"Their evenings were devoted to netting the twine, which my father had purchased at Niagara for that purpose. My mother hired Barbara Proyer as a help, and time passed less heavily than she had imagined. My father had brought with him a sufficient quantity of flour and salt pork to last them a year; for fresh meat and fish he depended upon his gun and spear, and for many years they had always a good supply of both. My father had a couple of deer-hounds, and he used to go to the woods for his deer as a farmer would go to his fold for a sheep. Wild turkey and partridge were bagged with very little skill or exertion, and when the creek and lake were not frozen he need scarcely leave his own door to shoot ducks; but the great sporting ground—and it is still famous, and the resort of sporting gentlemen from Toronto, London, and indeed all parts of Canada West—is at the head of Long Point Bay. I have known him, several years later, return from there with twenty wild geese and one hundred ducks, the result of a few days' shooting. Pigeons were so plentiful, so late as 1810 and 1812, that they could be knocked down with poles. Great would have been the sufferings of the early settlers had not a kind and heavenly Father made this provision for them. But deer were not the only animals that abounded in the woods; bears and wolves were plentiful, and the latter used to keep up a most melancholy howl about the house at night, so near that my mother could scarcely be persuaded that they were not under the window. The cow, for security, was tied to the kitchen door every night; during the day she accompanied the men to the field they were chopping, and fed upon browse, which kept her fat and in good heart—the men making a point of felling a maple tree each morning for her special benefit. Their first sugar-making was not very beautiful, but they made sufficient of a very bad quality for the year's consumption. The potatoes gave a great yield; the maize was eaten and destroyed by the racoons; the apple and pear pips grew nicely, as did the peach, cherry, and plum stones, and my mother's balsams and few flowers from the new rich soil were beautiful.
"The summer of 1796 passed away with few incidents at Ryerse Creek, except the arrival of settlers.
"This year there was a total failure of the grain crops, not only in the new settlements, but throughout the United States. The Indians alone had preserved the maize from destruction by the racoons, squirrels and bears, which had invaded the settlements by thousands in search of food, as there were no nuts in the woods. The settlers had now to depend upon the Indians at the Grand River for their bread, and they continued to sell their maize at the same price as formerly, and during the year of scarcity never raised it. My father procured his year's supply, but there were no mills; the nearest ones were south of the Short Hills, seventy miles distant. Lucky was the family that owned a coffee mill in the winter of 1797. My father had a number of hands getting out timber for his mills and clearing land, and when they returned from their work in the evenings they used to grind in the coffee-mill maize for the next day's consumption. They soon learned the exact quantity required, and each man ground his own allowance, dividing that of the rest of the household amongst them. The meal was made into johnny-cakes, eaten hot for breakfast, cold for dinner, and the remainder in mush with milk for supper; and upon this fare they enjoyed perfect good health, were always cheerful, and apparently happy.
"The greatest good-feeling existed amongst the settlers, although they were of all nations and creeds and no creeds. Many of those families who had remained neutral during the revolution to save their property, and still retained their preference for the British Government, now sought homes in Canada, or assisted their sons to do so. The Quakers and Yunkers were amongst the best settlers, as they always brought some property with them, and were generally peaceable and industrious.
"Lands were so easily obtained, and so much encouragement was given by Government to settlers, that many of the half-pay officers and soldiers who had gone to New Brunswick found their way here, as well as many of the idle, discontented, dissipated, vicious and worthless of the United States. But at the Settler's Home all were made welcome; the meals, victuals and night's lodging were freely given to all, and for years after, to my recollection, during the summer season our house was never free from travellers; not that there was any particular merit due to our hospitality, for the man that would have closed his door against a traveller would have been looked upon as worse than a savage. My mother, this summer, had a dreadful alarm, which she used to describe to me with great feeling many years after. My little brother (George), for whose sake she had encountered all the privations and hardships of an early settler, gave rise to numerous fears and anxieties if he was out of her sight a few minutes. Endless misfortunes might befall him; he might be eaten up by wild beasts; or, he might be stolen by the Indians (their stealing children not being a very uncommon occurrence in those days, and during the summer season there used to be hundreds encamped on the beach); or, he might be drowned; or, he might wander away and be lost in the woods; and he would steal away and follow the men to the field when not closely watched. One day George was missing, and great was the commotion. Search was made everywhere, and George's name sounded through the forest in every direction. At last his hat was found in the creek. My mother sat perfectly quiet on the bank, with feelings not easily described, while my father probed the deep holes, and thrust his spear under the driftwood, expecting every time he drew it out to see George's red frock rise to the surface, when she heard with delight a little voice say 'Mamma,' from the opposite side of the creek. And there was George, with his little bare head peeping through the bushes, with his pet cat by his side. The reaction was too much for my mother; she fell fainting to the ground. George had lost his hat walking over a log which the men used as a bridge.
