The most delicious butter and tempting cheese, quite equal, perhaps, to the renowned British in every thing but the name, were displayed in the greatest abundance.
A Mr. Hiram Ranney, from the Brock district, contributed a monster cheese, weighing 7 cwt., not made of "double skimmed sky-blue," but of milk of the richest quality, which, from its size and appearance, might have feasted all the rats and mice in the province for the next twelve months. It was large enough to have made the good old deity of heathen times--her godship of the earth--an agricultural throne; while from the floral hall, close at hand, a crown could have been woven, on the shortest notice, of the choicest buds from her own inexhaustible treasury.
A great quantity of fine flax and hemp particularly attracted my attention. Both grow admirably in this country, and at no very distant period will form staple articles for home manufacture and foreign export.
The vast improvement in home-manufactured cloth, blankets, flannels, shawls, carpeting, and counterpanes, was very apparent over the same articles in former years. In a short time Canada need not be beholden to any foreign country for articles of comfort and convenience. In these things her real wealth and strength are shown; and we may well augur from what she has already achieved in this line, how much more she can do--and do well--with credit and profit to herself.
The sheep in Canada are not subject to the diseases which carry off so many yearly in Britain; and though these animals have to be housed during the winter, they are a very profitable stock. The Canadian grass-fed mutton is not so large as it is in England, and in flavour and texture more nearly resembles the Scotch. It has more of a young flavour, and, to my thinking, affords a more wholesome, profitable article of consumption. Beef is very inferior to the British; but since the attention of the people has been more intently directed to their agricultural interests, there is a decided improvement in this respect, and the condition of all the meat sent to market now-a-days is ten per cent better than the lean, hard animals we used to purchase for winter provisions, when we first came to the province.
At that time they had a race of pigs, tall and gaunt, with fierce, bristling manes, that wandered about the roads and woods, seeking what they could devour, like famished wolves. You might have pronounced them, without any great stretch of imagination, descended from the same stock into which the attendant fiends that possessed the poor maniacs of Galilee had been cast so many ages ago. I knew a gentleman who was attacked in the bush by a sow of this ferocious breed, who fairly treed him in the woods of Douro, and kept him on his uncomfortable perch during several hours, until his swinish enemy's patience was exhausted, and she had to give up her supper of human flesh for the more natural products of the forest, acorns and beech-mast.
Talking of pigs and sheep recals to my mind an amusing anecdote, told to me by a resident of one of our back townships, which illustrates, even in a cruel act of retaliation, the dry humour which so strongly characterizes the lower class of emigrants from the emerald isle. I will give it in my young friend's own words:--
"In one of our back townships there lived an old Dutchman, who was of such a vindictive temper that none of his neighbours could remain at peace with him. He made the owners of the next farm so miserable that they were obliged to sell out, and leave the place. The farm passed through many hands, and at last became vacant, for no one could stay on it more than a few months; they were so worried and annoyed by this spiteful old man, who, upon the slightest occasion, threw down their fences and injured their cattle. In short, the poor people began to suspect that he was the devil himself, sent among them as a punishment for their sins.
"At last an Irish emigrant lately out was offered the place very cheap, and, to the astonishment of all, bought it, in spite of the bad karacter, for the future residence of himself and family.
"He had not been long on the new place when one of his sheep, which had got through a hole in the Dutchman's fence, came hobbling home with one of its legs stuck through the other. Now, you must know that this man, who was so active in punishing the trespasses of his neighbours' cattle and stock, was not at all particular in keeping his own at home. There happened to be an old sow of his, who was very fond of Pat's potaties, and a constant throuble to him, just then in the field when the sheep came home. Pat took the old sow (not very tenderly, I'm afraid) by the ear, and drawing out his jack-knife, very deliberately slit her mouth on either side as far as he could. By and by, the old Dutchman came puffing and blowing along; and seeing Pat sitting upon his door-step, enjoying the evening air, and comfortably smoking his pipe, he asked him if he had seen anything of his sow?