering politician of the Irish- American stripe came into the smoking compartment of the car I was in, and began to talk against Eng- land in the usual vulgar way of such men. One hears the same thing more or less every day over there, now as in the past, and what the British politicians and press call the friendship of the United States for Eng- land does not exist except in their imagination. We in Canada know too well that it is only a delusion and a snare. The people of the United States have no friendship for any other country but their own. It is all self with them and never anything else, as Eng- land will find out yet. A prominent characteristic of the great American nation is cuteness (which is not a very high virtue), but nevertheless many of them are as gullible and easily duped as the Vicar of Wakefield's son in the famous spectacle deal. In fact, the United States is the very paradise of all kinds of quacks, mounte- banks, swindlers and thieves. But, on the other hand, the real typical American is a genial, enterprising and intensely patriotic man. He is keen for money, and in business will drive a close bargain, but there is little or nothing of the miser about him, and he likes wealth, not to hoard it away, but in order to live well and to do things on the big scale. The American woman, if suddenly made rich, is often extravagant and fond of vulgar display. In 214 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. Chicago one day, on a street-car, a young lady of this class sat opposite me with a valise plastered on one side with the ugly cards of fashionable hotels in different European cities, and she took special care to keep that side of her valise out for people to see both on the car and in going down street. Vanity and Waste. A simple, natural life seems to be no longer pos- sible for anyone, even in the bush, and contentment has vanished out of all homes, rich and poor alike. Wages are higher in Canada than ever before, but the cost of living has gone up of late years to such a point that the most industrious men of the working classes, and all others of moderate incomes, have just as hard a struggle to provide for their families and keep the wolf from the door. The common people are supposed to have *^more comforts'' now than form- erly, but they have also more perplexities, anxieties and debts. The fundamental trouble after all is the prevalence of vulgar social pride, and the poorer classes want to put on even more style than those who can afford it. I saw a workingman's wife not long ago paying three dollars for an everyday hat for her little girl, with holes in her own shoes. The men still wear about the same kind of clothing, good or bad, as they have always done in my time, but the most of women must dress in the latest fashion, whether becoming to them or not. And such hats as they wear now, uglier than a basket of chips, as a SOME FKAUDS OF THE PEESENT DAY. 215 farmer's wife would say. Some of them are getting other foolish notions into their heads, and they go around endeavouring to reform the world with silly fads. Two of these meddlesome females came to the door of my den the other day with a petition against cigarette smoking, which, of course, I would not sign, but as the pipe was in my mouth I thought an explan- atory remark or two should be made for their benefit. So I said, *^The Indian lives the nearest to nature; he smokes; and, therefore, the proper use of tobacco cannot be wrong. As to cigarettes, their harmful results are due mainly to the vile stuff of which they are generally made. There are worse evils than smok- ing in the present day, and in any case home teaching will have far more influence than restrictive legis- lation on the habits of boys. ' ' They soon left. But to return. We have all to pay too much to live now, and also for getting buried when we die. The folly of expensive funerals needs to be abated in some way. Frail, showy coffins, made of basswood, are varnished to look like walnut or oak, and charged for at exorbitant prices. The falseness of it is worse than the expense. Surely a Christian ought to be buried in a plain honest coffin. Then an ugly black hearse must be employed at the same rate, and the poorest family must go into mourning and wear crape, often when they have not enough to eat, and all because it is customary to do so. I have seen widows in their weeds flirting with men and going to balls. 216 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. Faking the Public. The world has lately been informed of a new thing under the sun. A number of scientists and others claim to have discovered in the researches into the mysteries of nature that destructive microbes abound not only in our bodies but also in nearly everything we eat and drink now. In fact, if all that has been written in the last few years on this matter were true, the human race would be in danger of soon becoming extinct. But as we cannot see the microbes, and have been used to them so long, they do not alarm us in the least. A far worse fraud on the public, not to mention all the shoddy goods that are being sold, is the adulter- ation of foodstuffs, liquors, spices, coffees and other things that goes on so extensively at the present day. One of the latest fakes is a special offence to a Scotch- man. I went into a hotel one morning for breakfast down east a short time ago, and instead of wholesome oatmeal porridge, the girl waiting on the table brought me dry scales of wheat in a bowl, under a false name and as insipid as chaff. Even some farmers in the country have got into making the most of the maple syrup we get now out of common brown sugar, by flavouring it with a little pure syrup, or more often with the juice obtained by boiling the bark of the maple tree! No wonder that our poor stomachs give out when so much of our food is made wrong in the first place and then badly cooked as a general rule. SOME FEAUDS OF THE PEESENT DAY. 217 A Real Highlander. It is no exaggeration to say that Alexander Frazer, of Toronto, is a man of exceptional intelligence, use- fulness and worth. He was born and brought up in Scotland, and educated there, I believe, for the Pres- b^rterian ministry, but came to Canada over twenty years ago, and engaged in journalistic work on a Toronto daily paper for some time. He is now in the employ of the Ontario Government, as archivist, collecting and editing all sorts of public documents and records as well as the hitherto unwritten annals of the early settlers of the province, and no man could be better qualified for such a task. But it is as a genuine, broad-minded and kindly disposed Highlander that his greatest work has been done to his fellow-countrymen and others. It was through his efforts that the Highland Society of Toronto was formed, and its success is due to a large extent to his active interest in it. What he has done privately and without any ostentation in helping all sorts of people out of their troubles and difficulties will never be known, and shows that a relatively poor man, when actuated by a generous spirit, may often do more good than a millionaire to the community in which he lives. His personal qualities are also remarkably fine. I do not know of a more friendly, social and kind- hearted man, and his cordial greeting wherever met, and especially at his own door, reminds one of what Burns says, ''In heaven itself I'U ask no more Than just a Highland weloome.'' 218 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. He is an excellent Gaelic scholar, perhaps the best in Canada, and has a thorough knowledge of the history and traditions of his native land. Lights Gone Out, Mystery ! Mystery ! All is a mystery! The sigh of the night winds, the song of the waves, The visions that borrow Their brightness from sorrow, The tales whieh flowers tell us, the voices 3iiM 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. RENEWAIS ONtY_TEl. NO. 6A2-M05 ■ This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 1 HIS DooB. ^j^ j^jj renewed. Renewed boX are subiecttohmt^d^^ LD 21A-38w-5,'68 ^J401slO)476B General Library . University of California Berkeley