"The settlement was now considered in a most prosperous state; in a half-circle of twenty miles, probably there was a population of a hundred. People had ceased to count the families on their fingers, but no census was taken. The mills were fast advancing towards completion. Some few of the settlers grew wheat sufficient for their own consumption, and a little to sell; but the squirrels, racoons, and pigeons were very destructive to the grain of the early settlers. A dog that was trained for hunting the racoons, or a 'coon dog,' as they were called, was of great value, and the young lads, for many years after, used to make coon parties on fine moonlight nights, and go from farm to farm, killing those animals; and, although the necessity has long passed away, these parties still continue; and, though a virtue and kindness in the commencement, have ended in vice, and the coon parties now meet together to rob orchards and gardens of their best fruit and melons. One bitter cold night in February, 1798, the household was alarmed by the announcement of my mother's illness. No assistance was to be had nearer than three miles; no horses and no roads—only a track through the woods. Mr. Powel, who had just secured a lot near us, volunteered to go in search of Granny McCall, with the ox-team. After some weary hours' watching, the 'gee haw!' was heard on the return in the woods, and Mrs. McCall soon stood beside my mother, and very soon after the birth of a daughter was announced. That daughter is now making this record of the past. The settlement was now increasing so fast that the general voice was for a town, and my father was petitioned to lay one out at the mouth of Ryerse Creek, and was at last prevailed upon to do so, and called it Clarence. The first applicant for a lot was a Mr. Corklin, a very good blacksmith, a mechanic that was very much wanted in the settlement. He was a very intelligent young man for his class, and a great favourite with everyone, although he had one fault, that of indulging in strong drinks occasionally. He bargained for a lot, and put up a frame for a house. My father bought him a set of blacksmith's tools to commence with, and built him a shop. The next thing was a wife. My mother soon saw that a tender feeling was growing up between the young blacksmith and her nurse, a pretty girl, to whom she was much attached. My mother's advice was against the marriage, on account of his one bad habit; but of course she was not listened to, and they were married.
"A few months after the marriage, Mr. Corklin went in a log canoe to the head of the bay, on business, and was to return the next day; but day after day passed, and no Mr. Corklin appeared. At last the poor wife's anxiety became so great that a messenger was sent in search of him. He had been at Dr. Proyer's, but left the day he was expected home. The alarm was given, and search commenced along the lake shore. They found his canoe drifted on shore, laden with game, vegetables and a few apples, his hat, and an empty bottle that smelt of rum; but he was gone. They supposed that he had fallen overboard without upsetting the canoe. His body they could not find for days after, and his wife used to wander along the lake shore, from early dawn until dark, with the hope that she might find his body. One day she saw a number of birds on a drift log that was half out of the water. By the side of this log lay the remains of her husband. The eagles had picked his eyes out, but had only commenced their feast. This was the first death in the settlement. My father took back the lot, paid for the frame house, kept his smith's tools, and so ended his town.
"Upon more mature reflection, he decided that the neighbourhood of a small town would be the reverse of agreeable, as the first inhabitants would be those that were too idle to improve a farm for themselves, and bad habits are generally the attendants of idleness, and that he, in place of being the owner of all, would only be proprietor in common with all the idle and dissipated of a new country.
"On my father's arrival in the country he had been sworn in a justice of the peace for the London and Western districts—a very extensive jurisdiction over wild lands with few inhabitants; for those districts embraced all the lands between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, the Grand River, and Rivers Detroit and St. Clair. Courts were held at Sandwich, a distance of nearly two hundred miles, without roads, so that magistrates had to settle all disputes as they best could, perform all marriages, bury the dead, and prescribe for the sick. In addition to the medicine chest, my father purchased a pair of tooth-drawers, and learned to draw teeth, to the great relief of the suffering. So popular did he become in that way, that in after years they used to entreat him to draw their teeth in preference to a medical man—the one did it gratuitously, the other, of course, charged. My father put up two or three small log-houses which were tenanted by very poor people whose labour he required. From one of these houses my mother hired a nurse, Poll Spragge, who was a merry, laughing, 'who-cares' sort of girl. Upon my mother remarking the scantiness of her wardrobe, which was limited to one garment, a woollen slip that reached from the throat to the feet, Poll related a misfortune which had befallen her a short time before. She then, as now, had but the one article of dress, and it was made of buckskin, a leather something like chamois; and when it became greasy and dirty, her mother said she must wash it that afternoon, as she was going visiting, and that Poll must have her slip dry to put on before her father and brother returned from the field. During the interval, she must, of necessity, represent Eve before her fall. Poll had seen her mother, in the absence of soap, make a pot of strong ley from wood ashes, and boil her father's and brother's coarse linen shirts in it. She subjected her leather slip to the same process. We all know the effect of great heat upon leather. When Poll took her slip from the pot it was a shrivelled-up mass, partly decomposed by the strong ley. Poor Poll was in despair. She watched for the return of her family with no enviable feelings, and when she heard them coming she lifted a board and concealed herself in the potato hole, under the floor. Her mother soon discovered what had befallen Poll, and search was made for her. After a time, a feeble voice was heard from under the floor, and Poll was induced to come forth, by the promise of her mother's second petticoat, which was converted into the slip she then wore. She ended her recital with a merry laugh, and said now she had got service she would soon get herself clothes. But clothing was one of the things most difficult to obtain then. There were very few sheep in the settlement, and if a settler owned two or three, they had to be protected with the greatest care, watched by the children during the day that they might not stray into the woods, and at night penned near the house in a fold, built very high, to secure them from the bears and wolves, which could not always be done.
"There were instances of wolves climbing into pens that they could not get out of. On these occasions they did not hurt the sheep, but were found lying down in a corner like a dog. It is said that the first thought of a wolf on entering a fold is how he is to get out again; and if he finds that difficult, his heart fails him and he makes little effort.