LETTER III.
The next morning, after a brief and very unsatisfactory toilet, and a breakfast which needs no description, your brother C. and his wife left us to return to their own log-house, entreating me to go and see them as soon as I should have recovered from the fatigue of the journey. You will perhaps wonder that they should have remained the night with us, over-crowded as we were; but the fact is, when we first came here, the forest-paths between our lots were so indistinctly marked out and so little trodden, that to be out after dark was not safe; and, indeed, it is a rule among the settlers here, that should any one be out after dark, the nearest neighbour must afford him a shelter till the morning. To go astray in the “Bush” is dreaded above everything.
I cannot describe how greatly we were shocked at the changed appearance of your youngest brother. In spite of his present happiness as a married man, he bore in his whole appearance the marks of the hardships he had gone through. He had left us, only a year before, in France in high health and spirits, expecting to find in America, and especially in New York, an El Dorado where he might easily employ his little capital to advantage. We found him now fearfully thin, his handsome face pinched and worn, and looking certainly ten years older than his brother, fully five years his senior. In some future letter I must give you a sketch of his many misfortunes, his failure in New York, and subsequent settlement in Muskoka, together with the amusing account of his marriage given me by your sister F.
My first employment in the Bush was to write to my lawyer, entreating a further advance of money, and to some kind friends who had already helped us for the same purpose.
As soon as this necessary work was finished, I began to look about me, both outside and inside of the log-house. I found that it was placed in the centre of a very small “clearing” of not more than half an acre; and the very sight of the dense forest circling us all round, with hardly any perceptible outlet, gave me a dreadful feeling of suffocation, to which was added the constant alarm of fire, for the dry season had made every twig and leaf combustible.
Had it not been for these drawbacks, I should greatly have admired the situation. An amphitheatre of rock behind the house, wooded to the very top, and the trees tinged with the glowing hues of autumn, was very picturesque; and the house itself, built upon an eminence, seemed likely to be dry and comfortable. The house inside was simply one tolerable-sized room, which, like the cobbler’s stall in the nursery ballad, was
“Kitchen, and parlour, and all!”
It was built of rough, unhewn logs, chinks of wood between the logs, and the interstices filled up with moss. There were two small windows, and a door in the front. The size of the house, eighteen feet by twenty-five.
When your brother-in-law’s logs for his house were cut, he called a “raising bee,” which is the custom here. Fourteen of his neighbours responded to the call. This is for building up the walls of the log-house. Strength and willingness are most desirable at “bees;” but for the four corners, which have to be “saddled,” skill is likewise requisite, and, therefore, four of the best hands are always chosen for the corners.
“Saddling” is cutting out a piece at the corner of each log, so that the end of each succeeding log, when it is raised, rests in the niche prepared for it, and thus the building, when finished, is as firm as a rock. Nothing is paid for the assistance given, but good meals are expected; and sometimes these “bees” are quite festive meetings, where the wives and daughters of the settlers wait at table, and attend to the wants of the hungry visitors. At a “bee” which your brother attended some time ago, all the young women were in their Sunday attire.
At your brother-in-law’s “bee” the female element was entirely wanting, and two or three little things went wrong; but excuses are always made for the ignorance of a new settler, and in subsequent meetings the fare has been better, and full satisfaction given.
In the centre of each log-house stands out, hideously prominent and ugly, a settler’s stove, with a whole array of pots, pans, and kettles belonging to it, which, when not in use, are mostly hung up on the walls, certainly not conducing to their ornamentation. Your sister, always fertile in expedients, hangs a curtain before these unseemly appendages; but my lively imagination pierces behind the veil, and knowing they are there, gives me a feeling of irritation and disgust which I cannot describe.
I may truly call the stove a voracious monster, for in the very cold weather it takes nearly the whole day’s chopping of one person to keep it filled up night and day.
You must not suppose that we had come into a furnished house. There had as yet been neither time nor means to get furniture of any kind. Dear F. had herself only been in possession a fortnight, and we were only too glad to sleep on the floor, to sit on upturned boxes, and to make our table of the top of a large chest. When at length, after many weeks’ waiting, our baggage arrived, for some days we could hardly turn round; but we were most thankful for the excellent bedding and the good warm blankets we had brought from France, carefully packed in barrels. All woollen goods are extremely dear in Canada, and, as contrasted with our English manufactures, very poor in quality.
