Over these abominable corduroys the vehicle jolts, jumping from log to log, with a shock that must be endured with as good a grace as possible. If you could bear these knocks, and pitiless thumpings and bumpings, without wry faces, your patience and philosophy would far exceed mine;—sometimes I laughed because I would not cry.
Imagine you see me perched upon a seat composed of carpet-bags, trunks, and sundry packages, in a vehicle little better than a great rough deal box set on wheels, the sides being merely pegged in, so that more than once I found myself in rather an awkward predicament, owing to the said sides jumping out. In the very midst of a deep mud-hole out went the front board, and with the shock went the teamster (driver), who looked rather confounded at finding himself lodged in a slough as bad as the “Slough of Despond.” For my part, as I could do no good, I kept my seat, and patiently awaited the restoration to order. This was soon effected, and all went on well again, till a jolt against a huge pine-tree gave such a jar to the ill-set vehicle, that one of the boards danced out that composed the bottom, and a sack of flour, and a bag of salted pork, which was on its way to a settler’s whose clearing we had to pass in the way, were ejected. A good teamster is seldom taken aback by such trifles as these.
He is, or should be, provided with an axe. No waggon, team, or any other travelling equipage, should be unprovided with an instrument of this kind, as no one can answer for the obstacles that may impede his progress in the bush. The disasters we met fortunately required but little skill in remedying. The sides need only a stout peg, and the loosened planks that form the bottom being quickly replaced, away you go again over root, stump, and stone, mud-hole, and corduroy; now against the trunk of some standing tree, now mounting over some fallen one, with an impulse that would annihilate any lighter equipage than a Canadian waggon, which is admirably fitted by its very roughness for such roads as we have in the bush.
The sagacity of the horses in this country is truly admirable. Their patience in surmounting the difficulties they have to encounter, their skill in avoiding the holes and stones, and in making their footing sure over the round and slippery timbers of the log bridges, renders them very valuable. If they want the spirit and fleetness of some of our high-bred blood horses, they make up in gentleness, strength, and patience. This renders them most truly valuable, as they will travel in such places that no British horse would, with equal safety to their drivers. Nor are the Canadian horses, when well fed and groomed, at all deficient in beauty of colour, size, or form. They are not very often used in logging; the ox is preferred in all rough and heavy labour of this kind.
Just as the increasing gloom of the forest began to warn us of the approach of evening, and I was getting weary and hungry, our driver, in some confusion, avowed his belief that, somehow or other, he had missed the track, though how he could not tell, seeing there was but one road. We were nearly two miles from the last settlement, and he said we ought to be within sight of the lake if we were on the right road. The only plan, we agreed, was for him to go forward and leave the team, and endeavour to ascertain if he were near the water; and, if otherwise, to return to the house we had passed, and inquire the way.
After running full half a mile a-head, he returned with a dejected countenance, saying we must be wrong, for he saw no appearance of water; and the road we were on appeared to end in a cedar swamp, as the further he went the thicker the hemlocks and cedars became; so, as we had no desire to commence our settlement by a night’s lodging in a swamp,—where, to use the expression of our driver, the cedars grew as thick as hairs on a cat’s back, we agreed to retrace our steps.
After some difficulty the lumbering machine was turned, and slowly we began our backward march. We had not gone more than a mile, when a boy came along, who told us we might just go back again, as there was no other road to the lake; and added, with a knowing nod of his head, “Master, I guess if you had known the bush as well as I, you would never have been fule enough to turn when you were going just right. Why, any body knows that them cedars and hemlocks grow thickest near the water; so you may just go back for your pains.”
It was dark, save that the stars came forth with more than usual brilliancy, when we suddenly emerged from the gloomy forest to the shores of a beautiful little lake, that gleamed the more brightly from the contrast of the dark masses of foliage that hung over it, and the towering pine-woods that girt its banks.
Here, seated on a huge block of limestone, which was covered with a soft cushion of moss, beneath the shade of the cedars that skirt the lake, surrounded with trunks, boxes, and packages of various descriptions, which the driver had hastily thrown from the waggon, sat your child, in anxious expectation of some answering voice to my husband’s long and repeated holloa.
But when the echo of his voice had died away, we heard only the gurgling of the waters at the head of the rapids, and the distant and hoarse murmur of a waterfall some half mile below them.