I enjoyed my trip down the river amazingly. I do not know anything more delightful, when all goes well than being borne over the foaming rapids at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour. The channel of the Maitland is wide, and the banks picturesque. Our voyage did not exceed an hour, though the distance was above nine miles.
CHAPTER XIX.
MY NEW HOUSE AT GODERICH.—CARPENTRY AN ESSENTIAL ART.—AMERICAN ENERGY.—AGREEABLE VISITORS.—MY WIFE’S DISASTERS.—HINTS FOR ANGLERS.—THE NINE-MILE-CREEK FROLIC.—THE TEMPEST.—OUR SKIPPER AND HIS LEMON-PUNCH.—SHORT COMMONS.—CAMP IN THE WOODS.—RETURN ON FOOT.—LUDICROUS TERMINATION TO OUR FROLIC.
My new house at Goderich was constructed with cherry-logs neatly counter-hewed both inside and out, the interstices between the logs being nicely pointed with mortar. I had no upstair-rooms, excepting for stowage. The ground-story I divided into a parlour, kitchen, and three bedrooms. After office-hours I used to work a good deal at the carpenter’s bench—for I was always fond of it when a boy. I had made some useful observations, as well as tormenting our workmen on repairs at home, with the usual amount of mischief, and I now reaped the benefit of my juvenile experience. I was able to make the doors, and do nearly all the insidework of my house myself. Indeed, it is really essential for the well-doing of the emigrant, that he, or some members of his family, should have some knowledge of carpentry—in fact, be a jack-of-all-trades; and, in that excellent profession, educated persons, healthy in mind and body, excel the most.
There is a very true saying, that necessity is the mother of invention, and in no country is it better exemplified than in Canada. The emigrant has there, especially when distant from a town or settlement, to make a hundred shifts, substituting wood for iron, in the construction of various articles, such as hinges for barn-door gates, stable and barn-shovels, and a variety of other contrivances whereby both money and time are saved.
I have often heard young men say, they “could not” do this or do that. “Did you ever try?” is a fair question to such people. I believe that many persons, with average capacities, can effect much more than they give themselves credit for. I had no more been bred a carpenter than a civil engineer, in which last capacity I was holding office satisfactorily. My education had consisted of Latin, Greek, and French, and the mathematics. My time had been spent in my own country; riding, shooting, boating, filled up with a little amateur gardening.
Want of energy is not the fault of the Americans; they will dash at everything, and generally succeed. I had known them contract to do difficult jobs that required the skill of the engineer or regular architect, and accomplish them cleverly too, although they had never attempted anything of the kind before; and they generally completed their task to the satisfaction of the parties furnishing the contract. “I cannot do it” is a phrase not to be found in the Yankee vocabulary, I guess.
It is astonishing how a few years’ residence in Canada or the United States brightens the intellects of the labouring classes. The reason is quite obvious. The agricultural population of England are born and die in their own parishes, seldom or never looking out into a world of which they know nothing. Thus, they become too local in their ideas, are awake to nought but the one business they have been brought up to follow; they have indeed no motive to improve their general knowledge.
But place the honest and industrious peasant in Canada, and, no matter how ignorant he may be, when he sees that by his perseverance and industry he will in a short time better his situation in life, and most likely become the possessor of a freehold, this motive for exertion will call forth the best energies of his mind, which had hitherto, for want of a proper stimulus, lain dormant. Having to act and think for himself, and being better acquainted with the world, he soon becomes a theoretical as well as a practical man, and consequently a cleverer and more enlightened person, than he was before in his hopeless servitude in the mother-country.
When I left Guelph, I had arranged with my wife that as soon as I could get the new house ready, I would send for her. I did not think that this could possibly be done before sleighing-time, as the newly-cut road was almost impassable for waggons. Judge, then, of my surprise when, on returning home from the store-house one day, I noticed the door of my log-cabin open, and saw a lovely curly-headed child sitting in the doorway. I could hardly believe my eyes—it was my own little Maria. My dear little boy had remained at Douro with my wife’s sister Eliza, of whom he was so fond that my wife did not like to separate such friends from each other. On my entrance I found my wife surrounded by a pile of luggage, laughing heartily at my astonishment.