You know that, from boys, both your brothers have been excellent amateur carpenters, and this fact they have turned to good account in the “Bush.” As soon as time could be found, your eldest brother made a bedstead for his sister’s confinement, and stools, and benches, which we found most useful. For a long time after our arrival in the “Bush,” and even after your brother-in-law and myself had received remittances from England, we were in imminent danger of starvation from the coarse, bad food, and the difficulty of procuring it from a distance.
At the time of which I write, the autumn of 1871, there was neither store nor post-office nearer to us than that at Utterson, fully six miles from our land. I have already told you what kind of a road we found it on coming in. The gentlemen of our different families had to bring all provisions in sacks slung upon their shoulders and backs, no light work I can assure you.
The staple food of the settlers consists of hard salt pork, potatoes, oatmeal, molasses, rice, and flour for bread, which every family makes for itself. According to the “rising,” employed instead of yeast, the bread was either bitter, sour, or salt, and we only began to get good bread when our clergyman from Bracebridge, months after our arrival, recommended us to use the “Twin Brothers’ yeast,” which we found answer very well. With regard to other articles of consumption, such as tea, sugar, coffee, etc., I was then, and still am, decidedly of opinion that we were using up the refuse of all the shops in Toronto. The tea was full of sloe-leaves, wild raspberry-leaves, and other natural productions which never grew in China; and it was so full of bits of stick that my son informed the people at the store that we had collected a nice little stock for winter fuel.
My chemical knowledge was not sufficient for me to analyse the coffee, which we really could not drink, but it was a villanous compound, of which the coffee-berry was the smallest ingredient; in short, we were fain to fall back upon and take into favour real chickory or dandelion, which, with a little milk and sugar, is tolerably nice, and as the roots are plentiful among the potato-hills in autumn, many of the settlers prepare it for their own use.
You know what a simple table we kept in France, but there our plain food was well cooked and prepared, and was the best of its kind.
We found the change terrible, and very injurious to our health, and, what was worse, the store was often out of the most necessary articles, and our messengers were compelled to return, weary and footsore, without what we wanted. We are much better off now, having a post-office and store belonging to the settlement only three miles away, kept by very civil and intelligent Scotch people, who do their best to procure whatever is ordered.
We suffered much also from the want of fresh meat, for though at times some one in the neighbourhood might kill a sheep, yet we seldom heard of it before all the best parts were gone. We also greatly regretted that in a country where even the smaller lakes abound with fish, we were so far away from any piece of water that we could not obtain what would have been a most agreeable change from the much-detested salt pork.
I come now to speak of a delusion which is very general in the “old country,” and in which I largely shared. I mean with regard to the great abundance of venison and game to be found in these parts. This fallacy is much encouraged by different books on emigration, which speak of these desirable articles of food as being plentiful, and within the reach of every settler.
I certainly arrived with a vague notion that passing deer might be shot from one’s own door, that partridge and wild-duck were as plentiful as sparrows in England, and that hares and rabbits might almost be caught with the hand. These romantic ideas were ruefully dispelled! There is little game of any kind left, and to get that good dogs are wanted, which are very expensive to keep.
None of our party have caught the most distant glimpse of a deer since we came, except your two brothers, who once saw a poor doe rush madly across the corner of C——s’ clearing, hotly pursued by a trapper’s deer-hound, at a season when it was against the law to shoot deer. Your sister-in-law once, venturing from C——s’ clearing to ours without an escort, was much alarmed at hearing a rustling in the “Bush” quite near her, and a repeated “Ba—a, ba—a!” We were told that the noise must have come from an ancient stag which is said to have haunted for years the range of rock near us. This mythical old fellow has, however, never been seen, even by the “oldest inhabitant.”
Your brothers have now and then shot a chance partridge or wild-duck, but had to look for them, and the truth must be told that when settlers, gentle or simple, are engaged in the daily toil of grubbing, and as it were scratching the earth for bread, it is difficult to find a day’s leisure for the gentlemanly recreation of shooting. Your youngest brother was pretty successful in trapping beaver and musk-rat, and in shooting porcupine; of the two former the skins can be sold to advantage, but as to eating their flesh, which some of our party succeeded in doing, your eldest brother and myself found that impossible, and turned with loathing from the rich repasts prepared from what I irreverently termed vermin!
