At the Nottawasaga River, we found a log house recently erected, the temporary residence of Wellesley Richey, Esq., an Irish gentleman, then in charge of the new settlements thereabouts. Mr. Richey received us very courteously, and handed us over to the charge of an experienced guide, whose business it was to show lands to intending settlers—a very necessary precaution indeed, as after a mile or two the road ceased altogether.
For some miles further, the forest consisted of Norway and white pine, almost unmixed with any other timber. There is something majestic in these vast and thickly-set labyrinths of brown columnar stems averaging a hundred and fifty feet in height, perhaps, and from one to five in thickness, making a traveller feel somewhat like a Lilliputian Gulliver in a field of Brobdignagian wheat. It is singular to observe the effect of an occasional gust of wind in such situations. It may not even fan your cheek; but you hear a low surging sound, like the moaning of breakers in a calm sea, which gradually increases to a loud boisterous roar, still seemingly at a great distance; the branches remain in perfect repose, you can discover no evidence of a stirring breeze, till, looking perpendicularly upwards, you are astonished to see some patriarchal giant close at hand—six yards round and sixty high—which alone has caught the breeze, waving its huge fantastic arms wildly at a dizzy height above your head.
There are times when the hardiest woodman dares not enter the pine woods; when some unusually severe gale sweeping over them bends their strong but slender stems like willow wands, or catches the wide-spreading branches of the loftier trees with a force that fairly wrenches them out by the roots, which creeping along on the surface of the soil, present no very powerful resistance. Nothing but the close contiguity of the trees saves them from general prostration. Interlocked branches are every moment broken off and flung to a distance, and even the trunks clash, and as it were, whet themselves against each other, with a shock and uproar that startles the firmest nerves.
It were tedious to detail all the events of our morning's march: How armed with English fowling pieces and laden with ammunition, we momentarily expected to encounter some grisly she-bear, with a numerous family of cubs; or at the least a herd of deer or a flock of wild turkeys: how we saw nothing more dangerous than woodpeckers with crimson heads, hammering away at decayed trees like transmigrated carpenters; how we at last shot two partridges sitting on branches, very unlike English ones, of which we were fain to make a meal, which was utterly detestable for want of salt; how the government guide led us, helter-skelter, into the untracked woods, walking as for a wager, through thickets of ground hemlock,[2] which entangled our feet and often tripped us up; how we were obliged to follow him over and under wind-falls, to pass which it was necessary to climb sometimes twenty feet along some half-recumbent tree; how when we enquired whether clay or sand were considered the best soil, he said some preferred one, and some the other; how he showed us the front of a lot that was bad, and guessed that the rear ought to be better; how we turned back at last, thoroughly jaded, but no wiser than when we set out—all this and much more, must be left to the reader's imagination.
It was drawing towards evening. The guide strode in advance, tired and taciturn, like some evil fate. We followed in pairs, each of us provided with a small bunch of leafy twigs to flap away the mosquitoes, which rose in myriads from the thick, damp underbrush.
"It will be getting dark," said the guide, "you must look out for the blaze."
We glanced anxiously around. "What does he mean?" asked one of the party, "I see no blaze."
The man explained that the blaze (query, blazon?) was a white mark which we had noticed on some of the trees in our route, made by slicing off a portion of the bark with an axe, and invariably used by surveyors to indicate the road, as well as divisions and sub-divisions of townships. After a time this mark loses its whiteness and becomes undistinguishable in the dusk of evening, even to an experienced eye.
Not a little rejoiced were we, when we presently saw a genuine blaze in the form of a log fire, that brilliantly lighted up the forest in front of a wigwam, which, like everything else on that eventful day, was to us delightfully new and interesting. We found, seated on logs near the fire, two persons in blanket coats and red sashes, evidently gentlemen; and occupying a second wigwam at a little distance, half-a-dozen axemen. The gentlemen proved to be the Messrs. Walker, afterwards of Barrie, sons of the wealthy owner of the great shot-works at Waterloo Bridge, London, England. They had purchased a tract of a thousand acres, and commenced operations by hiring men to cut a road through the forest eight or ten miles to their new estate, which pioneering exploit they were now superintending in person. Nothing could exceed the vigour of their plans. Their property was to be enclosed in a ring fence like a park, to exclude trespassers on their game. They would have herds of deer and wild horses. The river which intersected their land was to be cleared of the drift logs, and made navigable. In short, they meant to convert it into another England. In the meanwhile, the elder brother had cut his foot with an axe, and was disabled for the present; and the younger was busily engaged in the unromantic occupation of frying pancakes, which the axemen, who were unskilled in cookery, were to have for their supper.
Nowhere does good-fellowship spring up so readily as in the bush. We were soon engaged in discussing the aforesaid pancakes, with some fried pork, as well as in sharing the sanguine hopes and bright visions which accorded so well with our own ideas and feelings.