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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 <of graves. 
 
 —Alex. McLachlan. 
 
 Two of the lights of my life have recently gone out, 
 and forever more, namely, my gifted aunt, who was 
 by nature the clearest-minded woman I have ever 
 known — may God be good to her as she was to us — 
 and Samuel Smiles, the author of '* Self -Help" and 
 other grand books. I can still remember the peculiar 
 interest with which I read his ^^Life of Thomas 
 Edward,'' the Scottish naturalist, long ago. 
 
 I never saw Samuel Smiles, but I seem to have 
 known him almost personally for a special reason. 
 In the fall of 1880, I chanced to meet an English 
 lady in Toronto who lived quite near him on the 
 same street in London, and she told me, among other 
 things about him, that he was in the habit of walking 
 up and down the street in front of her uncle's house 
 early in the morning with his head down, composing 
 what he was going to write during the day. 
 
 This Englishwoman had a little bit of history of 
 her own. Her uncle was a doctor, but soon after he 
 began the practice of his profession in London, being 
 
SOME FEAUDS OF THE PEESENT DAY. 219 
 
 a man of independent means otherwise, he pulled 
 down his shingle, and said that he was not going to 
 be bothered to death looking after the sick for paltry 
 fees. Then, taking her with him, they started travel- 
 ling around the world, and had been going from one 
 country to another for over eighteen years when I 
 met them. If they liked any place they would stay 
 for weeks, and perhaps for months in it, as they did 
 in Toronto, but if not, they soon left it, and moved 
 somewhere else. 
 
 The doctor was getting up in years, and his great 
 pleasure in life was playing chess. If he met another 
 good player at this game, he would sit up all hours of 
 the night at it, hardly ever speaking a word. 
 
 I have a pair of beautiful cuff-buttons his niece 
 gave me, my monogram hand-painted on them by 
 herself in a very artistic way. 
 
 War News, 
 
 What a frightful waste of human life goes on in 
 this world all the time. Man is the worst enemy of 
 man, in civilization as in the savage state, and after 
 nearly twenty centuries of preaching the gospel of 
 the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, 
 and which is the great central fact or heart of the 
 Christian religion, any *' peace on earth'' seems as 
 far away as ever. But in this insane, mechanical, 
 fierce-struggling age, more people are killed by the 
 railways, electric cars and accidents of every kind 
 than by all the wars. The world is fast becoming a 
 veritable slaughter house. There is no safety in 
 
220 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 travelling, working, or on the streets of onr cities 
 any more. 
 
 But to my tale. On the subject of war news I have 
 a rather suggestive incident to relate. The facilities 
 for collecting the news of the world from day to day 
 are greater and more perfect than ever before at any 
 time. "We have newspapers without number and 
 trains to distribute them everywhere at a speed of 
 thirty to fifty miles an hour. We have a network of 
 telegraph lines on land, cables under every sea, and 
 wireless messages may be sent through the air. But 
 what avails it all? For instance, in the case of the 
 present war between Russia and Japan, though 
 there are said to be over two hundred war corres- 
 pondents at or near the scene of the conflict, we can 
 get no reliable war news from either side, and have to 
 read instead of the truth such rumours, yarns and 
 lies as yellow coolies bring to Chefoo! And at the 
 same time every leading paper in Canada and the 
 United States boasts in the usual windy fashion that 
 it has made special arrangements for getting the 
 latest and most reliable war news. 
 
 In striking contrast to this state of things, during 
 the Crimean war, just fifty years ago now, there was 
 only one war correspondent of any note in the field, 
 but we got trustworthy accounts of what was going 
 on, and everybody could believe what was published 
 in the press about the war. One of our neighbours 
 in Cape Breton then had been a soldier in his 
 younger days, till he lost a leg and had to quit the 
 army and live on a farm. He would talk of nothing 
 
SOME FEAUDS OF THE PEESENT DAY. 221 
 
 else but the war, and was nicknamed ' ' Sebastopol' ' 
 by the boys for it. When the war came to an end he 
 gave a feast in an open field near his house, and more 
 than one man ate well, drank well, and slept well — 
 on the grass. We were at one of the nearest points on 
 the Atlantic coast to Europe, but it took five weeks 
 for the news of the fall of Sebastopol to reach us, 
 and we were actually surprised to hear of such a far- 
 away event in so short a time. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 A NEW EXPERIENCE. 
 
 In the early days of art, 
 Buildens wrought with greatest care 
 Each minute and unseen part, 
 For the gods see everywhere. 
 
 —Longfellow. 
 