I must now tell you how our lots are situated with regard to each other. C——s, having come out a year before the rest of us, had secured two hundred acres of free grant land, one lot in his own name, and one in the maiden name of his present wife, who came out from England to marry him, under the chaperonage of your sister and her husband. This has enabled him, since the birth of his little boy, to claim and obtain another lot of a hundred acres, as “head of a family.” His land is good, and prettily situated, with plenty of beaver meadow and a sprinkling of rock, and also a very picturesque waterfall, where, in coming years, he can have a mill. I have the adjoining hundred acres, good flat land for cultivation, but not so picturesque as any of the other lots, which I regret, though others envy me the absence of rock. My land lies between C——s’ and the two hundred acres belonging to your brother-in-law, whose very pretty situation I have already described.
I am sorry to say that the two hundred acres taken up before we came, for your eldest brother and sister, are at a distance of five miles from here; your brother, who went over to see about clearing a portion of them, says the landscape is most beautiful, as in addition to rock and wood there are good-sized lakes, which make the lots less valuable for cultivation, but far more beautiful to the eye.
When we had been here about three weeks, our young friend C. W. came to us from Montreal, where he had not succeeded in getting any situation, though he brought letters of introduction to Judge J. It is quite useless for young gentlemen, however well educated, to come out from the “old country” expecting situations to be numerous and easily attainable; all introductions from friends of yours to friends of theirs are for the most part useless, unless indeed addressed to some commercial firm. The best and surest introduction a man can have is to be a steady and skilful workman at some trade, and then he can command employment.
To return to C. W. He arrived, in fact, in the dusk of a chilly evening, and was near losing his way in the “Bush,” having to pass across my land, which was then almost untrodden. Fortunately as he advanced he betook himself to shouting, and luckily was heard and answered by C——s, who was just going indoors for the night. They soon met, and C——s took him home, and with him and your sister-in-law he boarded and lodged during the whole of his stay, for at your sister’s we were already over-crowded.
As the autumn advanced, we began most seriously to give our attention to building my log-house, hoping that I might settle my part of the family before the winter set in. Accordingly an acre of my land was cleared, and the logs for a house cut and prepared, a skilful workman being hired to help; and when all was ready, we called a “bee,” and took care to provide everything of the best in the shape of provisions.
Our well-laid plan was a signal failure, partly because settlers do not like coming to a “bee” so late in the year (it was November), and partly because some of the invitations had been given on Sunday, which, as most of the settlers near us were Scotch and strict Presbyterians, caused offence. Only three people came, and they were thanked and dismissed.
The very next day (November 11th), snow-storms and hard winter weather began; but in spite of this our four gentlemen, seeing my deep disappointment at being kept waiting for a residence, most chivalrously went to work, and by their unassisted efforts and hard labour actually managed in the course of a fortnight to raise the walls and place the rafters of a log-house not much smaller than the others. Their work was the admiration of the whole settlement, and many expressed themselves quite ashamed of having thus left us in the lurch.
After raising the walls, however, they were reluctantly compelled to stop, for the severity of the weather was such, that shingling the roof, chinking, and mossing became quite impossible. As it was, E. nearly had his hands frost-bitten. We were thus compelled to remain with your sister till the spring of 1872. We greatly felt, after we came into the Bush, the want of all religious ordinances; but we soon arranged a general meeting of all the members of the family on a Sunday at your sister’s, when your brother-in-law read the Church of England service, and all joined in singing the chants and hymns. Sometimes he was unavoidably absent, as the clergymen at Bracebridge, knowing him to have taken his degree at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and to be otherwise qualified, would ask his assistance, though a layman, to do duty for him at different stations in the district.
We found in our own neighbourhood a building set apart for use as a church, but too far off for us to attend either summer or winter. Here Church of England, Presbyterian, and Wesleyan ministers preached in turn, and thus some semblance of worship was kept up. I hardly dare describe the miserable change we found in our employments and manner of life when we first settled down to hard labour in the Bush. It was anguish to me to see your sisters and sister-in-law, so tenderly and delicately brought up, working harder by far than any of our servants in England or France.
