We slept that night under our cover of cedar bushes and slept sound. In the morning Braxton and my oldest boy started down the track, for it was no road, that followed the bank of the Chateaugay, to see if the settlers below would help to raise a shanty, and while they were gone I did my best to get things into order. For all I had come through, there was lightness in my heart, for there is a freedom and hopefulness in living in the woods that nothing else seems to give one, and I made child’s play of discomforts that would have disheartened me had I been told of them before leaving Scotland. It was nigh noon when Braxton came back. He had been made welcome everywhere, all were glad to have a new neighbor, and the promise given that word would be sent to all within reach to come to a bee next day. After dinner he took the axe and tried his hand at chopping. He began on a tree about half a foot thick and was nicking it all round, we looking on and admiring.
“Ye’ll kill somebody with that tree,” said a voice behind us, and turning, to our astonishment we saw a tall woman, in a poke-bonnet, looking on. Explaining that it was necessary to know how a tree would fall, she pointed how any direction could be secured by the way it was chopped, and, seizing the axe, she showed how, and, under her strokes, the first tree fell amid the shouts of the children. She was the wife of our nearest neighbor, and, on hearing of our arrival, had come over to see us, “Being real glad,” as she said, “to have a woman so near.” She stayed an hour, and after finding out all about us, showed me how to do a great many things needful in bush-life. Among the rest, how to make a smudge to protect us from the mosquitoes, which was a real comfort.
Next morning six men came and spent the day in clearing space for the shanty and in making logs for it. The day after, Braxton with two of the men went to Todd’s to buy boards and rafted them down the river. On the third day the raising took place, and that night, though it was not finished, we slept in it, and proud we were, for the house as well as the land was our own. It was quite a while before Braxton could finish it, for there was more pressing work to do, and for a month and more our only door was a blanket. The fire was on the hearth with an open chimney made of poles covered with clay. And here I must tell of my first trial at baking. We had brought a bag of flour and, once established in our shanty, I resolved to make a loaf. As you know, in Scotland there is no baking of bread in the houses of the commonality, and though nobody could beat me at scones or oat cake, I had never seen a loaf made. I thought, however, there was no great knack about it. I knew hops were needed, and sent one of my boys with a pail to borrow some from my neighbor, who sent it back half full. I set to work, and after making a nice dough I mixed the hops with it, and moulded a loaf, which my oldest son, who had seen the process while visiting round, undertook to bake. He put it into a Dutch oven, or chaudron, and heaping hot ashes over it, we waited for an hour, when the chaudron was taken out and the cover lifted. Instead of a nice, well-raised loaf, there was at the bottom of it a flat black cake. “Maybe it will taste better than it looks,” says I, thrusting a knife at it, but the point was turned, and we found our loaf to be so hard that you could have broken it with a hammer. And the taste! It was bitter as gall. Well, that was a good lesson to me, and I was not above asking my neighbors after that about matters on which I was ignorant.
No sooner had shelter been provided for us, than we all turned to with hearty will to clear up a bit of land. My boys were a great help, and the oldest got to be very handy with the axe, which was well, for Braxton never got into the right hang of using it, and spent double the strength in doing the same work my boy did. There is quite an art in chopping. It was exhausting work clearing up the land, being quite new to us and the weather very hot. Often had Braxton to lay down his axe and bathe his head in the creek, but he never stopped, working from dawn to darkening, and when it was moonlight still longer. I helped to brush and log, as much to encourage my boys to work as for all I could do. When ready to burn, three neighbors came to show us how to do it and, the logs being large and full of sap, it was a slow and laborious job. The men looked like Blackamoors, being blacker than any sweeps, from smoke and the coom that rubbed off the logs, while the sweat just rolled down them, owing to the heat of the fires and the weather. We came on to our lot on the 29th of May and it was well on in June when the remains of the logs were handspiked out of the way and the ground was kind of clear between the stumps on half an acre. In the ashes we planted potatoes, and a week after, when a bit more land was taken in, we put in a few more. This done, we turned to make potash. Except along the creek there was no timber on our lot fit for making ashes but on its banks there was a fine cut of swale elm. The chopping of the trees was the easiest part of the work, the getting of the logs together and burning them being difficult, the underbrush being very thick and we so short of help in handling the felled trees. A neighbor showed us how to make a plan-heap and skid logs, but from inexperience we did not work to much advantage that summer. We, however, wrought with a will and kept at it, even my youngest, Ailie, helping by fetching water to drink. Young people nowadays have no idea of what work is, and I don’t suppose that one in twenty of them would go through what their fathers and mothers did. Although it was a dry summer, the banks of the creek were soft, so our feet were wet all the time and we had to raise the heaps on beds of logs to get them to burn. Our first lot of ashes we lost. Before they could be lifted into the leaches, a thunderstorm came on and in a few minutes the labor of a fortnight was spoiled. After that, we kept them covered with strips of bark.
