LETTER VI.
Summer and mosquitoes! Inseparable words in Canada, except in the large towns, where their attacks are hardly felt.
In the Bush, the larger the clearing the fewer the mosquitoes. It is, above all things, desirable to avoid building a log-house near swampy ground, for there they will be found in abundance.
We have four acres and a half quite clear, but unfortunately our log-house, instead of being placed in the middle, is at one end, with a well-wooded hill and a portion of dense forest at the back and at one end; delicious retreat for our enemies, from whence they issued in myriads, tormenting us from morning till night, and all night long.
This Egyptian plague began in the end of May, and lasted till the end of September. We being new-comers they were virulent in their attacks, and we were bitten from head to foot; in a short time we felt more like lepers than healthy, clean people, and the want of sleep at night was most trying to us all, after our hard work. Our only resource was keeping large “smudges” continually burning in pans. These “smudges” are made of decayed wood, called “punk,” and smoulder and smoke without flaming.
When I went to bed at night (my only time for reading) I used to turn a long trunk end upwards close to my bolster, and place a large pan of “punk” on it, so that myself and my book were well enveloped in smoke. Many times in the night we had to renew our pans, and from the first dawn of day the buzzing of these hateful insects, who seem then to acquire fresh liveliness, prevented all chance of sleep. Nor were the mosquitoes our only foes. Flies of all kinds swarmed around us, and one in particular, the deer-fly, was a long black fly frightful to look at, from its size and ugliness. Still, as the flies did not circle about in the air as the mosquitoes did, we could better defend ourselves against them.
We derived little or no benefit from the numerous remedies recommended by different settlers. In one only I found some alleviation—a weak solution of carbolic acid, which certainly deadened the irritation, and was at least a clean remedy compared with the “fly-oil” with which most of the settlers besmear themselves unsparingly.
Towards the end of June I entered upon an entirely new phase of Bush-life, which was anything but pleasant to a person of a nervous, susceptible temperament. This was my being in perfect solitude for many hours of every day. Your sister-in-law expected her first confinement, and we were so anxious that she should have proper medical advice, that it was thought advisable to place her in lodgings at B——e till the important event took place. Her brother coming to pay her a visit entirely agreed in the necessity of the case, and as he kindly smoothed away the money difficulty it was carried into execution. She could not go alone, and therefore your eldest sister accompanied her, and thus I lost for a time my constant and only companion.
I undertook now to keep house for both your brothers, as in his wife’s absence Charles could have little comfort at home. I only saw them at meal-times, and though your eldest brother came home always before dusk, yet I could not but be very nervous at being so much alone.
The weather became so hot, that the stove was moved into the open air at the back of the house, and to save me fatigue your brother cut a doorway at the back, close to where the stove was placed. Unfortunately there was a great press of work at this time, and moreover no lumber on the premises, and therefore no door could be made, and the aperture, which I had nothing large enough to block up, remained all the summer, to my great discomfiture.
At first I was not so very solitary, for a settler’s daughter, who had worked for your sister-in-law, came to me three times a week, and went on the alternate days to your sister F——e. We liked her very well, were very kind to her, and under our training she was learning to be quite a good servant, when an incident occurred which occasioned our dismissing her, which gave me great pain, and which has never been cleared up to my satisfaction.
Our poor dog Nero, who was an excellent guard, and quite a companion, was taken ill, and we fancied that he had been bitten by a snake in Charles’ beaver meadow, where he had been with your brothers who were hay-making. We nursed him most tenderly, you may be sure, but he got worse and worse suffered agonies, and in less than a week I was obliged to consent to our old favourite dog being shot. He was taken from my bed well wrapped up, so that he knew nothing of what was coming, while I walked far away into the wood, and your brother with one shot put the faithful animal out of his pain. Two days before he died a large piece of poisoned meat was found near the pathway of our clearing, and as from before the time of his being ill no one but this servant girl had gone backwards and forwards, as her father had a kind of grudge against your brother for driving his cattle off the premises, and as she never expressed the slightest sympathy for the poor beast, but seemed quite pleased when he was dead, we could not but fear that she had been made the medium of killing him. We found that he had been poisoned with blue vitriol, but we knew this too late to save him.
