\ mmmmmmmm ^ PL -^ r 1 Wong THE FOREST TREE 'TerkeleyN LIB^RARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA J AMONG THE FOREST TREES OR, HOW THE BUSHMAN FAMILY GOT THEIR HOMES. HEING A BOOK OF FACTS AND INCIDENTS OF PIONEER LIFE IN UPPER CANADA, ARRANGED IN THE FORM OF A STORY. HV THE REV. JOSEPH H. HILTS, Aiithor of " Ex])(^rionc'es of a Backwoods Preacher." etc. TORONTO: IMilNIED FOK rilE AUTHOR BY WILLIAM HRIGGS, 78 & 80 KING STREET EAST. k 1888. Entered, according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight, by Rev. Joseph H. Hilts, in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture, at Ottawa. Jlcdicattoix TO THE DESCENDANTS OF THOSE BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN WHO BRAVED THE DANGERS, FACED IHK DIFFICULTIES, ENDURED THE HARDSHIPS AND SUFFERED THE PRIVATIONS OF PIONEER LIFE IN THIS OUR NATIVE PROVINCE, THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. AND THE AUTHOR INDULGES THE HOPE THAT ITS PRODUCTION AND PERUSAL MAY BE THE MEANS OF CAUSING BOTH WRITER AND READER MORE HIGHLY TO APPRECIATE THE BOON SECURED TO THEM BY THE NOBLE EFFORTS OF THE EARLY HOME BUILDERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 749 Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2008 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/amongforesttreesOOIiiltricli INTEODUCTION. ^DVERS?3 criticism has sounded the death-knell of "^(fj^ so many literary productions, that I felt many misgivings when I sent out my tirst book, " Ex- periences of a Backwoods Preacher," to seek m place in the arena of Canadian literatuie. But the favorable comments of the Press, and the hearty commendations of hundreds of the readers of these " Experiences," have encouraged me to try and produce a work that would be more worthy of public favor than my first effort can claim to be. Acting on the advice of persons of large experience in the book trade, I have written "Among the Forest Trees," in the form of a story. The book is really a narrative of facts and incidents, around which the imagination has been permitted to throw some of the draperies of fiction. But truth is none the less true because some fancy pictures are found in its surroundings. A good piece of cloth is no less valuable because, by coloring, it is made beautiful. And although a man may be as good a man in an outfit made of sail-cloth, or of an Indian blanket, as he would be if he were dressed in the finest production of the weaver's and the tailor's art, yet no one will say that he would be just as presentable in the one case as in the other. So facts may become more impressive, when nicely clothed. In writing the following pages, three things have been kept steadily in view. 1st. The facts and incidents must be substantially true. 2nd. All the drapery and coloring VI INTRODUCTION. must be in strict harmony with pure morality, and with the demands of a sound religious sentiment. 3rd. And the whole must be illustrative of pioneer life, in its conditions and surroundings, and calculated to show something of the toils, privations, hardships, difficulties and sorrows of the early settlers. Keeping within these limits, I believe that I have produced a book that can with entire safety, and not without profit, be put into the hands of either young or old, since there is not one line from the beginning to the ending that will excite bad passions or mislead the judgment. And while this is true, there is much that will touch the finer sensi- bilities and sympathies of the reader. It will be observed that the author has recorded the narrations and conversations as though they were the utterances of others. Hence the first person is generally left in the background. This method was adopted, because by it a great variety of characters could be brought on the scene, and a larger diversity of style could be presented. Another thing to which I would call the reader's atten- tion is the fact that dates and localities have mostly been left out of the text of the book. Where these are given they are found in the explanatory notes. This plan was adopted to afford greater facilities for grouping together facts and incidents, that were separated by time and distance, so as to give an aspect of unity to the whole production. The reader will also observe that the names of persons and places are mostly taken from trees and shrubs and plants and flowers, as these are found in the forest wilds. It may be a mere fancy of mine; bub I thought that it would add to the attractiveness of the book, if the names • INTRODUCTION. Vll found in it coincided, as far as possiVjle, with the subject treated of in its pages. John Bushman is a fictitious name. But he is by no means a fictitious character. If you asked me where he lived, I would answer, you might as well try to confine the almost ubiquitous John Smith to one locality, as to settle the question where John Bushman lives, or more properly? to say where he don't live. Every township and every neisrhborhood have, at some time, had their first man and first woman, their John and Mary Bushman. Another thing that is to be noted is this : among the varied characters, and diversified actions described in these pages, there is not a wicked act, nor a vicious person men- tioned in the whole book. All the actors are strictly moral if they are not pious, and all the actions are virtuous if they are not religious. I have no sympathy with that style of writing that gives more prominence to the bad than to the good, in human character. Therefore I resolved that, so far as myself and my book are concerned, the devil shall be left to do his own advertising. And now as to why the book has been written. Since the thousands of refugees, known as the U. E. Loyalists, came to this country a little over a hundred years ago, wonderful changes have been eftected. And these will continue in the future. In the race for ease and opulence, on the part of the people of this country, there is danger that the brave pioneers and their works may be forgotten, unless some records of their noble deeds are handed down to the future. But very few persons had better facilities than the writer to gain from personal experience a pi-actical knowledge to pioneer life. Both of my parents were born on the Niagara frontier soon after the Loyalists came to this country. I Vlll INTRODUCTION. was but three years old when my father cut hiis way to his shanty through seven miles of unbroken wilderness ; and five- sevenths of my whole life have been spent among pioneer settlers. 80 that if a personal know^ledge of the things written about be of any advantage, I have that knowledge. One word more. To those readers who, like myself, make no claim to classical learning, I wish to say that I have tried to produce a book that would at the same time both please and instruct you. How far my effort has been suc- cessful can be decided only after you have read it. To my scholarly readers, if I should be so fortunate as to secure any such, I wish to say, Don't use a telescope in searching for defects ; you can see plenty of them with the naked eye. And wdien you tind them, which no doubt you will, don't be too severe with your criticisms. But remember that the w^riter never saw the inside of a college in his life. Remember that he never attended a high school until he went as a member of a school board to settle a rumpus among the teachers. And remember that he never had twelve months' tuition in any sort of school. His book- learning has been picked up by snatches of time and while other people slept. No, don't be too severe in judging, nor too quick in condemning. Please don't ! J. H. H. October 1, J8S8. TABLE OF COlsrTEISrTS. PAGE Chapter I. —Found by .Surveyors 11 Comtn-jncing Life— The Little Shanty— Sylvan Lake - Sunday Morning Alone with Nature and with God. Chapter II. — Tuk Road-Makers - - - - 22 Deer and Wolves -Solitude— Housekeeping -Mr. Roots Pro- posal—The Travoy— The Toggled Chain. Chapter III.— House-Buildixu 34 The Dinner -Poetic ElFusions— A Reminiscence— Wants to bu a Poet - A Surprise. Chapter IV.— A Partner Found - 47 John Makes a Discovery Asking Consent -Coming Home — Squire Myrtle— A Glad Mother. Chapter V — An Old-Time Wedding 58 Blunders— Practical Courting— A Wedding— Sister Betsv — A Thrilling Tale— A Plucky Boy. Chapter VI. -Talk About Wolves ----- 72 Treed by Wolves— Good Luck— Wolf Scalps and Bread- Chasing the Deer— The Last Race. Chapter VII. — Some Oral History 86 The United Empire Loyalists — The Gourley Trial — A Be- fogged Jury— A Harsh Verdict— A Cruel Sentence. Chapter VIII. — Preparing to Move 99 William Briars- -Life's Realities— Friendly Offerings— Betsy's Poetry— The Old Man's Story -Little Bright Eyes. Chapter IX. —Homeward Bound 115 Migratory Waves— Moses Moosewood's Resolve— Picture of a Court— Take a Gun Along— A Mother's Vision. Chapter X. — Some White Gipsies - - - - - 128 A Witch Story— Backwoods Welcome— Housekeeping— Ex- ploring the Premises— Forest Aristocrats. Chapter XI. — Clearing Land 141 Hemlock Compass — Poor Grip's Fate — Log Rolling — A Mother-in-law's Question— Philosophers in Petticoats. Chapter XII.— Sowing and Reaping 155 The Three-square Harrow— Tests of Character— Post Ottlces -Forty Miles' Walk— A Letter- Phmty of News. Chapter XIII.— Harvesting the Crop - - 168 Threshing-floors- Skilful Housekeeper — Beavers- -Gathering Wild Fruit— Finding a Dutchman- A Fawn. X CONTENTS. PAGE CHAJfTKR XIV. — Mary Finds a Friend . . . . igl Being Isolated — A Glad Surprise — Canadian Girls — Cart Making —Dr. Ashgrove— Underbrushing. Chapter XV. — Winter in the Woods - - - - 194 Threshing — Cleaning - White Caps — Katrina — Mixed-up Dreams— John Goes to Mill— Killing Venison. Chapter XVI. — Visitors and Callers .... 207 Familiar Faces - Backwoods Police— Woman's Intuitions- Making Sap-Troughs- The Big Store-Trough. Chapter XVII.^-Sugar-Makino 221 A Good Business— Sugaring-ofF— Moses Comes Home— The Hoot-Owl— A Sugaring Party— Dutch Pleasantries. Chapter XVIII. — More Settlers Coming . - - - 235 Rapid Settlement— A Crowded House -Lost Children— Harry Hawthorn— Mr. Beech— Shearing Sheep. Chapter XIX.— And Still They C^ome .... 248 A True Woman— A Bear Eats a Boy— A Bear in a Berry Patch— Matthew Millwood. Chapter XX. — A Neighborhood of Strangers - - - 261 Canadian Society— Married Under a Tree— The First Baby- Neighborly Kindness— Mean Specidation. Chapter XXI.— Riverbend Mills ..... 274 The Stolen Baby— White Squaw— Children Killed— The First Funeral— A Neighborhood Sensation. Chapter XXII. — A Boarding-House Wanted - - - 287 A Cook Needed— Backwoods Society— Wolves at Work— The W^oif Classified- He is a Sneaking Coward. Chapter XXIII. — A Backwoods Lyceum .... 300 The Old Mill— The Boy's Load-The Bear and the Hunter- No Toll Allowed— The Bear and the Mill Saw. Chapter XXIV.— More Boarding-House Tales- - - 313 The Lost Girl— The Lost Woman— Boys and Ghosts. Chapter XXV.— More Glimpses of Bush Life - - - 326 A Tobacco-chewing Christian — A Strange Clock — A Big Scare— A Race for Life— Plucky Canadians— Killed by Indians. Chapter XXVI. — The Mills Completed .... 339 The First Grist— The First Preacher— The Meeting-house— The Post Office— The Store-Sylvanus Yardstick. Chapter XXVIL— Some Old-Time Customs - - - 354 Seeking Information— The Logging-Bee— Husking-Bees— Red Corn and Kissing— The Spinning-Bee— How to Treat a Dude. Chapter XXVIII. — Twenty Years of Progress - - 366 Drawbacks and Discouragements— Cheap Butter and Eggs- No Whiskey— General Success— John's Dream Realized. AMONG THE FOREST TREES Chapxkr I FOUND BY SURVEYORS, NUMBER of men were on their way to lay out some townships in the unsurveyed parts of Upper Canada. While passing through the rear range of the surveyed townships one day about noon, they came to a beautiful spring of water that issued in streams of refreshing coolness out of a ledge of rocks that arose on one side of a valley through which ran a large creek, whose waters were making their way to Lake Ontario. Being weary and hungry, they stopped for dinner. Shaded by the thick branches of the hemlock, which spread over them like a protecting canop}', and resting on the dried leaves that passing seasons had left l)ehind them, making a couch that was by no means uninviting to weary limbs and jaded bodies, they betook themselves to the task of demolishing the food before them as only hungry backwoodsmen can doi 12 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. They were too intent on taking their dinners to spend any time in unnecessary talk. The stillness that reigned around was only broken by the murmuring sounds that came from the creek that ran but a short distance from them, .and the gentle rippling of the spring that issued from rocks just beside them. While they were busily engaged in satisfying the demands of appetite, they were startled by the sound of an axe not far from where they were. " What is that ? " came from two or three at once. They all listened. Sure enough, there was distinctly heard the blows of a man chopping. Every doubt was soon removed by the falling of a tree in the direction of the sound of the axe. Although they were seven or eight miles from any settlement, it was evident that some one was working near by. They resolved to find out what he was doing, and who he was. Accordingly they went to the place. There they found a young man of about twenty-one or two years of age, with his coat off" and his sleeves rolled up, swinging an axe with as much dexterity as though he had been accustomed to that sort of work all his life. " What are you doing here ? " said one of the men, after a few friendly words had been spoken. " Commencing life in the backwoods," was his quick reply. " I have no house, as yet, to invite you into, nor have I any chair to offer you. But both the house and the chair are on the list of things that I hope for in the not very distant future. , But, in the FOUND BY SURVEYORS. 13 meantime, make yourselves as comfortable as possible, and rest for awhile." " How long have you been here, and where did you come from ? " asked the foreman of the company. " I have been here just one week, and I came from the vicinity of the " Falls." " How much land have you here ? " " Two hundred acres. One hundred I got as a grant from the Government, and the other my father bought and gave it to me." " Is it all good land ? " " Yes ; there is not an acre of useless land on the two hundred acres." " Do you think that you shall enjoy this sort of life ? " was asked by one of the men. " A man can enjoy almost any sort of life that is not degrading nor sinful, if he makes up his mind to do so," said the young man, as he took a small stone from his vest pocket, and began to whet his axe with it. " That seems like sound philosophy/' said the fore- man. " But have you made an estimate of what it costs to hew out a homestead in the wilderness ? Do you know that to chop an acre of this heavily tim- bered land means six days of hard work, and to clear it off means three days more, and to fence it, two days more, and another day to sow and harrow in the seed, so that every acre you put into crop w^ill cost two weeks of hard work." " Yes," replied the other, " my father has told me all of that. He cleared up the farm he still lives on in the township of Pelham. He says that clearing 14 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. land is hard work. But he says, too, that not very much can be honestly orot in this world without hard work." "Are you married ? " This question was put by a young man who had recently been " engaged," but whose marriagre had been deferred till the return of the surveying party. Young Bushman colored up, and in an emphatic manner said, " No ; not yet. ' Build your cage before you catch your bird,' is old advice ; but it is good, and I intend to act upon it." "Where do you sleep and take your meals?" was asked. " I have a small wigwam or shanty not far away, where, like Robinson Crusoe, ' I am monarch of all I survey,' and where I live, much as that far-famed gen- tleman did, only I have no man ' Friday ' to help while away the time. Will you come and see it ? " They consented to go. He led them over a lot of fallen trees, and around some " brush -heaps," and soon brought them to his shanty. It was made of poles small enough for one man to handle. They were notched together at the corners. The spaces between them were tilled with moss. It was covered with hemlock bark, such as is now sold by the cord at the tanneries. The doorway was just wide enough for a man to pass in and out, and a couple of cedar slabs an- swered for a door. There was nothing very inviting about this little substitute for something better. But plenty of men in this Canada of ours have lived for months in just such humble homes. FOUND BY SURVEYORS. 15 But in the surroundings were found such a scene of wild-wood beauty as is seldom met with. Just in front of the shanty was a miniature lake of clear spring water. It was about an acre in extent, and it was as round as a hoop. It was surrounded by a fringe of beautiful spruce and cedar trees that grew right down to the water's edge. On the opposite side, in the distance, were a number of upland pines, raising their cone-like heads far above the forest of beech and maple trees around them, that seemed to be lifting their branches in homage to those giants that had de- fied the storms of fifty decades, appealing to them for protection against the woodman's axe. A little to the right a nice brook fiowed out of the lake, and ran ofi* toward the creek before spoken of. All of them agreed that it was a lovely spot. But the engaged young man became poetical. Standing on a log in front of the shanty, and pointing out over the lake, he broke out in the following : ' ' What beauteous mirror here is found Set in a fringe of evergreen ; On whose smooth surface may be seen The tops of all the trees around. Were I commissioned from above To find some spot of earthly bliss, I'd want no nicer place than this To spend my days with one I love." " There," said young Bushman, pointing to the lake, " is the future Mrs, Bushman's duck-pond." The transition from the poetical to the practical was so sudden, that the whole company saw the incon- 16 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. gruity of sentiment as expressed by the two young men, and indulged in a hearty laugh. " My friend," said the foreman, " I wish, before leaving you, to congratulate you on the beauties of your home on the border of Sylvan Lake, and I hope that under the guiding hand of our kind and good Father above, the coming years may bring to you all the prosperity and happiness that your manly courage and your fearless energy deserve." " Thank you for your kindly and encouraging words," said the young man in a somewhat trembling- voice, " and if ever you come this way again don't for- get Sylvan Lake. You will find a welcome here at any time." They shook hands and parted, and young Bushman was left alone.* " That young fellow deserves to succeed," said the foreman, as the party walked away. " He has got the sort of stuff in him of which true manhood is made " Yes," said the poetic young man. " I wish that I could face things with as much self-reliance as he seems to do. But the bringing up, I suppose, makes the difference." " Bringing up," replied the foreman, " has a good * In the Township of Elma was a man by the name of Twamley, who for two months never saw a human face. One day he heard some men talking. He ran after them and persuaded them to stop with him for a day and night, and then they went on their way. He told the writer that he never was so much pleased to see any one before. They were entire strangers to him. FOUND BY SURVEYORS 17 deal to do with the formation of character ; but no kind of bringing up can make a real manly man out of a milksop, any more than a blacksmith can make a good axe out of a piece of cast iron. To develop a man you must have manly qualities to work upon. A sneak or a coward may become a good man and a sin- cere Christian ; but to make up a brave, manly man, you must have better material to work upon than the kind of stuff that sneaks and cowards are made of." We will look into the shanty. In one corner is a flat stone set up on its end, so that its sides touch two sides of the wall, and its face forms the diagonal of the angle of the corner. An opening at the top, for the smoke to escape, answers for a chimney. Here the cooking is done. In another corner is a lot of hemlock boughs and some bedding. Here the sleeping is done. What- ever may be said against this sort of couch, one thing- can be said in its favor, gout and rheumatism seldom torture the limbs that repose on a bed of hemlock. In still another corner sits a very large basket, which was lately bought from some Indians, and in which Mr. Bushman keeps his supplies of provisions. He may as well become reconciled to be called Mr., for in time to come that will be a very familiar and a very popular name. But what is in the basket ? That is the question now. Well, here is a supply of good bread that was made by the wife of the nearest settler, which is seven miles distant. Then here is a lot of boiled ham, good enough for a prince to eat, and a roll of butter (we 18 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. won't say anything about the butter, for fear of mak- ing a mistake). Here is salt, pepper, mustard, and a lot of spices too numerous to mention. But what have we here so carefully done up in this clean white cloth ? Well, as sure as anything, here is half a dozen speckled trout. They are the same kind of fish that Dr. Wild says the Ashurites used to carry to Jerusalem to sell on the market. These, no doubt, are the product of Sylvan Lake. We find the basket well filled, and we conclude that a man in health would be a loner while starving on such substantial food, supplemented by such royal dainties. In the other corner we see a rifle and its accoutre- ments, some fishing tackle and an axe, ready for use, and held in reserve in case the other one should break. A covered box sittino- ao^ainst the wall serves for a dish cupboard. Four crotched stakes, driven into the ground with the forked end upward, represent the four posts of a table. Two small poles are used for cross bars, and a couple of cedar slabs make' the top, and, altogether, make a substitute for a dining-room table of the most fashionable class. A couple of cedar blocks of convenient size and length are the only chairs to be found in this unpreten- tious home. But it is wonderful how men can adapt themselves to their surroundings when strong motives for doing so are present. John Bushman was a man of a strong: will, and much decision of character, and one not easily turned from his purpose at any time. But he now had a FOUND BY SURVEYORS. 19 powerful motive actuating him, viz., a desire to have a home of his own, and to secure a competence for those who might become, in after years, dearer to him than life itself. We have been thus minute in the description of Bushman's shanty for the reason that we shall find many similar ones in tilling out our story of life among the forest trees, and we wish as much as pos- sible to avoid repetition. We let this description suf- fice for the class of shanties of which this one is a fair representative. The next day after the surveyors left was the Sab- bath. John Bushman resolved to observe the sacred day in accordance with its requirements, as far as it was possible to do so in his lonely situation. He had been trained from childhood to respect the claims of the Sabbath. But it was not simply the force of habit with the young man, it was a matter of prin- ciple as well. In early youth he had been converted, had joined the Church, and pledged himself to a godly life. If there is any grander object in this sinful world than an intelligent, earnest, devoted, manly young Christian gentleman, will those who have seen such object please tell where it may be found, for we have not yet seen it. When he went out in the mornincr the air was vocal with the song of birds, and sweet perfumes were float- ing upon the morning breezes, that seemed to be speaking in gentle whispers lest too soon nature's children should be awakened from their restful slum- bers. 20 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. The sun was already above the horizon, and it was shooting its beams through the openings that here and there were found in the fringe of evergreens that sur- rounded Sylvan Lake. Wherever these golden sun- beams fell upon the surface of the clear water, it looked as if a large diamond had exploded, and scat- tered its fragments in all directions, like drops of melted gold, and making the lake appear like a great overgrown mirror upon whose face a hundred lamps were blazing. To say that the young man enjoyed the scene around him would be too tame an expression. He was fairly entranced. Though his life had been spent almost entirely on a farm, there was nothing of the rustic about him. He had enough of the poetic ele- ment in his composition to place him in harmony with the beautiful in nature or art. And although he was not, perhaps, sufficiently schooled in metaphysical lore to be able to explain why he was pleased, yet any one that could have looked on his beaming face that morn- ing could not for one moment doubt the fact that he was highly gratified with what he saw around him. He prepared and ate his breakfast in a thoughtful mood. After he put things to rights in the shanty he took one of his block-seats out, and placing it under a cedar, he sat down with his back against the tree and commenced to read Dr. Blair's " Sermon on the Source of True Enjoyment." When he came to the question, " Is the source of true enjoyment external, internal or mixed ?" he closed the book and began to reflect. To deny that things outside of himself were a source of FOUND BY SURVEYORS. 21 true enjoyment would be to ignore the sensibility of taste and all the aesthetic emotions awakened by the presence of beautiful objects of every kind. On the other hand, to deny that there are sources of enjoyment that are internal would be to dispute the evidence of consciousness, " for," said he, " I know, ' that being justified by faith, I have peace with God.' And this knowledge must be a source of enjoyment. So that both around me and within me I find that which gives enjoyment. I believe that it is true, that religion puts a person in harmony with nature and with God." Such were the reflections of John Bushman on that beautiful morning, and in such a happy frame of mind he spent his first Sabbath in his new home among the forest trees. :^^ Chapter II THE ROAD-MAKERS. BOUT a month after John Bushman had com- menced his work, he started one morning for a fresh supply of bread. This he did every week. As he was leisurely following the blaze marks on the trees he was somewhat surprised to hear loud speaking, like some one driving oxen. He stopped and listened. He heard men talking not far off. He concluded to go to them, and see what they were doinof. The first man he came to was an Irishman. When he came up to the man he put down the axe that he was awkwardly trying to handle, and looking the young man in the face, he said, with a good honest Irish brogue, " An' shure, sur, it's meself that's nearly surprised out of me foive sinses, for by the life of Paddy Maguire, I niver expected to foind a livin' sow! in this wild wilderness. An' shure, an' would yez moind to be after tellin' a body where ye're from, and where ye're goin' ?" Young Bushman was much amused by the quaint manner in which the Irishman put the case. He answered by saying in a pleasant way, " My name is John Bushman. I live some four miles from THE ROAD-MAKERS. 28 here, and I am on my way out to the settlement for a supply of bread, as unfortunately I have no one at home to bake it for me. And I am both surprised and pleased to meet you here. Now, I have given you my name ; will you intrust me with yours ? " " Sure that I will, sur. You are wilcoaie to me poor name ; and if, on a further acquaintance, yez are found to wear well, yez shall be wilcome till any favor that I can grant yez. My name, sur, is Harry Hawthorn." " And what are you doing ? " " Making a road, so that people may come in here and settle up this part of Her Majesty's dominions ; lonof life to her." " Who are those other gentlemen that I see a few rods further on ? " said Bushman. " The two who are chopping at the big tree are brothers. Their names are John and George Brusky. That one piling brush is Peter Birch, and the man who stands beside the oxen is Mister John Root. He is the foreman or contractor, I belave, is what yez call it in this country." Bushman went on to where the two men were chop- ping, and introduced himself to them as one of the few inhabitants of the newly surveyed townships. They answered him very civilly. They spoke their words in a way that showed that they inherited their tongues from Yorkshire parents, or they had been taught to speak by a Yorkshire family. After a few words with them, he passed on to where Mr. Root was feeding his oxen. As he came up, Mr. Root said to him, " I presume 24 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. you are hunting work, and I am glad you have come, for I am in want of men. Good choppers is what I want, and I suppose you can chop, for if I am not greatly mistaken you are a native of this province, and they are generally pretty good with an axe.