There is another complaint in Upper Canada, which attacks the settler very soon after his arrival, especially if young, and that is worms; a disorder very prevalent at all times in Canada, particularly among the poorer classes, and probably owing to food.
These, with ague and colic, or country cholera, are the chief evils of the clime; few are, however, fatal, excepting the lake fever, and that principally among children.
The sportsman should recollect, in so marshy and woody a country, subject as it is to the most surprising alternations of temperature, that instead of minding that celebrated rule, "Keep your powder dry," he should read, "Keep your feet dry." Dry feet and the avoidance of sitting in wet or damp clothes, or drinking iced water when hot, or of cooling yourself in a delicious draught of air when in a perspiration, are the best precautions against ague, fever, colic, or cholera—in a country where the thermometer reaches 90° in the shade, and sometimes 110°, as it did last summer, and 27° below zero in the winter, with rapid alternations embracing such a range of the scale as is unknown elsewhere.
In the country places, in travelling, you will invariably find that windows are very little attended to, and that the head of your bed, or the side of it, is placed against a loosely-fitting broken sash. The night-fogs and damps are highly dangerous to new-comers; so act accordingly.
Fleas and bugs, and "such small deer," you must expect in every inn you stop at, even in the cities; for it appears—and indeed I did not know the fact until this year—that bugs are indigenous, native to the soil, and breed in the bark of old trees; so that if you build a new house, you bring the enemy into your camp. Nothing but cleanliness and frequent whitewash, colouring, paint, and soft soap, will get rid of them. If it were not for the strong smell of red cedar and its extreme brittleness, I would have my bedstead of that material; for even the iron bedsteads, in the soldiers' barracks, become infested with them if not painted often. Red cedar they happily eschew.
Travellers may talk as they please of mosquitoes being the scourge of new countries; the bugs in Canada are worse, and the black fly and sand-fly superlatively superior in annoyance. The black fly exists in the neighbourhood of rivers or swamps, and attacks you behind the ear, drawing a pretty copious supply of blood at each bite. The sand-fly, as its name imports, exists in sandy soil, and is so small that it cannot be seen without close inspection; its bite is sharp and fiery.
Then the farmer has the wheat-fly and the turnip-fly to contend against; the former has actually devoured Lower Canada, and the latter has obliged me in a garden to sow several successive crops. The melon-bug is another nuisance; it is a small winged animal, of a bright yellow colour, striped with black bars, and takes up its abode in the flower of the melon and pumpkin, breeding fast, and destroying wherever it settles, for young plants are literally eaten up by it.
The grub, living under ground in the daytime, and sallying forth at night, is a ferocious enemy to cabbage-plants, lettuce, and most of the young, tender vegetables; but, by taking a lantern and a pan after dark, the gentlemen can be collected whilst on their tour, and poultry are very fond of them. Last year, the potato crop failed throughout Canada. What a singular dispensation!—for it alike suffered in Europe, and no doubt the malady was atmospheric. The hay crop, too, suffered severely; but still, by a merciful Providence, the wheat and corn harvest was ample, and gathered in a month before the customary time.
By the word corn I mean oats, rye, and barley; but in the Canadas and in the United States that word means maize or Indian-corn only, which in Canada, last summer, was not, I should think, even an average crop. It is extensively used here for food, as well as buckwheat, and for feeding poultry.
But to our journey westward. I arrived at Toronto on the 27th of June, and found the weather had changed to variable and fine.