In the spring of 1834, we had with infinite labour managed to clear off a small patch of ground, which we sowed with spring wheat, and watched its growth with the most intense anxiety, until it attained a height of ten inches, and began to put forth tender ears. Already the exquisite pleasure of eating bread the product of our own land, and of our own labour, was present to our imaginations, and the number of bushels to be reaped, the barn for storage, the journeys to mill, were eagerly discussed. But one day in August, occurred a hail-storm such as is seldom experienced in half a century. A perfect cataract of ice fell upon our hapless wheat crop. Flattened hailstones measuring two and a half inches in diameter, seven and a half in circumference, covered the ground several inches deep. Every blade of wheat was utterly destroyed, and with it all our sanguine hopes of plenty for that year. I have preserved a tracing which I made at the time, of one of those hailstones. The centre was spherical, an inch in girth, from which laterally radiated lines three fourths of an inch long, like the spokes of a wheel, and outside of them again a wavy border resembling the undulating edge of pie crust. The superficial structure of the whole, was much like that of a full blown rose. A remarkable hail-storm occurred in Toronto, in the year 1878, but the stones, although similar in formation, were scarcely as bulky.
It was one night in November following, when our axeman, William Whitelaw, who had risen from bed at eleven o'clock to fetch a new log for the fire shouted to us to come out and see a strange sight. Lazily we complied, expecting nothing extraordinary; but, on getting into the cold frosty air outside, we were transfixed with astonishment and admiration. Our clearing being small, and the timber partly hemlock, we seemed to be environed with a dense black wall the height of the forest trees, while over all, in dazzling splendour, shone a canopy of the most brilliant meteors, radiating in all directions from a single point in the heavens, nearly over-head, but slightly to the north-west. I have since read all the descriptions of meteoric showers I could find in our scientific annals, and watched year after year for a return of the same wonderful vision, but neither in the records of history nor otherwise, since that night, have I read of or seen anything so marvellously beautiful. Hour after hour we gazed in wonder and awe, as the radiant messengers streamed on their courses, sometimes singly, sometimes in starry cohorts of thousands, appearing to descend amongst the trees close beside us, but in reality shooting far beyond the horizon. Those who have looked upwards during a fall of snow will remember how the large flakes seem to radiate from a centre. Thus I believe astronomers account for the appearance of these showers of stars, by the circumstance that they meet the earth full in its orbit, and so dart past it from an opposite point, like a flight of birds confronting a locomotive, or a storm of hail directly facing a vessel under full steam. No description I have read has given even a faint idea of the reality as I saw it on that memorable night. From eleven p.m. to three in the morning, the majestic spectacle continued in full glory, gradually fading away before the approach of daybreak.
We often had knotty and not very logical discussions about the origin of seeds, and the cause of the thick growth of new varieties of plants and trees wherever the forest had been burnt over. On our land, and everywhere in the immediate neighbourhood, the process of clearing by fire was sure to be followed by a spontaneous growth, first of fire-weed or wild lettuce, and secondly by a crop of young cherry trees, so thick as to choke one another. At other spots, where pine-trees had stood for a century, the outcome of their destruction by fire was invariably a thick growth of raspberries, with poplars of the aspen variety. Our Celtic friends, most of whom were pious Presbyterians, insisted that a new creation of plants must be constantly going on to account for such miraculous growth. To test the matter, I scooped up a panful of black soil from our clearing, washed it, and got a small tea-cupful of cherry-stones, exactly similar to those growing in the forest. The cause of this surprising accumulation of seed was not far to find. A few miles distant was a pigeon-roost. In spring, the birds would come flying round the east shore of Lake Huron, skirting the Georgian Bay, in such vast clouds as to darken the sun; and so swiftly that swan-shot failed to bring them down unless striking them in rear; and, even then, we rarely got them, as the velocity of their flight impelled them far into the thicket before falling. These beautiful creatures attacked our crops with serious results, and devoured all our young peas. I have known twenty-five pigeons killed at a single shot; and have myself got a dozen by firing at random into a maple-tree on which they had alighted, but where not one had been visible.
The pigeon-roost itself was a marvel. Men, women and children went by the hundred, some with guns, but the majority with baskets, to pick up the countless birds that had been disabled by the fall of great branches of trees broken off by the weight of their roosting comrades overhead. The women skinned the birds, cut off their plump breasts, throwing the remainder away, and packed them in barrels with salt, for keeping. To these pigeons we were, doubtless, indebted for our crop of young cherry-trees.
Where there was so much seed, a corresponding crop might be expected; and dense thickets of choke-cherry trees grew up in neglected clearings accordingly. Forcing my way through one of these, I found myself literally face to face with a garter snake five feet long, which was also in search of cherries, and had wriggled its way to the upper branches of a young tree ten feet high. Garter snakes, however, are as harmless as frogs, and like them, are the victims of a general persecution. In some places they are exceedingly numerous. One summer's evening I was travelling on foot from Holland Landing to Bradford, across the Holland river, a distance of three miles, nearly all marsh, laid with cedar logs placed crosswise, to form a passable road. The sun was nearing the horizon; the snakes—garter chiefly, but a few copperhead and black—glided on to the logs to bask apparently in the sunshine, in such numbers, that after vainly trying to step across without treading on them, I was fain to take to flight, springing from log to log like some long-legged bird, and so escaping from the unpleasant companionship.[3]
One of the most perplexing tasks to new settlers is that of keeping cows. "Bossy" soon learns that the bush is "all before her where to choose," and she indulges her whims by straying away in the most unexpected directions, and putting you to half-a-day's toilsome search before she can be captured. The obvious remedy is the cow-bell, but even with this tell-tale appendage, the experienced cow contrives to baffle your vigilance. She will ensconce herself in the midst of a clump of underbrush, lying perfectly still, and paying no heed to your most endearing appeals of "Co' bossy, co' bossy," until some fly-sting obliges her to jerk her head and betray her hiding-place by a single note of the bell. Then she will deliberately get up, and walk off straight to the shanty, ready to be milked.
CHAPTER XIV.
OUR REMOVAL TO NOTTAWASAGA.
In the autumn of 1835, we were favoured with a visit from Mr. A. B. Hawke, chief emigrant agent for Upper Canada, and a gentleman held in general esteem, as a friend to emigrants, and a kind-hearted man. He slept, or rather tried to sleep, at our shanty. It was very hot weather, the mosquitoes were in full vigour, and the tortures they inflicted on the poor man were truly pitiable. We being acclimatised, could cover our heads, and lie perdu, sleeping in spite of the humming hosts outside. But our visitor had learnt no such philosophy. He threw off the bedclothes on account of the heat; slapped his face and hands to kill his tormentors; and actually roared with pain and anger, relieving himself now and then by objurgations mingled with expletives not a little profane. It was impossible to resist laughing at the desperate emphasis of his protests, although our mirth did not help much to soothe the annoyance, at which, however, he could not help laughing in turn.
Mosquitoes do not plague all night, and our friend got a little repose in the cool of the morning, but vowed, most solemnly, that nothing should induce him to pass another night in Sunnidale.