* How much do you expect by the day, or do you want to work by the month ? " These words were spoken in such rapid succession, that there was no chance to correct the contractor's mistake until he had finished his long paragraph of questions. As soon as he could find a chance to speak, Bushman said to him, " You are correct in supposing me to be a native of this province, also in thinking that I know something about chopping. But you are mistaken in supposing that I am hunting work." " 0," said the other, " I ask your pardon. I thought you looked like a working-man. That led to the mis- take." " No harm is done," said the young man good na- turedly. I am a working-man ; but I have recently commenced a job that will last me thirty or forty years, if I live so long." " What kind of a job have you that is likely to last so long ? " asked Mr. Root. " I have started to make a home in the bush. I have two hundred acres of land, and I expect that I shall some day be able to drive the plough through the most of it, if I am spared." * This was true forty or fifty years ago more than it is at the pre- sent time. THE ROAD-MAKERS. 25 " That means a good many hard days' work, many a blistered hand, and many a tired arm before your task will be completed," said the other. " What you say is true," said Bushman. " But I am not afraid of work. And as to blistered hands and tired limbs, time and use will do much towards miti- gating that difficulty. And the thought of having a comfortable home is a strong motive for enduring- hardships. Besides all this, there are many homes in this country that have been made in this way, and I believe that I can do what so many others have done." Now, Mr. John Root was an American. He was o£ German descent, but his ancestors had lived in Penn- sylvania for three or four generations, and as an American he could appreciate a pushing, plucky man wherever he met with him. He stepped up to young Bushman, and said, " Give me your hand young man. I like your way of looking at things. I am always glad to meet with men of your stamp, men who have got some vim and backbone in them. These are the men who have made your country and mine what they are socially, commercially and politically. Go ahead, and may your fondest hopes be realized." " Well," said the young man, " I hope that you, too, may have success. But you spoke just now of want- ing men. Have you much of this kind of work to do ? " " I have to clear out the road around two townships, and to open one leading line through each of them. That is not less than seventy-five miles of road. And then there are all the swamps to be causewayed, and 26 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. the creeks and rivers to be bridged over. So, you see, I need all the suitable men that I can get." " Yes," said Bushman, "you have plenty of work for all the men you will be likely to find. My land is right on this line, and only four miles further on. I shall be pleased to see you at my bachelor's hall on the bank of Sylvan Lake at any time you can favor me with a call." Root thanked him for the invitation so kindly ghjen, and the two parted, each one having a good opinion of the other. Bushman got back with his weekly supply of bread about noon. He was much pleased at the prospect of having a road so soon. He had feared that it might be years before he would have the advantages of a good road. But the Provincial Government had adopted the policy of opening out leading roads through what was known as the " Queen's Bush " and the " Huron Tract." This was one of the first eff'orts in that direction. The adoption of this policy has been a source of great convenience to the early settlers in different parts of the province, and it has also had much to do with the rapid filling up of the back country. But after all that the fostering hand of any Gov- ernment can do to smooth the way for the pioneers, yet they have much to contend with by way of toil- ing and suff'ering. One day, not long after his interview with the road- makers, as he was ffoino^ out from dinner, he saw a deer come bounding through the opening, and not far THE ROAD-MAKERS. 27 behind it were two large wolves in full chase. Neither the deer nor the wolves seemed to pay any attention to the man. He watched them until the deer ran into the lake, as deer will do when chased by dogs or wolves, if they can find water to run into. They seem to know, by some means, that wolves will not follow them into the water. Bushman went back to the shanty for his rifle. When he returned the deer was swimming toward the,/ middle of the lake, and the wolves were crouching on the ground with tongues hanging out, and with gleam- ing eyes and savage looks, watching the deer. The young man was good with the rifle. It was but the work of a moment to lift the weapon to his shoul- der, take aim, and send a bullet crashing through the head of the largest wolf, it being the one that was nearest to him. The wolf rolled over on its side, stretched itself out and was dead. The other one sprang up, looked at its dying com- panion for an instant, and then started to run away. But from the other barrel of the rifle a bullet was sent through its heart, and it dropped dead a few rods from its mate. It being in the early summer, neither the meat nor the skin of the deer was worth much, so it was left alone. But the reports of the gun frightened it so that it left the water, and disappeared in the forest, on the other side of the lake. Bushman saved the scalps of the two wolves, and when he went home he carried them as far as Hamil- ton, and got the bounty for them. 3 28 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. Living alone in the bush, and miles away from any neighbors, like everything else, may be said to have two sides — one bright and the other dark. This sort of life has a pleasant side. There is per- fect freedom of action. One is more completely his own master here than he can be where his doings are liable to affect the rights and privileges of others. But in the woods, alone, when no one but yourself is to be affected by your acts, you can just do as you please. There is the fresh, green beauty of the forest trees, clad in their lovely vernal summer dresses — Where nature whispers its delight, Where sun and showers their influence spread, Where wild-wood flowers their odors shed, And nought but beauty meets the sight. But while this mode of life has its independent aspect, it also has a helpless aspect. There is its lone- liness. To have no one to speak or to be spoken to ; to cook and eat one's meals in silence ; to go to bed at night and get up in the morning ; to go to work with- out a parting word, and to come in at noon and night with no words of encouragement, no look of apprecia- tion, and no smile of welcome, is not the most pleasant mode of existence that one might desire. And to this must be added the fear of cutting oneself, and other accidents to which choppers are par- ticularly exposed. Or a man might be taken suddenly ill, and die before any person would be aware that any- thing was wrong with him. Some danger might arise from wild beasts, and in some localities the Indians have occasionally been troublesome in times past. THE ROAD-MAKERS. 29 When all these, and other causes of uneasiness that might be mentioned, are summed up and estimated, we can easily see that a man must have a good deal of nerve, and no small amount of courage and self-con- trol to enable him to face, for any length of time, such a condition of things. Youno[ Bushman had nerve and courao^e and self- control fully up to the average of men in civil life, but he was no boaster. He added to these natural traits an unbending determination to succeed, a con- science void of offence, a mind at peace with God and with all mankind, and an unswerving faith in the Divine guidance and protection. He could be com- paratively happy in any condition : For worldly things small influence had Upon his faith or hope or love; He was content, and could be glad To know he had a friend above. As the summer months passed away the opening at Sylvan Lake grew larger week by week. The young backwoodsman found that by continual handling the axe his hands got hard and his arm became strong, so that he could chop all day without much weariness. By the middle of August he found that he had chopped twelve acres since the middle of May. He now concluded to do something toward prepar- ing a better residence. One evening, as he threw him- self on his hemlock bed, a happy thought struck him; and he was so carried away with the new idea that he spoke it out aloud. Said he, " I will try and change work with Mr. Root, and get him to come with his men 30 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. and team, and help me to put up the body of a house. Then I will go and help him on the road till he is paid." " Yes, my friend, I will do that, not only willingly, but gladly," said Mr. Root from the outside of the door, where he stood and heard young Bushman's talk, while he supposed he was alone. Mr. Root came in and sat down on one of the blocks. Then he said, " We are working along by the side of your land on the boundary, and on looking at my in- structions I see that the road that I have to open through the township is the concession that runs along the end of your lots. So, you see, we shall be in this locality for a considerable length of time. Now, I have two bridges to build not far from here. You told me one day that you could do something at fram- ing. I called in to-night to see if I could secure your help. That is why I said I would gladly change work with you." " Well," said Bushman. " There could nothing suit me better. I can help you at the bridges, or chop, or drive oxen, whichever you like. I am very anxious to put up a house this fall, for if I live till next spring I shall have all that I can attend to in clearing off land." Mr. Root answered : " I have twelve men now, and next week four more are coming. That will be six- teen, besides ourselves. That ought to be force enough to put up a fair sized house, if the logs are not too heavy." " I can, without much trouble, find a sufficient num- THE ROAD-MAKERS. 31 ber of nice cedars," said the young man. " I want to make the house about 24 feet by 18, if we can raise one as large as that." " Never fear," said Root. " You cut your logs, and make a ' travoy ' to haul them on, and we will get them tooether. Then, if the men cannot raise all of them, I will show you a ' Yankee trick ' in the mat- ter of ox-driving." "But what do you mean by a 'travoy,' said Bushman, with a puzzled look, " I never saw the article that I know of." Mr. Root said, " I don't know as I can describe it so as to make you understand. But, did you ever see an old-fashioned three-square harrow ?" " 0, yes, I have often worked with one of them." " Well ; make a good strong three-square harrow, and leave out the teeth. Pin a good sized block of wood on the top of it about two-thirds of the distance from the point towards the heel. That will make a good substitute for a ' travoy.' I will show you how to use it." " I can easily do that," replied the young man. " But let me tell an anecdote about a three-square harrow." " When I was a boy, my father had a pair of three year old steers. They were partly broken in to work. One day I was sent to harrow in a patch of oats on a stumpy piece of new land. The chain that fastened the steers to the harrow had a broken link, and it was toggled together." "What do you mean by being toggled together?" asked Mr. Root. 32 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Why ! Don't you know what a ' toggle ' is ?" said the young man, laughing. " No ; I do not/' was the reply. " Well ; I will tell you. When we broke a link of our chain, and had not time to go away to a black- smith's, we took the ends of the broken chain and put one link into another. We then took a piece of hard wood and drove it into the link that passed through the other, thus fastening the chain solidly together." "All right," said the American, "I understand now." " As I was saying," replied Bushman, " the chain had a break in it. While driving along among the stumps, by some means the toggle fell out, and let the steers away from the harrow. After some trouble I got them around to their place again and went in between them to fix the chain. Just then the steers made a start to run away. Before they got fairly under way, I caught hold of the tops of the ox-bows, where they projected through the yoke and held on for life, think- ing that if I lost my hold and fell between the steers the harrow would run over me and tear me to pieces. But a few rods had been travelled over in this peril- ous way, when the harrow caught firmly on a stump, and stopped the runaways." " My father came up just then with a face as white as a sheet. He had seen the whole afiair. He helped me out of my unpleasant position, saying : ' My boy, this is no place for you.' He took the steers in hand, and finished the job himself. Yes, Mr. Root, I have a right to know what an old fashioned three-square harrow is." THE ROAD -MAKERS. 38 "I say, Bushman," said Mr. Root, after a moment's silence, " I have an offer to make you. Now, by a little managment I can arrange my plans so that we can be in the vicinity during the coldest months in the winter. We shall need a warmer place to stay in ourselves, and a better stable for the oxen, than I could afford to build for the short time that we should use them. Now, my proposition is this. We will turn in and help you build your house. Then we will put up a stable for the cattle, after which we will go to another part of my job and work until the cold winter comes on. Then we will come back here and stop till we complete all that is within reach of this place." " All right. That will suit me exactly. And after the house and stable are done, I will go to work for you to pay you for your time and trouble," was the young man's answer. " Very well," replied Mr. Root. '' We will work it out on that line." And they did, to the entire satisfaction of all parties. They were honest men, and between such there is sel- dom any difficulty about business matters. In two days' time the house-logs were cut, and on the ground where the house was to be erected. The spot was a nice one for a residence, it was be- tween the lake and the line where the road was to be. From the front door the future occupants would be able to look up and down the prospective road, and from the back there would be a splendid view of Sylvan Lake. Chaptkr III. HOUSE-BUILDING to raise a log house of any great size requires some mechanical contrivance, as well as considerable force, either mechanical or otherwise ; and to lay up the walls properly demands a good deal of practice, and not a little skill. To notch up a corner perfectly is a piece of work that but few men can do. Either it will be " out of plumb," or it will " bow in," or " bow out." Or maybe the logs will " ride," that is, rest on each other, or they will be too far apart, leaving too much of a " crack " between them. The fact that so few men are able to do a nice job on a corner, makes good cornermen an important factor at log-raisings. Such men sometimes go long distances. And there have been instances in which cornermen have been hired to go into other neighborhoods than their own to lay up corners. When Bushman enquired among Mr. Root's men he found that three of them claimed to be good corner- men. He could do something at that work himself^ so that he felt easy on that score. He then went to Mr. Root and asked him if he had a large auger among his tools. HOUSE-BUILDING. 35 " What do you want with it ? " asked the American* " I want to make some 'bull heads ' for the raising/' replied Bushman. '' What are they, and what use do you make of them ?" asked Root. " Don't you know what a bull's head is for ? Why^ we use them, and bull's eyes, too, at log raising. Were you never at such a place ? " said Bushman. " No ; nothing more than putting up a shanty in the Michigan lumber woods. But what are the things, anyway ? I want to see them." Bushman snswered, " Now, I think of it, that you came from an old State where the log raising is one of the old things that are looked back to as belonging to the times of your great-grandfathers, and of course you can't remember them." Mr. Root said, " That is all true. But are you never going to tell me what bull's heads and bull's eyes are like ? " " Yes, as soon as I can get you ready for the infor- mation." " I am ready now, and have been for some time." '' Not quite ready yet," said Bushman ; " did you ever see a ' skid ? '" " Yes, I have cut and used scores of them in the lumber woods," was the reply. " I thought so. We use skids at log-raisings for the same purpose, and the same way that they are used in the lumbering woods, namely, to roll or slide logs on. But one more (question, if you please : Did you ever see a man on crutches ? " 36 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Yes, more than once. But what earthly connec- tion can there be between a man on crutches and the use of a bull's head at a log-raising ? " " I will tell you, my inquisitive friend," said Bush- man. " I dare say you have noticed that the head of the crutch, or, in other words, the part that is placed under the arm in walking, is shaped like a new moon with the points of the horns cut off. That piece is put on a long staff, or handle. Well, a bull's head is like a great overgrown crutch, with a handle from ten to twenty feet long, and the head large enough and strong enough to bear the strain of six or eight men pushing on it with all their strength at once." " I see," said the other. " But after the thing is made, how is it used ? " " In raising, we roll the logs up on the skids as far as we can reach with our hands. Then we put one or two bull's heads under each end of it, and the men take hold of the long handles and push against the log and slide it along the skid to the place where they want it." " I think I understand. But what is a bull's eye ? " asked Mr. Root. " We cut a long, slim beech, or hickory sapling about the size of a chair post. We leave the top limbs all on, and twist them together until they are like a rope. Brinsf the end around in a circle of about fifteen inches diameter, fasten it securely to the main body of the sapling. Then you have a hoop on the end of a long pole. Now, the man on the corner takes the pole in his hand, then he slips the hoop on the end of the log HOUSE-BUILDING. 37 and pulls with all his might, to help the men who are pushing the log up the skid. Sometimes ropes are used. But the withes are cheaper and handier." " I think that I could make either a bull's head or a bull's eye now/' said Mr. Root. " But in answer to the question you asked so long ago, I want to say, I have both a large and a small auger among my tools." " All right," Bushman answered, " I want a two-inch auger to bore into the bull's head for the handles, and I want an inch auger to bore into the handles to put pins into for the men to take hold of when using the articles." In a few days the necessary preparations for the rais- ing were all finished. Mr. Root and his staff of road- makers came according to the previous arrangement. But the four extra men who were expected did not come in time for the raising, so that the force was not as strong as they had thought it would be. However, they had fourteen men and a good yoke of oxen. This was by no means a light team for the job, especially as the loo's to be handled were all cedar. Bushman had made the best preparations in his power for the comfort of the men, by providing plenty of food and tea and coffee. His bachelor experiences had developed him into a very passable cook. No whiskey was found in the " bill of fare." There were two reasons for this. The young man never u.sed it, and he was too conscientious to give to others what he would not take himself. And besides this, there was no place for many miles where it could be obtained. It would have been a great gain to this 38 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. country, if whiskey had always been conspicuous by its absence from the social life, and individual habits of the people, in all the provinces of this young Dominion. But the men were well satisfied with the efforts made for their enjoyment. As this was to be the first house of any respectable size in two or three townships a great deal of care was taken in laying the foundation and rearing the walls. It must be exactly square. It must be entirely level, and it must stand so that the sides and ends would face the four cardinal points of the compass — East, West, North, and South. And this would make it correspond with the concessions and sidelines of the township. And m ore than this, an example would be set that all new comers miojht follow in buildins: their new homes. But a lot of active, handy men would not be long in laying the foundation and in getting the floor sleepers in their places. By nine o'clock they had everything ready to commence the raising. Mr. Root superintended the work on the ground, while Bushman himself gave directions to cornermen in regard to their part of the work. And now, kind reader, let us pause a little to watch those men at their work. See with what readiness they do as they are told by the foremen. Each seemed to vie with the other in doing his part. And when the word is given, see how every man seems to spring with all his might, and how the log fairly seems to jump along the skids toward the place where it is wanted. HOUSE-BUILDING. 39 But do you notice the peculiar kind of words that are spoken. The only thing said is, " He-o-heave, He-o-heave." Do you ask what is the meaning of those words ? I cannot tell you. I have been at a great many raisings, and I have heard the words at every one of them ; but I have never heard a defini- tion of them by any one. In fact, I never heard a question asked about the meaning of them. I think I can give you an equivalent for them, that is easily understood. '■ Prepare-lift," seems to be what is implied in the words " He-o-heave." At the word " heave," every man does his best, and the work goes on. We have here an illustration of the benefit of united action. Now, these men might lift, one at a time, until they died, and they could not put up those logs, and make a house of them. But what would be impossible to do by individual eff'ort can easily be accomplished by united and concentrated eflTort. But if we do not make haste these busy workers will have the walls up while we are describing the process of raising them. How swift time flies when we are interested in anything. Here it is noon already, and the men are preparing for their dinner or lunch or whatever it may be called. We will sit down and share with them. We need have no misgivings as to our being welcome to do so, for backwoodsmen are noted for their unpretentious hospitality. The men sat at an extempore table, made by plac- ing two. large logs so that poles could be laid across 40 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. from one to the other. These were thickly covered over with bed-quilts, and over all was spread a white table cloth that had been borrowed from the nearest neighbor. The dishes had been got from the road makers. They sat on the ground in the same manner that tailors sometimes sit on the bench when sewing. There was considerable mirth among the dinner- party who partook of that first public meal ever enjoyed on the banks of Sylvan Lake. After they had finished their dinners, some one pro- posed to drink the health of the future mistress of the house they were raising. The idea took, and the tea- cups were filled with the clear, pure water from the lake. It was decided that Mr. Root should propose the toast, and John Bushman was to reply. After a little hesitation, Mr. Root lifted his cup, and the rest followed his example. He looked around upon the beaming faces of the good-natured lot, and spoke as follows : — " Here's to the lady who one day will come And, as the loved mistress of this rural home. Will preside like a genius that chases away All the cobwebs and darkness ; and make people say, What a splendid housekeeper John Bushman has got, Who can make Sylvan Lodge such a beautiful spot ; May her heart long be lightened with music and song ; May her path still be bright as the years pass along, And as age creeps upon her may her life still be blest With the love of a husband, the kindest and best ; And at last when the work of this life is all done, May she rest in the home where the Master has gone. " HOUSE-BUILDING. 41 As Mr. Root sat down, the whole company broke out in a storm of applause. "Hurrah for Root! long life to the Mistress of Sylvan Lodge ! " rang into the ears of John Bushman, who colored up and looked like a man who is charged with some mean action. The cups of water were forgotten, and Bushman was called for by half a dozen voices at once. The young man stepped upon the end of one of the logs used as supports for the table, and commenced by saying :— " Gentlemen, for the first time in my life I find myself wishing that I was a poet, so that I might reply to my friend in a proper way. But I shall have to ask you to listen to a short speech in prose, and it may be too prosy a speech. '*' In reply to the kindly wishes so well expressed by our friend, and so heartily endorsed by you, all I wish to say is, I do indulge a hope that at no very distant day Sylvan Lake will reflect a fairer face than mine, and that the house we are raising to-day may have the presence of a mistress as well as that of a master. And, gentlemen, if, in the future, any of you should be passing this way do not forget this place. And I want you all to remember that the sun that lavishes its warmth and light upon us, is not more free to kiss away the dew-drops from the leaves that bend in the morning under their loads of liquid brightness, than the hospitalities of Sylvan Lodge, as you have been pleased to call this house, shall be free to anyone who is helping to raise this house to-day." As he finished his short address he was loudly 42 AMONG THE FOEEST TREES. applauded by his comrades. Harry Hawthorn became enthused, as the newspaper men say. He cried out at the top of his voice, " Sucess till yez Maisther Bush- man, and may your shaddy niver grow shorter, and may your purse become longer and heavier ; and may your dacent lady, Mrs. Bushman, grow purtier, and swater timpered as the years go by." They now concluded to resume their work. But be- fore they commenced an elderly man, named Adam Switch, told the men that their mirthfulness brought a sad recollection to his mind. Some one asked him to what he referred. He said, " A number of years ago — I think it was before the Rebellion — I was at the raising of a log barn. The men all seemed to be carried away with the spirit of mirth. Although there was not a drop of intoxicating liquor about the place, they acted as if all hands were tipsy. " Everything went well until about the middle of the afternoon. The barn was up ten or twelve feet high. In putting up one of the long side-logs the men got racing to see whose end would be ahead. In their thoughtless haste one end was shoved so far ahead that it slipped oflF the skid, and fell. In falling to the ground it struck the owner of the barn and killed him instantly.* He left a wife and small family to battle with life in a new country, as best they could without him. I never go to a raising since that day without solemn feelings." *In the Township of Wallace a man was killed in the same way in A.D. 1860, while at his own raising of a log barn. HOUSE-BUILDING. 