Square timber, fit for framing, can be purchased from four to five dollars per hundred feet, running measure. Twelve hundred feet are sufficient, varying in size from four inches to a foot square. This quantity will frame a barn fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, and sixteen in height, from the sill to the plate which supports the roof. Twelve thousand feet of boards and plank, at five dollars per thousand, superficial measure, will be enough to enclose the frame, and lay the threshing-floor, and board the roof ready for shingling.
The best and cheapest method of barn-building is as follows: In the winter season cut and square with the broad axe all the frame timber you require, and draw it home to the place you have fixed on for the building, and from the saw-mill all the lumber you require. As soon as the weather is warm enough hire a framer, whose business is to mark out all the tenons and mortices, and to make or superintend the making of them. When ready, the building is put together in what is called bents, each bent consisting of two posts, one on each side of the building, connected together by a strong beam running across the building. The foundation is composed of twelve cedar blocks, three feet long, sunk two-thirds of their depth into the ground, one under each corner of the barn, and under the foot of each post. These blocks support the sills, which are firmly united at the corner to the cross sills. The bents, four in number, are then laid on this foundation, and are ready for raising, which is done by calling a “bee.” Thirty-five men are ample for this service—more are only in the way. Every two persons should be provided with a light balsam or cedar pole, fifteen feet in length, shod at the end with a ring and strong spike. These pike-poles are laid in order in front of the bent to be raised, one between each person. All being ready, the framer-gives the word “attention,” when each man lays hold of the bent, one man being stationed at the foot of each post with a hand-spike, which he presses against it to prevent its slipping. “Yeo heave!” is then shouted by the framer, at which every man lifts, waiting always for the word, and lifting together. As soon as the bent is lifted as high as they can reach, the pike-poles are driven into the beam, and the bent is soon in a perpendicular position. Several pikes are then stuck into the opposite side to keep the bent from being swayed over, until the tenons on the foot of the post is entered into the mortice on the sill: it is then secured by stays, until the next bent is raised, when the girts connect them together. In this manner all the bents are raised: the wall-plates are then lifted upon the building which connect all the bents. The tenon on the top of each post goes through the plate, and is firmly pinned; the putting up the rafters completes the frame. The raising of a building of this size should not occupy more than three quarters of a-day. No liquor should be served out to the swarm of working bees till the raising is over, as many serious accidents having occurred for want of this precaution.
I am particular in giving these descriptions, because I flatter myself they may prove useful to the future colonist.
The first week in September we commenced sowing our fall-wheat, and finished on the tenth, which is considered in good season. I would by all means recommend early sowing, especially on old cleared farms. Late sown wheat is more liable to winter-kill and rust. In fact, you can hardly sow too early to ensure a good crop.
September is the most beautiful month in the Canadian year. The weather is neither too hot nor too cold. Nothing can be more delightfully pleasant; for, in this month, the foliage of the trees begins to put on that gorgeous livery for which the North American continent is so justly celebrated. Every variety of tint, from the brightest scarlet and deepest orange, yellow and green, with all the intermediate shades blended together, form one of the most beautiful natural pictures you can possibly conceive.
I received a very pressing invitation from my wife’s brother-in-law, who resided near the foot of Rice Lake, in the township of Otonabee, to come and spend a few days with him. As an additional inducement, he promised to show me some capital duck-shooting. I was too fond of fowling to decline such an invitation as this. Besides, I wished to see that new settlement. The township lies north of Rice Lake, which forms its southern boundary: it is the largest in the county of Peterborough, with the exception of Harvey. Otonabee contains above eighty thousand acres, and is now the most populous as well as one of the most fertile townships in the county, which, at the time of which I am writing, had been just opened by the Government for location.
The only practicable road then to this settlement was from Cobourg, distant twelve miles from the southern shore of Rice Lake, leading over a chain of hills, the highest of which is, I believe, about seven hundred feet above the level of Lake Ontario, and from whence, on a very clear day, the opposite shore may be seen, though the distance is nearly sixty-five miles. I have heard this statement disputed, but I am perfectly convinced of the truth from having myself seen, on several occasions, the United States’ shore of the lake from White’s Hill, which is several hundred feet lower.
It was arranged that I should drive my wife as far as Cobourg, and leave her with some friends till my return. I was to take out with me from Cobourg the gentleman’s sister, Miss Jane W——, who was to return with me.
We left Darlington in a one-horse pleasure-waggon so called, or rather mis-called, by the natives. For my part, I never could find in what the pleasure consisted, unless in being jerked every minute two or three feet from your seat by the unevenness of the road and want of springs in your vehicle, or the next moment being soused to the axletree in a mud-hole, from which, perhaps, you were obliged to extricate your carriage by the help of a lever in the shape of a rail taken from some farmer’s fence by the roadside. You are no sooner freed from this Charybdis, than you fall into Scylla, formed by half a mile of corduroy-bridge, made of round logs, varying from nine to fifteen inches in diameter, which, as you may suppose, does not make the most even surface imaginable, and over which you are jolted in the roughest style possible, at the expense of your breath and injury of your person. I am happy to say that better roads and a better description of pleasure-carriages have superseded these inconvenient conveyances.
Since the institution of county councils, and the formation of towns and townships into municipalities, great attention has been bestowed, and large sums of money voted, for the improvement of roads and bridges; and several Joint-stock companies, chartered by the Provincial Parliament, have completed sundry lines of plank and macadamized roads, on which toll-gates have been erected. What has already been done in this way has added greatly to the wealth and settlement of the province. No one can understand, indeed, except the early settler, what a blessing a good road is, especially to those who are too far back for the benefit of water communication.