Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2

by Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

The labour of bringing home logs for fuel in winter is not one of the least in a farm, and then these logs have to be sawed and split into convenient lengths for the fireplaces and stoves.

But all this may be achieved, if done cheerfully; and, to show that it can, I will add that, amidst all this labour, my young friend was building himself a dam, where the beavers, in times when that politic and hard-working little trowel-tailed race owned his property, had seen the value of collecting the waters of the brook. He was repairing their decayed labours, for the purpose of washing his sheep, of getting a good fish-pond, and of keeping a bath always full for the comfort of his family.

What a change in ten years! The forest, which had been silent and untrodden since the beavers first heard afar off the sound of the white men's axes, was now converted into a smiling region, in which a prattling brook ran meandering at the foot of gently swelling hill-sides, on which the snowy sheep were browsing, and the cattle lowing.

A field of Indian corn was rustling its broad and vivid green flaggy leaves, whilst its fruit, topped by long silky pennons, waving in the breeze, seemed to say to me, "Good Englishman, why do your countrymen despise my golden spikes? do they think, as they do of my ugly, prickly friend the oat, that I am not good enough for man, and fit only for the horse or the negro? You know better, and you have often eaten of a pound-cake made of my flour, which you said was sweeter and better than that of wheat. You have often tasted my puddings; come now, Mr. John Bull, were they not very good?"

"Certainly they were, Mr. Maize, and hominy and hoe-cake and all that sort of thing are good too; but pray don't ask me to devour you in the shape of mush, molasses and butter. Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves will never tremble."

Jesting apart, the flour of Indian corn, or maize, is as much superior, as nutritive food, to potatoes, as wheat flour is to Indian corn. I wish the poor Irish had plenty of it.

The farmers in Upper Canada use it much, but in that wheat country it cannot of course be expected that it supersedes flour, properly so called. They also use buckwheat flour largely in the shape of pancakes, and a most excellent thing it is.

My friend's life was diversified; for, during the season that the crops are ripening, he had time to spare to go out on fishing and shooting excursions on the Trent, and occasionally in winter a little deer-hunting, with, longo intervallo, a bear-killing event.

I went to a combined fishing and shooting pic-nickery, and travelled from Rainey's mills and Falls all along the valley of the Trent to Healy's Falls.

The Trent is a beautiful and most picturesque river, rushing and roaring along over a series of falls and rapids for miles together, and expanding in noble reaches and little lakes.