I found chopping, in the summer months, very laborious. I should have underbrushed my fallow in the fall, before the leaves fell, and chopped the large timber during the winter months, when I should have had the warm weather for logging and burning, which should be completed by the first day of September. So, for want of experience, it was all up-hill work with me.
This was the season for musquitoes and black flies. The latter are ten times the worse of the two. This happened to be a bad fly year, and I, being a new comer, was nearly devoured by them. Luckily, they do not last more than a month, and it is only before rain that they are so very annoying. I have seen children whose necks were one mass of sores, from the poisonous nature of their bite: sheep, calves, and foals, are sometimes killed by them. Nor is this, indeed, an unfrequent occurrence. It must be, however, borne in mind that, as the country is cleared up, and the woods recede, the flies disappear. In the clearings along the front townships, the flies are not more troublesome than they are in England.
The farm on which I now reside used to swarm terribly with flies, lying, as it does, near the water; but, for the last three years, it has been entirely free from them, especially from the black flies.[[3]]
[3] These insects are always much worse, and more numerous, when the spring is backward, and the floods are higher than usual. From close observation, I believe the larvae are deposited during high water on the rocks, when, as soon as the water falls, the heat of the sun hatches the insects. I have remarked large stones, which had been under water during the flood, covered over with small brown coloured cells, exactly the shape, and very little bigger than a seed of buckwheat. From out of these cells, on a sunny day, the flies rise in clouds, for they bite through the envelope, and emancipate themselves. Being provided with a sharp appetite, they will attack you the minute they are at liberty. These pests begin to appear between the 10th of May and 1st of June, according to the earliness or lateness of the season. Towards the end of June, numbers of small dragon-flies make their appearance, which soon eat up all the black-flies, to which repast, you may be sure, they are heartily welcome.
A person who understands chopping, can save himself a good deal of trouble and hard work by making what is called a plan-heap. Three or four of these may be made on an acre, but not more. The largest and most difficult trees are felled, the limbs only being cut off and piled. Then all the trees that will fall in the same direction, should be thrown along, on the top of the others, the more the better chance of burning well. If you succeed in getting a good burn for your fallow, the chances are, if your plan-heaps are well made, that they will be mostly consumed, which will save a great many blows of the axe, and some heavy logging.
CHAPTER VIII.
A LOGGING BEE.—LIME-BURNING.—SHINGLING.—ARRIVAL OF MY BROTHER-IN-LAW.—BIRTH OF MY SON.—SAD JOURNEY TO DARLINGTON.—LOSE MY WAY.—AM REFUSED A LIFT.—MY BOYISH ANGER.—MY WIFE’S DEATH.—THE FUNERAL.—I LEAVE DARLINGTON.
My fallow was finished by the first week in July, but I did not put fire to it until the first week in August, because the timber was so green. Indeed, I did not expect the fire would run at all. I was, however, agreeably deceived, for I got a very respectable burn, which gave me great help.
As soon as the ground was cool enough, I made a logging Bee, at which I had five yokes of oxen and twenty men, four men to each team. The teamster selects a good place to commence a heap, generally against some large log which the cattle would be unable to move. They draw all the logs within a reasonable distance in front of the large log. The men with hand-spikes roll them, one upon the top of the other, until the heap is seven or eight feet high, and ten or twelve broad. All the chips, sticks, and rubbish are then picked up and thrown on the top of the heap. A team and four good men should log and pick an acre a day when the burn has been good.
My hive worked well, for we had five acres logged and set fire to the same evening. On a dark night, a hundred or two of these large heaps all on fire at once have a very fine effect, and shed a broad glare of light for a considerable distance. In the month of July in the new settlements, the whole country at night appears lit up by these fires.