The experience of life proves to a certainty, that some persons are compelled to drink deeper of the cup of adversity than others, nay even to drain it to the dregs.
We know that the Jews of old and the heathen world still suppose that such are visited for their sins by the judgment of Heaven; but the Divine Teacher has taught us better things, and warned us against such rash conclusions, instructing us indeed that
“There surely is some guardian power
That rightly suffers wrong;
Gives vice to bloom its little hour,
But virtue late and long.”
Poor G. was one of these unfortunate persons, whose melancholy history I will now relate, in his own words.—He was, it seems, a native of Ireland, from which country he emigrated soon after the last American war, with his wife and two children, leaving three other children at home with his father and mother, who were the proprietors of a small estate in the county of Cork. He arrived safely with his family at the Big Bay in Whitby (Windsor,) and purchased a lot of land close to the lake-shore.
In those days, the emigrant’s trials were indeed hard, compared with what they are now. The country was quite unsettled, excepting that here and there the nucleus of a small village appeared to vary its loneliness, for the clearings were mostly confined to the vicinity of the Great Lake. There were no plank, gravel, or macadamized roads then; saw and grist-mills were few-and-far-between. It was no uncommon thing then for a farmer to go thirty or forty miles to mill, which cause indeed sometimes detained him a whole week from his family; and, even more, if any accident had happened to the machinery. Besides this inconvenience, he had to encounter risks for himself and his cattle,—from bad bridges, deep mud-holes, and many other annoyances—I might say, with truth, “too numerous to mention.” The few farms in that neighbourhood were then chiefly occupied by Americans, some of whom had found it highly desirable to expatriate themselves; and might have exclaimed with the celebrated pick-pocket, Barrington, in a prologue spoken to a convict-audience in New South Wales,—
“Friends, be it understood,
We left our country for our country’s good.”
I have no intention of reflecting here on the national honour of the American nation; but it is a well-known fact, that many of the early frontier settlers were persons who had evaded the payment of their just debts or, perhaps, legal penalties for worse offences, by crossing the lines, and forming settlements in Canada. Such persons are not a fair specimen of American character. Individually, I have nothing to say against the Americans, but rather the contrary, for I have found them good and obliging neighbours.
I have heard it generally asserted, that the Yankees are the greatest rogues under the sun. If smartness in trading, or barter, be roguery, they richly deserve the epithet; but I deny that their intentions are one whit more dishonest than those of the persons with whom they trade. That their natural shrewdness and general knowledge give them an advantage, I am quite ready to admit; and perhaps they are not over-scrupulous in exercising it to the discomfiture of their less-gifted neighbours.
Unfortunately, Mr. G. purchased his land of a squatter, who had no title himself, and consequently could give none to the purchaser, who, after three or four years of hard labour upon it—when he had fondly hoped he had surmounted the greatest difficulties—found that the Government had issued a deed for the benefit of another person before he came into possession, who could not be induced to give up his legal rights to the unfortunate cultivator. He was so disheartened by this occurrence, that he determined to sell all he had and leave the country, which resolution he put into immediate execution.
He took a passage for himself and family in a ship, timber-laden, from Quebec, bound for Liverpool. It was late in the fall: the vessel was one of the last that sailed; consequently, they experienced very rough weather, accompanied with snow and sleet. Mid-way across the Atlantic, they encountered a dreadful storm, which left the ship a mere wreck on the ocean. To add to their misfortunes, a plank had started, owing, it was supposed, to the shifting of some part of the cargo during the gale; and so quickly did the vessel fill that they only saved two eight-pound pieces of salt pork and a few biscuits.