Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2

by Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

The day was fine, and so, having carried our provision with us, we halted in the deep woods, upon the muddy banks of the Cold Creek, to breakfast. A Tartar camp was visited by an English traveller somewhere in the dominions of the Grand Lama, and he was treated to London porter. So were we in the deep forest of Central Canada, for London porter appears to travel everywhere; and, discussing it with much relish, we fed the horses, and gave them what they liked much better, clear and pure water—which indeed I now think would have been quite as good for us—and waggoned on, until we came to a surprising new settlement in the Bush, the villages of Percy and Percy Landing, where, there being mill "privileges," as a sharp running water-stream is called in the United States, flour and saw-mills have been established, and a very thriving population is rising both in numbers and in means. Here we dined in a new inn, or rather tavern, kept by a French Canadian, and then pursued our journey for a few miles on a decent new road, amidst fine settlements and good farms, and, crossing a beautiful stream, plunged into the undisturbed forest by a road in which every rut was a canal, and every stone as big as a bomb-shell at the very least. How the waggon stood it, and the roots and stumps of the trees with which these boulders were diversified, I am still unable to explain; for my part, I walked the greater part of it, for the bones of my body seemed as if they were very likely, after a short trial, to part company with each other.

At length, after jolting, jumping, complaining, and comforting, we came to a bridge near Myer's Mills. Our conducteur, my young friend aforesaid, who was more used to the road, saw at a glance that something had gone wrong with the said bridge; for it exhibited a very disorderly, drunken sort of devil-may-care aspect.

He was too far advanced upon it to retreat, when he discovered that a beam or two had departed into the lively current below. With true backwoodsman's energy, he pulled his horses up sharp, reined them well up, and then, with a tremendous shout, applied the whip, and actually leaped horses, waggon, and passengers over the chasm, the remainder of the bridge groaning, and saying most plainly, "I will not bear this any longer." Next morning, we heard that the whole structure had fallen in and disappeared.

I have been in some danger in the course of my life; but a visit afterwards to this spot convinced me that one's existence is often a sort of size-ace throw; and whether the six or the one comes up or goes down, is a miracle. I never had a nearer leap for clearing Styx than this, excepting one shortly afterwards upon the timber-slides of the Trent, at Healy's Falls.

A vast timber canal or way had been constructed here by the Board of Works, to convey timber down a rapid without danger, the slide being alongside of that rapid. It was an interesting work; and, with my young friend and two naval officers, settled in Seymour, I went to examine it. At the sluice-way, or timber-dam, was a sort of bridge, composed of parallel pieces of heavy square joists and a platform; we walked along this Mahomet's railway, where Azrael seemed to have established pretty much the same sentry as Cerberus, having two or three mouths ready to devour the adventurous passenger.

The parallel pieces were about two feet distant from each other; I walked on one, and my companions on the other, until a good view of the whole work and the splendid rapids was attained. Under our feet, at some distance, was the water of the slide running on an inclined plane of woodwork, at a great angle, and with enormous power and velocity into a pitch or cauldron far below.

The day was bright, and the shadow of the parallel logs left between the space no view of the water underneath. They called me suddenly to look at the rapid. I jumped, as I thought, over the space between us; but my jump was into the shadow. One of the naval officers, a powerful man, six feet and more in height, saw me jump; and, just as I was disappearing between the timbers, caught me by the arm, and, by sheer muscle and strength, held me in mid-air. The other immediately assisted him, but my young friend became deadly pale and sick. I did not visit either the slide or the cauldron; in either, instantaneous and suffocating death was inevitable. Reader, never leap in dark places, and look before you leap. My young friend looked before he leaped over the bridge with his span of horses, and, like a gallant auriga, guided his van without fear; but he told me afterwards that the cold sweat sat on his brow, when the chasm was cleared, as much on the bridge as it did at my Quintus Curtius venture. By the by, did Quinte Curce, as the French so adroitly call him, ever leap—I doubt the fact—into the chasm which closed over him?

After passing this bridge, and a slough of despond beyond it, we again plunged into the woods, and, mounting over boulders, sinking into bog-holes, and fairly jolted to jelly, on a sudden turned into an open space of near a hundred acres, round which the solemn and stately forest kept eternal guard. Here, in the space of ten or twelve years, our pioneer friends had laboured through weal and through woe, through Siberian winters and West Indian summers, through ague and fever, to create a little modern paradise.

My young friend commenced in this secluded region, where the outer barbarian was never seen and seldom heard of, where even the troubles of 1837-8 never showed themselves, his location upon one hundred acres. He had received the very best education which a public institution in England could afford; but circumstances obliged him, at the early age of twenty-five, to turn his thoughts, with a young wife, to "life in the Bush," as a sole provision. The partner of his cares, equally well educated, and of an ancient family, by the death of her father, who was high in office in his country's service, was left equally unprovided for.

With youth and good constitutions, a determination to make their own way in life spurred them on to the most disheartening task, a task which thousands of young people from Britain have, however, daily to encounter in Canada, and the progress of which I relate simply from a desire to show that "life in the Bush" is not to be entered into without solemn and serious reflection.