 The most of us only make a partial or sort of half 
 success of everything we undertake in life, and more 
 often our best efforts end in failure than in anything 
 else. I have endeavoured to do many things in the 
 past forty years — farming, studying to get an edu- 
 cation of some kind, school-mastering, travelling for 
 a wholesale house, speculating in real estate, pros- 
 pecting for mines and writing for the press. By 
 hard, persistent work, self-denial and thrift I got on 
 fairly well in nearly the whole successive list. But 
 I failed in one ambitious enterprise — in trying to 
 build a city in the Sudbury district fourteen years 
 ago. I did not know then that the accursed reign of 
 big robber companies and trusts was so near at hand 
 to monopolize the whole earth. 
 
 I have seen a large portion of the American conti- 
 nent, but this beautiful place on the Vermillion river 
 is the spot I love best, and last spring I determined 
 
 222 
 
A N^EW EXPEEIENCE. 223 
 
 to make a summer home for myself there. It was no 
 easy task. Men for such work and building materials 
 were both hard to get. I could not even find men to 
 clear land, as most common labourers in this north 
 country prefer to work in the lumber camps or loaf 
 about the towns and villages drinking their hard- 
 earned wages. Over 1,300,000 sawlogs passed my 
 door on the drive, but I had to send outside from fifty 
 to one hundred miles for lumber to build with, and 
 pay double price for it. The weather was very wet, 
 too, the greater part of the summer, raining almost 
 every day. But in spite of all difficulties I managed 
 to remodel and complete a very fine large house and 
 to trim up the place more or less. It is one of the 
 best buildings in the district, and is located on a ris- 
 ing hill overlooking a pretty lake. 
 
 One of the workmen, J. Myles McDonald, a splendid 
 young Highlander, played the bagpipes for us every 
 evening in grand style. He and the stone mason 
 while putting the foundation under the house talked 
 the Gaelic all the time, and a painter with an Irish 
 name, that I picked up later on, could talk it equally 
 well, and was a real artist in his own line. On a 
 rocky point that projects into the lake there must 
 have been over a ton of wild fruit, mostly gone to 
 waste. But the fishing has not been very good in any 
 of the northern lakes this year, owing to the high 
 water. In this connection there was a good joke on 
 me. I assumed from the painter's name, Harry 
 O'Neil, that he was a dogan, and as I happened to 
 
224: BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 be cook the first week after he came, I was sorry 
 that I could not get any fish for his dinner on Friday, 
 but it turned out that he was an Orangeman of the 
 true blue kind. 
 
 Another and greater surprise for me was to dis- 
 cover that the devil rules in the building trade, as in 
 the most of our affairs just now. But next season, 
 if I live, I hope to have a better time there. It was 
 a new experience to me. 
 
 Not Inspired Prophets. 
 
 Eudyard Kipling is the prophet of the English 
 people in this age. But he often writes mere non- 
 sense, and with the air of an oracle, too; as, for 
 instance, when he says that the task of civilizing and 
 governing the wild dark races of the earth is the 
 white man's burden, while the fact is not so by any 
 means. The white man's burden, and which is 
 becoming almost insupportable now, is made up of 
 many things at home in every community, small and 
 great, such as taxes to no end; the excessive cost of 
 government; law courts and extortionate lawyers' 
 fees; jails and penitentiaries for criminals; asylums 
 for the insane; poor houses, churches, schools, col- 
 leges and societies of all kinds; missionaries to the 
 heathen; the legalized robbery of the public by huge 
 money trusts and corporations; the endless impos- 
 tures of quacks and fakirs of every description; 
 besides his own follies, sorrows and miseries through 
 life. But, after all, women, and especially mothers, 
 bear the burdens of the world. 
 
A NEW EXPEEIENCB. 225 
 
 The people of Canada have also a prophet of the 
 same sort. Goldwin Smith has been telling us for a 
 long time that the inevitable destiny of Canada is to 
 be annexed to the United States, while the two coun- 
 tries are getting farther apart every day, not only in 
 sentiment, but in business interests as well. I never 
 had but one short discussion with Goldwin Smith, on 
 board a steamer at Sault Ste. Marie. His knowledge 
 of history is very extensive, and as a writer of pure 
 simple Anglo-Saxon he has had no equal since John 
 Euskin's time. Last week in a public address at 
 Ottawa he said a good many pertinent things, of 
 which the following extract was perhaps the best, — 
 
 ^^You have interesting times before you. Democ- 
 racy is on its trial. It has pretty well performed the 
 destructive part of its task; the constructive part 
 remains to be performed. Meantime the passions of 
 aggrandisement and war, which slumbered for a 
 time, have reawakened. Jingoism tramples on 
 righteousness and humanity. Eeligious belief is 
 being shaken by science and criticism, and the author- 
 ity of conscience as it rested on religious belief seems 
 in danger of being impaired. War is raging between 
 capital and labour. Society is threatened with a 
 tyranny of accumulated wealth. If you mean to 
 take an interest in public affairs, as it is the duty of 
 every citizen of a free commonwealth to do, you will 
 have plenty to occupy your minds. I wish I could 
 look in twenty years hence and see how you are 
 getting on." 
 