43 By sundown the walls were up and the rafters on. Then the men concluded that their task was done, And it was done, too, without Mr. Root having to show thjem a " Yankee trick by way of ox-drivinpf." Bushman was well pleased with the way in which the work was done. And Mr. Root, after conofratu- lating him on the success of the day's efforts, said. " Inasmuch as all his men had agreed to come to a ' bee,' no charge would be made for the time spent at the raising." The young man was completely taken by surprise. He thanked them for their kindness, and hoped he might be yet able to make them i\\ a suitable return. One of the men, a Mr. Beech, said to him, " So far as 1 am concerned, very likely you may have a chance to do it before many months are gone. One of my reasons for joining this party of roadmakers was the opportunity it would give me to select a good lot of land on which to settle. " I am so well pleased with the looks of the land and timber about here that I have sent in an applica- tion for the lot on the other side of the road from yours. If I get it, which most likely I will, I expect to settle on it early next spring. So, you see, we are likely to become fellow-citizens of the new country, and we may as well commence to be sociable and neighborly at once." " I am glad to hear it," said Bushman ; " and I hope that you may never have cause to think of me in any other character than that of a good neighbor and trusty friend/' 4 44 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Well, upon me sowl," broke in Harry Hawthorn, '' an', share, wonders will niver cease. It's meself that's jist afther securin' the roight to build a shanty fur meself, and a byre fur me cow on the lot over the bound'ry, and jist furnenst the lot we are on this blessed minute. Thin I will sind to ould Ireland, that I love so well, and bring out my Biddy and our chil- der, and we will make ourselves a home, and may the saints be good till all of us." " I am delighted," said Bushman, " to hear that I am to have two such neighbors as Mr. Beech and Mr. Hawthorn, and I hope that we shall do what we can for each other, so as to lighten the burdens of pioneer life." " Shure, and we will do that same thing," replied the Irishman. " But, if you plaze, do not call me Misther. Let me name be only Harry on wake days, and Harry Hawthorn on Sunday fur a change, to match wid me Sunday clothes, you see." They all laughed at the way that Harry presented his wishes respecting the cognomen by which he would have himself addressed by his neighbors. " Will you allow me a place in your Backwoods Society ? " The question was asked by Mr. John Brushy. He was the most quiet and the most powerful man in the group. He stood six feet, and weighed two hundred pounds. When he was roused, he was just the kind of man to be let alone by ordinary men. But he seldom got roused, unless he had too much whiskey in him. Then he was quarrelsome, and sometimes dangerous. HOUSK-BUILDING. 45 But he was the right man for the bush, and his friends were always safe with him, and couhi trust him. They all looked at the big man, and they saw that he was in earnest. " Yes, cheerfully," said Bushman, in answer to his question. " Yes, wioh all my heart," said Peter Beech. " Yes, me too," said Harry ; " give us your sledge- hammer of a hand, and long may we all live in peace and harmony together." " Well, I hope none of you will leave me till my contract is filled," said Mr. Root. " Then if I conclude to stay in Canada, and in the meantime, if I find no tiner tract of land, I will see if I can come across a vacant lot hereabouts, and settle down in your neigh- borhood. But at present we will talk about our plans for the future," and turning to Bushman, he said, " What do you calculate on doing next ? " " I think I will go on and finish up the house first, and then pay you back the work that I owe you. By that time winter will be here. Then I will leave the house to you and your men, and go home for a couple of months, and come back in the spring." " And bring a wife with you," broke in one of the men. " As to that, I don't know whether any one would have me," he said, with a blush on his cheek. " The first thing to be done will be to go out to Mapleton, and bring in the glass and nails. That will take about two trips. Then T shall have to get a frow and drawing-knife, and cross-cut saw, to make 46 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. the shingles. I think I can borrow them from the people where I get my bread." " How far is it to Mapleton ? " asked one of them. " About twenty-two miles," was the answer. " And what direction is it ? " " There is only one way out from here yet, and that is the way we all came in on." " What are you going to do for lumber ? " was asked by James Brushy. " I shall have to hew out timber for the floors, and split cedar slats for the sheeting," was the reply. " Well," said Brushy, " can't we all who are intend- ing to settle here put in together and buy a whip saw ? I know how to use it, and in that way we can get on until somebody comes along to put up a saw- mill." The four men agreed to adopt the plan, and directed Bushman to order the saw through the storekeeper at Mapleton. Everything succeeded as they wished. The house was made as comfortable as such a one could be. The stable was built for the cattle, the work was duly paid back to Mr. Boot, and by the middle of December John Bushman started for home, having been absent since early in the last spring. Chapter IV. A PARTNER FOUND. c " A v,!T.OHN BUSHMAN had been so absorbed since O/^ coming to the backwoods that he had scarcely thought of the old home and its surroundings. He believed that he was not forgotten there. He felt confident that he was often carried to the Great Helper of the needy on the wings of a mother's prayers and a father's faith. And he fully believed that in some mysterious way he was benefited by those prayers. But he had now been away from home for seven months, and his life among the forest trees had been such a busy one, that attention to present duties had so fully occupied his mind that he may be truly said to have taken no thought for to-morrow. But now, as he journeyed homeward on foot, for this was before the time of railroads, he had time to think. His first thoughts were about the loved ones at home. He had not heard from them since he left them in the spring. There were no post offices then in the back country. He would ask himself many questions as he walked along. " Were they all alive and well or should he find an empty seat, and if so, whose seat would it be ? 48 AMONO THE FOREST TREES. Would it be baby Little's ? How sad it would be if the little prattler should be ^one. Or would it be one of the older members of the family ? " Just then a startlino; thought crossed his mind : " What if mother should be gone to come back no more ? " The very thought made him almost sick. He felt a sinking at his heart and a dizziness in his head. He never, till that moment, realized the strength of his attachment to his mother. But he tried to dismiss such unpleasant thoughts and think of something not so gloomy. He wondered if sister Betsy had accepted the offer of young William Briers to become his wife. He believed that she was more than half inclined to do so before he left. But he was not certain, for Bet was such a queer girl, that no one but mother could get any- thing out ol' her. He said to himself, " I do wish she would have him, for Will is a good fellow; and I think more of him than any other young man in the settle- ment." Thinking of his sister and her lover started a new train of ideas. He thought of the house so recently built, called by the men Sylvan Lodge. Who was to be its mistress in the days to come ? John Bushman was by no means what is called a lady's man. He had never shown any particular partiality to any of the young women of his acquaint- ance ; and, though he was on good terms with all of them, he would not acknowledge, even to himself, that he had ever been in love with any of them. He flattered himself that he had not been touched by any of the darts from the bow of the sly god. No, no ; A PARTNER FOUNL*. 49 Cupid had lost his arrows ii' auy oi" tliciu had been shot at him. And he straightened himself up, and stepped along with the feeling of perfect composure and complete satisfaction on the score of his being an entirely unpledged young man. But something told him to look down into his heart, and when he had done so, he made a discovery that might upset a man of less self-control than he had. Down deep in his heart he saw the picture of a face, not a pretty one, perhaps, but it was a very attractive one — not a dashing, saucy, bewitching face, but a modest, thoughtful, honest one, and, moreover, he seemed to hear a gentle voice softly whispering, " I am here, John. You fancied that your heart was unoccu- pied, but I am here ; I found it empty and crept into it years ago, when we were only children, and I don't want to be turned out now." John knew the face. It was that of an old play- mate and school-mate. When he came to realize the state of the case he was not displeased, though he was somewhat surprised. He said to himself, " I did not know that the little witch was there, but when did she get there, and how ? I don't remember ever show- ing her any more attention than 1 gave to other girls, and I am sure that she has not been more friendly to me than the other young women ; in fact, I have thoutdit of late that she seemed cold and offish. But no matter how she got there, I now see that she has the strongest hold on my affections, and if I can get her consent to go with me to my new country home, little Mary Myrtle shall be the future mistress of Sylvan Lodge." 50 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. Young Bushman was no blusterer, and there was not a particle of the braggart in his composition ; but when he made up his mind to do a thing, he called to his assistance a ivill that was unbending, and an energy that was most unyielding. So, having settled in his own mind the question as to who should be the chosen one to brighten his home with her presence, he resolved to let the matter rest until he could have an oppor- tunity to mention the thing to the young lady herself, and find out if her views and feelings harmonized with his. After three days' travel, made doubly tiresome by the soreness of blistered feet, he came into the neigh- borhood of home. He looked in the direction of his father's house and he could see the tops of the chim- neys with the blue smoke curling up towards the calm cerulean sky. He thought that smoke never seemed so beautiful before. He almost fancied that it spread itself out like loving arms to encircle him and give him words of welcome. The first person that he met was a blunt old York- shireman, who lived on a farm adjoining his father's. When the old man came up he took the young man's hand with a grip that fairly made him wince, as he said, " A Jock, beest this you ? How hast thee been sin' ye left us last spring?" '' I have been well, Mr. Roanoak," said John, " but how are they at home ? Do you know that I have not heard from home since I went away last April ? " " Well," answered the Englishman, " your mother be'ant very blissom sin' you went off to the woods to A PARTNER FOUND. 51 live on bear's meat. The rest of them are hearty and well." After a few more words with his old friend whom he had known from his boyhood, John went on to the old home, where so many happy days to him had come and gone. As he came to the door he listened before going in. He heard his father asking^ God's blessinor on their food. They were just sitting down to tea. Presently he heard his sister say in a bantering sort of way, " Mother, cheer up, for I believe that John is on the way home. I have felt like it all day." " 1 dreamed last night," said the mother, " that he came home tired and hungry, and asked me to give him some dinner." The father spoke and said: " He will be here before many days. The winter must have set in back where he is, and he promised to come home before Christmas to help me butcher the pigs. If he is alive and well he will soon be here, for John always was a truthful boy." John could wait no longer, but giving a rap on the door, he opened it and went in, at the same time say- ing, " Mother, where is my plate ? I'm as hungry as a bear in the month of March." We will gently close the door and retire, as it is not seemly to intrude upon the privacy of family reunions. The people in the neighborhood were all pleased to see young Bushman looking so strong and healthy, after his summer in the bush. He was a oeneral favorite among his acquaintances. 52 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. The old people liked John because they had always found him truthful and honest, even from childhood. The young people liked him because he never put on any airs of superiority, or assumed any authority over them ; and he always showed himself to be the sin- cere friend of all his young companions and school- mates. Their mode of expressing themselves was, " We like John Bushman, because he always treats us as his equals, and we can always trust him." The children liked him because he always spoke cheerfully and kindly to them, and he never passed them on the road without letting them know that he saw them. He seemed to understand the truism that " kind words cost nothing," and he acted upon it. But when kind words are bestowed upon children, they are like precious seed scattered on a fertile soil, they yield a rich harvest in calling out the affections, and in gain- ing the confidence of the little ones. John had to answer a great many questions in regard to his lonely life among the forest trees. What degree of success had attended his efforts ? Was he going back in the spring ? Was the land and water good ? How far ofi was his nearest neighbor ? What was the soil and timber ? What were the prospects of an early settlement of the country ? These and many other questions he had to answer to the best of his ability, which he did cheerfully and satisfactorily. One evening as the family sat by the large fire that was blazing in the old-fashioned Dutch fire-place, John told about having killed the wolves; and he showed them the bounty money that he got for the A PARTNER FOUND. 53 scalps in the village of Hamilton, as he was on his way- home. " Are you not afraid, John, that the wolves will catch you alone sometime witliout your gun, and tear you to pieces / " asked his mother. He answered, " I never go awa}^ from the house without either the gun or the axe in my hand. Wolves are great cowards, and will very seldom attack a man in day^ time. It is only at night, when they can sneak up behind in the darkness, that they are at all dan- gerous to human kind." " What did you do with the skins of the wolves ? Are they good for anything ? What color are they, and how big are they ?" asked his sister. "There Bet," said he, with a laugh, "that is just like a girl. They want to know everything at once. Here you have been shooting questions at me so fast that I had no time to answer one of them ; and they come so swiftly that a fellow has no chance to dodge them. Please hold on a while, and give me time to think." "Humph! you think everything is like shooting since y^ou shot the wolves," shouted Betsy, " but will the great hunter condescend to answer my girlish questions ? " " Most certainly, sister mine, if you will hold your tongue and your temper for a few minutes. " Firstly, then, I got my nearest neighbor, who is something of a tanner, to dress them with the hair on, and I spread them on my block seats for cushions; and they are, in this way, both ornamental and useful. 54 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Your second question is answered in the first one. " Thirdly, they are gray, with dark stripes running through them, making them a sort of brindle. " Fourthly, a wolf is a good bit larger than a fox, and something smaller than a bear. His skin is just big enough to cover him from nose to tail. Will that do, Sis ? " " Well," said she, " I am wonderfully enlightened on the subject. How should I know the size of a fox or a bear, since I never saw either." " A full-grown wolf," said John, " is as tall as a large dog, but he is not so heavy, nor so strongly built. He is more like a greyhound than anything else that I know of, unless it is another wolf. That is all that I can say about him." The father here spoke, saying, " It is time to change the subject for the present. We will have some more talk about wolves at another time. But I think it would be well to be on the look-out for a aood, strong, resolute dog for John to take with him to the bush, when he goes back to his place next spring. He will want a dog to guard his place, as I intend to give him a yoke of oxen, a cow and half a dozen sheep as soon as he can get anything to feed them." "I am very thankful to you, father," said John, " for your intended gift. And as for feed, I can get that as soon as it is needed, for I have five or six acres of splendid beaver-meadow on my lot, and I can cut hay enough there to keep a number of cattle and sheep." " Squire Myrtle has got just the sort of a dog that A PARTNER FOUND. 5o you ought to have, John ;" so said his youni^er brother, William. At the mention of that name the young man started and his face flushed up for moment. He soon regained his equilibrium, and no one but his mother noticed his perturbation. Her sharp eyes saw it, and trifling as the incident was in itself, she drew her own conclusion from it. She said to herself, " I have his secret now. There is more than a dog at Squire Myrtle's that he would like to take with him to the bush." During the Christmas week John paid a visit to the homestead of Squire Mja'tle. It was one of the oldest farms in the vicinity of the Short Hills On it was a very large orchard, mostly of seedling fruit. But the greater part of it was of a good quality. The fields were beautified by numerous second- growth chestnut, shellbark hickory, and black-walnut trees. But there were two things that Squire Myrtle especially doted on. These were his horses and his garden. The latter took up much of his time in sum- mer, and the same may be said of the horses in winter. Nobody's garden produced better vegetables than did his ; and nobody's team stepped off more lively, nor with longer strides than the Squire's. And, on a clear, cold night in winter, his sleigh-bells could be heard for two miles or more, as he drove home from mill or from market. The young man was received with a warmth of greeting by Mr. and Mrs. Myrtle that ought to have 06 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. convinced him that he was a little more than a merely welcome visitor. After the usual enquiries as to the health of himself and family at home, he had many questions to answer about the back country. What were the prospects of success in farming and fruit growing ? How far from lake navigation ? Were there any churches and schools within reach, etc., etc. He told them that his place was some thirty-five miles from Lake Ontario. The nearest church or school, so far as he knew, was twenty miles, and the nearest doctor or magistrate was twenty-five miles from where he had located. " The soil is, I think, good for grain and the hardier kinds of fruit. But it has not yet been tested by actual experiment," said he. "Dear me, John, you have gone a long way back. Could you not have found land to settle on without going so far ?" said Mrs. Myrtle. John answered, " It is, to be sure, a long way back now, but it will not always be so. Some persons have to be pioneers, and I am willing to take my place among them. I believe that I can stand the rough and tumble of bush life as well as others." " I can remember," said the Squire, " when young couples had to come all the way from Long Point on Lake Erie to get married. There was only one minister in all this part of the province that was authorized to marry." " Yes," said his wife, " and you know what a trip we made on horseback when we got married, And I A PARTNER FOUND. 57 can never forget how old Mr. Greenhedge laughed when we told where we came from and what we wanted. It seems to me that I can see hiiri yeb, as he pronounced the benediction on William Myrtle and Polly Thorntree." " Mr. and Mrs. Myrtle," said John, witli a shaky voice, " I have an important question to ask you, and I may as well do it now as to put it off till another time. Are you both willing that I should try and persuade your Mary to go with me to the bush as my wife." They looked at each other for a moment. Then Mr. Myrtle said, " John, I know you are truthful and honest. You may try, and all I say now is, success to you." He did succeed. After John was gone, Mrs. Myrtle said, " I am glad of this, for I know she likes him." Chaptkr v. an old-time wedding. g^LEVER men sometimes do silly things when they undertake to hunt a wife. A man may show o^ood judgment in all the ordinary affairs of life, and yet he may act more like a lunatic than anything else when he goes courting. The reason of this may be found in the false esti- mate which men sometimes make of woman's charac- ter and position. If a man looks upon a woman as being inferior to himself, he will likely assume an air of superiority over her, that will set her against him, and drive her from him. And on the other hand, if he looks on her as an angel, done up in skirts and corsets, he will act the part of a cringing weakling, and in this way he calls out contempt where he wishes to gain esteem, and pro- vokes aversion where he hopes to awaken love. If this man would counsel with his mother or his sister they would tell him that a woman never can re- spect what she despises, nor love what she stands in dread of. John Bushman was a sensible young man. He did not estimate woman to be either better or worse than AN OLD-TIME WEDDING. 59 himself. He simply treated her as his equal — noth- incr more, nothing less. As a natural consequence, he had the respect of his lady friends. But there was one of the number that had a stronger feeling towards him than simple respect. This one was little Mary Myrtle, whose image John so unex- pectedly discovered that day that he looked into his heart when on his way home. We call her little, not because she was so very small, but from a habit that nearly every one got into when Mary was a child. It was done to distinguish her from an aunt of the same name, who was a young woman when she was an in- fant. John had not as yet said anything to her about becoming Mrs. Bushman, although, like an honest, manly man, he had asked her parents' consent to do so. Mrs. Myrtle said to Mary the next morning after the interview recorded at the close of the last chapter, " John Bushman asked your fathet- and me if he might try and persuade you to go with him to the bush as his wife. What do you think of that?" " Did you tell him he might ? " demurely asked the young lady. " What else could we tell him ^ He is all right liiui- self, and wo cannot expect to keep you always. Will he have a very difficult task ? " said the mother, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. " I do not think so," was the candid reply. About a week after his visit to the Squire's, John made another call one afternoon. The old people were 5 60 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. both away to Fort George on some business in connec- tion with the estate of Mrs. Myrtle's father, who had died recently, leaving his business all in the hands of his daughter and son-in-law to settle. Mary received him kindly enough, but without evincing any emotion. He thought at first that she seemed a little cool and distant; but on second thought he made up his mind that it was only his own fancy. He was conscious that his feelings towards her had been greatly intensified since his conversation with her parents, so that now, if she failed to respond fully to his warmth of manner, it was not because she was too frigid in her deportment, but it was because he had been too sanguine in his expectations. After conversing for some time on a variety of topics, they stood in silence for a while. They both seemed to be a little embarrassed. Presently John broke the silence by saying, " Mary, I came here to- day to ask from you a great favor — such as men, as a rule, only ask once in a life-time, and one which, if granted, I hope you may never regret, and I pray that I may never have occasion to seek the like again. Mary, can you guess what that favor is ? But, stay; I don't want you to guess it. I want to tell it to you in plain, honest English. Now, Mary, we have known each other from childhood. I know that you have too much modesty to be a coquette, and too much honesty to be a flirt. And I trust that I have too much true manhood in me to court either a coquette or a flirt. I intend, so far as I know how, by the help of God, to be a true man. I want a true woman. I believe that you are one. Will you be my wife ?" AN OLD-TIME WEDDING. 61 She looked for a moment into his honest face, and then said : " Your outspoken, truthful honesty entitles you to expect the fullest candor from me. I will be just as frank with you as you have been with me. I have dreamed of this hour oftentimes in my sleep, and I have sometimes thought of it in my wakeful mo- ments. But I hardly allowed myself to hope that it would ever come, and yet I could see no reason why it might not. I know that I love you, and I feel that I can trust you. Yes, I will be your wife." One long, loving kiss, which was fully reciprocated, sealed the contract. Just then they heard the noise of the Squire's lum- ber waggon rattling over the frozen ground. They looked out and saw him and his wife coming: home from the chief town of the district, and they won- dered where the afternoon had gone to. The young man bid his affianced good-bye, and started for home. As he passed out at the bars he met the old people, and accosted them in a friendly, though somewhat timid manner. As he was passing on, Mary's father said, in a loud tone of voice, so that the f(irl, who was standinfj in the door, could hear : " I say, John, have you a very hard time in finding some one to go with you to the bush ? " " No, sir," replied John ; " the first one that I asked has consented to go." " I wonder," said Mrs. Myrtle, " if he and Mary are engaged ?" " Very likely," was the only answ^er the Squire re- turned tu his wife's query. 62 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. "I am afraid, after all, that you are not just satis- fied to let him have Mary," said she thoughtfully. " What objections can I have ? The young man is all that I could wish. " But the trouble with me is to get my feelings to harmonize with my judgment. It seems to me that in taking Mary from us, John will, in some way, do me an injury." " Well," answered she, " I remember overhearing father talk like that to mother after we were engaged. Your words sound just like echoes of what he said about you. Probably men do feel like that when some one takes away one of their pets. You know, it has been said that a man has three pets, viz. : the youngest child, the eldest daughter and the living wife." " Well, 1 don't know how it is with other men, but I do know that my greatest pet is the living wife," said he, as he jumped out of the waggon and lifted her to. the ground. As John walked home that evening he felt that he was a highly favored man. The Myrtle family was among the most respectable in the township, and Mary was looked upon by all her acquaintances as being one of the best young women in the neighborhood. That such a one should say that she loved him, and she could trust him with her life's happiness was, he thought, enough to make any young man imagine that the hard rough frozen road was as smooth as a flag- stone pavement. As he walked along he fancied that he heard a soft voice singing in sweet and soothing cadence — AN OLD-TIME WEDDING. 63 " John Bushman, who will be your wife, And walk with you the path of life, To help you in its toil and strife ? Sweet Mary Myrtle. John Bushman, if in coming years, Your eyes should be bedimmed with tears. Who then shall try to quell your fears ? Sweet Mary Myrtle. John Bushman, when life's dream is past, And darkness gathers round you fast, Who will stand by you till the last? Sweet Mary Myrtle." Here the voice seemed to stop. The young man listened for a while, but he heard no more. Then, as he was musing by himself, he began in a low modu- lated voice to sing — "John Bushman, whom do you intend, To honor cherish and defend, And live with until life shall end ? Sweet Mary Myrtle. " " John," said a voice, ' what is all this about Mary Myrtle ? " The young man was awakened from his reverie. The speaker was his sister. She was coming out for an armful of kindling just as he came into the wood- shed, and she heard the concluding words of his little song. He stood and looked at her for a moment, and then said — " I say. Bet, how would you like to dress up in white kid gloves, and other things to match, and stand by the side of a friend of mine, while she gets married ?" 