Donald had formed the most extravagant notions of Canada. In his eyes it was a perfect El Dorado, where gold was as plentiful as blackberries upon the bushes. He did not seem ever to have given the idea of having to work for his living a thought—and laughed at a notion so disagreeable and repugnant to his old habits, as absurd.
"Whar was the use of ganging to a new country," he said, "if a bodie had to work as hard there as in the auld?"
After paying his passage-money, and furnishing provisions for the voyage, he had only the sum of nineteen pounds remaining, which he considered an inexhaustible fund of wealth, from which he was to obtain, not only a comfortable living in the land of promise, but an independent fortune. He was entitled to a grant of land, which he said, "Would make him a laird, and place him on an equal footing with the lairds in the backwoods of Canada."
Flora often wondered in after years, what became of poor Macdonald and all his high-flown dreams of future greatness.
The wife of the old soldier was a tall, raw-boned, red-fisted virago, who fought with both fists and tongue. She seemed to live in a perfect element of strife. A quarrel could not exist in the ship without her being either the original cause, or the active promoter of it, after it was once set on foot. She would bully the captain, out-swear the sailors, and out-scold all the rest of the femalities in the vessel.
The daughter of a soldier, born amidst the horrors of war, and brought up as a camp-follower, her ignorance of all the gentler humanities of life was only exceeded by her violence. While assisting in pillaging the dead, after the battle of Waterloo, she had found the sum of a hundred gold Napoleons concealed in a belt upon the person of a dead French officer. This made her a woman of fortune, and led to her marriage with her present husband, for she had had several, who doubtless were glad to be released by death from the unnatural tyranny of such a mate. Macdonald was an easy, good-natured man, who for the sake of peace, let the wilful woman have her own way, and thrash him and the bairns as often as the wicked spirit by which she was possessed, prompted her to exhibit these peculiar marks of her conjugal and maternal love.
Had Macdonald been asked, why he submitted to such base treatment from his wife, he might have answered with the tall Canadian backwoodsman, when questioned on the same subject,—
"It pleases her, and it don't hurt I."
Mrs. Macdonald was in a delicate situation, and from the very day the ship sailed, she gave out that she was on the eve of an increase to her interesting family: to the great indignation of the captain, who had a mortal antipathy to babies, and who declared in his rough way, "That it was an imposition; Mrs. Macdonald had no right to swindle him into taking out more passengers than he had bargained for."
The stalwart dame was enchanted that she had found out a way to annoy the captain, to whose orders she was forced to submit, and whom in consequence she regarded as a bitter enemy. In fact she did all in her power to encourage his fears respecting her. Whenever he paced the deck in sullen dignity, she began to sigh and groan, and declare in a voice loud enough for him to overhear, "That she did na think that she could haud out anither day ava'."