It is one thing to sit in a pretty drawing-room, to play, to sing, to study, to embroider, and to enjoy social and intellectual converse with a select circle of kind friends, and it is quite another thing to slave and toil in a log-house, no better than a kitchen, from morning till night, at cleaning, washing, baking, preparing meals for hungry men (not always of one’s own family), and drying incessant changes of wet clothes.
I confess, to my shame, that my philosophy entirely gave way, and that for a long time I cried constantly. I also took to falling off my chair in fits of giddiness, which lasted for a few minutes, and much alarmed the children, who feared apoplexy. I felt quite sure that it was from continual fretting, want of proper exercise, the heat of the stove, and inanition from not being able to swallow a sufficiency of the coarse food I so much disliked. Fortunately we had brought out some cases of arrow-root, and some bottles of Oxley’s Essence of Ginger, and with the help of this nourishment, and walking resolutely up and down the clearing, where we kept a track swept for the purpose, I got better. Your eldest sister likewise had an alarming fit of illness, liver complaint and palpitation of the heart, doubtless brought on by poor food, hard work, and the great weight of the utensils belonging to the stove. I was much frightened, but after a time she, too, partially recovered; indeed we had to get well as best we might, for there was no doctor nearer than Bracebridge, eighteen miles off, and had we sent for him, we had no means of paying either for visits or drugs.
Christmas Day at length drew near, and as we wished to be all together, though our funds were exceedingly low, dear C——s insisted on contributing to our Christmas-dinner. He bought a chicken from a neighbouring settler who, in giving him a scare-crow, did not forget to charge a good price for it. He sent it to us with some mutton. Your sister has told me since, that while preparing the chicken for cooking, she could have shed tears of disgust and compassion, the poor thing being so attenuated that its bones pierced through the skin, and had it not been killed, it must soon have died of consumption. In spite of this I roused my dormant energies, and with the help of butter, onions and spices, I concocted a savoury stew which was much applauded. We had also a pudding! Well, the less said about that pudding the better. Nevertheless, I must record that it contained a maximum of flour and a minimum of currants and grease. The plums, sugar, spice, eggs, citron, and brandy were conspicuous by their absence. Still, the pudding was eaten—peace to its memory!
We all assembled on Christmas morning early, and had our Church service performed by your brother-in-law. Cruel memory took me back to our beloved little church in France, with its Christmas decorations of holly and evergreens, and I could almost hear the sweet voices of the choir singing my favourite hymn: “Hark! the herald angels sing!” There was indeed a sad contrast between the festive meetings of other years, when our little band was unbroken by death and separation, and when out of our abundance we could make others happy, and this forlorn gathering in a strange land, with care written on every brow, poverty in all our surroundings, and deep though unexpressed anxiety lest all our struggles in this new and uncongenial mode of existence should prove fruitless. For the sake of others, I tried to simulate a cheerfulness I was far from feeling, and so we got over the evening. We had a good deal of general conversation, and some of our favourite songs were sung by the gentlemen.
It was late when our party broke up; your brother C——s with his wife and C. W. actually scrambled home through the forest by moonlight, a track having been broken by snow-shoes in the morning.
A great grief to me at this time was the long interval between writing letters to the “old country” and receiving the answers, an interval which my vivid imagination filled up with all kind of horrors which might have happened to the dear ones we had left behind.
The close of the year silently came on, and I finish this letter with a “Sonnet to the Pines,” my first composition in the Bush, written partly to convince myself that I was not quite out of my wits, but had still the little modicum of intellect I once possessed, and partly to reassure your brothers and sisters, who were always predicting that I should bring on softening of the brain by my unceasing regrets for the past, and gloomy prognostications for the future.
SONNET TO THE MUSKOKA PINES!
Weird monarchs of the forest! ye who keep
Your solemn watch betwixt the earth and sky;
I hear sad murmurs through your branches creep.
I hear the night-wind’s soft and whispering sigh,
Warning ye that the spoiler’s hand is nigh:
The surging wave of human life draws near!
The woodman’s axe, piercing the leafy glade,
Awakes the forest-echoes far and near,
And startles in its haunts the timid deer,
Who seeks in haste some far-off friendly shade!
Nor drop ye stately Pines to earth alone.
The leafy train who shar’d your regal state—
Beech, Maple, Balsam, Spruce and Birch—lie prone,
And having grac’d your grandeur—share your fate!