64 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " You must be green, John, if you think that you can fool me by talking about kid gloves and white dresses. What have they got to do with the girl you were just now speaking about ?" she asked. " More than you think, little Sis. But never mind now; go in and get the supper, for I am hungry. I will tell you some other time," and the two went into the house together. After the supper was over, and they were sitting around the cheerful fire, old Mr. Bushman said — " John, I have traded off one of the spare horses for a yoke of cattle for you to take with you to the bush ; I might have given you a span of horses, but I know from my own experience, as well as from what others have told me, that, for the first few years in the new country, oxen are handier than horses. They are easier provided for, it costs less to keep them, there is less danger that they will stray off, and they are easier and more cheaply harnessed ; and, besides all this, when they wear out you can turn them into beef." " I am glad, father," said John, " that you are able to help me in this way, and I am grateful to you for being willing to do it. There are not many who go to the bush under as favorable circumstances as I shall be able to do through your generosity. I only hope that I may some day be able to make some return for all your kindness." " The best return that you can make to your mother and me is to live a sober, honest. Christian life," said the father, with some signs of emotion; and "that you can do with the help of the Lord." AN OLD-TIME WEDDING. 65 " And by the Lord's assistance I will, father," said the young man. " You may well say that. You are highly favored in comparison with others. It is not quite forty years yet since your grandparents came to this country. They had good homes in Pennsylvania. The War of Independence came on : they sided v^ith the mother country. The Americans were the victors. Their doctrine is, ' to the victors belong the spoils.' They acted upon it ; they took everything that they could find, and sent the Loyalists through hundreds of miles of unbroken wilderness, to make their way as best they could to where the British flag still floated over the wild woods of Canada. My people and your mother's people came through the State of New York which was then mostly a wilderness. They brought a few articles with them, such as could be carried on pack-horses." "Where did you first touch this country?" asked John. " We crossed the river at the place where Black Rock is now. We swam the horses, and we got some Indians to bring us over in their bark canoes." " Were you not afraid the canoes would tip over and let you all into the water?" asked Betsy. " There was no use being afraid — there was no other way to get over. We did not load the crafts too heavily, and we were good sailors," was the reply. " Father," said John, " do you remember anything about that revolutionary war ? " " Yes, quite distinctly. You know I was near 66 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. seventeen years old when we came to this place. My father belonged to the 'Light Horse/ and he was away from home most of the time. I remember he came home one day to see how we were getting along. Some of the Americans found it out in some way ; they resolved to take him prisoner. I remember my mother came into the house with a frightened look and said to father, ' The Yankees are after you.' " The floor was made of wide boards, and not nailed down very securely ; mother took up a spade that stood in the corner and pried up one of the boards, saying, 'Here, Joe, get down under the floor, it is your only chance.' " He did as she said, and she had only got the board replaced when the parties were at the door. "They came in without ceremony. Looking around the room, one of them said to mother, in a rough insulting way, " 'Where is your husband?' " ' He is not here,' she answered. "' Was he not here this morning?' said he sternly. " ' Yes; but he is not here now. Do you suppose that he would be such a fool as to stay here till you come after him ? He knew you were coming, and he dodged you. That is all that I can tell you about him.' " ' Look here, woman,' said he, lifting his gun in a menacing way and stepping toward her ; ' you know where he is ; now tell me, or, by the powers above, I will run the bayonet through you.' "I never will forget how mother looked just then. Her Teutonic blood was up. AN OLD-TIME WEDDING. 67 " She looked him fully in the face, as she said, ' You think to scare me. do you? I will never tell you where he is. But you are a pretty man, are you not ? You are a brave soldier, too, are you not, to threaten to kill a woman, because she refuses to betray her children's father into the hands of a band of cut-throats ? ' " That is the sort of stuff the women were made of, who gave to Canada and to Britain the 'United Empire Loyalists.' "One of his companions called to the man, saying, ' Come away, Bill ; don't touch her. But you are playing a losing game.' "At this, he struck the bayonet through the floor and fired off his musket, with a terrible oath, saying, 'If I could only find the Tory, I would send an ounce of lead through his heart.' " They went away without further molesting any- thing about the place. " The bayonet and the contents of the gun passed through the floor within six inches of the man's head.* " Another incident that I heard of," continued Mr. Bushman, " was like this : A number of women and children of the Loyalists were concealed in a cave away in the woods, while the men were all away in the war. One day a boy, about fifteen years of age, was sent out to try and get some news about how things were going on in the army. As he was return- ing, he was discovered by a company of the rebel scouts. They asked him where his people were con- *This incident occurred with the writer's paternal great-grand- parents. 68 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. cealed. He refused to tell them. They threatened to shoot him if he did not do it, but he persistently- refused to comply. They then took and tied him to a tree, six men were placed a dozen yards from him, and ordered to prepare to shoot him. They pointed their guns at him, and waited for the order to fire. The leader approached the boy and said, ' Will you tell us now where they are ? ' The boy answered, ' If I tell you, and you find them, you will kill them. It is better for one to die than for so many to die. / luill not tell you ! You may shoot me if you will.' The leader turned to his men and said, ' Hold on, boys. Don't shoot. It is too bad that such a little hero should be shot like a dog. Untie him and let him go.' * Some other time I will give some more reminis- cences of the early times of our country." The engagement between young John Bushman and Mary Myrtle gave entire satisfaction to both families. This was only what might be expected under the cir- cumstances. The two families had been neiorhbors for a number of years. They had together battled with the hardships of pioneer life " among the forest trees." They were both Protestants, and attended the same meetings. And although the Bushmans were of Ger- man descent, and the Myrtles of English, yet five gen- eration separated both families from their connection with either country. They were just the kind of people to commence to build up a distinct nationality — the * That boy came to Canada after the war. He married an aunt of the writer's mother, lived to be an old man, and died respected by everyone. AN OLD-TTME WEDDING. 69 right kind of seed from which to produce a national tree of vigorous growth — a tree that should strike its root so deep and firm in the virgin soil of the northern British territory, that the most bitter enemies of the Empire could neither uproot nor break it down. The winter was rapidly passing away. February was almost gone, and yet but little preparation for the approaching wedding had been made. The time fixed upon was the twenty-first of March, the time of the vernal equinox, when, as people used to say, " the sun crossed the line." John said that they selected that day because they thought it would be a good time to pass from the frigid, cloudy days of unmated winter, into the bright spring sunshine of matrimonial summer. Like thousands of others, he placed a higher value on the ideal future than on the actual present. One serious question was, who should be got to per- form the ceremony. The clergy of the Church of England and the ministers of the old Kirk of Scotland were the only reverend gentlemen in the Province allowed to marry. It was some years after this before Dissenters could legally marry people. Magistrates did the marrying in many cases, and under certain conditions. These conditions existed in this case. Mary's father was a magistrate, and it was desired, after much consultation, that he would officiate. A notice was posted on the door of the only mill in the township, stating that " John Bushman and Mary Myrtle intended to enter the bonds of holy wedlock on the twenty-first of the ensuing month of March, in the house of William Myrtle, Esquire, at the hour (5f 70 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. eleven o'clock in the forenoon ; " and calling upon any persons who had legal objections to offer to present themselves at the time and place above-mentioned, or to " hold their peace forever after." The approaching wedding became a thing of great interest in the neighborhood. The time came around at last. Nearly everybody, old and young, for miles around, were invited, and most of them came. The house was full of people. John's sister Betsy, and her affianced, William Briars, " stood up," to use the phrase then in vogue. Squire Myrtle soon got through with his part, and Mary changed the name of Myrtle for that of Bushman. One of the most striking features of an old-time wedding was its simplicity. There was no effort for mere display. There were no costly gifts by those who could ill afford it. No affected friendship where there was concealed aversion. But a genial atmosphere of friendship, and a healthy exercise of neighborly cour- tesies, along with a generous provision for the satisfy- ing of hunger and thirst, constituted the leading features of the old-time weddings, such as prevailed among the early settlers in the time of our grand- fathers. The congratulations were hearty and sincere. Mirth and merriment pervaded the large assemblage, and none seemed more joyous than the two elderly gentle- men, one of whom had gained a son and the other one a daughter, by the day's proceedings. The two mothers-in-law took things very coolly, and kept themselves from anything like noisy demonstra- AN OLD-TIME WEDDINCx. 71 tion. But it was easy to see that neither regretted the fact that their children had been yoked together for a life-long work in the matrimonial harness. At an early hour of the evening, a short prayer for the happiness and prosperity of the newly-wedded pair was offered up by the oldest man in company ; the people dispersed, and the nuptials of John Bushman and Mary Myrtle were things of the past. Chaptkr VI. TALK ABOUT WOLVES. WEEK or two after the wedding, as they were sitting around the fire one evening, John said to his father : " I think we were to have a talk about wolves some time. Now would be a good time, and I would like to have a good wolf story to-night." " Why so ? " inquired his sister. " Do you feel decidedly wolfish since you are married ? If you do, we will tell Squire Myrtle to shut Mary up somewhere? so that she won't be devoured by a wolf." " There, Bet," said he, " that is just like you ; always taking a fellow up, before he knows that he is down. But you are wonderfully smart, since that Briar has been scratching around our place." " Oh ! for shame, John ; I would not be as mean as you are for anything. Since you have the smooth, sweet, pretty little Myrtle, I think you might allow me to hold on to the Briar if I can. But don't let us be gabbling nonsense all the evening, and keep father from the talk about wolves. But I hope he won't put too many of them in, for if he does I shall dream about them." TALK ABOUT WOLVES. 73 " That is a sensible speech for you, Sis. Now we will be as silent as a very sedate young man and his chat- terbox of a sister can be expected to be," replied John. '' I heard that there were twenty-five or thirty of them," said the father. " ' Dear sakes,' as grandma used to say," said Betsy ; " who can listen to a story with that many wolves in it ? " " But the wolves were there all the same," replied Mr. Bushman. TREED BY W^OLVES. " The occurrences I am about to relate took place about thirty miles from here, and only a few years ago. A man who had a great liking for the bush, and who was a noted hunter, was the hero of the story. He was a cabinet-maker by trade, and at the time he had a shop on the banks of the Twenty-Mile Creek. Not far off was a dense forest of many miles in extent. The forest, in many places, was thick with the alder and other shrubs. This was the home of man}' wild animals, especially the wolf. " One day Mr. Scantling took his gun and ammuni- tion, and started for a hunt. Before going into the swamps of alder, he rubbed some oil of cumin on the bottom of his shoes to attract the wolves. This device proved to be such a complete success, that he got a great deal more wolf than he intended. " When he was between three and four miles from home, he heard the wolves coming on his track, howl- ing and yelping like a pack of liounds. He intended 74 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. to get up into a tree, and then slioofc the wolves at his leisure. " But he had some difficulty in finding one of suit- able size, with strong branches near enough to the ground to answer his purpose. At length he found one. But the wolves were so near now, that he had to use all his agility to get out of their reach before they would be around the tree. In his hurry he dropped his powder-flask, and there was no time to spare to go back and get it. " His rifle was an old-fashioned one, with a single barrel that only carried one charge. It was loaded, however. But one bullet seemed like a mere trifle in such an emergency. The scent that Scantling had put on his shoes not only drew a large number of wolves, but it seemed also to set them all wild with excite- ment. They would howl, and snarl and snap at each other, and jump up, and try to climb the tree. In fact, it made them act as if every wolf was forgetting his usual diofnified sneakinorness, and was actino^ under some sort of temporary delusion, that made him regard- less of danger and of public opinion ; for each wolf tried to be as hateful as possible to his fellows. " One very large wolf sprang up several times, so that its mouth was but a few inches from Mr. Scant- ling's feet. And when his jaws came together they would snap as loud as the jaws of a steel trap. And every time, when he found that he had missed his prey, he would make the woods echo with his howls of disappointed rage. " After a short time Mr. Scantling said to himself, TALK ABOUT WOLVES. 7o ' I can stop that fellow's pranks, at least, and I will do it; " He lifted the gun, and pointed it towards the wolf. The brute made a rush at the muzzle of the rifle, when he got the full contents of it in his mouth and through his head. He gave a yell of baffled rage and fell dead upon the ground. He literally met death half way. " The report of the gun startled the wolv^es for a moment. Some of them scattered and ran off for a few rods. They soon came back to the tree, and seemed, if possible, more furious than ever when they saw their companion lying dead upon the ground. " They evidently attributed its death, in some way, to the man in the tree. They would stand and look at it, and then set up a terrible howl, in which the whole of them would join ; and when twenty-five or thirty wolves go in for a concert, the noise they make is something frightful. The forest fairly seemed to tremble, as if swept by a hurricane of sound. And as the volume of sound, in its outward progress, struck the trees, it was broken into fragments, which came back to the centre of the circle in succeeding echoes, that fell upon the listener's ear like the screechings of a thousand demons. " Mr. Scantling was a man of nerve, and he was accustomed to seeing wild animals. But he said after- wards, that sometimes he had to call up all his will force to keep from dropping right down in their midst. It was hard to resist the strangely fascinating influence that their terrible noise, their gapino mouths, and their fierce, fiery eyes had upon him. 76 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Sometimes the wolves would try to gnaw the tree down. Then they would lie down in a circle around it, and watch their prisoner as sharply as a cat will watch a mouse. "And this was kept up from ten or eleven o'clock on Monday morning, until sunrise on Wednesday morning. ' Two nights and two days, treed by wolves,' is what the people used to say when speaking of the incident. '• As the sun began to shine on Wednesday morning the whole pack sent up one most pitiful wail. Then they set to work and tore their dead companion into shreds, and left its fragments scattered on the ground. After this was done the wolves, as if by common con- sent, went off in different directions."^ Mr. S. waited for an hour or two to see if the wolves would come back. But nothing could be seen or heard of them. He came down from his place of forced retirement, hunted up his powder, loaded his gun, and started for home. " When he got part way out of the woods he met a lot of his neighbors, who had been out all night hunt- ing for him. His family had got very uneasy about him." "Are you not afraid, John, to go back to the wild woods after hearing that story about wolves ? " asked his mother. * This is a simple narrative of facts, as it occurred, some fifty-five yeai'S ago, in the Township of Caistor. The man's name was Stocking. The story is told, as it has been related to the writer, by persons who were conversant with all the facts of the case. TALK ABOUT WOLVES. 77 " No, mother, I cannot say that I am," said John. "I have heard before what a wolf- den the alder swamps of Caistor used to be ; but I don't think they are so thick there as they were at the time that father's story refers to." " Perhaps they are not," said the father, " but it is not long aero since a man found six young wolves in a hol- low log. He took them home and kept them until they would take milk like a dog. The old wolf came to hunt up her family. He shot her, and then he killed the young ones, and got the bounty money for the scalps of all of them. This was in the same local- ity of the other story." " Why did he not keep some of the young ones for dogs ? Would they not do as well as a dog to watch the place, if they were trained to it ? " inquired Betsy. " No amount of training could take the sneaking, wolfish nature out of them," replied the father. " They would be entirely too watchful for the interest of their owners, if there were any sheep or calves about the place." " They are cowards as well as sneaks," remarked John. CHASED BY WOLVES. " When I was coming home I heard of a man up in Grimsby who was followed b}' a lot of wolves. Mr. Hardwood had his wife and two or three children with him on an ox-sled. He had a quarter of fresh beef that he was taking to his home in the woods. While they were going through what is called the Pepperage Swamp three w^olves got after them. It was 78 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. bright moonlight, so that every movement could be seen. The wolves evidently wanted the meat. " Mr. Hardwood gave the whip to his wife, and told her to hurry up the oxen while he would try and keep the wolves off the sled. He had with him a new axe- handle, which had been given him by a friend. This he used for a club. When the wolves came near he would strike at them. Sometimes he hit them. Then they would jump back, and stand and howl as if they were calling for reinforcements. In a short time they would come on again, full chase. And when they were about to jump on the sled a rap or two with the axe-handle would put them to flight again. ''The oxen, poor things, did not require any whip- ping when they found what was after them. They did their best to get out of danger. This chase continued for a mile or more. Then a neighbor's clearing was reached, and the barking of a couple of dogs fright- ened the wolves, so that they ran off into the woods, and w^ere seen no more." " John," said his sister, " your story is about as ro- mantic as father's was." " I don't think there is much romance in being chased by w^olves, especially when there is a woman and a lot of children in the case," said John " Well, if it was not romantic, I don't know what would be," she replied. " I can't see where the romance comes in," was John's reply. " Let me tell you where," said Betsy. " I fancy my- self sitting down on a lot of straw in t' e rough box TALK ABOUT WOLVES. 79 of an old ox-sled. Around me, in the straw, three lovely babes lie sleeping, all unconscious of the danger that threatens them. Behind me, partly hidden by the straw, is a quarter of a noble steer, that had done little else than to eat and drink, and jump and frisk all its life. But a few short hours ago it took its last sup of water, and its last bite of hay. Then the hard-hearted butcher laid it low with his cruel haumier, and with his treacherous knife he took its precious life, and ended all the strife by skinning it. " In front of me a orood -sized man sits on a board that is laid across the top of the box for a seat. The oxen are ioijorino- alonfj at the rate of about two miles an hour. We enter the precincts of Pepperage Swamp. I look up to see what has so increased the darkness. Then I see the tall, slender trees standing, like two walls, about sixty feet apart, as if they were placed as sentinels to guard the ' Queen's highway,' said high- way in this place consisting of a four-rod strip of black muck and corduroy. "The trees lift their weird-like forms high up in the direction of the stars, breaking the moonlight into a thousand fragments, that shoot like silvery arrows through the small openings among the interlacing branches. " The man is talking to his oxen, saying, ' Come, come ; hurry up. Hurry up, old boys, and get these tender plants, the woman and children out of the cold.' " Just then we hear what sounds like the whining of a dog. Then another, and another. We look back, 80 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. and away behind us, running towards us, through the shadows, we dimly see three moving bodies, that seem to be the size of rats. But they grow larger and larger. Now they look like foxes. Now they are as big as dogs. Now, O dear 1 what are they ? " ' Wolves,' cries the man in front. ' Here, wife, you take this gad and lay it on to the oxen with all your might, while I get into the hind end of the sled and keep off the wolves.' John, you have told the rest," said his sister. " Well done, my girl," said the father. ' " You have put some romance into the story, haven't you, Bet ? I never knew you had such a vivid imagina- tion. I am almost ashamed of the way I told my story," was John's reply.* " I hope," said Mrs. Bushman, " that John and Mary may never have any such an experience as that in their backwoods life." " Don't fear, mother," said John. " If that Mr. Hardwood and his wife could save their beef and their children and themselves from the wolves, I think Mary and I will be able to take care of ourselves." Before closing this " talk about wolves," we may venture to relate a few incidents of a later date. We have said that the wolf is a crinofino^ sneak when he is cornered. He has not half the grit in him that the wild cat, or the ground-hog, or even an old rat has. Get any of these in a trap and they will fight till they * The two incidents above related occurred many years ago ; one in Grimsby Township and the other in Caistor. The parties con- cerned in them are all dead now. TALK ABOUT WOLVES. 81 die. Bat not so the wolf. It is said, and we believe it to be true, that, if a wolf gets into a sheep-pen, the first thing that he will do is to try to find a way out. He will not touch a sheep until the question of possible retreat is settled. And if he finds that there is no w^ay out, he will lie down and watch the sheep, but he will not touch one of them. He quietly awaits coming events. But if he finds that a safe retreat is among the possibilities, then woe betide the helpless sheep, as many a pen of slaughtered innocents has borne testimony. MISTAKEN TRAPPERS. Some years ago, in one of our back townships, two men set some traps near the edge of a swamp. In a day or two, they went out, early in the morning, to see if there was anything in the traps. As they came to one of them they saw a wolf, with one of its front feet in the trap. At first they thought it was a wolf. But as they came nearer it looked so friendly, and seemed so glad to see them that they changed their minds, and concluded that it was somebody's gray dog. He seemed to be in great pain, with the poor lacerated foot still in the trap. The kind-hearted hunters, full of sympathy for the sufferings of their newly-found friend, pitied it and patted it on the head, and fondled it and let it go. It started ofi" limping, as they supposed, to carry home to an indignant master and a sympathizing mistress the proof of its cruel treatment. The wolf went about half a mile away, and then 82 AMONG THE FOREST TRKES. found his way into a farmyard among the sheep and cattle. A youth, who was at the barn, saw the wolf, went to the house, got a gun and shot him. In a few minutes after the two men came along, and went into the yard to see what the boy had killed. On examin- ation they saw the foot that had very recently been in the trap. Here was unmistakable evidence that the dead wolf was their property half an hour ago. But they had kindly released it, and now it is the property of the youth who killed it The bounty and skin brought him some twenty dollars. For months after this, if any one wished to hear words that were more strong than elegant, all that he need to do was to ask one of these men what was the latest news about the price of wolf -scalps. WOLF-SCALPS AND BREAD. An industrious Christian family was living on a new farm in a back settlement. Their resources were limited. They depended on the grain that they raised, not only for bread, but also for other household supplies. One summer the frost cut off nearly all their crops, and left them in comparative destitution. They managed by hard work and the strictest economy to get through the winter without any real suffering ; but by the first of June, they found themselves out of flour and out of money. No chance to get a supply on credit either, for none of their acquaintances had anything to spare, and but few of them had enough for themselves. And yet it was two full months till TALK ABOUT WOLVES. 83 harvest, and no bread in the house and nothino- to buy it with. This was a sad plight to be in. But man's extremity is often God's opportunity. At all events, it seemed like it in this case. One evening, towards sundown, Mr. Fernleat* started out to hunt the cows, that were in the bush. He was making his way towards the sound of the bell, with a heavy heart, as he thought of the dark prospects before him. He was crossing one of those peculiar spots, described in backwoods language as a beaver-meadow. Just then a large wolf ran across his path, and went towards thg woods a little distance off'. He started after it, making all the noise he could. The wolf ran only a few rods in the woods, and then took refuge in a hollow tree that had been broken oft' by the wind. It made a very excellent place for a wolf or a fox to hide in. Mr. Fernleaf gathered up pieces of poles and chunks of wood until he completely filled up the end of the log, and made it impossible for the wolf to get out. Then he went after his cows, leaving the wolf a close prisoner for the night. Next morning he took a neighbor, and a gun and a couple of axes, and went to see how the prisoner was getting on. They found everything as it was left the night before. They shot the wolf in the tree. In cutting the tree so as to get at the dead one, they found six living wolves about the size of an ordinary cat. These they killed. The seven scalps brought between seventy and eighty dollars. This they divided between them. 84 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. and they had ample supplies till the harvest came in, which, if we remember rightly, was a good one. As Mr. Fernleaf related the incident to us, sometime after, a tear moistened his eye while he said, " I have thought, and I still think, that God sent that wolf across my path that day, as the easiest and best way of fulfilling His promise, where He says, ' Thy bread shall be given thee and thy water shall be sure.'" Who will say that he was mistaken. THE LAST RACE. We have been told a great deal about the destruc- tion of deer by the wolves. When the snow in the woods is from two to three feet deep and a heavy crust on it, the deer has no chance for escape if the wolves come across them in their hiding-places in the upland thickets. They seem, as much as they can, to keep away from the swamps, these being the lurk- ing-places of the wolves. But sometimes hunger drives the wolves out in search of food. Then they go to the thickets to hunt the deer. And when they are found the slaughter begins. The wolves can run on the crust. The deer cannot do so, their small, sharp hoofs break the crust and they go down; and besides this, the crust is nearly as sharp as broken glass. It cuts the legs of the poor struggling deer, so that in a short time they fall a helpless prey to their ferocious enemy. Then the wolves hold high carnival. But when there is nothing to prevent the deer from using its locomotive powers, the wolf has to earn his TALK ABOUT WOLVES. 