 I believe the map of the North American continent 
 15 
 
226 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 will likely be altered before another century is over, 
 but not in the way that is predicted by Goldwin 
 Smith. At present Canada is in nearly the same 
 position in America as Eussia is in Europe, with no 
 outlet to the south, and if a Canadian only wants a 
 milder climate for the winter months he has to go to 
 the United States for it. I prefer the Bahama 
 Islands for various reasons, but mainly because they 
 are under the British flag, and not much farther 
 away. One can go there from Eastern Canada in a 
 few days, and I do not know of a better place for 
 health and pleasure from December to May, and at 
 less than half the expense of living in big, noisy 
 hotels in the most of American so-called ^^fashion- 
 able" winter resorts. This interesting group of 
 islands is north of Cuba and in the same latitude as 
 Florida, and beginning not far from the east coast 
 of that state. 
 
 A Weird Echo. 
 
 In the summer of 1904, when I was improving my 
 town site on the Yermillion river, some Indians came 
 and camped on the reserve across the lake, not more 
 than a mile away, but hid from us by a rocky point 
 of land. Children and dogs always abound in any 
 Indian encampment, and both made considerable 
 noise in this case, though otherwise they were no 
 annoyance to us in any way. One of the men was 
 very old, but able to go about every day picking 
 berries in the bush and fishing on the lake. His 
 wrinkled little squaw was apparently still older, and 
 
A ISTEW EXPEEIEISTCE. 227 
 
 seldom left the tent. She died there in the fall, and 
 the poor old Indian lamented wildly over her loss. His 
 loud wailings echoed all around the lake, and were 
 rather weird to listen to at night. 
 
 Woman^s Work. 
 
 The art of cooking is nearly as old as the human 
 race, but how poorly understood yet, simple as it 
 really is, except the useless fancy part of it. In Can- 
 ada some of the farmers' wives are the best cooks of 
 plain wholesome meals, but too many of our girls, in 
 town and country alike, do not want to learn how to 
 cook any more. They would rather do anything else 
 than housework. The latest fad they have taken up 
 is to become professional nurses in hospitals and sick 
 rooms, but it would be far better for themselves and 
 all the rest of us if they were to get married and 
 nurse children of their own. Mary Pepequis, a 
 young squaw in Naughton, is one of the expert cooks 
 of the Sudbury district. She speaks English well, is 
 as clean and tidy as a Quakeress, and she always 
 greets you with a bright, cheerful smile on her face. 
 
 There is one great difference, however, between 
 woman's work in the home and man's work. A man, 
 if he is any good, can usually see at night the results 
 of his work for the day, but a woman, after toiling 
 over a hot stove all day to prepare three meals for 
 the family, can see nothing for it at night but a lot 
 of empty dishes to wash and scraps for the dog or the 
 hens. Her work is literally eaten up. And she must 
 get through the same unvaried task every day, with 
 
228 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 no rest, not even on Sunday, the whole year round. 
 Her only satisfaction is in having done her duty to 
 her household faithfully and well. But a good wife 
 feels amply rewarded if her work is duly appreci- 
 ated by her husband and children, and they let her 
 see it. She is never so happy as when labouring 
 unselfishly for her loved ones. Nor should men 
 forget, as they often do, that it is not the easiest 
 thing in the world to get meals ready sharp on time. 
 In this respect a hungry man is worse than a bear. 
 
 When in Sudbury I live in a den of one room and 
 a woodshed, but at my own beautiful town site and 
 park I have a fine large house of fifteen rooms on a 
 hillside in view of the lake. I tried to get a suitable 
 couple to look after the place, the man to clear land 
 and his wife to keep the house. But when the man 
 was all right the wife was no good, and when the 
 wife was all right the man was no good. To get both 
 right was harder than a problem in Euclid. So I 
 had to close the house up for the winter and hope for 
 better luck in the spring. 
 
