“Now, Mr. Buck, what can you prove?”
“Wal, gentlemen, I was along with Jonathan Stubbs when he went to chop the settlement duties, and when we got to the posts opposite the lots, he said, ‘Wal, this looks plaguy ugly any how! I calculate I must fix these duties the short way,’ so he pulled out of his pocket a short piece of trace-chain which he laid on a stone in a line between the two posts, and with a stroke or two of his axe severed it in two. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘Ina Buck, I guess you are a witness that I cut a chain between two posts, so they can’t fix me nohow?’”
“He was, however, a little out of his calculation, for we did fix him, and sent him to jail, where I dare say he had ample time to plan some new device for performing settlement duties.”
My new friend advised me to purchase land adjoining his grant, which was very prettily situated on the banks of the Otonabee, in the township of the same name, within a mile of Peterborough. The price asked was fifteen shillings per acre, which was high for wild land at that time, but the prospect of a town so near had improved the market considerably.
I took his advice, closed the bargain, and became a landed proprietor in Canada West. On the 16th of May, 1826, I moved up with all my goods and chattels, which were then easily packed into a single horse waggon, and consisted of a plough iron, six pails, a sugar kettle, two iron pots, a frying pan with a long handle, a tea kettle, a chest of carpenters’ tools, a Canadian axe, and a cross-cut saw. My stock of provisions comprised a parcel of groceries, half a barrel of pork and a barrel of flour.
The roads were so bad that it took me three days to perform a journey of little more than fifty miles. We (that is to say myself and my two labourers) had numerous upsets; but at last reached the promised land without any further trouble. My friend in Douro turned out the next day and assisted me to put up the walls of my shanty and roof it with bass-wood troughs, which was completed before dark.
I was kept busy for more than a week chinking between the logs and plastering up all the crevices, cutting out a doorway and place for a window, casing them; making a door and hanging it on wooden hinges, &c. I also made a rough table and some stools, which answered better than they looked. Four thick slabs of lime-stone, placed upright in one corner of the shanty with clay well packed behind them to keep the fire off the logs, answered very well for a chimney with a hole cut through the roof directly above, to vent the smoke.
I made a tolerably good bedstead out of some iron-wood poles, by stretching strips of elm-bark across, which I plaited strongly together to support my bed, which was a very good one, and the only article of luxury I possessed.
I had very foolishly hired two Irish emigrants, who had not been longer in Canada than myself, and of course knew nothing either of chopping, logging, fencing, or, indeed, any work belonging to the country. The consequence of this imprudence was, that the first ten acres I cleared cost me nearly 5 pounds an acre[[2]]—at least 2 pounds more than it should have done. Experience is often dearly bought, and in this instance the proverb was fully verified.
[2] The usual price for clearing land, and fencing it fit for sowing, is, for hard wood, from eleven to twelve dollars per acre; for evergreen, such as pine, hemlock, cedar, or where that kind of timber predominates, from twelve to fourteen dollars per acre. There is no fixed price for swamp.