85 venison before he eats it, and he frequently takes his breakfast miles away from where he started in pursuit of it. Some years ago a chase of this kind occurred, not far from Elora, where the banks of the Grand River are precipitous and high. A wolf was after a large buck, which was almost tired out, so the wolf was only one jump behind him. When they came to the edge of the precipice they both went over, and were killed on the ice that covered the river. It was their last race. Chapter VII. SOME ORAL HISTORY. FEW nights after the talk about the wolves, John said to his father, " In that new country to which I am going, and where I expect to spend my days, I shall meet with people from different countries. Some of them will, to a great extent, be ignorant of the character and doings of the first settlers on the Canadian frontier, and many who come from the Old Country will have prejudices against the U. E. Loyalists and their descendants. You know, according to history, there were a large number in Britain who, if they did not go so far as to justify the revolting Americans, did, at least, strongly sympathize with them. Now, I would like to be as well prepared as possible to meet those objections, whether they originate in ignorance or prejudice. Can you relate some facts and incidents in connection with the early settlement of the Niagara District ? " " Yes," replied the father ; " I am glad to have an opportunity to enlighten your mind on this subject, and I trust that your loyalty will be strengthened by a knowledo^e of what vour immediate ancestors and SOME ORAL HISTORY. 87 their suffering fellow-sul)jects did and suffered to win the title of United Empire Loyalists." " But, father," said the youno^ Canadian, " where and how did those people get the name of U. E. Loyalis's ? Did they take it to themselves, or did the Americans give it to them ? " Answer, " Neither. The name was given, as a title, by the British Government, to those who stood by the royal cause in the War of Independence. In the Treaty of Paris it was stipulated that the American Congress should use its influence, and exert its authority with the State Governments, to have the Loyalists dealt with as conquered people, who had been faithful in their allegiance to the Government that is overthrown, are always treated in civilized countries. " But, if the Congress ever attempted to fulfil this enofasfement, their efforts were not successful. So far as mitigating the punishment of the Loyalists was concerned, if the Congress spoke, its voice was not heard. Perhaps it was the clamor of Tom Paine, who just then was screaming his anti-British and anti- Christian bombast into the willing ears of the new Republic, that made the words of the people's represen- tatives fall uselessly upon ears that were dull to hear the right. " Whatever may have been the cause of it, one thing is certain, that is this : The Loyalists could not have been more cruelly treated, unless they had been mas- sacred without regard to age or sex. And there were many cases in which death itself would have been less cruel than the treatment to which the sufferers were subjected. 88 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " They were driven from their homes — and many of them were the owners of good homes. They had their property taken from them, and some had large estates." * " But, father," inquired John, " why could they not have stayed where they were, instead of starting on such long and tedious journeys, as some of them did ? You said once that they travelled hundreds of miles through dense forests, having no roads but Indian trails to follow." " Your question, John," said the father, " is a natural one ; but there were two very potent reasons why the Loyalists did not remain in the States. They could not stay if they would, and they would not stay if they could. Every State passed laws against them — some more severe than others, it is true ; but not one of them proposed to deal either kindly or justly with them. " And there were two reasons why these people would not stay in the States. They were British in all their sympatiiies and in all their aspirations. The system of government, secured by the British Con- stitution was, to them, the best in the world, and they would not voluntarily change it for any other. And, besides this, these people would not consent to stay and become mere serfs among those who had robbed them of their property and driven them from their homes." * For proof that this is not an exaggeration of facts, see Rev. Dr. Ryerson's " Loyalists of America, " Vol. II., pages 177, 178. SOME ORAL HISTORY. 89 " How many of those people left the States to go to British territory ?" "About forty thousand came to the British pro- vinces in 1784, and more went to Florida, the Bahama Islands, and British West Indies.* '' Ten thousand of the number came to this Province,-|" and settled along the frontier in different localities. Some went as far west as Long Pouit, on Lake Erie, others settled in the Niagara Peninsula, while others went north of Lake Ontario, about where York County and the town of York now is." " When did the first settlers come into the County of Lincoln ? " asked John. " In or about 1780," replied the father. " Where did the first settlers come from ? " " Mostly from Maryland and Pennsylvania; though a number of families came from New York and some from Virginia," was the answer. " Well," said John, " there is one thing that I cannot understand, Why were the Quakers interfered with, seeing they are non-combatants ?" "They refused to pledge themselves to the new order of things. And they would not promise to hold no intercourse with the Loyalists, hence some of them suflfered about as much persecution as the Loyalists themselves." " Why did not the British Government reward the.se people for their sacrifices and sufferings, in a * See Ryerson's " Loyalists," Vol. II., page 186, 187; also see Dr. Ciregg's " History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada." page 17. + See Ryerson's "Loyalists," Vol. II., page 308. 90 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. more honorable way than to leave them to the merci- less treatment of their bitter enemies ?" asked the young man. " As soon as the British Government became aware of the facts of the case, they acted very honorably by the Lovalists. You must know that Enorjishmen are very much set in their ways, but once they are con- vinced that they are wrong, or that the}' have made a mistake, there are no people in the world that will acknowledge the wrong more gracefully or correct a mistake more promptly or cheerfully. S ) it was in this case. " When the people of England came fully to realize the exposed condition in which the Treaty of Paris left the Loyalists, all parties agreed that the mistake must at once be corrected as far as it was possible to do so. The feeling on this subject may be gathered from extracts from speeches of British statesmen and others. Lord North, who was Premier during the war, said : ' Now let me, sir, pause on a part of the treaty which awakens human sensibility in a very irresistible and lamentable degree. I cannot but lament the fate of those unhappy men who, I conceive, were in general objects of our gratitude and protec- tion. They have exposed their lives, endured an age of hardships, deserted their interests, forfeited their possessions, lost their connections and ruined their families in our cause.' " Mr. Wilberforce said, in the House of Commons, that ' when he considered the case of the Loyalists, he confessed he felt himself conquered.' SOME ORAL HISTORY. 91 " Lord Mulgrave said : ' The article respecting the Loyalists he never could regard but as a lasting monu- ment of national disgrace.' " Mr. Burke said: ' At any rate it must be agreed on all hands, that a vast number of Loyalists had been deluded by this country, and had risked everything in our cause ; to such men the nation owed protection, and its honor was pledged for their protection at all hazards.' " The Lord Advocate said : ' With reo^ard to the Loy- alists, they merited every possible effort on the part of this country.' " Mr. Sheridan, said : 'He execrated the treatment of those unfortunate men, who without the least notice taken of their civil and religious rights, were handed over to a power that would not fail to take vengeance on them for their zeal and attachment to the religion and government of this country.' " Sir Peter Burrill said : ' The fate of the Loyalists claimed the compassion of every human breast.' "Sir William Booth said: ' There was one part of the treaty at which his heart bled, the article in rela- tion to the Loyalists. Being himself a man, he could not but feel for men so cruelly abandoned to the malice of their enemies. It was scandalous. It was disgraceful. Such an article as that ought scarcely on any condition to have been admitted on our part. They had fought for us, and run every hazard to assist our cause, and when it uiost behoved us to aff'ord them protection we deserted them.' "In the House of Lords, Lord Walsingham said : 'He 7 92 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. could neither think nor speak of the dishonor of leav- ing these deserving people to their fate with patience.' "Lord Townsend said that, 'To desert men who had constantly adhered to loyalty and attachment, was a circumstance of such cruelty as had never before been heard of.' " Lord Stormont said that, ' Britain was bound in justice and honor, gratitude and affection, and by every tie, to provide for and protect them.' " Lord Sackville regarded the abandonment of the Loyalists as a thing of so atrocious a kind, that the sacrifice of these unhappy subjects must be answered for in the sight of God and man. " Lord Loughborough said : ' The fifth article of the treaty had excited a general and just indignation, and that neither in ancient nor modern history had there been so shameful a desertion of men, who had sacri- ficed all to their duty, and to their reliance on British faith.' " At the close of this discussion, the Commons passed a direct vote of censure against the Govern- ment for neglecting to protect the Loyalists in the Treaty of Paris." * " Father," said John, '' I am very much pleased that you have told us so many things about the Loyalists, and also about the way in which the home Government took up their cause at the last. I never knew that they had endured so much." " The time will come," said the father, " when *See " Loyalists of America," Vol. II. pp. 60 and 61, where these extracts are found, and much more of the same kind. SOME ORAL HISTORY. 93 people in this country will be as proud to be able to trace their ancestry back to the United Empire Loyalists as ever people in England were to be able to trace theirs back to the heroes of the Norman Con- quest. These people formed the nucleus of a distinct nationality, and one that will yet make itself heard among the nations — a nationality that is different from the American or the English type, but one that shall exhibit the best traits of both these nations." " The first settlers in this country must have ex- perienced many hardships here, after all the ill-treat- ment they endured before they came here," said John. '•' Yes," answered his father, " that is so. Now, it seems like a big undertaking for you and others to go to the New Purchase or to Talbot District to settle. But light will be your trials as compared with those of the first settlers of this district. " If you get into any kind of trouble, there are tho^e who are able and willing to help you. They had to help themselves or go without, no matter what came in their way. If you need supplies, you can get them. They had to supply themselves or go without. If they were sick, they had to be their own doctor. If they needed medicine, they went to nature's great laboratory of herbs and roots and flowers to get it." " Well," said John, "it must have been very difficult to keep house at all in those days, where there were no mills, no stores, no blacksmiths, no shoemakers, no tanners, no weavers, no tailors, no tinsmiths, nor coopers. How could they manage to live ?" 94 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Your questions are very natural ones, John," said his father. "In a country where none of these are found people have to do the best they can. They must use what ingenuity they have to provide for themselves. For instance, I can remember when I was a young man, I often helped my mother to grind both wheat and Indian corn on the top of a large oak stump/' " On the top of a stump ! Of all things, who would ever think of doing that ? Why, how did you manage it," broke in Betsy, who had come into the room in time to hear a part of the conversation. "I don't know who first thought of it, but I know that it was a very common practice at one time. We would scoop out a sort of butter tray in the top of the stump with a hollow adze ; then we took a stone or a piece of hardwood and, after fitting it to the dish, we pounded the grain until we made it as fine as we could, then we run the meal through a sieve. The finest was made into johnny cake or bread, and the coarsest into porridge or mush." " I can remember, John," said his mother, " when your wife's grandmother used to grind corn and wheat in a large pepper mill, to make bread and mush for a family of eight." " Where did they get salt to put into their mush and other things, mother?" asked John. "At first," she replied, " we found a great deal of hardship in doing without salt ; but, after a while, some friendly Indians showed our people where there was a salt spring. We used to boil our 'own salt out SOME ORAL HISTORY. 95 of this water until the home Government sent out salt from Liverpool." "Father," said John, "how did these people keep themselves in clothes and shoes ? " " The most of them brought a pretty good supply with them when they came. But for some years there was a great deal of suffering, especially in the winter time. But they soon got into the way of raising flax and wool. The women became very expert in carding and spinning, and weaving, and making up garments for their families," was his answer. " Did the women do the carding ? " asked Betsy, who was very much interested in the conversation. " Yes ; they used hand cards. It was a slow and, tedious work, but it had to be done. I tell you. Bet, that with the vast range of work that these old women had to do, and the heavy burdens they had to carry, it is no wonder that they became stoop-shouldered and hard-handed. The wonder is, that there was one bit of feminine sweetness or womanly tenderness left in them. They had to be housekeeper, cook, servant, mistress, carder, spinner, weaver, tailor, dre!|>smaker, nurse, doctor, gardener, butter and cheese maker, and whitewasher, all in one." " How did the men do their part of the work ? " asked John. " Their jobs were just as various, and no less numerous, than the women's were. They had to raise the flax, and rot it, and crackle it, and swingle it, and hatchel it for the women. They must raise the wool, and shear the sheep ; they must chop and clear the yb AMONG THE FOREST TREES. land ; they looked after the cattle ; they must attend to the sugar-bush in the spring ; they must be their own tanner, and currier, and shoemaker, and carpenter, and sleighmaker, and blacksmith. In a word, they must be both boss and hired man. Jack and his master, landlord and tenant, all in one, or, if they did not do this, they would come in behind in the race." " Father," said John, " you have not told me since I came home how that Scotchman came off in his trial, that was to come on in August, I think. Were you at the trial?" " You refer to the agitator, Robert Gourley, I sup- pose ? Yes, I heard the trial," was the answer. " You see, I went to town on business, and when I learned that the ' troublesome Scotchman ' was to be tried that day, I went to hear the trial and see the man who had made such a noise in the country. And I am sure that I never pitied a man more than I did poor Gourley that day. " It did seem to me that the whole thing was a bur- lesque on the sacred name of justice. There was the prisoner, in a box, looking like a ghost more than like a man.* There was the Chief-Justice, lookinor and acting more like some despotic ruler than like a new country judge. There sat the twelve men in the jury- box, looking as though they wanted to do right, if some one would only tell them what was right in this case. They had the fate of the prisoner in their hands, but they did not know what to do with it. *See Dent's "Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion," Vol. I.^ page 31 and following. SOME ORAL HISTORY. 9? " There were the lawyers, hopping about like red squirrels in the top of a chestnut tree, and trying to look wise, as lawyers always try to do, but sometimes they make sad failures. " There sat the witnes.ses, looking as if they would like to retain the good opinion of the two convicting magistrates, who sat there, enjoying the torture of their victim with as little tenderness of feelinfj as a cat enjoys the fruitless struggles of the poor little squeaking prisoner that is held fast in its merciless claws. " When the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, the judge asked the prisoner if he had anything to say. He said somethino^ about British law and British cjen- erosity. But he soon learned, to his sorrow, that the court had no ear for logical argument or pathetic appeal. The judge ordered him to leave the country in the short space of twenty-four hours, and to suffer death as a felon if he ever dared to come back to Upper Canada." " How could these U. E. Loyalists so soon forget the cruelty to which they had been exposed, and the un- feeling treatment the Americans had subjected them, to only one generation back ? It seems to me, that in their treatment of Gourley they were exliibiting the same spirit and performing the same acts against which they and their fathers had so loudly protested during, and after, the Revolutionary War." This was said by the young man with considerable warmth. The father answered, 'The Loyalists were not wholly responsible for what was done. Two at least of Gour* 98 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. ley's persecutors were his own countrymen, namely, Dickson, of Niagara, and the afterwards notorious Dr. Strachan, of York. And I do not think the Chief-Justice is a U. E. Loyalist, though I am not certain as to that. " And you know it sometimes happens that servants become the hardest masters, and it often occurs that persons who are elevated from the lower to the higher positions in society become the most overbearing and tyrannical. This is one of the ways in which the rebound or strike-back that there is in human nature manifests itself. You know it is easy for a coward to be brave when there is no danger. And a weak man may act like a strong one when he has a weak or helpless victim to deal with. Bearing these facts in mind, we can account for a great many things that would otherwise be very difficult to understand. "It seems that Gourley's enemies dare not face him in court until they had tried, for seven months, what the foul air of a prison cell, and the scanty sustenance of prison fare could do towards taming the wild, rest- less spirit of the clear-headed, vigorous Scotchman. When they had the lion chained they could extract his teeth at their leisure. It was a strange scene that presented itself in our little town on the 20th day of August, in the year 1819, for Robert Gourley had com- mitted no crime either against the state or any indi- vidual in the state." Chapter VIII. PREPARING TO MOVE. " jjT^OOK here, Bet," said John to his sister one day, ^iL=J as they were alone tof^ether, " I wish that you and Will Briars would hurry up and get mar- ried before Mary and I move away to the bush, so that we could be at the wedding." " Who told you that Will Briars wanted me, and what makes you think that I would have him if he did?" said the girl, as she gave him a look that was intended to demolish inquisitiveness. " Now, Bet, none of your feminine artfulness, if you please, for it would be lost on me," said the brother with a laugh, " for I have the best of reasons for believing that he wants you. He told me so him- self. And equally good are my reasons for thinking that you intend to have him, for mother told me so." " Feminine artfulness ; dear 1" said Betsy, with a look of feigned sadness. " Can it be that modest- looking little Mrs. Bushman has been giving my poor brother such severe lessons in ' feminine artfulness ' that he has become a disbeliever in his own loving sister's truthfulness and sincerity." 100 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. "What is the matter with you, Bet? You look as sorry as a patch of beans on a frosty morning," said he. "But come, now, let us begin to talk a little sober sense." '•'What kind of stuff is sober sense?" said she, demurely. " you incorrigible primp ; will you never get over your old trick of trying to head a fellow off when he is doing his best to coiue to a safe conclusion about any matter." " What weighty matter are you trying to conclude now, brother mine ?" said she, with provoking cool- ness. " I am wanting to find out if a certain couple with whom I am acquainted are going to be married before myself and wife will be obliged to flit to our cabin home, on the banks of Sylvan Lake, among the forest trees." She answered : " You want to know, then, if the pair Will likely be made one Before the time when you must tear Yourself away from home ? Now, I'll be honest, brother dear, For Will and I have said, We will not marry till one year Has passed ; and then we'll wed. " " Bravo ! Betsy. Why, you can be poetical as well as pert, when you like, can't you ? " said the brother. " And now, since you have broken silence on the sub- ject, tell all about your plans, won't you, Sis ? " John PREPARING TO MOVE. 101 had been in the habit of calling her " Sis," when he wished to please her, ever since they were children. " We are engaged," said Betsy, " and we did intend to be married this spring ; but no time was fixed upon. This is all changed now, and it will be a year, at least, before we will be married." " What has changed your plans so soon and so much ?" asked John. " Yourself has had more to do with it than any one else," she replied. "How have I been the means of changing your arrano^ement ?" said he. She answered, " When you came home and told about the fine land and water and timber there is back in the new country. Will was greatly taken up with it. And the more he heard about it, the more he has been charmed by your descriptions. He has fully made up his mind to go out with you and take up land in the bush, instead of settling on the tifty acres that he has here. Do you think that he is acting wisely ?" " Yes ; decidedly so," answered John. " It is the best thing that he ever did. Will is just the right sort of man for a new country — hardy and steady, and not afriiid of work. He will succeed by the help of the Lord, and no one, you know, can do so without that help." " You don't believe in the doctrine of old Hickory, the miser, do you ? He says, ' Help yourself, and ask no favors from God or man.'" " Old Hickory is a wicked old sinner, and as mean 102 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. as dirt, or he would not talk like that. But then, a man that will rob his own sister, and she a widow, is bad enough to do anything," said John, with a good deal of energy. Then, turning to his sister, he said, mirthfully, " Won't you make a fine wife for a backwoodsman. You are strong, and tough, and fearless — exactly the woman for the bush. I fancy that I can see you now as you will look then, — ' * With face begrimed with soot and ashes, With hands besmeared with smoke and rust ; With eyes that seem as though their lashes Were lost in clouds of charcoal dust." " My, how smart we can be when we try, can't we. Bub ? " said she. " And now let me try, — " Say, how about your loving Mary ? Will she be like some little fairy, With visage bright, and garments airy, Presiding over Sylvan Lodge ? ' ' Or, will you make the poor girl sorry For having wed in svich a hurry A man who keeps her in a woiry By flinging clubs she cannot dodge ? " " How will that do, Johnnie, dear ?" said Betsy ^ laucrhinor. " Now, let us drop the poetical and take up the practical," said he. " You say Will is going out with us ; I am glad of that. If it has not been taken up since I came away, the lot next to mine on one side is vacant. Would it PREPARING TO MOVE. 103 not be a good thing for Will to send in an application for that lot at once ? There will be a big rush there next summer. I will do all that I can to help hijn make a start, if he goes, and he can make our house his home till he gets one of his own." " Where do they go to get the land ?" she asked. " They go, or send, to the land office at Little York. Squire Myrtle has had a good deal to do with business of this kind : no doubt he will help Will in the matter, if he asks him to do so. But if he wants to get land near to mine, there is no time to be lost ; that section will till up very rapidly. The line of road that runs by my place will be a leading line of travel between the front and rear settlements. And besides thi-s, the locality is so situated that it must, in the nature of things, become the centre of a large settle- ment in the near future. Two large and rapid streams £orm a junction near the corner of my lot and there are a number of first-class mill sites within a short distance of the road. I expect some day to see a village, perhaps a town, on that spot." " Well," said Betsy, " I think you had better tell Will to see Squire Myrtle, and get him to send in an application at once ; I don't like to speak to him about it myself." When dinner was over that day, John went to see William Briars. He found him in the barn, threshing oats with a flail. After a few commonplace words, John said, " Will, I am told by one who ought to know, that you are thinking of going to the bush with me. Is that so?" 104 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Yes ; I have made up my mind to go to the new country, and try my lot as a pioneer," said William. ♦' My father-in-law has had a good deal of experience in connection with land operations," said John. '■ Sup- pose we go and ask him to write away and see what can be done for you ; I think you are entitled to one hundred acres for services in the militia the last year of the war." " When I joined the Flankers," said Will, " I was told that I would have a claim for two hundred acres — one hundred for head right, and another hundred for ' Flanker ' right." " yes ; you were a ' Flanker,' sure enough ; you are entitled to the two hundred acres ; I had not thought of that. You are all right. We will go right off and see Squire Myrtle, and have him send in your certificate and get a location ticket for the lot next to mine." The young men found the Squire at home, and told him what they wanted. He took the matter in hand for Will, and he succeeded so well, that by the time that John and Mary were ready to move, the papers came to hand, and William Briars was s^ranted the two hundred acre lot that joined John Bushman's two hundred acres. As the first of April was now here, and as the middle of that month was the time set for starting to the new home of John and Mary, both their families were making preparations for helping them in their undertaking. As has already been stated, old Mr. Bushman had PREPARING TO MOVE. 105 procured a yoke of oxen for John. Besides these he gave him a cow and half a dozen sheep. But it was understood that the sheep were to be left where they were for a year, or until John could have a suitable place for them, so ns to save them from the wolves. Mary's father gave her a cow and such an outfit as would enable