 I go down there now and again for a few days to 
 fix up one thing or another, staying alone, but which 
 I do not mind at all. It is the only place on earth 
 that I feel at home in and love. I cannot say, like 
 Rob Roy, ''My foot is on my native heath, and my 
 name is Macgregor,'' but I am happier there than 
 anywhere else. 
 
 Sleep and Dreams. 
 
 If the scientists would only try to explain some of 
 the mysteries of life instead of wandering into the 
 
A :NrEW EXPEKIENCE. 229 
 
 infinite we would be under greater obligations to 
 them. About a third part of our lives is passed in an 
 unconscious state, lying on such beds as we may get, 
 and we can only go so long without sleep. The most 
 of people sleep at night because they work through 
 the day, but in many occupations, as in mining, the 
 night shift sleep in the daytime just as well. 
 
 Some persons, of both sexes, require far more 
 sleep than others. I have not slept on an average 
 over five hours a night during the past thirty years, 
 but I once had a packman in the bush with me who 
 would sleep from eight in the evening until six in 
 the morning, and nothing would disturb him. I 
 always get up several times in the night, from old 
 habit, and look out to see what the weather is like, 
 and sometimes to have a smoke, but he slept on all 
 the same. 
 
 Dreams are also a mystery to me. It is said that 
 even the longest dream only takes a few seconds to 
 occur, and just before waking. I dreamt one night 
 that I went up the lakes by boat from Amherstburg 
 to Port Arthur, then by train to Manitoba, took up 
 a homestead there, built a house and stable, put in a 
 crop, saw it grow and ripen, got through the harvest, 
 threshed and sold the grain, prepared for winter, 
 and the snow came, when I suddenly woke up, and 
 I suppose the whole thing happened in my dream in 
 less than no time. 
 
 My dog often dreams, and barks in his sleep as if 
 chasing game, but I have not noticed any of the 
 other lower animals dreaming, though they may do so. 
 
 Some people believe in dreams, but I have never 
 
230 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 had any dream come true yet. The New Testament 
 ends with a dream. 
 
 Popular Fallacies, 
 
 If the world once gets a wrong idea into its stupid 
 head it sticks there, no matter how false it may be 
 on the very face of it. As a sample illustration, the 
 Scotch people are universally believed by everybody 
 else except themselves to be extremely clannish or 
 partial to each other. But nothing could be farther 
 from the truth. Scotchmen are too independent and 
 self-reliant to be clannish, and the strongest bond 
 uniting them the world over is a sincere and ineradi- 
 cable love of their rugged native land, which is 
 another and far higher thing. Why do the Highland 
 regiments in the British army fight so well on every 
 battlefield? Because of hereditary aptitude to some 
 extent, but mostly for Scotland's sake. Even the 
 poorest crofter is filled with a nameless sorrow at 
 leaving the hills and glens so dear to him, and there 
 is no patriotic dirge equal to ''Lochaber no More.'' 
 A German will walk five miles to get a cobbler of his 
 own race to put a ten-cent patch on his shoe. The 
 French rarely associate with others on intimate 
 terms; and the Americans, as they wrongly call 
 themselves, are in many respects the most clannish 
 people on earth. Freeland would be a more appro- 
 priate name for the United States — free to shoot and 
 lynch each other, and not get hanged for it. 
 
 Another popular error or prejudice is in regard to 
 the red-headed girl. She is assumed to have a more 
 
A NEW EXPEKIEISrCE. 231 
 
 explosive temper than other women. But go to a 
 lunatic asylum or a penitentiary, and you will find 
 that very few of the inmates, male as well as female, 
 have red hair. Then women adorned with golden 
 tresses are almost invariably good housekeepers, and 
 have more character than the general run of their 
 sex. The girl with red hair and a freckled face may 
 not be proud of her complexion, but she ought to be, 
 for as to freshness and beauty there is no other like 
 it. A majority of the distinguished British authors 
 of the nineteenth century had either fair or red hair, 
 notably Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and George 
 Eliot. 
 
 When a young man I happened to get a copy of 
 ''Forest Life in Canada," by Mrs. Moodie, and read 
 it with unusual interest, as her account of the trials 
 and hardships that she and her husband, an army 
 officer, had gone through in the Peterborough dis- 
 trict, about the time of the Mackenzie rebellion, 
 tallied so well with the experiences of the early 
 settlers in the County of Bruce at a later period. I 
 afterwards looked her up, and found her living in 
 Toronto with one of her sons. She was very old, but 
 active in both mind and body, and could relate many 
 incidents of her past life in a fine humourous way. 
 We had several evening chats, and I now remember 
 that one of them was on this very subject of the 
 unjust sneers at red hair. The last time I saw her 
 she was lying dead in her coffin at a daughter's 
 house there, and so worn down by age as if only a 
 little girl. In real intellectual outfit, as compared 
 
232 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 to the most of the female writers of the present day, 
 she was a bright and shining star, and had also a true 
 woman's heart. She was a sister of Agnes Strick- 
 land, who wrote ''Lives of the Queens of England" 
 and other quasi-historical books of that kind. 
 