We buried him honourably, and I planted a circle of wild violets round his grave, and was not ashamed to shed many tears besides, which was a well-deserved tribute to our old and faithful friend.
After the girl was dismissed I found more than enough of occupation, for though your brother made and baked the bread, which I was not strong enough to do, yet I cooked, washed for them, and did the house-work, which I found sufficiently fatiguing, and was very glad after dinner to sit down to my writing-table, which I took good care to place so as to face the open door, never feeling safe to have it at my back.
Your dear sister F. was so kind, that at great inconvenience to herself, on account of the heat and the flies in the forest, she managed to come nearly every day at four p.m. with the children, and remained till your brother came back for the night.
He was occupied for many weeks in making hay with your brother and brother-in-law in the beaver meadow, a large one and very productive. They make a great deal of hay, and put it up in large cocks, but a great deal of it was lost by rotting on the ground, from not being carried away in proper time. The delay was occasioned by none of us having oxen of our own, and from not having the means of hiring till the season was passed.
The not getting money at the proper epochs for work is the greatest drawback to the new settler. If it comes too soon it is apt to melt away in the necessities of daily life; if it comes too late he must wait for another year.
I fully realised during this summer, that solitude in the Bush is not privacy. Though in case of any accident I was out of reach of all human help, yet I was liable at any moment of the day to have some passing settler walk coolly in, and sit down in my very chair if I had vacated it for a moment. I got one fright which I shall not easily forget. I had given your two brothers their breakfast, and they had started for their hay-making in the distant beaver meadow. I had washed up the breakfast-things, cleared everything away, and was arranging my hair in the glass hanging in the bed-place, the curtain of which was undrawn on account of the heat. My parting look in the glass disclosed a not very prepossessing face in the doorway behind, belonging to a man who stood there immovable as a statue, and evidently enjoying my discomfiture.
I greeted him with a scream, which was almost a yell, and advanced pale as a ghost, having the agreeable sensation of all the blood in my body running down to my toes! His salutation was:
“Wall, I guess I’ve skeered you some!”
“Yes!” I replied, “you startled me very much.”
He then came in and sat down. I sat down too, and we fell into quite an easy flow of talk about the weather, the crops, etc.
How devoutly I wished him anywhere else, and how ill I felt after my fright, I need not say, but I flatter myself that nothing of this appeared on the surface; all was courtesy and politeness.
At length he went way, and finding your brother in the beaver meadow, took care to inform him that he “had had quite a pleasant chat with his old woman!”
I knew this man by sight, for once in the early part of the summer he came to inquire where Charles lived? On my pointing out the path, and saying in my politest manner,
“You will have no difficulty, sir, in finding Mr. C. K.’s clearing,” he coolly replied:
“I guess I shall find it; I knows your son well; we always calls him Charlie!”
I had visitors during the summer, who were much more welcome. Two nice intelligent little boys with bare feet and shining faces, the children of an American from the “States,” settled in the Muskoka Road, used to come twice a week with milk, eggs, and baskets of the delicious wild raspberry at five cents a quart. While they were resting and refreshing themselves with cold tea and bread-and-butter we used to have quite pleasant conversations. They were very confidential, told me how anxiously they were expecting a grandmother, of whom they were very fond, and who was coming to live with them; of their progress and prizes in the Sunday-school some miles from here, which they regularly attended; of their garden and of many other little family matters; and when I gave them some story-books for children, and little tracts, they informed me that they would be kept for Sunday reading. They never failed, with the things they brought for sale, to bring me as a present a bunch of beautiful sweet-peas and mignonette, and occasionally a scarlet gladiolus.