The neighbors were very kind. They had little and had not an hour to spare, but they never grudged lending us a hand or sharing with us anything we could not do without. There was no pride or ceremony then, and neighbors lived as if they were one family. One of them who had a potash kettle lent it to us, and it was fetched on a float or sort of raft, which was pushed up the creek as far as it would go. Then the kettle was lifted out and carried by main strength, suspended on a pole. We had thought the chopping, the logging, and the burning bad enough, (the carrying of water to the leaches and the boiling of the lye was child’s play) but the melting of the salts was awful. Between the exertion in stirring, the heat of the sun and of the fire, flesh and blood could hardly bear up. How we ever managed I do not know, unless it was by keeping at it and aye at it, but on the first week of October we had filled a barrel with potash, and Reeves took it away in one of his canoes and sold it in town for us, on the understanding that we were to take the pay out of his store. He made thus both ways, and everything he kept was very dear. I have paid him 25 cents a yard for common calico and a dollar a pound for tea. We could not help ourselves just then.
I should have told you our potatoes grew wonderfully. There is a warmth in newly-burned land or a nourishment in ashes, I don’t know which, that makes everything grow on new land far beyond what they do elsewhere. The frost held off well that fall, and we lifted our crop in good order, except a few that were very late planted, which did not ripen properly. When we landed on our lot, Braxton used his last dollar to pay the canoemen, and I had just 15 shillings left after paying the boards we got at Todd’s mill, so all we had to put us over until another crop would be raised, was the potatoes and what we could make out of potash. We were in no way discouraged. The work was slavish, but we were working for ourselves in making a home; the land was our own, and every day it was improving. The children took to the country and its ways at once and were quite contented. We were cheerful and hopeful, feeling we had something to work for and it was worth our while to put up with present hardship. I remember a neighbor’s wife, who was always miscalling Canada and regretting she had come to it, being satisfied with nothing here. She said to her husband one day, in my hearing, “In Scotland you had your two cows’ grass and besides your wage sae muckle meal and potatoes, and we were bien and comfortable; but you wad leave, and dae better, and this is your Canada for you!” “Can you no haud your tongue, woman,” he replied, “we hae a prospect here, and that is what we hadna in Scotland.” That was just it, we had a prospect before us that cheered us on to thole our hardships.