 "What a tremendous part sex plays in all human 
 affairs, both for good and ill. It is the motive power 
 of the world. The greed for money and the love of 
 fame are as nothing to it. Generations may come 
 and go, but the interest of man in woman, and 
 especially of woman in man, goes on forever. Nature 
 has so ordered the matter, and there is no evading 
 of her behests or laws. But the wide-spread and 
 accepted fiction that in modern life, with its conven- 
 tionalities and rules, woman is always sought and 
 won by man, is the greatest fallacy I know of. It 
 is oftenest the other way, and wisely so. The sex 
 instinct is far stronger in woman than in man, and 
 marriage is her appointed career in life. Man hunts 
 for many things, but woman only hunts for man. 
 
 But there is no respect among the young people 
 even for the sacred matter of courtship any more, 
 and it is usually referred to in slang terms, as when 
 they say that a girl has ''set her cap" for some 
 fellow, or that she is "struck" on him. In Gaelic 
 there is a much finer way of saying the same thing, — 
 Tha suel ann, "Her eye is in him," and in any such 
 case the man may as well submit to his fate. 
 
 A Wise Man. 
 
 It was probably about 1875 that I first met Norman 
 McLeod, and ever since we have been very intimate 
 
A ISTEW EXPEEIENTCE. 233 
 
 friends in the good old-fashioned way. He was then 
 a young fellow, lately out from somewhere in the 
 north of Scotland, to try what he could do in Canada 
 by his own unaided efforts. His first employment 
 was with a nursery firm in London, Ont., as travel- 
 ling agent on a very small salary, I think only $10 a 
 month. But he soon started for himself in the same 
 business, and got on very well. 
 
 The tendency of family life in the present genera- 
 tion is not for parents, if poor, to be better cared for 
 by their children when grown up than in the past. 
 Quite the contrary in too many cases. But, as a 
 notable exception, when Norman McLeod had made 
 a little money, and in such a hard way, too, he 
 bought a farm near the village of Ripley, in the 
 County of Bruce, and then brought his widowed 
 mother and his brothers and sisters from Scotland to 
 live on it. His chief reason for locating them there 
 was in order that his mother should be able to hear 
 the gospel preached in her own native tongue, and 
 for more than thirty years he has provided her with 
 a good home, while he has himself remained as yet 
 unmarried, no doubt partly if not mainly for her 
 sake. 
 
 In his physical make-up he is a compact medium- 
 sized man, with rather dark complexion and clear, 
 intelligent, black eyes. In all practical business 
 matters he carries his dish level, as the Scotch say, 
 and very seldom makes a mistake of any kind. I 
 have never seen him angry, and he always knows the 
 road he travels on. 
 
 As a natural result, therefore, while so many 
 
234 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 young men with all sorts of advantages fail in the 
 struggle of life, Norman McLeod, a poor Highland 
 lad without any such aids, has not only done more 
 than his duty to those depending on him, but has 
 also accumulated enough for the rest of his days. 
 
 Not a Cheerful Tale. 
 
 With the best intentions in the world, and using, 
 as I thought, good judgment, I made more mistakes 
 in 1904 than in any other year of my life. But mis- 
 takes are said to be lessons in wisdom, or ought to 
 be for all of us, if not too late. In my case, however, 
 ^^I said I will be wise, but it was far from me.'' We 
 think we know things, but not a mother's son of us 
 can see ahead one day. Our philosophy is laughed at 
 by the fates. 
 
 My worst mistake was in working too hard during 
 the summer and fall at my place on the Vermillion 
 river, trying to make a home for myself and others 
 there. The little strength I had left gave out, and for 
 the first time in my life I had to quit and take a rest. 
 But I picked up very well until grippe and the 
 rheumatism — my two old enemies — came back on me 
 worse than ever, and in the spring (of 1905) a bad 
 cold brought on a severe attack of pleurisy, which 
 laid me up for a while in spite of me. I have lived 
 alone so long, and always suffering more or less in 
 mind and body, that I have to be very ill before I 
 complain at all. But this time I had to send for a 
 doctor, and also get my good old companion in the 
 bush in past years, Eussell Cryderman, to come and 
 
