Only the first three concessions of this township were settled at this time, the remainder of the land being generally in the hands of absentee proprietors. I am happy to say, the absentee tax has had the effect of throwing vast quantities of these lands into the market.
This township, like Whitby, is now well settled, and though not generally equal in regard to soil, is still considered a good township. Bowmanville is the principal town, containing about twelve hundred inhabitants. In 1825 it only boasted a grist-mill, saw-mill, a store, and half-a-dozen houses. I mention this, merely to show how much the country has improved in a few years. This is not an isolated fact it applies to nearly all Canada West.
My intention was, to stay with my friends till the ensuing spring, and to get a little insight into Canadian farming, clearing land, &c., that I might have some experience before commencing operations on my own account.
The situation of my friend’s house was close to the Toronto road, partly built of logs and framework: it had been designed by the former Yankee proprietor, and could certainly boast of no architectural beauties. We lived about a mile and a half from the lake shore, and I took advantage of my vicinity to the water to bathe daily. I found great refreshment in this, for the weather was very hot and dry. The drought lasted for some time, and among its consequences, I may mention the prevalence of extensive fires.[[2]] Several broke out in our neighbourhood, and, at last, the mischief reached our own farm. It destroyed several thousand rails, and spread over forty or fifty acres of meadow land. We ultimately stopped its further progress in the clearing, by ploughing furrows round the fire and a thunder-shower in the evening completed its extinction. Fire seldom runs in the woods on good land, and where the timber is chiefly deciduous, but on sandy, pine, or hemlock lands, or where evergreens chiefly prevail.
[2] Fires in Canada are of frequent occurrence, and are generally caused by the burning of brush-wood or log-heaps by the settlers. In dry weather, with a brisk wind, the fire is apt to run on the surface of the ground in the bush, where the dry leaves are thickest. In clearing the land a good deal of brush-wood and tops of trees are thrown into the edge of the woods. It follows, as a matter of course, that the greatest danger to be apprehended is the burning the boundary-fences of farms. I have heard it asserted that these fires are sometimes caused by spontaneous combustion, which I consider altogether a fallacy.
I have seldom known very serious damage by these fires done in Canada West, although occasionally a barn or house falls a sacrifice to the devouring element. Not so, however, in some parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where extensive conflagrations often devastate the country for miles round. Of such a character was the great fire at Miramichi, which nearly destroyed Fredericton, and was attended not only with an immense loss of property but with the sad loss of many valuable lives. I will presently give in his own forcible and feeling language the history of a lumberer who escaped from destruction after being for some time in imminent peril of his life. He was one of the few persons who had the good fortune of escaping the great conflagration in Miramichi, which broke out in the October after my arrival, and excited so much general sympathy. Fifteen of his comrades perished in the flames.
The narrative which I introduce here, anticipating by a few months the proper order of narration, was related to me by the man himself with that native eloquence which often surprises, and always interests us in the uneducated. The class to which he belongs is one peculiar to America. Rough in manners, and often only half-civilized, the lumberer, as an individual, resembles little the woodsman of other lands. He is generally a Canadian Frenchman, or a breed between the Irish and the native of the Lower Province. However, some Yankees may be found among these denizens of the woods and wilds of Canada. The fearful conflagration to which our poor lumberer nearly fell a victim, has been thus ably described in M’Gregor’s “British America.” “In October, 1825, about a hundred and forty miles in extent, and a vast breadth of the country on the north, and from sixty to seventy miles on the south side of Miramachi river, became a scene of perhaps the most dreadful conflagration that has occurred in the history of the world.
“In Europe we can scarcely form a conception of the fury and rapidity with which fires rage through the forests of America during a dry hot season, at which period the broken underwood, decayed vegetable substances, fallen branches, bark, and withered trees, are as inflammable as the absence of moisture can make them. To such irresistible food for combustion we must add the auxiliary afforded by the boundless fir forests, every tree of which in its trunk, bark, branches, and leaves contains vast quantities of inflammable resin.
“When one of these fires is once in motion, or at least when the flames extent over a few miles of the forest, the surrounding air becomes highly rarefied, and the wind consequently increases till it blows a perfect hurricane. It appears, that the woods had been on both sides of the north-west partially on fire for some days, but not to an alarming extent until the 7th of October, when it came on to blow furiously from the westward, and the inhabitants along the river were suddenly surprised by an extraordinary roaring in the woods, resembling the crashing and detonation of loud and incessant thunder, while at the same instant the atmosphere became thick darkened with smoke.
“They had scarcely time to ascertain the cause of this awful phenomenon before all the surrounding woods appeared in one vast blaze, the flames ascending from one to two hundred feet above the tops of the loftiest trees; and the fire rolling forward with inconceivable celerity, presented the terribly sublime appearance of an impetuous flaming ocean. In less than an hour, Douglas Town and Newcastle were in a blaze: many of the wretched inhabitants perished in the flames. More than a hundred miles of the Miramichi were laid waste, independent of the north-west branch, the Baltibag, and the Nappen settlements. From one to two hundred persons perished within immediate observation, while thrice that number were miserably burned or wounded, and at least two thousand were left destitute of the means of subsistence, and were thrown for a time on the humanity of the Province of New Brunswick. The number of lives that were lost in the woods could not at the time be ascertained, but it was thought few were left to tell the tale.