I counted not the least of the drawbacks of the bush, the lack of public ordinances. There was no church to go to on Sabbath, and the day was spent in idleness, mostly in visiting. Sometimes the young men went fishing or hunting, but that was not common in our neighborhood, where the settlers respected it as a day of rest, though without religious observance of any kind. Accustomed from a child to go to kirk regularly in Scotland, I felt out of my ordinary as each Sabbath came round. To be sure, I taught the children their catechism and we read the story of Joseph and the two books of Kings before the winter set in, but that did not satisfy me. The nearest preaching was at South Georgetown, and tho’ I heard no good of the minister I wanted to go. Somehow, something aye came in the way every Sabbath morning I set. At last, it was after the potatoes had been lifted and the outdoor work about over one Sabbath morning in October, a canoe, on its way down, stopped to leave a message for us. This was my chance, and getting ready I and my two oldest children went, leaving the others in charge of Braxton, and, for a quiet man, he got on well with children, for he was fond of them. I remember that sail as if it were yesterday—the glow of the hazy sunlight, the river smooth as a looking-glass, in which the trees, new clad in red and yellow claes, keeked at themselves, and the very spirit of peace seemed to hover in the air. Oh it was soothing, and I thought over all I had come through since I left Scotland. Tho’ I could not help thinking how different it had been with me six months before, yet my heart welled up as I thought of all the blessings showered on me and mine and thanked God for his goodness. It was late when we came in sight of the church, for the sound of singing told us worship had begun. Dundee was the tune, and as the voices came softly over the water my heart so melted within me to hear once again and in a strange land the psalmody of Scotland that I had to turn away my head to greet. Stepping ashore where the church stood on the river bank, we went quietly in. It was a bare shed of a place, with planks set up for seats, and there were not over thirty present. The minister was a fresh-colored, presentable enough man, and gave a very good sermon, from the 11th chapter of Second Corinthians. While he was expatiating on what the apostle had suffered, something seemed to strike him, and he said, “Aye, aye, Paul, ye went through much but you never cut down trees in Canada.” He spoke feelingly, for he had to work like the rest of his neighbors to earn his bread. One end of the church was boarded off, and in it he and his wife lived. I will say no more about Mr McWattie, for his failing was notorious. When worship was over, it was a great treat to mix with the folk. That I did not know a soul present made no difference, for all were free then and I made friendships that day that have lasted to this. When he heard that I was from the south of Scotland, Mr Brodie would take no refusal and I had to go with him across the river to his house, where we had dinner, and soon after set out to walk home. People now-a-days think it a hardship to walk a mile to church, but I knew many then who went four or five, let the weather be what it might. It was dark before we got home, and that night there was a frost that killed everything. The weather kept fine, however, until December, and we had no severe cold until the week before New Year.
I cannot think of anything out of the common that first winter. Our neighbors wrought at chopping cordwood to raft to Montreal in the spring, but Braxton could not, for he had no oxen to draw the wood to the river-bank, so we went on enlarging our clearance. I forgot to say, that one of our North Georgetown acquaintances gave my oldest boy a pig in a present, and we managed to keep the little creature alive with the house-slop and boiling the potatoes that had not ripened well.
We all suffered from the cold, which was past anything we had any conception of before coming to Canada. Our shanty was so open that it did little more than break the wind, and water spilled on the floor at once froze. We had plenty of wood, but it was green, and the logs were fizzing and boiling out the sap the day long, and it took Braxton quite a while to learn that some kinds of wood burn better than others. At first he was just as likely to bring in a basswood or elm log as one of maple or hemlock. Most of the heat went up the big chimney, so that while our faces would be burning, our backs were cold. It was worst in the mornings, for I would rise to find everything solid, even the bread having to be thawed, and the blankets so stiff from our breaths and the snow that had sifted in that I had to hang them near the fire to dry. We kept our health, however, and after the middle of February the weather moderated. In March a deer, while crossing our clearance, broke through the crust, and while floundering in the snow was killed by two of my boys. After that they were on the watch, and ran down and killed two more with their axes. I salted and dried the hams, and but for them we would have fared poorly. Having no kettle, we made only a little maple sugar that spring by boiling the sap in the kailpot. There was no sugar then like what is made now, it was black and had a smoky flavor.
The spring was late and wet, which was a great disappointment, for Braxton could not burn the log-heaps he had ready and make potash, on the money for which he counted to buy provisions to put us over until harvest. To make matters worse, provisions got to be very scarce and dear, so that flour and oatmeal sold at $5 the quintal, and sometimes was not to be had. One day, when quite out, I went down to Rutherford’s, who kept a bit of a store, and he had neither meal nor flour, but went into the kitchen and brought out a bowlful of the meal they had for themselves. I went over the potatoes we had cut for seed, and sliced off enough around the eyes to make a dinner for us. In June, provisions became more plentiful, for the boats had begun to bring supplies from Upper Canada to Montreal. It was the middle of that month before Braxton had a barrel of potash ready, and the money it brought did not pay what we were due the storekeepers. We were kept very bare that summer, but had a prospect before us in the three acres of crops which we had got in and which were doing finely.