A l!TEW EXPEEIEIsrCE. 235 
 
 sleep with me at night for nearly two weeks. Some 
 of my friends in town were exceedingly kind to me, 
 and brought me nice tempting little things to eat. 
 But I had to live mainly on slops, like beef tea, etc. 
 My stomach rebelled against any nourishing foods, 
 and my blood having got watery my heart would 
 flutter now and again like a caged bird. My nervous 
 system, too, seemed to be on fire. But by the doctor's 
 skilful treatment and my own resolution to get well, 
 I am able to be up again the most of the time. Oh, 
 how I long to get out camping among the pine trees, 
 but though now the middle of May the weather is 
 raw and cold and wet yet. It is the latest and worst 
 spring I have ever seen in the Sudbury district for 
 eighteen years. But at best this northern climate is 
 very hard on old men. If I live I shall never pass 
 another winter in it. 
 
 For more than forty years I have desired above 
 all things that I might be able to do something, if 
 ever so little, for the good of the world before leaving 
 it. But hitherto, as far as I know, the most of my 
 efforts in this direction have been in vain. Is God 
 inexorable to the prayers of mankind? He has been 
 to my prayers all my life. 
 
 A New Bosary. 
 
 A great many of the river drivers of Northern 
 Ontario are French Canadians from the Province of 
 Quebec. They are nearly all Catholics. It is very 
 risky work — driving the sawlogs that are cut in win- 
 ter down the rivers and streams as soon as the ice 
 
236 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 breaks up in the spring — and some of the poor boys 
 get drowned every season. Their graves may be seen 
 in many places on the banks of the rivers, and especi- 
 ally at the long rapids on the Ottawa river. 
 
 But, nevertheless, the river drivers are always 
 light-hearted and full of fun, even in fly time. They 
 usually camp at rapids or falls in the rivers, where 
 the logs are often piled up into great jams that have 
 to be broken up, sometimes, with dynamite. Few 
 things are more interesting than to watch the logs 
 tumbling over a falls or going down a swift rapids. 
 
 On Sundays the river drivers loaf about the 
 camp, wash their underwear, and fish. Very few of 
 the French boys can read, but the most of them say 
 their prayers every night and morning. In one of 
 the gangs coming down a river in the Sudbury dis- 
 trict last spring a young fellow lost his rosary, or had 
 perhaps forgotten to take it with him, and he could 
 not get through his various prayers to God and the 
 saints very well without it. But any bushman must 
 be resourceful, and this one got over the difficulty in 
 a novel way. He went down every day to where a 
 boom was strung across the river and checked off 
 his prayers on the links of the chain between two of 
 the boom sticks. When he came to the large connect- 
 ing link in the chain he would yelp out a prayer to 
 or for the Virgin Mary with special emphasis, and 
 then go back to the camp in a happy frame of mind. 
 
 It is surely time for the Roman Catholics to give 
 the poor Virgin Mary a rest. They seem to revere 
 or worship her far more than even God or Christ. 
 
A I^EW EXPEEIEN^CE. 237 
 
 But neither Catholic nor Protestant ever has a good 
 word to say or sing for her husband Joseph, who, 
 nevertheless, must have been a remarkably clever 
 man, as amply proved by his getting into Egypt with 
 the mother and child although all the roads in Pales- 
 tine were guarded by fierce Roman soldiers. 
 
 Knocked Out. 
 
 The old proverb about the pitcher that goes once 
 too often to the well, and gets broken at last, is true 
 of many a man's life. 
 
 I had been roughing it in the Sudbury district for 
 seventeen years without any apparent hurt to my 
 health, and never was laid up for a single day with 
 any serious illness in all that time. I could tramp 
 the bush with my pack and pick and gun as well as 
 ever, even at Dr. Osier's chloroform age. 
 
 But last year (1904) I very foolishly overtaxed 
 the little physical strength I had left at other work, 
 and I am paying for that mistake with compound 
 interest this year. All spring and summer I was 
 half-sick, a miserable state to be in, with one thing 
 or another, and getting weaker every day. But I 
 would not give up until I finally had to, though 
 much against my will. I hated to leave my old den 
 and go to the hospital, the only place of refuge for a 
 homeless man in such a case, and especially on the 
 outskirts of civilization in our north land. 
 