them to start housekeeping in a new settlement with a fair share of comfort. As the time came near when they were to start for their new home in the wilderness, the young people seemed to realize the importance of the step they were about to take. They were going to shoulder life's burdens and face life's difficulties ; and that, too, in a new country where, in the nature of things, many privations would have to be endured, and many dis- couragements would have to be met and overcome. But neither John Bushman nor his young wife were hot-house plants. They had both been brought up to industry and economy. They had stood face to face with life's realities all their days. Mary's mother was a woman of good sense, and she had trained her daughter for usefulness, rather than for helplessness, and had taught her to understand that God's arrange- ment is that "drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags," and that "an idle soul " (whether man or w^oman) "shall suffer hunger." The woman who, in those old- fashioned times, w^as called a good housekeeper, was as proud of the title as her granddaughter is proud of being called the belle of the town. But although Mary was not much past twenty years of age, she was a good housekeeper. She knew how to do her 106 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. own work, and she intended, while health permitted her, to do it. She had no notion to flit over the journey of life on the gaudy pinions of the short- lived butterfly. There are three kinds of women in relation to life's duties and its burdens. There are those who help their husbands ; there are those who hinder him by making him spend his time in helping them ; and there are those who are like a handful of clean chips in a pot of soup — they do neither good nor harm. Mary Bushman was among the first class, and, con- sequently, she was one of the best. Such a woman is a blessing to any man. Such a woman is fit to adorn life in a log hut or in a marble palace. Such a woman was the wife of John Bushman. Happy is the man who finds such a wife. " Her husband shall be known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land." Prov. xxxi. 23. John, too, had been taught that work is respectable, and that it is a part of God's arrangements concerning men in the present state of existence. He learned to view a life of honest industry, based on Christian principles, and wrought out on the line of duty as {aid down in God's Word, as being the highest type of noble manhood. And from a boy it had been his am- bition to present to the world such a character. How far he succeeded in doing so the future will tell. Such were the two young people who, on a bright morning about the middle of April, in one of the years that compose the first quarter of this century, started out from the parental domiciles to hew out a PREPARING TO MOVE. 107 home for themselves among the forest trees of their native Province. These are but the counterparts of thousands of honest couples who have, at different times, gone into the wilderness and made homes for themselves and their children. And to-day, all over this fair land, are found the monuments of their toils and their successes. The magnificent homesteads, in the shape of splendid farms and princely dwellings, that adorn the landscape in all directions, are the outcome of the toils of the past, or the rapidly parsing, generation. These people have left behind them, for the good of the country at large, an untarnished name and a virtuous example. These people have left to their children an inherit- ance that is often too lightly appreciated by them, for it is frequently the case that the sons and daugh- ters of the hard-wrought pioneers refuse to work the fields that have been cleared and fenced by those who went before them. They become too proud, or too indolent, to till the soil that has been enriched by the sweat- drops of their parents. Farms, that cost long years of toil to make them what they are, .are being morto^ac^ed for means to ensraore in some kind of speculation that in a few years collapses, leaving the would-be speculator penniless, and with the regrets that must chase him, like a restless spirit, through all the rest of his life, torturing him in his hours of wakefulness, and troubling him in his nightly dreams. One of the most gloomy outlooks that can be seen in this year of grace, 1888, is the fact that so many 108 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. of the younger portion of our population are learning to look with contempt upon the agricultural part of our national industries. They are too ready to exchange the healthy exercise, and independent posi- tion of the owner and cultivator of the soil, for the doubtful chances of commercial life, or the uncertain prospects of some town or city enterprise. How few there are who have common sense enough to know when they are well off in this world. But it is time to return to the affairs of John Bush- man and his friends. About a week before the time for starting, a sort of family consultation was held at Squire Myrtle's, when final arrangements were made. It was decided that Mr. Bushman and the Squire should each of them take a load — the one of pro- visions, and the other household stuff. William Briars was to go along and drive the cows. John was to borrow a waggon from Mr. Koanoke, the Yorkshire neighbor, and with his oxen take a load of seed grain and potatoes. The waggon was to be sent back by tying it behind his father's, on the return journey. Mary's mother insisted on going along to see what sort of a place her daughter was to live in. The bad roads and the long distance had no terrors for her that were sufficient to make her give up the idea. So it was decided that she was to go. The other mother would have been very willing to go, too, but she could not do so then. But she told the young people that she would come and see them when the sleighing came again, PREPARIXG TO MOVE. 109 The time and manner of their exit beincr fixed upon, it only remained that the articles needed be collected and ready at the time. There was not much trouble, however, in gathering up all that was wanted, or at least all that they could find room for in the loads. The people, who had known John and Mary from their infancy, were very much attached to both of them, and now that they were going away, every- body seemed disposed to show them kindness and to do them favors. One farmer gave John a couple of bags of seed spring wheat ; another sent a lot of seed oats ; and still another brought him half a bushel of millet to sow. Mr. Blueberry, an old and highly respected Quaker, brought one day a bag of pink-eye potatoes to John, for seed, and after presenting them, he gave him a small parcel, done up in a bit of grey cloth, saying, " Here, my friend, I have brought thee a lot of apple seeds to plant. If thee will put them in good ground, and when they grow to be as tall as thyself, set them out in an orchard, by the time thee has children big enough to pick up apples, thee will have plenty of apples for them. I have always liked thee, John, and I have liked thy wife since she was a little midget of a girl, and I hope she and thee will do well. Fare thee well." The old man's reference to children picking up apples, awakened some new thoughts in John's mind. He fancied himself some twenty years older. It was in the fall of the year. He stood in the door of a nice 110 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. frame house, lookinor through an orchard of well- loaded fruit trees toward Sylvan Lake, on the clear waters of which were playing flocks of geese and ducks. Among the trees, gathering apples, were boys and girls, ranging from the pretty miss of eighteen, down to the rollicking youngster of eight, all of them working and playing by turns, but giving the largest share of the time to playing. " John," said a soft and pleasant voice behind. He turned suddenly with a start ; he stood and looked in a sort of dreamy way at the speaker. It was Betsy. " What have you been thinking about that is so very interesting that you can't hear me call you to dinner. Three times I called you, and then I had to come after you. What is it, John ?" said his sister. "Never mind, Bet," said he; "in about twenty years from this I will tell you, if we are alive, and perhaps show you, too, what I was thinking about ; but to-day I can't." When John went to ask Mr. Roanoak for his waggon, the ready and cheerful manner in which the good-natured Englishman gave his consent would make it seem as though he had been anxiously waiting for an opportunity to oblige his young friend. " Aye, Jock ; tho beest welcome to tak the wagin, and, mayhap, tho'lt need sumut else from among my fixins. If tho do, say what it mought be, Jock, and tho'lt get it, if it beest anything but the old ooman." John thanked him for his kindness, and said he would not need anything besides the waggon. As he was starting away, the other called him back and said, — - PREPARING TO MOVE. Ill " Jock, when tho cooins for the wagiii, fetch a sack wie thee, and I will fill it up wie English bull's-eye potatoes for seed. If tho'lt plant un on new land, tho'lt grow them as big as turnips, and as rnealy as flour." The white English bull's-eyes were in vogue fifty years ago. As John walked homeward, after this interview, he began to question himself as to the reason of all the kindness that was being shown him by his old neigh- bors. John did not think of the many eyes that had been watching him all these years, as he had passed from infancy up to manhood. He did not know that his character had been highly appreciated for some years past. He did not know how often one had said to another, in their friendly intercourse, " That boy of neighbor Bushman's is a noble lad, so true, and honest, O 111 and obedient." He had not yet learned that a truth- ful, honest and thoughtful boy, brought up in any community, is not only a comfort to his parents and an honor to his friends, but he is also a blessing to the neighborhood where he lives, by his example and his influence over other boys. John Bushman had been such a boy, and the people all remembered it to his credit now that he was leav- inof the old home for a new one. But while the farmers around were showing so much kindness to John, their women folks were equally forward in helping Mary. And their presents were not, like many of the wedding gifts of to-day, an unwilling ofi:ering at the shrine of fashion, rather than the honest expression of sincere friendship. 112 AMONG THE FOEEST TREES. A number of articles of utility in housekeeping were given to Mary during her last week in the old home. One old lady gave her a pair of beautiful ducks, and another gave her a pair of beautiful geese, to swim, as they said, on Sylvan Lake, but not for " fox feed." An old playmate of hers brought her half a dozen hens and a rooster, " to lay eggs for custard pies for John and Mary, and to crow in the morning to wake them up in time," as she said. Besides all these, many dishes and napkins and sheets and blankets were added to the store provided by the two mothers of the departing couple. But the most unexpected and most valuable of these presents came from a quarter that surprised every one. The night before their departure old Hickory, the miser, came to bid them good-bye. Before leaving he said to Mary, " May I call you once more by the name that I used to do when you were a little girl ? I may not see you any more; will you let me just this once call you by the old, pretty name of long ago ?" There seemed to be a pathetic ring in the old man's voice that none could understand, and yet it touched every heart. Then, turning to the rest of the company, the old man said, " I will explain the reason for my strange conduct, for I know you think it strange. " Long years ago 1 had a loving and lovely wife, and one sweet little angel girl. They were everything to me. how near to my heart that woman and her baby got. But the small-pox came and took them PREPARING TO MOVE. 113 both. With her little head lying on my arm, my baby died at night, and my precious wife followed it the next morning. The world to me, since then, has had no charms ; and, as I turned from the grave that held the remains of my wife and child, I made a vow that nothing human should ever touch my heart again. " I travelled far by sea and land ; I worked at what- ever would pay the best ; I gathered wealth, I hardly knew what for, but its acquisition gave a semblance of rest to my weary heart. " Nineteen years ago I was passing along the road on a hot summer day; being thirsty, I came to this same house to ask for a drink. As I came along the path I saw a little girl playing with some pebbles; when I saw the little one I stopped as if spellbound to the spot. For a moment I fancied myself looking down a vista, and seeing at the other end the identi- cal child that thirty years before I had laid in the grave with its mother in an Old England graveyard. My first thought was. Can it be that, after all, the old Hindoos are rio-ht about the transmicrration of souls ? Of the child before me, and my own long-lost darling, it might with truth be said that sameness could go no further without becoming identity. " As I came up to her I said, Will you let me call you ' my little bright eyes?' " She looked at me for a moment, and said, in her childish way, ' Oo may tall me what oo yikes, if oo won't hurt yittle Mary.' The identical name, too, I said to myself. How strange it seems. " Well, that little child got nearer my heart than 114 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. any human being had done in thirty years. It seemed whimsical, but I could not help it; I resolved to settle in this locality, where this one little ray of light might occasionally shine upon my darkened pathway." Then, looking Mary in the face, he said to her, " May I call you by the old, sweet name that I gave my darling so lon^ ao'o ? " "Yes, poor heart-sore old pilgrim, call me what you like," she said, with tears in her eyes. Putiing his hand in his pocket, he took out a num- ber of shining gold coins. He placed them in Mary's hand, as he said, " Here, little bright eyes, take these as some slight compensation for the good you have done to a lonely, friendless man." Then turning to the young husband, he said, " John Bushman, my little bright eyes is an angel. Your little bright eyes is a woman. See to it that you never, never, never use her badly. Good-bye, and may Heaven's blessings attend you both." As the old man walked away, Mary said, with much earnestness, " 0, I am so sorry that I did not know of this before; there are so many ways in which I might have helped the poor old man." CHAP^rKR IX. HOMEWARD BOUND fHREE distinct epochs have marked the migra- _^ tory movements of the people of this Province betv\een the closing years of the last century and the last quarter of the present. The first one is included between about 1780 and 1800, the second is between about 1815 and about 1830, and the third reaches from about 1850 till 1875 or 1880. The first wave of immigration that struck the fron- tier of this Province was the U. E. Loyalists, when they sought shelter, under the British flag, in the wil- derness of Canada. The second was mostly composed of the children of the first settlers. When these came to be men and women they struck for the wilderness, as their fathers and mothers had done in their day. This wave rolled itself further inland than its prede- cessor had done. The Talbot District, the New Pur- chase, and the country north of the eastern settlements constituted mostly the objective points during this period. The third wave was made up of both native and foreign elements. It spread itself over the Huron tract, the Queen's bush, and the country between the Georgian Bay and Ottawa. 116 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. Of the trials endured, the hardships underwent, the privations suffered, the difficulties overcome, the dis- couragements met with, and the wearisome toils of many of those immigrants no one can form a correct estimate, unless his knowledge is the result of per- sonal experience. If all the facts setting forth the sufferings endured during, and as the result of, these migrations, could be written in a book, there is no doubt but it would be one of the most absorbing volumes ever read. John Bushman goes to the woods with the second of these mi^jrations. He forms a soit of connectincr link between the first and third, and, to a certain extent, his experiences are the counterpart of both of them. The position of the fathers was like that of soldiers that invade a hostile country, and tear up the roads and break down all the bridges behind them, so that there is no chance for retreat, nor for reinforce- ments to follow. With them it is either conquer or die — death or victory. The pioneel'S of this country had no choice but to stand at their post and fight it out. The Yankees had robbed them of their property, and driven them from their homes, so that they had no place to retreat to, and they had no kind friends be- hind them to send on needed supplies. With them it was, either get for yourselves or go without. Do or die. Produce or perish. But with John Bushman and his associates it was different. They had to face similar hardships, and do the same hard work, in clearing up the land, in mak- ing roads, in building school-houses, mills and churches, HOMEWARD BOUND. 117 as well as homes for themselves. But they had bet- ter facilities than their fathers had possessed iu doing these things. Most of the pioneers of John's day had friends that were able and willing to help them in case of an emergency, and if not, they could go to the front for a few weeks, in haying and harvest, and earn money to purchase what they needed. And this is equally true concerning the pioneers of the later migration. Many an honest backwoodsman has cjone to the front and earned the dollars needed to tide him over some pressing financial difficulty. And when the task was done he went to his rustic home with a light step, thankful that he had the ability and opportunity to help himself. It is in this way that many of the best homes of our land have been built up. The people who come after us will never fully realize what the pioneers have done and suffered to make this the banner Province of this wide Dominion; and if the time should ever come when justice will be done to the memory of these successive waves of im- migration, there is no doubt but the highest place will be given to the sturdy men who first sent the sound of the woodman's axe ringing through the frontier wilderness of Upper Canada. The day before John was to start a young man by the name of Moses Moosewood came to see him. He said to him : " I hear that Will Briars is going with you to the Purchase. Is that so? " " Yes ; he and I are intending to start in the morn- inor. He will drive the cows, and I am to take a load 118 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. of stuff with the oxen. The horse teams will come on the day a^'tcr, so that we will all reach the place about the same time," was John's answer. " Well, John," said Mose, as he was called by every- body, " I have a great mind to get ready and go too. You know I am old enough to strike out for myself. Father has plenty of help without me ; besides, if 1 am ever going to build up a home and have something of ray own, it is time that T began to lay the foundation." " That is all true," said John ; " but, Mose, do you want to know ray honest opinion about your going?" "Yes, John, I do," he answered: " I know you have not got a very high opinion of rae, in a general way, but I dare say it is as good as I deserve. But I would like very ranch to know what you think of ray chances in the bush. You know I have a right to a hundred acres of land whenever I choose to settle." " Well, Mose," said he, " if you could be persuaded to give up your wild, reckless ways, and keep your- self out of mischief, I don't know a young man that would be more likely to succeed. You have in you the stuff that 'inen are raade of ; but I am sorry to say that it is terribly warped and twisted. If you could get straightened out and keep straight, you could suc- ceed anywhere." " John," said the young man solemnly, " I thank you for your honest and f rie ndly words. I have had these thoughts myself before now. My mind is raade up ; time is too precious to be frittered away as I have been doing. Life is worth too rauch to throw it away on senseless and useless pursuits. I am going to HOMEWARD BOUND. 119 straighten up. I am going to turn over a new leaf. I am oroinor to start out on anew line of life." " These are noble resolves," said John, with great earnestness; "I am more than pleased, I am delighted, Moses, to hear you talk like this; but there is only one way in which j^ou can carry these good intentions to a successful issue." " What way is that?" inquired Moses. " Go to the great Helper of the weak, and seek strenorth and cjuidance from Him." "I have done that already, and He has heard and helped me. That is why 1 am here. I want to go with you, John, that I may have the benefit of your counsel and example. And another reason that I have for going is, that I may get away from my evil asso- ciations. What would you advise me to do ?" " I would not like to persuade you in any way to do what you might regret hereafter," John said. " But, so far as I can see, no young man, who is able and willing to work, can do any better than to go to the new country and make a home for himself. And if you do as you say you will, there is every prospect that you can do well by going with us to the bush." " Whether I fail or succeed, John, one thing is set- tled, and that is, I am done with the old reckless life that 1 have always lived," said Moses. " I am going to be a man, the Lord helping me. I will go with you and try my fortune in the woods. I only wish that I had gone with you last spring. I might have made a commencement then, as you did, and now 1 would have a place to go to." 120 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Well, Moses, you can't recall the past," said his friend, " but you can improve the present. Take this number of a lot to Squire Myrtle. Get him to write, and find if it is still vacant, and send in your name and certificate, showing that you are entitled to land. If the lot is vacant you will get it. If it is taken up you will be granted a lot in the immediate neighbor- hood." " How far is this lot from yours ? " he asked. " Will Briars' lot is between it and mine." " That is not so far but that we can be neighbors. I will go to see the Squire at once, and then make my preparations to start with the teams." " I think you had better wait until you get the lot secured, for two reasons. You would not know where to commence work, if you were there, until you get your papers. And if you go without them there is no telling how long you would have to wait for them, as there is not a post-office within twenty-five or thirty miles of the place," said Bushman. " Well, can't you find something for me to do until the papers come to hand ? Why not hire me for a month, and pay me by boarding me after I get my papers ? " " I would be very glad to do that. But how would you get the papers ?" was the reply. " When we come to the last post-office, as we are going out, I will write back to the Squire and tell him the name of it, and he can send the papers there, and I will come and get them.* I would rather do that *The writer can easily remember when there was no post-office nearer than thirty-five niiles from where the family lived. HOMEWARD BOUND. 121 than to lose so much time in waiting for them," said Moses. " That is well thought of," said John. " We will settle the matter in that way. You go to work for me until you want to start for yourself. I will pay you in board, and perhaps help you sometimes, if you wish it." " Now for another thing, John," said Moses ; " what will I need to take with me to the bush ?" " Well, the first thing is an axe or two — better take two, in case one should break. You will want your clothes, as a matter of course ; beyond these, you would do well to let your mother give directions and do the packing up, for, you know, she will think of things that we could not. Remember there is no need for superfluities in the backwoods. But if you have a gun you had better take it along, and some ammuni- tion, too, for there are plenty of things to shoot at ; and, in fact, a man is hardly safe without a gun," said John. "What kinds of game are there?" inquired Moses. '' Anything dangerous ? " " There are martins, minks, muskrats, beavers, otters, foxes, deer, moose, wolves, bears, and, if rumor may be credited, panthers have been seen occasionally. These are rather dangerous customers, more so than the bear or the wolf. Besides, there are wildcats and racoons in abundance, as well as squirrels of all kinds. Then there are wild ducks of different descriptions, par- tridges and blue pigeons in large numbers. Yes, Moses, you will have use for a gun for many years to come if you stay in that part of the country," John said. 122 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " My stars, John, but that is a long list. What would become of a fellow if all of these should come at him at once ? He could not climb a tree from the panther, he could not hide from the bear, he could not run from the wolf, and he coidd not dodge the wildcat nor stand before the moose," was Moses' rejoinder. " I think," said John, " that you would be safer if you met them all together than you would be to meet one of them alone. They would get to fighting among themselves about which should have you, and which was the best way of killing you. The bear would say, let me hug him to death ; the panther would say, let me claw him to death; the wolf would say, let me bite him to death; the wildcat would say, let me scratch him to death ; and the moose would say, stand back, all of you, and let me stamp him to death. " Then they would go into court to settle the ques- tions in dispute. Eloquent lawyers and astute judges would focalize their legal lore upon the subject. One lawyer would put in a plea, another lawyer would put in a counterplea. One learned judge would say it was one way, another learned judge would say it was an- other way. Then all the learned judges would say that it ♦was not any way. One attorney would move for an enlargement, another attorney would move to tighten things up by giving the screw another twist ; one grave counsel would show cause, another grave counsel would show contra. One month a point would be advanced a stage, another month a point would be put back a stage. "Now, while the snapping and snarling pack was HOMEWARD BOUND. 123 settling the matter, you could run away to a place of safety, like a wise man ; or, if you were fool enough to wait for the final decision, you would likely die with old age before you found out whether you were to be killed by the bear or the panther, or the wildcat or the wolf." " Well done, John," said Moses, " I knew you were something of a philosopher, but I did not know that you were a painter as well. That is a fine fancy picture that you have given." "It is not all fancy, my honest friend," said he. " When I was a boy, two men got into a dispute about the line between their farms. One wanted it moved two rods one way, and the other wanted it moved two rods the other way. They went into court, and lawed each other for thirteen years, until the case went through all the courts ; and Comfort v. Johnston, and Johnston* versus Comfort, became like a by-word among the lawyers all over the country. After they had spent money enough in law to have purchased either of the two farms, they settled the dispute by one buying the other out." " Well, I shall take a gun and a good supply of ammunition with me, anyway," replied young Moose- wood, " for I don't want to be killed by any of the snarlinor brii^ade." Among the necessary articles for life in the bush, was the flint and steel, to be used in producing fire, * Mr. .Johnston was tlie writer's grandfatlier, and the facts were as stated above. 