After the cooped-up quarters on the ocean the smoothness and freedom of the Erie Canal were heavenly. They saw birds and squirrels, and once caught a glimpse of a wolf. At Montezuma they changed canal-boats, because the craft they were on went through to Buffalo, and they wished to go to Geneva, where John, Andrew and Jane were getting rich.
Two miles out of Geneva the boat slowed up, a plank was run out and all went ashore. John worked for a farmer a mile away. They found him. And in the dusty road another prayer-meeting was held when everybody kneeled and thanked God that the long journey was ended. Paterfamilias had predicted they would never arrive, but he was wrong.
The next day they saw Andrew and Jane, and tears of joy were rained down everybody's back. Now for the first time they had plenty to eat—meat every meal, potatoes, onions and corn on the ear. There is no corn in Scotland, and Jamie thought that corn on the ear was merely a new way of cooking beans. He cleaned off the cob and then sent the stick back to have it refilled.
America was a wonderful country, and Brother John had not really told half the truth about it. Jamie got a job at fifty cents a week with board. Fifty cents was a great deal more than half a dollar—I guess so! He would have been paid more only the farmer said he was a greenhorn and couldn't speak English. Jamie inwardly resented and denied both accusations, but kept silent for fear he might lose his job. His only sorrow was that he could see his mother only once a week. His chief care was as to what he should do with his money.
In the Fall of Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six, there were several Scotch families going from Geneva to the "Far West"—that is to say, Indiana. The Oliver family was induced to go, too, because in Indiana the Government was giving farms to any one who would live on them and hold them down.
They settled first in Lagrange County, and later moved to Mishawaka, Saint Joseph County, where Andrew Oliver had taken up his abode. Mishawaka was a thriving little city, made so largely by the fact that iron-ore—bog-iron—was being found thereabouts. The town was on the Saint Joseph River, right on the line of transportation, and boats were poled down and up, clear to Lake Michigan. It was much easier and cheaper to pole a boat than to drive a wagon through the woods and across the muddy prairies. Mishawaka was going to be a great city—everybody said so.
There was a good log schoolhouse at Mishawaka, kept by a worthy man by the name of Merrifield, who knew how to use the birch. Here James went to school for just one Winter—that was his entire schooling, although he was a student and a learner to the day of his death.
The elder Oliver fell sick of chills and fever. He sort of languished for the hills of bonny Scotland. He could not adapt himself to pioneer life, and in the Fall of Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven, he died. This was the end of a school education for James—he had to go to work earning money. He became the little father of the family, which James J. Hill says is the luckiest thing that can happen to a boy. He hired out for six dollars a month, and at the end of every month took five dollars home to his mother.
Jamie was fourteen, and could do a man's work at almost anything. "He has a man's appetite at least," said the farmer's wife, for he took dinner with the man he worked for. He soon proved he could do a man's work, too. This man had a pole-boat on the river, and James was given a chance to try his seamanship. He might have settled down for life as a poleman, but he saw little chance for promotion, and he wanted to work at something that would fit him for a better job. Then the worst about life on the river was that each poleman was paid a portion of his wages in whisky, and the rivermen seemed intent on drinking the stills dry. James had not only a strong desire to be decent, but liked also to be with decent people.