“By keeping out of his way, I should think,” I replied.
“That’s just what I was going to advise you to do, Peter,” observed Silas. “And I’ll tell you what, lad, instead of your kicking your heels doing nothing in this place, you and I will start off up the country with our guns as soon as I have done my business here, which won’t take long, and we’ll see if we can’t pick up a few skins which will be worth something.”
This proposition, as may be supposed, was much to my taste; but I did not much like the thoughts of leaving Captain Dean and Mary, though I did not tell him so. He, however, very soon discovered what was running in my mind, and set himself to work to overcome the wish I had to remain with them. I had found so few friends of late, that I had learned to value them properly. But Silas Flint wanted a companion, and, liking me, was resolved that I should accompany him. We went on shore together; and before the day was over, he had so worked up my imagination by his descriptions of the sport and scenery of the backwoods, that I became most eager to set off.
I next day told Captain Dean; and as I assured him that it was my father’s wish that I should see something of the country, he did not oppose the plan, provided I should return in time to sail with him. This I promised to do; and I then went below to tell Mary, who was in the cabin packing up some things to take on shore. To my surprise, she burst into tears when I gave her the information; and this very nearly made me abandon my project. When, however, I told her of my promise to return, she was comforted; and I added, that I would bring her back plenty of skins to make her tippets and muffs for the winter, to last her for years.
Three days after his arrival at Quebec, Flint was ready to set out. I had preserved intact the money my kind father had given me, and with it I purchased, at Flint’s suggestion, a rifle, and powder, and a shot-belt, a tinder-box, a pipe, some tobacco, a tin cup, and a few other small articles. “Now you’ve laid in your stock in trade, my lad,” he observed, as he announced my outfit to be complete. “With a quick eye and a steady hand you’ve the means, by my help, of making your fortune; so the sooner we camp out and begin the better.”
I told him I was ready, and asked him where we were to go.
“Oh, never you mind that, lad,” he replied. “It’s a long way from here; but a man, with his eyes open, can always find his way there and back. All you’ve to do is to follow the setting sun going, and to look out for him rising when coming back.”
“Then I suppose you mean to go to the westward?” I observed.
“Ay, lad, to the far west,” he answered; but I confess that at the time I had no idea how far off that “far west” was.
We set off the next morning by a steamer to Montreal, and on from thence, past Kingston, to Toronto on Lake Ontario, in Upper Canada. Flint lent me money to pay my way. He said that I should soon be able to reimburse him. I need not say how delighted I was with the fine scenery and the superb inland seas on which I floated. I could scarcely persuade myself that I was not on the ocean, till I tasted the water alongside. Flint told me with a chuckle, that once upon a time the English Government sent some ships of war in frame out to the lakes, and also a supply of water-tanks, forgetting that they would have a very ample one outside. A little forethought would have saved the ridicule they gained for this mistake, and the expense to which they put the country. As my intention is to describe my adventures afloat rather than those on shore, I shall be very brief with my account of the life we led in the backwoods.