124 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. when, as was often the case, the fire on the hearth went out. Instead of striking a match, as we do now, people would lay" a piece of punk on some gun- powder. Then they would produce a spark, either by snapping the gun over it, or by striking a flint with steel. When the powder ignited, it would set fire to the punk. With the help of a handful of tow, or some dry kindlings, our grandmothers, in this way, made the fire to do their cooking, and our grand- fathers could beg or borrow or steal, from under the dinner-pot, fire enough to burn their brush-heaps or log-heaps. When Moses spoke of taking ammunition, John was reminded that he had not yet provided for these indispensable appendages to new country housekeep- ing. He went and got a link of steel and a couple of dozen flints to take with him. The rest of the day was spent in getting things together, and in loading up the waggon, as John and Will Briars were to start the next morning at daylight. The condition of things at the two homes can be understood only by those who have had personal experience in the matter. When the first permanent break m the family circle is made, it seems to aflfect the whole household. When the eldest son is going away to commence for himself, it seems to throw a shadow over the old home. For some years his father has been leaning upon him more than he would be willing to confess, and he has been guided by his advice to a greater extent than he had been conscious of. And now he feels as if some part of his strength HOMEWARD BOUND. 125 was leaving him, as though part of hiraself was going away. The younger children have learned to look upon their elder brother as a sort of over-shadowing pro- tection. He has been to them at once a brother, a friend, a counsellor, and a guide. And now he is going away. How sad they look ! The smaller ones speak in whispers and walk on tiptoe, as if they were afraid to awaken the spirit of weeping that they seem to think is sleeping in some corner of the room. And who can describe the feelings of the mother, as for the last time she puts his things in place, and that place the box in which they are to be carried from her sight and from her home, perhaps forever ? How the deepest emotions of her soul will be awakened, as memory reproduces some of the events of the past. She will think of that night, so many years ago, when she gained, by a painful experience, such a knowledge of some of the mysteries of human life as she never had before. She will think of the time when the girl-mother first looked into the blue depths of the dreamy eyes of her baby boy. She will remember how, in the old times, she rocked the cradle with her foot, while her hands plied the needle. Then her mother-love would fly ofl' down the coming years, on the airy wings of fancy, painting beautiful pictures of the future of her son. " And now," she says to herself, "he is i^oino^ from me a man — a married man. Another has come, and thouoh she has not crowded me out of his aflections, she has crowded herself into the warmest corner of his heart. But I tlo not com- 126 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. plain. I don't blame Mary ; I did the same myself ; and I hope that her married life may be as happy as mine has been. I hope that John will be as good a husband as he is a son." Unselfish woman ! unselfish woman ! So it has been from the beginning ; so it will be till the end. The Myrtle home was no less agitated. When the eldest girl goes out from the old home, she seems to carry very much of the sunlight of that home with her. The young children have learned to look upon her as a kind of second mother to them. The older children look to her for counsel, feeling that in her they always have a sympathetic friend. The mother has coine to look upon her as a sort of superfluous right hand, or as a second self. The father has always looked on her as next to the mother in importance to the household. And in the Myrtle household all this was especially true. No daughter ever filled all the positions above named better thun Mary had done. She was leaving behind her four brothers and three sisters, all younger than herself. There was sadness in that home. The younger children had got so accustomed to have Mary hear them say their prayers, and put them to bed, that they thought no one else could do it as well as she could. When the last night came, poor Mary nearly broke down, as the children gathered around her, and at her knee said their evening prayers for the last time, perhaps, for- ever. But she soon regained her composure, and went on with her preparations for the events of to-morrow. John and Will Briars were on the way, and were one day's journey with the cattle. HOMEWARD BOUND. 127 Next morning early, the two teams, with their loads, started. But early as it was, they were not to get away without a surprise. As they came opposite the school-house, where John and Mary used to go to school and to meeting, they were hailed by a lot of young women, with Lucy Briars at their head. They were carrying a box, and when they came to the Squire's team, they asked him to take the box and put it where it would be entirely safe. They said, " We have bought a set of dishes, as a present for Mary, and we want you to take good care that they are not broken on the way." The Squire promised to do as they wished. Mary thanked them very sincerely, and gave them a standing promise, which she said should last a hundred years, that if any of them, either married or single, should ever visit at her home among the forest trees, they should be treated to the very best that Sylvan Lodge could furnish. At noon the next day they overtook John and Will, with the cattle. Then they all went on together, making but slow progress over the new and rough roads. Chapter X. SOME WHITE GIPSIES. (i^^T the close of the second day the movers found themselves still nine miles from their journey's end. A consultation was held as to what was best to do. To go on in the darkness of the night, made darker by the tops of the trees, many of which were evergreens, was a thing not to be thought of. Equally impracticable would be the idea of trying to reach the only house on the road, which was all of two miles ahead. There seemed to be no other way than to become "gipsies " for one night, at least. They decided to make a good fire, and draw the waggon up around it, then tie the horses and cattle to trees, feed them some hay, a number of bundles of which had been secured at a farmhouse, ten or twelve miles back, and get themselves some supper, and then put in the night as best they could. With people of energy, action is apt to follow deci- sion. So it was in this case. Every one went to work, and in a short time everything was arranged for " the night in the woods," a term by which this incident was designated in after years. SOME WHITE GIPSIES. 129 Every one seemed disposed to do a reasona' le share toward making the occasion not only bearable, but enjoyable as well. After Mrs. Myrtle and Mary had cleared away the tea things, and the two elder men had indulged in their " after supper smoke," as, I am sorry to say, they were in the habit of doing, the whole company sat down around the blazinor lire. Some sat on lo^fs, and others sat down on the leaves, and leaned themselves against the trees. When all was quiet, William Briars spoke and said, " Squire Myrtle, I don't remember that 1 ever heard you tell a story. Can you tell us some incident in your past experience to help to pass away the time ? " " Oh, as to that," said the Squire, " I am not much good at story-telling. As a magistrate, I have to deal with hard, stubborn facts so much that I have about lost all relish for fiction of all kinds." " We don't want fiction," said Will ; " I could furnish enough for the whole company, if that were needed. And as for romance, we need not go far for that. Our position to-night is romantic enough for anybody. But give us some of the hard facts, Squire, and we will be thankful." " About the funniest case that I ever had on my hands," said Squire Myrtle, " was the case of a man who was a firm believer in witches. He came to me with a complaint against one of his neighbors, and said the neighbor was a wizard. He said, * The man is in the habit of coming in the night; he steals me out of bed, takes me to the stable, puts a saddle and bridle 130 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. on me, turns me into a horse, goes into the barn, fills one of my own bags with wheat, puts it on my back, gets on top of it, rides away to the mill, leaves the grist, and then rides me back home again.' " When he first came, I thought he had gone out of his mind, for I knew the man very well, and I always looked on him to be a man of more than average intel- ligence. I tried to put him oflf, but he still adhered to his statement, and insisted on having a trial. To please him, I appointed a time to hear the case, sent a sum- mons to the accused party, and gave directions about witnesses. " In the meantime, I felt a good deal of curiosity to know how this thing was going to end. I knew the accused party to be a man of a low type intellectually and socially. But I knew nothing against his morality. How he would take it was a matter of some import- ance. If he had been of a higher intellectual cast, he would likely enjoy it as a joke. But how he would feel and act must be seen when the time came. " When the trial came on, all the parties were on hand. " The complainant testified positively to the state- ments made in the charge. And no amount of cross- examination could shake his testimony in the least.* * This is no baseless fiction. Seventy or eighty years ago the belief in witches was very common. Even some intelligent people were firm believers in the power of witchcraft. The writer knew an old man who went to his grave with the firm conviction that he had often carried grists for witches, and been fed oats in a trough like a horse. SOME WHITE GIPSIES. 131 " His wife testified that on several occasions her hus- band had gone to bed at the usual time, all right apparently ; that on waking up in the night she found him gone, and he could not be found ; that he would come home al)0ut daylight, complain of being very tired, go to sleep, and sleep till nearly noon. " Two of the older children corroborated the state- ment of their mother. So did a young man who made his home at the place. '• The accused, as a matter of course, demied having any knowledge of the affair from first to last. " Just at this juncture the miller, to whose mill the man-horse was said to have been driven, appeared on the scene and requested to be sworn. On being exam- ined as a witness, he said : ' On hearing this morning of this strange case, I felt it my duty to come here, as I think I can throw some light on the subject. On difierent occasions, on going to the mill in the morn- ing, I have found a bag of wheat standing just outside the door, and having the name of the complainant written on the Ijag with black ink. I do not know who left it there. But I made up my mind that, in some way, there was a mystery behind the affair, and resolved to keep my own counsel, and await fur- ther discoveries. Two or three times, when the owner of the name on the bags has been to the mill with other bags, I have been on the point of telling him about them. But I felt sure that he could not clear up the mystery. So I concluded to wait a little longer. There are six bags of good wheat safely put away in one corner of the mill. The owner can have them any time he calls for them.' 132 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " The matter began to wear a serious aspect. The evidence established two very important points. First, the absence from home of the complainant ; and se- condly, the fact that his bags were in some mysterious manner conveyed to the mill in the night. The case seemed to be getting more and more mystified. I don't know how the matter might have ended, had it not been that my wife had visitors that afternoon. Two women came on a visit. They lived on the road leading from the complainant's place to the mill. On my wife's telling them that I had a case on hand that afternoon, they naturally inquired what it was about, and who were the parties. My wife told them what she knew about it. Then one of them said, ' I think that, perhaps, I might give some information that would be of use.' " My wife brought the woman into the room saying, ' Here is an important witness for you.' " I asked her two or three questions, and then told her she must testify, which she did, as follows: " 'My husband's brother lives on the lot next to ours. He has been sick for more than a year. We are often called in the night to go to him. On two, or perhaps three occasions, we have met Mr. Crabtree going to- wards the mill, with a bag full of some sort of grain on his shoulder. He always seemed to be in a hurry. We thought it was very strange, but knowing him to be an honest man we said nothing about it.' " Light now began to dawn on the minds of all pre- sent. ' Sleep -luaUdng,' was whispered from one to another, until the room was in a perfect buzz. Pre- SOME WHITE GIPSIES. 133 sently some one started laughing. This went like a contagion until the court became a scene of boisterous merriment. The finishing touch was given to the pic- ture by Mr. Crabtree running across to Mr. Thistle- down and, taking his hand, asked him if he could ever forgive this ridiculous blunder. " ' We will let this pass,' said Mr. Thistledown. ' I thought you were acting more like a child than any- thing else. But I believed that you were honest in your fancies, and I hoped that you would find out your mistake some time. I am glad that you are satisfied.' "'Court is dismissed without costs, and verdict re- served,' said I, as the two men went ofiT together." "Well, Squire," said Will, "that is an interesting story, and we are thankful to you for telling it." " This is a good place for witch stories," said Moses. " With the moon shining down through the tree tops making shadows, and the fire shining up through the tree tops making shadows, we have such a combina- tion and interlacing of shadows, as are very well adapted to give hiding places to witches." "I move for an adjournment," said Mrs. Myrtle, who w^as somewhat wearied, and a good deal shaken up by the long ride, over the rough roads, on a lumber waorojon." " Carried unanimously," said the Squire, in response to his wife's motion. Will and Moses decided that they would stay up and keep a good fire while the rest lay down to sleep on some temporary beds, fixed under the waggons. After Mr, Bushman had oflfered a prayer for divine 134 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. protection, they all retired for the night, except the two young men. They faithfully fulfilled their engagement. Next morning the two young men had a good deal to say about Squire Myrtle's nasal powers as a first- class snorer, and John's ability as a nocturnal ox driver. They claimed that the one could snore loud enough to wake up a sleeping earthquake, and the other could holla loud enough to frighten a young tornado. After a lunch had been enjoyed, and a prayer offered by Mr. Myrtle, they hitched up the teams and started. In less than an hour they came to the house of their nearest neighbor, it being seven miles from their own place. Here John was warmly received by the family where he had got his bread and butter the year before. On inquiry they learned that Mr. Root and his men were to move out of John's house either that day or the next. They had already waited a week for John to come, as they did not like to leave the place till he was there. On learning this, it was thought best for John to go forward as fast as he could, and let Mose and Will drive the cattle, and the whole party to follow as fast as they could get on, over the new rough road. John reached the place about ten o'clock, and was just in time to met his old friends before a part of them went away. They gave him a warm greeting. Harry Hawthorn especially became almost boisterous in his reception of an old friend. SOME WHITE GIPSIES. 135 After the first salutations were over, the first ques- tion asked of John was, " Where's your wife ?" John answered, "She is coming on behind, 'along with some other friends, with three waggon loads of stutf." At this intelligence, the men began to hurrah for Mrs. Bushman, until the woods echoed in all direc- tions, hurrah, hurrah. Mr. Root here said, " Boys, I move that we don't move a foot until Mrs. Bushman and her friends come on. I want to see a living woman once more before I go ten miles further into the bush." " Shure, and oigh seconds that ; come, boys, we can all afford to take a half a day, or so, for the sake of welcomin' the leddy, who will be after presiding over Sylvan Lodge," said the exuberant Harry. " Let us give the lady a short address of welcome, to the backwoods," said Mr. Beach. " I propose that our respected ' boss ' be appointed to give Mrs. Bushman an address of welcome, when she comes," said John Brushy. " All right, boys," said Mr. Root ; " we will see what can be done." Then turning to John, he said, " I have had two reasons for staying here till you came. One is, I did not want to go and leave the house alone ; another is, I got a lot of hay and other things in by the sleighing, and I find that I have more than I shall need, and want you to take it off my hands." "All right," said John; "what are the articles you want to dispose of ?" " There is about a ton of hay, and some hams of 136 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. pork, and some flour, and a few bushels of potatoes," was the answer. " Very well," said John. " I will not only take them, but I will be glad to get them, as I shall need them. I have four head of cattle to feed, and I shall have two men besides myself and wife to board, besides comers and goers ; and if I am not much mistaken, there will be plenty of the latter for the next year or two." " Here are the waggons coming now, the first that have ever been seen on this road," said Mr. Root, As the teams came up, the men stood out in front of the house, and gave three cheers for the first white woman that ever stood in Rockland Township, as they said. Mary and her mother came forward, and were in- troduced to the company by John. When all had gone into the house, Mr. Root handed Mary the key of the door, and said, " Mrs. Bushman, by the appointment of the gentle- men who have, with me, occupied this house during the past winter, I now present to you the keys of Syl- van Lodge. We are sorry that we could not present it to you in a iliore tidy condition, but we have done the best we could. And, in honor of my men, I wish to say to you, that during our stay in this house I have not heard a word said that might not have been properly spoken in your presence. We look upon you as the first white woman that ever came to reside in this township. You will feel lonesome, perhaps, at first, but let me say, you will not be long alone." " During the week that we have been waiting for SOME WHITE GIPSIES. 137 your husband's return we have assisted Mr. Beach to put up a house on the lot next to this, and within three months he expects to have his family settled there. " Also, Mr. Hawthorn has sent home funds to brincr out his family. His lot is just over the boundary, and he intends to settle there in two or three months. I think that by the first of September you will have a warm-hearted Irishwoman and a true-hearted Enjjlish woman for near neio^hbors. And it is not improbable that next summer I may bring to the locality the best American woman in the State of Michigan, Mrs. Root. May you long live to be the pre- siding genius of Sylvan Lodge, and an angel of mercy in the settlement." The whole company cheered Mr. Root as he sat down. " Mrs. Bushman " was called for. Mary, covered with blushes, for the first time in her life attempted to make a speech. She said: "Mr. Root, and gentlemen, I thank you sincerely for your kind wishes, and for the cheering information you have given me. And I want to say to all of you, that if at any time any of you find the need of rest or refresh- ments, don't pass by this place. The door of this house will never be closed in the face of either the hungry or the weary." "These are truly spoken words, brave little woman," said John to his wife. "And I will stand by you in this thing, Mary, as long as we have a shelter over our heads or a crumb on our table." '''Trust in the Lord, and do ii'^od. and thou shalt 138 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.' This," said Mrs. Myrtle, " is an old promise, made cen- turies ago, but thousands have proved it to be true. You may do the same." The waggons were soon unloaded, and an invitation to wait for some dinner gladly accepted by Mr. Root and his men. After this was over the road-makers took their leave, after extorting a promise from Mr. Bushman and Squire Myrtle to make them a visit at their shanty before returning to their homes. After the men went away all parties were busy in examining the place. John's father and father-in-law were greatly taken up with the land and timber. They also gave John credit for the neat and tasty way in which the house was built. In fact, they expressed satisfaction with the appearance of everything they saw. Mary and her mother, with the help of Will Briars, were not long in setting things up in the house. There were no stoves to be put up in those days, but an old- fashioned fireplace answered the same purpose. With its lug-pole and trammel hooks, and flagstone hearth, sooty chimney, and its bed of hot coals, on which sets the old-time bake-kettle, with its big loaf of bread in it, and its shovelful of coals on the top, seems to the memory like a fading picture of the long ago. But fading and fanciful as this picture may seem to the housekeepers of to-day, it represents what was a do- mestic reality two generations back in this Ontario of ours in thousands of homes. Mary's mother had provided the wide and shallow SOME WHITE GIPSIES. 139 bake-kettle, with its iron lid, and the lonor-handled frying-pan as its accompaniment, these being among the indispensables in the backwoods. When the things were all placed, the house was far from being an uncomfortable one. It was divided into three rooms by rough board partitions. In one corner was the ladder, by which the " loft " or upper part of tbe house was reached. The " upstairs " of a log house is an indescribable place. If the reader has ever seen the upper room of a log house, no description of mine is needed. If he has never seen it, no description could make him fully appreciate the reality. It would pay him to travel fifteen or twenty miles, climb up a ladder eight or ten feet, and look around him. If he does this he will soon see that the place, like a bachelor's hall, Is a store-house of comical oddities, Things that have never been neighbors before. He will likely see all sorts of things, ranging from a baby's cast-ofF shoe to a high -post bedstead, with curtains of glazed cambric in bright colors. Before night the premises had been pretty tho- roughly exploied. Mary and her mother were delighted with the beautiful little lake, with its evergreen sur- roundinors. And rio^ht there and then John had to give them a promise that he would not cut away the pretty Canadian balsam trees that stood a little back from the water, and threw their cone-like shadows upon the mirror-like surface of the lake. When the two fathers and John took a walk 10 142 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. of the time when, " the heavens being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." As he sees the smoke rising in dark and whirling columns, as it ascends towards the sky, he is reminded of the " smoke that ascendeth for ever and ever." As he watches the fire leaping up in cones of flame, rising higher and higher, as the heat increases, until it seems to send up its blazing tongues as if to kiss the sun, he will think of a world on fire. And as the heated air rises and the cool air rushes in, from all directions, scattering the sparks and burning leaves here and yonder, he will think of the whirlwind of wrath, that will some day sweep all the enemies of good into the destruction that awaits the ungodly of every kind. About eleven o'clock in the morning, the three young men started out with lighted torches, made of dry cedar, to set the brush on fire. The older men and the women were to stay by the house, with pails of water to put out any little fire that might kindle too near the house or stable. The progress of the young men could be followed by the track of smoke and flame that they left behind them, and in about twenty minutes the whole clearing with the exception of the little space was in a solid mass of smoke and flame. . They all stood and looked at the scene before them, until the heat sent the women into the house. The men, bl^-^ded by the smoke, covered with ashes and dust, and dr^ -kping with per- spiration, battled back the fire when it came danger- CLEARING LAND. 143 ously near to the house, but in half an hour the hardest of the fight was over. " Burnt as black as your hat and nobody hurt and no harm done," was the laconic remark of Moses Moosewood at one o'clock p.m. that April day. " Boys," said John to William and Moses, " would you like to take a stroll and have a look at your lots? We can't well do any more here to-day." They were both pleased with the proposal. They went into the house and loaded two guns to take with them. " John, are you not afraid of getting lost?" inquired Mrs. Myrtle. " No, mother, I cannot say that I am." " It seems to me," she answered, " that there is o^reat danger in getting lost in such an unbroken wilderness. I suppose that in some directions you might go a hundred miles and not find a house. What would you do if you got oflr", where you could not make anybody hear you holla — and when you could not tell the way home." " Well, in that case I don't know what we would do," said he, " but we are not going to place ourselves in any such position ? But you ask, how far would we travel before we would find a house if we started in the wrong direction ? That would be a hard ques- tion to answer. The Indians and old hunters say that to the north there are lakes as large as Lake Ontario, but they are a long way oflf. I don't intend to take my friends to hunt up these northern waters, as we would find nothing better than fish and Indians when we trot to them." 144 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. "Have you a compass ? " asked Mrs. Myrtle. " No, we don't need one," said John. " How can you tell in what direction you are going without a compass ? " she asked. " Wherever nature has planted a hemlock tree, there it has planted a compass, and one too, that is not affected by mineral deposits," answered John. " How is that," inquired John's father, who came in just in time to hear the remark. " Last summer," said he, " two Indians came along one day, and asked for somethinof to eat. After they had taken what I gave them, one of them said: 'Me like to gib white brother some to pay my dinner. Me hab no money, but me tell you someting. Did white brother ever see hemlock compash ? Me guess not. Look at that tree dere,' said the Indian, pointing to a large one that is chopped down since. ' Look up-up to very top. You see him lean over to east. Every one hem- lock lean over to see sun rise, sun home of Great Spirit,' said he. " As they were starting away I asked them their names, and where they lived. The old one answered, my name is Leaning Tree. My friend's name is Bend- ing Limb. We live in Huron country, at Saugeen Kiver." ' ' There is a germ of pleasant thought Here by the wildwood Indian taught. That nature bows a reverent head When morning sun comes from its bed." " Well, John," said the Squire, " do you think there is any truth in the Indian's notion about the hemlock ?" CLEARmO LAND. 145 "Decidedly there is truth in it," said John. "You can't find a hemlock tree that the top branch don't lean to the east, unless the top has been broken off. And with this fact to start with, we can find any point where we have hemlock timber to look to." " How is it that we never heard of that before? We have Indians in our vicinity, and we never hear any- thinor like that amono^ them," was the remark of John's father. " I suppose," answered John, " that one reason is because hemlock is not plentiful in that part of the country, so that the Indians have some other method of findin<^ their way from point to point." I have omitted to mention that two dogs had been brought along with the company; the one was a large mastiff, and the other a gray bull-dog, with a mixture of Scotch terrier. This dog was allowed to follow the young men to the bush. He belonged to Mose. They soon came to the corner of Will Briars' lot. Here they saw the pretty little spring, by the side of which the surveyors were taking their dinner when they heard the sound of John's axe the year before. Will and Mose were delighted with the place. "Here," said W^ill, "I shall build my house, and there will be no wells to dig." " Yes," said Mose. " You can build your stable in that low place down there by the big hemlock. Then you can fix spouts to take the water as it pours out of the rock, and carry it right into the stalls without once having to lift it. Won't that be handy ? " " Look, boys," said John. " See ; that big tree-top 146 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. leans to the east. Now we will go east about half a mile, and see what the land is like. Then we will turn south about half a mile. That will take us on the lot that has been applied for by Mose. Then we will turn west for half a mile, then north for half a mile, and come back to the place of starting, as the docu- ments say. Now let us see how nicely we can go around a square by the help of the Indians' hemlock compass." " All right," said the other two. " You go on, and we will follow." " Well," said John, " I will go ahead, and let Mose keep two rods behind me, and let Will keep two rods behind him, on a straight line. We will start east, and if I turn to the right or left Will must tell me. In this way we can go almost as straight as a staked line, if we are careful." They started, and went on as fast as they could walk. The dog kept taking little circles, and some- times chafing a chipmunk to its hole, and at other times treeing a red squirrel. He kept himself in mo- tion till they came to the tirst turning point, according to their reckoning. While they were getting their bear- ing for the next start Will cried out, " See that strange-looking thing there ?" pointing with his finger. " What in the world is it ?" On looking, John saw something moving on the ground that seemed to be neither walking nor run- ning, but it was waddling along a little faster than a snail, but not quite as fast as a duck. When John saw what it was he said to Mose, " Call CLEARING LAND. 147 your dog, and hold him, for it will ruin him if he gets hold of that creature. It is a porcupine." But it was too late The dog had got his eye on the porcupine, and in less time than it takes to write it he had hold of it. For a couple of minutes it seemed as though the dog was shaking a basket filled with white thornpins, and scattering them at such a rate that it was difficult to see the dog or his victim. But the fight was soon over, and the porcupine lay dead, nearly torn to pieces by the ferocious dog. But such a looking dog as was there to be seen is not often found. His mouth and eyes, and face and neck, and breast were thick with quills. In fact, he looked as though he had suddenly turned himself into a porcu- pine, only the quills were stuck in the wrong way. It was a sad sight to witness the sufferings of the poor brute as he rolled on the ground, and tried to dig the quills out of his mouth with his paw^s ; and in every possible way he seemed to try to make them under- stand his tortures, and to ask them to help him. After a while John said to Mose, " You can do as you like, but if that was my dog I would put him out of his misery as soon as possible. He never can get over this, and the longer he lives the more will he suffer." Mose said, " Boys, if either of you can put him out of pain by shooting him, I wish you would do it, for I confess I have not the heart to kill the poor brute, after he has come with me so far from his good home." John Bushman quietly lifted his rifle, and in two minutes the dog lay dead beside his victim and his destroyer. 