Pine lumber brought at that day (1835) $7 per thousand feet in cash at Niagara; therefore the lumber mill paid $49 per day of twenty-four hours during the season of sawing. To supply the demands of this trade vessel after vessel was built, and soon return freights began to be offered, such as salt from Sodus, N.Y., and flour in barrels, to be carried to Kingston, until the business of lumber manufacturing and vessel freighting was, at that early period in the history of Upper Canada, as productive as the output of a paying gold mine. The author’s father served on many of his schooners as captain and supercargo as well, and never lost his love of the water and its attendant adventure.
One of the most important occurrences of the time, and one from which many reckoned their local history, was a remarkable display of falling meteors. The following account is taken from memoranda left by my mother, and as told by my father:
On the night of the 12th of November, 1833, my father, then a young man, was salmon-spearing in a boat in the creek, at its outlet into Lake Ontario, now Port Oshawa. One of his hired men sat in the stern and paddled, while he stood close beside the light-jack of blazing pine knots, in order to see the salmon in the water. He, in common with the inhabitants generally, was laying in a stock of salmon to be salted down for the year’s use, until the salmon “run” again the following fall.
At or about ten o’clock of this evening, as nearly as he could judge, from out of an intensely dark November night, globes of fire as big as goose eggs began falling all around his boat. These balls continued to fall until my father, becoming frightened, went home,—not forgetting, he quaintly added, to bring with him the salmon already caught. On reaching home, Lot 6, B. F. East Whitby, the whole household was aroused, and frightened too; but the fires ceasing they went to bed, to pass a restless night after the awe-inspiring scene they had witnessed.
Getting up before daybreak next morning, my father raked over the embers of the buried back log of the big fire-place and quickly had a blaze. Happening to glance out of the window, to his intense amazement he saw, as he said, “the whole sky filled with shooting stars.” Quickly he called to the men, his hired help in the lumbering business, to come down stairs. They needed not a second invitation, and among them was one Shields, who, on reaching the door, dropped in a twinkling upon his knees and began to pray. The balls of fire continuing, his prayers grew more earnest, if vigor of voice could be any index to his religious fervor. Of the grandeur of the unparalleled scene my father said almost nothing, for I am led to think they were all too thoroughly frightened to think of beauty, that being a side issue entirely. The fiery shower growing more dense, my father went out of doors and found the fire-balls did not burn or hurt. Then he went to a neighbor’s—a preacher of renown in the locality—having to pass through woods, and even in the darkness, he affirms, the fire-balls lighted his way quite distinctly. The preacher, already awake, was seated at the table beside a tallow dip reading his Bible, with two other neighbors listening and too frightened, he said, to even bid him good morning. He sat and listened to verse after verse, and still the stars fell. The preacher gave no explanation or sign, but read on. Looking eastward, at last my father saw a faint glimmer of breaking day. Once more he came out into the fire and made his way homeward. Before he reached there daylight broke. Gradually the fire-balls grew less and less, and, with the day, ceased altogether. To find a sign of them he hunted closely upon the ground, but not a trace was left of anything. Nor was any damage done. What became of the stars that fell he could not conjecture.
Realize that in 1833 astronomers had not taught Upper Canadians in regard to meteoric showers, as we know to-day, and we do not marvel at their consternation and fright. Such was the greatest meteoric shower the world probably has ever known. Its greatest density was said to be attained in this section of the continent.
A bit of doggerel went the rounds at that time. It was made, I believe, by one Horace Hutchinson, a sailor whom my father had on one of his schooners. Here is the first verse:
“I well remembered what I see
In eighteen hundred and thirty-three,
When from the affrighted place I stood
The stars forsook their fixed abode.”
A better sailor he was than a poet, and yet, bad as the verses were, they were very popular in the thirties in a large section of the Home District, of which this is a part.
E. S. Shrapnel, the artist, paints the picture ([page 144]) from an actual photograph of the house, he obviously supplying the kneeling man.