When they were gone I used to sit down to my letter-writing; and after all my grubbing and house-work, I felt quite elevated in the social scale to have a beautiful bouquet on my writing-table, which I took care to arrange with a background of delicate fern leaves and dark, slender sprigs of the ground-hemlock. The very smell of the flowers reminded me of my beloved transatlantic home, with its wealth of beautiful plants and flowering shrubs, and every room decorated with vases of lovely flowers which I passed some delicious morning hours in collecting and arranging.
When the fruit season had passed, I lost my little visitors, but was painfully reminded of them at the beginning of the winter. Your brother-in-law was called upon, in the absence of the clergyman, to read the burial service over an old lady who had died suddenly in the settlement. This was the grandmother of my poor little friends. She had always expressed a wish to spend her last days with her daughter in Muskoka, but put off her journey from the “States” till the weather was so severe that she suffered much while travelling, and arrived with a very bad cold. The second morning after her arrival she was found dead in her bed.
I remained all the summer strictly a prisoner at home. The not being able to shut up the log-house for want of the second door of course prevented my leaving home, even for an hour; for the Bush is not Arcadia, and however primitive the manners and customs may be, I have failed to recognise primitive innocence among its inhabitants.
As to the berry-picking, which is the favourite summer amusement here, I would sooner have gone without fruit than have ventured into the swamps and beaver meadows, where the raspberries, huckleberries, and cranberries abound. My fear of snakes was too overpowering. Charles killed this summer no less than seven; and though we are told that in this part of Canada they are perfectly innocuous, yet your brother pointed out that three out of the seven he killed had the flat conformation of head which betokens a venomous species.
In the meantime our news from B——e was not too good. After a residence in the lodgings of five weeks, your sister-in-law had been confined of a dear little boy, and at first all had gone well, but after a week she became very ill, and also the baby; and as he had to be brought up by hand, and there was great difficulty in getting pure, unmixed milk in B——e, it was thought better, when he was five weeks old, to bring the whole party back. That memorable journey must be reserved for another letter.
I noticed this summer many times the curious appearance of our clearing by moonlight. In the day the stumps stood out in all their naked deformity, as we had no “crops of golden grain” to hide them; but at night I never beheld anything more weird and ghostly. The trees being mostly chopped in the winter, with deep snow on the ground, the stumps are left quite tall, varying from five to seven feet in height. When these are blackened by the burning, which runs all over the clearing, they present in the dim light the appearance of so many spectres. I could almost fancy myself in the cemetery in the Dunkirk Road, near Calais, and that the blackened stumps were hideous black crosses which the French are so fond of erecting in their churchyards.
They have in America a machine called a “stump-extractor;” but this is very expensive. By the decay of nature, it is possible, in two or three years, to drag out the stumps of trees with oxen; but the pine stumps never decay under seven or eight years, and during all that time are a perpetual blot on the beauty of the landscape.
I was much interested in a sight, novel to me, namely, the fire-flies flitting about in the tops of the tall trees. They seemed like so many glittering stars, moving so fast that the sight became quite dazzled. In the cold weather, too, the aurora borealis is most beautiful; and it is well worth being a little chilly to stand out and watch the soft tints melting one into the other, and slowly vanishing away. But for these occasional glimpses of beauty and sublimity, I should indeed have found existence in the Bush intolerably prosaic.
I very much missed the flocks of birds I was accustomed to in Europe; but as I always forbade any gun being fired off in my clearing, I soon made acquaintance with some. It was a treat to me to watch two audacious woodpeckers, who would come and nibble at my stumps, and let me stand within a few feet of them without the least fear. There was also a pretty snow-bird, which knew me so well that it would wait till I threw out crumbs and bits of potato for it; and once, when we had some meat hanging in a bag on the side of the house, which your brother tied up tightly to prevent depredation, this sagacious creature perched on the shed near, and actually looked me into untying the bag, and pulling partly out a piece of the pork, upon which it set to work with such goodwill, that in a few days some ounces of fat had disappeared.