 To be laid up in a bare room in a hospital any- 
 where is rather lonely and irksome for a man of rest- 
 less activity and used to outdoor life. But they were 
 
238 BEMOCKED OF DESTHSTY. 
 
 all very good and attentive to me there, and my 
 kind-hearted friend, Thomas Baycroft, the well- 
 known prospector, came to see me twice a day and 
 brought me my mail and anything else I wished to 
 get. His health, too, has been ruined by hard work, 
 and he had to go to Arizona last winter to save his 
 life. The climate of Northern Ontario is hard on old 
 men at best. I also, to my great surprise and 
 pleasure, had a visit one night from Capt. A. 
 McAulay, of Southampton, who went to school to me 
 in the old college days, and has been my constant 
 and true friend ever since then. 
 
 But I am able to be out and around again, and 
 may possibly get back some of my old vigour yet. 
 I intend to go to a milder climate for the winter, but 
 large as Canada is in extent of territory for the 
 politicians to blow about in after-dinner speeches, I 
 must go to some other country to find such a climate. 
 
 We all know what often becomes of the best laid 
 plans of mice and men. I wanted to snug up my 
 affairs, if possible, this year (1905), and also to do 
 several more or less important things that have been 
 in my mind for a long time. But owing to the disas- 
 trous breakdown of my health, I have only been able 
 to do one of them, and that was, to get a good farm 
 for my elder brother Frank, who has been unlucky 
 all his life. I would rather help as many of my poor 
 relations as I could before the banshee comes rapping 
 at my window-pane than to leave them bequests in 
 my will. 
 
 But my best intentions and purposes have nearly 
 
A NEW EXPEEIENCE. 239 
 
 always been frustrated in one way or another, and 
 I have found out that the heart of man is as likely 
 to be broken even in the quiet backwoods as any- 
 where else by disappointments, sorrows and miseries 
 of every kind. Truly one needs courage and a hopeful 
 spirit in the hard struggle of life, wherever his lot 
 may be. What I have suffered in body and mind 
 during the past year no tongue or pen can tell. 
 
 The old scripture query: ''Why should a living 
 man complain?'' is rather absurd. For in that case 
 no one would ever complain of anything in this 
 world. There would be far more sense in asking why 
 any man who is well and able to work should com- 
 plain. Health is everything, and all else is nothing 
 without it. 
 
 Several doctors have told me that I was the most 
 cheerful patient they had ever seen in my state, and 
 I am resolved to keep up my spirits to the end, or 
 until I have to ''cuddle doon'' in the arms of good 
 old mother earth — the mother of us all — for my 
 eternal rest. 
 
 Bemocked of Destiny to the last. 
 
COPY OF WILL. 
 
 I, Aeneas McCharles, of the town of Sudbury, in 
 the District of Nipissing and Province of Ontario, 
 prospector, make this my last Will and Testament 
 on the seventh day of June, 1906, revoking of course 
 all other Wills that may have been heretofore made 
 by me. 
 
 I hereby appoint and constitute my brother, John 
 A. McCharles, of the Township of Huron in the 
 County of Bruce, and Norman McLeod, of the Vil- 
 lage of Ripley in the same county, to be the Execu- 
 tors of this my Will, and I charge them to carry out 
 my wishes as expressed therein, in every respect, as 
 God shall judge between us. 
 
 I direct that all my just debts and funeral and 
 testamentary expenses be paid as soon after my 
 decease as may be convenient. 
 
 1. — I give, devise and bequeath to the municipality 
 of Drury, Denison and Graham, in trust, the follow- 
 ing lands, to be kept and used as a Public Park for 
 the people of the Sudbury District forever: namely, 
 Park lots numbers One, Two and Three, and Block 
 number Five, and Town Lots numbers One, Two, 
 Three, Four, Five and Six in Block number Six, 
 being subdivisions of that part of Lot number Nine 
 (9) north of Vermillion Lake, in the Second Conces- 
 
 240 
 
COPY OF WILL. 241 
 
 sion of the said Township of Graham, with power to 
 lease, but not to sell, lots and sites for cottages in the 
 said Park, and the revenue from which is to be ex- 
 pended, as far as it goes, in keeping the grounds in 
 order. 
 
 And if at any future time, a separate municipality 
 should be formed in the said Township of Graham, 
 then the control of the said Public Park shall be 
 transferred to such separate municipality, to be man- 
 aged and looked after in the same way. 
 
 2. — All the other lands I may die possessed of in 
 the said Township of Graham, with all the improve- 
 ments thereon, I give, devise and bequeath to my 
 son, Henry A. McCharles, for his sole use. 
 