148 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. The three formed into line and started south for half a mile, as near as they could guess it. They then turned west, and at the end of another half mile they turned north. " Now," said John, " we shall soon see how the old Indian's hemlock compass works, and what kind of surveyors we are." " For my part," said Mose, " I have been more in- terested in the land and timber than I have in survey- ing. I never saw finer timber than we have come through since we started." " John," said Will Briars, " how will we know when we get back to the starting-place ? We did not leave any mark." " The spring is there," answered John, " and the big hemlock will be a guide to the spring. We can't mis- take them both." " Is it not wonderful what a Bushman one summer in the woods has made of John," said Will to Mose. " Yes," said Mose ; " do you think that we can learn as much in so short a time ? " " Boys," said John, " none of us need pretend great ignorance of the woods. We can easily remember when there was plenty of bush in Pelham, and other townships around where we were raised. But going into a new place, and into a strange wilderness, is like going into wicked company. One wants to keep his thoughts about him, so as not to forget where he is." They now started north to find the spring. After walking nearly half a mile, they saw the large hem- lock, a little out of their course. But the deviation CLEARING LAND. 149 was SO trifling that they were well satisfied with the result of their experiment. It was now near sundown, so they went home, and found that supper was ready, and the people at the house were waiting for them. They had an appetite for their supper, so there was not much talking done by any of the young men till after the eating was over. Then they related the afternoon's adventures. Every one felt sorry for the fate of poor Grip, as the dog was called. That his backwoods life should terminate so suddenly and traoficallv was sad indeed. But, as no one was to blame but Grip and the porcupine, and, since they were both dead, there could be no reflections cast on any one. So Grip, like many another hero, soon passed out of sight and memory. Poor Grip ! he conquered, but in conquering died. " Well, boys," said Squire Myrtle, " since you have been away Mr. Bushman and I have done two good things. We have made half-a-dozen first-class hand- spikes, and we have found a beautiful spring of clear, cold water. The time will come when the spring will be worth a good deal." " Where is the spring ? " asked John, earnestly. " In a thick clump of cedars, only a few feet from the edge of the lake," answered the other. " I am very glad to hear it," replied John ; " I have often thought about water supply. But I had no idea of springs about here, as the ground is so dry, with no rocky ledges in it." " Well, the spring is there, all right," said John's father, " and it is a good one. Water enough to supply two or three families." 150 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Don't talk about springs," put in Mose, " till you have seen Will's spring ; it comes out of the rock in a stream the size of your arm, as clear as crystal, and as cold as ice- water. It corner out about three feet from the ground. By building his house in the right place, he can carry the water in pipes to his kitchen, and from there he can send it to his stable, and into the trouo^hs to his cattle, without either liftinor the water or taking the animals out of the stall." Next morning the five men went to work to clear off ground for spring wheat. The two older men were old hands at logging. The young men had not done very much at it ; but they had some experience, and were willing to learn. John's oxen proved to be a good team for the work. They seemed to know what had to be done, and how to do it, and they would do their work without being whipped up to it. The first day they logged and " picked up " an acre or more. They fired the heaps after night, before going to bed. Next morning the heaps were well burned down. The operations of the day before were repeated, another acre was logged off' and set fire to. The next day was the Sabbath, and it was spent in resting, and in religious worship and conversation. On Monday the two older men took a couple of guns, and Rover, the big dog, and went to pay the promised visit to Mr. Root and his men. The road was cut out and logged to the place where the men were at work, so there was no difficulty in finding their way. They came back before sundown, bringing a lot of CLEARING LAND. 151 partridges, that Rover had started up, and the men had shot them. They had a f^rlowin;^' account to give of the land and timber where they had been. But they did not see any signs of a house, or shanty, from the time they left till they came back. "John," said Mose, " You will be able to tell, in the years to come, that you were the first settler in all this section of country." " I think," said John, " that I cut down the first tree north of where Mr. Ashcraft lives, that is seven miles south of this, you know." " What made you come so far back, when there is plenty of good land before you get to this ? " asked Mrs. Myrtle, of John. "Well," answered John, "you see, I picked out the lot on paper, and the distance looked small on paper. I could not tell which was settled, and which was not, by looking at the surveyor's maps. But when I came last spring, and found that my land was so far in the rear, I felt a little like going back, and waiting till some settlers would come in. But then I thono'ht it would not be manly. And I made up my mind to face the difficulty, and I am glad now that I did so. Now I will have a start sooner than I could have had if I had waited for some one else to break the road." The young men had made out a good day's work, so the Squire said, and they felt that they could get along very well without the older men. But they could not do so much in a day. By Wednesday night they had about five acres cleared, all but hauling off the rail cuts. That one 152 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. man and a team could do, and John was to do it, and Mose was t'o go and help Will commence on his lot, till John got his wheat sowed. Then Will was to help at the logging again. On Thursday morning the old people started home. Mary and her mother parted without any very bois- terous demonstrations. They both had a good supply of fortitude and self-control, so that the parting was not as sensational as it would have been between per- sons of a more volatile nature. Though they had never before been apart for one week, and now they were parting for at least a year, neither of them gave way to her feelings. After old Mr. Bushman saw how the two women deported themselves, he said to John, " There is good stuff. There are two Christian philosophers done up in women's clothes. ' William Briars wrote a long letter to Betsy, and put a large red wax seal on it, that made it look like some of the imposing legal documents of the present day. This he handed, with great caution and with strict injunctions to secrecy, into the hands of Mrs. Myrtle, who promised him that nobody should see it or hear from it until she could place it in Betsy's own hands. Squire Myrtle was to send the papers for the lot when he got them, for Mose. He was to direct them to Greenbush post-office, a new office opened since last fall. This would be only twenty miles away. Mose said he could go and come in a day. After receiving many loving messages to those at CLEARING LAND. 153 home, from all the young people, the two teams started homeward about eight o'clock in the morning of a warm, bright April day. After they were out of sight John said to the other young men : " Now, boys, we're in for it, to sink or to swim, to succeed or to fail, to live or to die. Boys, what this neighborhood is to be in future years very largely depends upon us. Shall it be a respectable, orderly, well-doing neighborhood ; or shall it be the home of rowdyism, and the birth-place of all kinds of mischief ? Now let us, right here and now, solemnly pledge ourselves to three things. First, we will always do what we think is the right thing, by everybody ; secondly, we will, both by precept and example, divscourage others from doing what is wrong; and thirdly, we will stand by each other, no matter who else may come here, and no matter what may happen in the settlement. If we do as I propose, we will be a source of strength to each other, and a blessing to the community." " I am ready to do as you say John," said Mose, " I know that I shall need help, and I am willing to do what I can to help others." " What do you say Will," asked John. " As to that," said Will, " I am with you until the end of my life, by the help of God." " We will consider that matter signed, sealed and delivered," John said, as he walked into the house to see what Mary was doing. He found her standing at the table washing up the breakfast dishes. 154 AMONG THE FORKST TREES. He turned her face up, and kissed her, and said, " Are you sorry. Mar}', that you took the situation of a pioneer's wife ? " " No, John," she answered ; " I did it voluntarily, because I wanted to be where you are, I expect to be lonesome for a time; but under the great guiding hand it will all come right in time. I like to be a pioneer's wife, John; I certainly do. ^ -r, t» - Chapter XII. SOWING AND REAPING. Y the first of May John had the ground ready for his spring wheat and oats. He had brought with him some tools, a thing that every man going into the bush ought to do. If necessity is not the mother of invention, it certainly is a mighty stimulant to the inventor. At the dictation of necessity men not only adapt themselves to new modes of living, but they frequently become experts at new methods of securing a livelihood. Mechanics become farmers, and farmers are turned into mechanics, and both become something else, as circumstances change. And a man that can not, or will not try to comply with these demands of new country life, should never think of being a pioneer. It' he does, the chances against his success are fully nine to one ; and it is a moral certainty that he will have a desperate hard time of it at best. A man that can't make a handle and hang an axe, or grind and hang a scythe, had better allow some one else to do the pioneering, and wait till the country is suppli(^'(l with thi^ various tradesmen before he goes to live in it. U 156 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. People who have no ingenuity about them have no business in the backwoods, not even as hunters, lest they get lost and are never heard of more, or are found only in a condition to be buried. But John Bushman was not one of this sort. He had energy and ingenuity. And although he had spent his boyhood and youth on his father's farm, he had got a good many mechanical ideas, and about home he was called " handy," whatever that means. He went to work and made himself a three square harrow, or drag, as it was often called in those days. But he made one slight mistake in putting in the teeth. Instead of putting them in straight, or slanting them back a little, he slanted them forward a little. And it was wonderful how that harrow would tear up the ground. But it was also marvellous how it would hold on to a stump or a root when it caught fast to them. John was well pleased with his work, and he made that harrow do service for two or three years. He said he could afford to stop and lift it when it got fast, because it did such good work when it was moving. Next morning, after breakfast, John said to Will and Mose, " Boys, I want you and Mary to come out and see me sow some wheat." " What for ? " inquired they. "Because in after years, when this country is all cleared up, and everything is changed, I want you to be able to say, that you saw the first handful of grain sown in this township. It will be something for you to tell your children of, you know." SOWING AND REAPING. 157 "Children, indeed," said Will. "Yes, John, I like your suggestion. But is it not wonderful how soon married folks learn to talk like fathers and mothers ?" " We were children not lonor aoro," said Mose, " and I remember how 1 always liked to hear my mother tell about things that happened when she was a girl." " Well, come on," said John. " But, hold a moment. Mary, I want a couple of pieces of cloth of some kind for flags, so that I can go straight, and sow even." "Will white towels do ?" she inquired. " Yes, anything that I can tie on the end of a stake, and see it across the field," said he. John took the cloths and fastened them to two stakes, one of which he placed at each end of the ground to be sowed. Then he began to march with a measured step across the ground, and scattered the seed wheat broadcast as he went backward and for- ward. After he had gone a few rounds Mary said to Will and Mose, " He looks like a farmer already, don't he?" " Yes, he does," said they. Then turning to Moses, Will Briars said, " Look here, my friend, we have got to hustle things pretty lively, or John will leave us so far behind in the race that we will forget that we started with him. He goes at everything in a systematic way, and he seems always to do his best at everything he undertakes. These, you know, are the men that come out ahead." "Yes, that is true," said the other. "And we may very safely take him for a pattern in more ways than one. But is it not time we were going to work ?" 158 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " Don't get too proud of jyonr farmer, Mary," they said to her as they went off to their work. By this time John had got ready to start the harrow. He had often driven a team to harrow on his father's farm, but this was the first time that he had his own team hitched to his own harrow, and putting his own grain into his own ground. He started to work, and as the harrow teeth tore up the fresh, black soil, John thought that he had never seen finer land. And as he walked along behind the oxen, and watched his work, with an occasional glance at Mary, who sat in the door looking at him at his work, John took a sort of mental inventory of his possessions. First, and foremost, there was his young and prudent wife, next came his two hundred acres of good land, then his cattle and other property, then his health and dexterity, then his kind friends. " All these," he said to himself, " with an approving con- science, and the assurance of Divine favor, ought to make any man happy." He worked away with a light heart, and by the time the other men came home from their work he had one bushel of wheat nicely harrowed in. The next day was Sabbath, and it was spent much the same as was the last one, only there was less variety in the exercises, as there were not so many to take part in them. But it was a day of rest and refresh- ment to all of them. As the evening came on, and as they sat around the fire, Moses said to the rest of them, " Do you know that since I changed my course of life I have more SOWING AND REAPING. 159 real enjoyment in one day than I had in a whole year before. I used to think that, for a young person, a reliofious life was like a winter's fo^c, both dark and freezinof. But I never knew what heart sunshine was until I gave my heart to the Master." " I believe you, Moses," said John. " I have had the same kind of experience, and can testify that what you say is true." " But, John," replied he, " you never had one part of my experience — I mean the wild, reckless, sinful past. You never used to do such things as I and many others did." " Outwardly I might not have appeared so bad, but, you know, sin has its headquarters in the heart. My heart, Mose, might be as bad as yours, and yet, being diiFerently constituted, and being under different influ- ences, the evil in me might not show itself to the world to the same extent. And this, too, not by any desire on my part to deceive the world, but by the force of circumstances which threw around me power- ful restraints." " Do you think, John," broke in Will Briars, " that we can't tell what a man is by what he does, unless we know him fully ?" " Not in all cases, though we can in some. If we see a man committing wilful and deliberate sin, we need not be told that he is a sinful man, ' for by their fruits ye shall know them.' But if we see a correct outward deportment, we cannot always tell whether this deportment springs from a principle of right, in- fluencing the actor, or whether the action may not be 160 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. the result of some other cause. We give the actor credit for the outward act, but the hidden motives we must leave to be searched out by a wisdom hio^her and deeper than our own." On Monday morning, after breakfast, Mary said to Will and Mose: " How much coaxing will it take to get you two to stay and help me to-day ?" " What do you want done ? " asked they. " I want a nice hen-house built for my chickens and ducks. The hens are laying, and unless they are shut in for a while, I am afraid they will steal off in the woods, and the eggs will he lost, and perhaps the foxes or some other chicken-eaters will take the hens," was her answer. " I wonder if Rover could catch a fox ? I would like to see him after one," said Mose. " I hardly think he could catch a fox in the woods," answered John; " but if he had it in an open field he might." " Chasing foxes won't answer my question or build my hen-pen," said Mary good naturedly. " The mistress of Sylvan Lodge has only to issue her mandate to ensure attention and obedience on the part of her dependents," said Mose with a laugh. " Don't make fun of me, Mose. You are not my dependents," Mary said. " Yes we are, too," said he ; " for if you should turn against us, who would cook our victuals, wash our clothes, make up our beds, and keep us out of mis- chief ?" SOWING AND REAPING. 161 " My ! but that is a long, long list of questions to ask, and so soon after eating your breakfast, too. I don't see how you could think of them all at once," she answered. " But, seriously, I want the hen-pen built." " And you shall have it," Will Briars said ; " only tell us where you want it to stand, and give the size and description of it." " For instructions in this I must refer you to John. He knows better than I do where to place it," said Mary. Before John went to his harrowing, he hauled up a lot of poles for the hen-pen, and by night the young men had the job completed, to the entire satisfaction of all concerned. By the end of the week John had four acres of wheat, and one acre of oats, and a half an acre of millet, sowed and nicely harrowed in. Will and Mose, too, had got about ten acres underbrushed and an acre chopped. The next thing in order now, was to split the rails, and fence the fields of grain, to keep the cattle from it. This is an important part of the work on a bush farm. The rails are made from any kind of timber that can be split into pieces of suitable length, and small enough to be handled by one man. Cedar and pine are, perhaps, the best timber for rails. But vari- ous other timber is used, such as oak, either black or white, black or white ash, beech, elm, basswood, hickory, chestnut, and sometimes the knotty hemlock is made into rails. 162 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. John and Mose went to rail-splitting and fence- making. They found it pretty hard work at first. But they soon got used to it, and then it was like any other work, after one gets accustomed to it. About two weeks were spent in fencing, and by that time a good fence surrounded the sowed land, along with an acre for potatoes and vegetables of various kinds. By this time, too, the grain was nicely up, and beginning to look green, giving the place quite a farm- like aspect, and driving away the look of wild loneli- ness that is found in connection with a house standing alone in a burnt piece of ground among the stumps. Mary had got her ducks and geese so used to her that they would come at her call. She would let them out for a swim on the lake an hour or two in the middle of the daj^ Then she would call them up and feed them, and shut them in, for fear of foxes. The woods now began to show signs of summer, in the unfolding leaves, and the opening blossoms. Various wild wood flowers began to show their beauty, and numerous forest plants sprung up from their cold wintry beds and, shaking ofl" their coverins: of autumn leaves, that kind nature spread over them in the fall, they once more began to spread their leaves and add beauty and attraction to the scene, as their predeces- sors had done for a thousand generations. "John, what are these ? " said Will, one evening, as he threw down on the table a handful of some kind of plants, or rather of different kinds of plants. Looking them over carefully, and after smelling some of them, John answered : " These are adder- SOWING AND REAPING. 163 tonofues, or some call them deer-tong^ues. These are leeks; they are fhe best things to spoil milk and butter that grow in the woods. If the cows eat the leeks — and they are sure to do so, if they can find them — the milk and butter will have such a * leeky ' taste that it can be used only after eating the leeks ourselves. That seems to take the bad taste away. This," said he, picking up a plant with a large, round leaf. " is called Adam and Eve. And here is cow cab- bage. And this strange looking plant is the skunk cabbage." " How many more kinds of cabbage can you find in the woods ? " inquired Mose. " About as many as you can find cabbage eaters in the clearing," said John. One morning soon after these plants had been ex- amined, on going into the yard, John found that an addition had been made to his stock, in the shape of a fine heifer calf. "Now," said Mary, when John told her, "I shall soon have souie milk, and when Cherry follows the example of old Brindle, we can make our own butter, and raise the calves, too." " Well, Mary," said he, jokingly, " If that is not counting the chickens before they are hatched, it is making butter before the cream is soured." " Never you mind, John, the cream will be here, and the butter too, in due time." By this time the planting was all done, and the grain was looking well, and everything seemed to be prospering with these people in the wilderness. M .M*^ 4t^ % #«.« '^. '•^X T^*l ?^ w ftil lo g iJmI' lUrr ^ tor far «H lA k« kA«« W< If 1 MA AaitY M^ «ta M ItfVttkfMl ^-v 1I«#T «a ■ niT T . -- .; ^ €»M IJW 1 f**,i ^-1 u Al^l 0« i %: . %r-i «%4 ^y r «fli|4oT mr* »lf «»|lb4 Whrr. \\ '*r t • w«*. •■ . . « aaMi cifc^. I ^iy»»»><^ 9mff^ «•» 1 .:.Ufy 1 ■i; : : • i.\ r, _ in • :• . •. xmthtK lauo9 iowm^i^o ^ X ; '. • tit WA. .. ■ . */ u.. the t.>wu^h;p of iM »* wherene *'" .lOM ifotn. wj'i •"•» he tell yi 1 ri. from the township of Ashclown. ad I He U A ma ' •'{ 164 AMONG THE FOREST TREES. " John," said Moses one night, before he retired, " I have a mind to go out to the post-office to-morrow, and see if those papers have come. You know it's over a month since they were sent for. They ought to be on hand by this time ; don't you think so ? " " All right," said John. " But you will need to start early to go there and back in one day." '•'If Mary will put up something for me to take along to eat, I will start as soon as it is light, and take my breakfast as I walk along." " Certainly, I will give you something to take along with you. But you are not to go before you have breakfast, I will see to that," Mary replied. "Now, I don't wish to give you any bother, Mary," said he, " and I will do first-rate on a lunch for one day." " Whether you can or not, you won't get the chance to try to-morrow, if I am alive and well in the morning." " Better let her have her way, Mose," said John, " for I suppose she is like other women in that. I once heard an old man say that — ' When she will, she will, and you may depend on it ; And when she won't, she won't, and that's the end on it.' And he said that all women are that way." " Well, I shall not contend with her about the breakfast," said Mose. That would be too much like a man quarrelling with his own bread and butter." " In the morning, by sunrise, Moses was on his way to Greenbush post-office. But not before he had his SOWING AND REAPING. 165 breakfast, and a good one, too ; for Mary said that " when a man is cjoing to walk all day, he needs some- thing substantial to start on." When John went to the yard that morning he found another calf among the stock ; a heifer, like the other. " Now," said Mary, " I shall not have time to feel lonesome. With two cows to milk, and two calves to feed, and with chickens, and ducks, and ofoslings to take care of, and butter-making, and bread-baking, and cooking, and washing, and scrubbing, surely I can employ myself so that I will not feel lonely." When Will came in at evening, he said he had news to tell them, and on being asked what it was, he said : " This afternoon a man came to me, who says he has the lot right opposite mine, on the other side of the boundary. He has commenced working on it, and he has a temporary little shanty up already. He did not know that he would have neighbors so near him till he heard me chopping, and came to see who it was. He was greatly pleased when he found that he was so near the oldest settler in the township." " Well, I am thinking that he will be the pioneer in the township of Oakland, for that is where he is. Where did he come from, and did he tell you his name ? " said John. " He comes from the township of Ashdown, and his name is Woodbine. He is a man about thirty years old, and he has a wife and two children. He is a fine looking man, and he is a Lowland Scotchman. But he came ten years ago to this country." " I am