Letters from Muskoka

by Mrs. Charles Gerrard King

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.