 3. — I hereby direct and authorize my said Execu- 
 tors to make the following bequests out of the money 
 I may leave in the bank or elsewhere : To my cousin, 
 Jessie Henderson, of Powassan, Ont., Five hundred 
 dollars. To Annie Gordon, widow of the late Arthur 
 Gordon, of Whitefish, Algoma, Five hundred dollars. 
 To Alexander Mclntyre, of Sudbury, Ont., who so 
 unfortunately lost his sight. Five hundred dollars. 
 To my good half-sister, Annie Mary McCharles, of 
 Detroit, Mich., U.S.A., Five hundred dollars. To 
 Jessie McLean, formerly school teacher, of Kincar- 
 dine, Ont., Five hundred dollars, in grateful recog- 
 nition of her mother's kindness to me after I first 
 left home. To each of the three daughters of my 
 deceased sister, Sarah McEae, One thousand dollars, 
 if they come back from the United States to any part 
 of Canada to live within two years after my decease; 
 
24:2 BEMOCKED OF DESTmY. 
 
 but, if not, only Five hundred dollars each is to be 
 given to them. To Christy McKenzie, wife of Mur- 
 doch McKenzie, of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Five hun- 
 dred dollars. And to Edgerton M. Stenabaugh, of 
 Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., U.S.A., accountant, Five 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 All the above money bequests are personal, and if 
 any of the parties should die before me, his or her 
 share is not to go to any heirs, but to be put back 
 into the estate. 
 
 4. — I also direct and authorize my said Executors 
 to invest Thirty thousand dollars, or the main part 
 of my estate, in Ontario Government bonds at or 
 under par, if I do not make such investment before 
 my decease, and I give, devise and bequeath such 
 bonds or their equivalent in cash as follows : — 
 
 First. — To my son, the said Henry A. McCharles, 
 One hundred shares or Ten thousand dollars, with 
 the hope that he may make a good and wise use of it. 
 To my sister, Mary Potcher, of Lucknow, Ont., Ten 
 shares or One thousand dollars. To my sister, Isabella 
 Cameron, of Vancouver, B.C., Twenty-five shares 
 or Two thousand and five hundred dollars. To 
 my brother, Roderick McCharles, of Euthven, Ont., 
 Twenty-five shares or Two thousand and five hundred 
 dollars. To my brother, Frank McCharles, Junior, of 
 Ruthven, Ont., Twenty-five shares or Two thousand 
 and five hundred dollars. To Russell Cryderman, of 
 Sudbury, Ont., Ten shares or One thousand dollars, 
 in remembrance of the many days we spent together 
 in the bush. And to Isabella McKenzie, of Ripley, 
 
COPY OF WILL. 243 
 
 Ont., Five shares or Five hundred dollars, because 
 she was good to my old aunt. 
 
 Second. — I give, devise and bequeath to the Pro- 
 vincial University, in Toronto, the remaining One 
 hundred shares of such bonds, or Ten thousand 
 dollars, on the following terms and conditions: 
 namely. That the interest therefrom shall be given 
 from time to time, but not necessarily every year, like 
 the Nobel prizes in a small way: (1) To any Canadian 
 from one end of the country to the other, and whether 
 student or not, who invents or discovers any new and 
 improved process for the treatment of Canadian ores 
 or minerals of any kind, after such process has been 
 proved to be of special merit on a practical scale; 
 (2) or for any important discovery, invention or 
 device, by any Canadian, that will lessen the dangers 
 and loss of life in connection with the use of elec- 
 tricity in supplying power and light; (3) or for any 
 marked public distinction achieved by any Canadian 
 in scientific research in any useful, practical line. 
 
 5. — To my said Executors I donate Two hundred 
 and fifty dollars each and all their expenses in admin- 
 istering my estate according to the terms of this 
 Will. 
 
 6. — If I should not get my poor autobiography 
 published in my lifetime, I leave the manuscript of 
 it as a sacred trust to my friend, James B. Hammond, 
 of Nairn Centre, Ont., to have it published within 
 one year after my death, the copyright of it to be 
 taken out* in his own name and for his own benefit, if 
 any. But if no publishing house in Canada will print 
 
244 BEMOCKED OF DESTINY. 
 
 it on the terms of a fair royalty, he is to get Five 
 hundred copies of it printed in extra style, to be 
 given as souvenirs to my old friends and others, and 
 a copy to each of the chief public libraries of Ontario 
 and Nova Scotia ; and the cost of which is to be paid 
 for by my said Executors out of my estate. 
 
 7. — The rest and residue of my estate I wish to be 
 divided among all the sons of my four brothers and 
 the sons of my sister, Isabella Cameron, of Vancouver, 
 B.C., share and share alike, to see which of them 
 will make the best use of his portion of it. 
 
 8. — ^Any beneficiary disputing the Will shall forfeit 
 his or her share of the estate. 
 
 1 
 
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 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
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