IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 1.1 LilM 12.5 US ^^^ •■■ S! I£ |20 IL2g Hu tL6 |<^^gMM lllil^^^SSE fflnSBBB Photographic Sciences Corporation ^ / 3 12X ItX MX 32X p TIm eofnr fHnMd hum hat bMn raproduead thanks to the 8«n«ro«ity of: Douglat Library Quaan't Univartity L'axamplalra ffNm4 f ut raproduit grica A la gAnAroolt* da: Douglas Library Quaan's Univartity quality toglbtnty tha Tha Imagaa appaaring hara ara tha poaslbla conaidaring tha condition off tha original eopy and in kaaping filming oontraot apaeifioatkNia. Original coplaa ki printad papar covara ara filmad ^kinkig with tha front eovar and anding on tha laat paga with a printad or Hkiatratad impraa- •Ion, or tlw baek eovar wlian approprlata. AN othar original coplaa ara fHmad begiimhig on tha first paga with a printad or INuatratad Impraa- sion. and anding on tlio laat paga with a printad or Mluatratad impraaaton. Laa Imagas suivantas ont 4t* raproduitas avac la plus grand soin, compta tanu da ki condition at da ki nattatA da raxamplaira film*, at an conformltA avac las conditions du contrat da fHmaga. l.aa aacanipiairas origlnaux dont ia couvartura sn papiar ast ImprimAa sont ffilmte an commanpant par la pramlar ptet at an tarmlnant soit par .a damlAra paga qui comporta una amprainta dimpraaslon ou dUiustratlon, soit par la sacond plat, aakm la cas. Tous las autras axamplairca origlnaux sont ffiimAs an commandant par la pramMra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'Imprassion ou d'illustration at an tarmlnant par la damMra paga qui comporta una talla amprainta. Tha kwt racordad frama on aach microflcha Shan contain tha symbol — ^- Imaaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol ▼ (moaning "END"), wl«ichavar appUaa. Un das symboias suhrants apparattra sur ia damlAra imaga da cliaqua microflcha, salon la cas: la symbola — »• signifia "A 8UIVRE", ia symbols V signifia "FIN". Maps, pkitas, charts, ate., may ba filmad at diffarant reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely Inckided in one expoeure are filmed beginning b« the upper left hend comer, left to right and top to bottom, as many framae aa required. The foHowkig diagrama IHustrata tlie method: Lee cartas, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent Atre flimto i des taux da rMuctton difffArants. Loraqua la document est trop grand pour Atra raproduit en un soul ciieliA, ii est ffilmA A partir da I'angki supMeur geuche, de gauclie k droita. at da haut wt ba». an prenant ia nombre d'Imagas nteessalre. Las diagrammes suivants illustrent la mithode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 i- •Hf ■^' ;* -0 G lift*- THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 4 „ THE^ GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT: HIS DAILY LIFE, SPORTS, AND PASTIMES m CANADA, AUSTRALIA, AND THE UNITED STATES. By W. STAMER, AOTHOB OF " BIOOLLEOTIONB OF A UFB OF ASVINTOBB," KVC. UBI BBNS IBI PATRIA. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : TINSLBY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 1874. \_All Mightt qf TratulaUon and Beproduetion are rtmvti.1 L^ 'jy^^/^ /i-7^.sy \ \ I/, / lOKDON : SAVrU. EDWAUnS AND CO.. PRIMTKRg, OHAKDOS STREET, COVENT QARDEN. > 0 \ r ■< ■^ *• > \ (^ 4 PREFACE. A LTHOUGH I have endeavoured to be as -^ concise as possible, I cannot discover, on careinl re-perusal of my manuscript, that anything has been omitted which could with advantage have been introduced. By minutely describing the process of clearing, house-building, trapping, &c., I might have spun out the work to any length I pleased, but the only person likely to have benefited by such procedure would have been the printer. All the descriptions in the world wont teach a man how to swing an axe, nor a hundred diagrams how to build a shanty. I have endeavoured to give the reader a truthful description of the life led by the gentle- man emigrant in different parts of the world ; if he wants to know more Le must get his informa- tion, as I have done, from personal experience. ^o)i:99 * * f CONTENTS or THE FIRST VOLUME. tlSI EMIGRATION 1 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT 21 THE CANADA8 54 THE CLEARED FARM 73 THE BACKWOODS FARM 144 EMIGRATION. "The world is a well-furnished table Where the guests are promiscuously set; Wo all faro as well as we're able, And scramble for what wo can got. My simile holds to a tittle : Some gorge, whilst some scarce have a taste ; But if I am content with a little, Enough is as good as a feast." DAME BRITANNIA is at the present time pretty much * i the same predicament as was the celebrated old lady who lived in a shoe — she "has so many children, that she doe(»h> 1 1<»k>^v what to do." A good mo Jier, -fhe wishes to act fairly towards them all ; but sLc ioesn't appear to see her way very clearly, and keeps uxi de- manding, in piteous accenlH, '^ AVliat's to be done with the children ? The answer would seem plain enough. If you can't find work for them at home, assist them to emigrate. Did your first-born only do their duty, instead of the portionless brats of the family having to be got rid of by hook and by crook, there would be a cry for more helpers. But the prosperous are seldom open-handed, and VOL. 1. B •*y S"* 2 EMIGRATION. those who talk the loudest of the obligations of nobility are too often the first to forget the ob- ligations of wealth. Although it is of the Gentleman Emigrant — his joys and sorrows, his pleasures and his pains — that we are about to write, a few words on the emigration of the masses will, we think, be hardly out of place ; they will serve as an introduction. Whatever may be done for our poorer brethren, it is but little after all ; and that in great and wealthy England men should be suffered to die for lack of the common necessaries of life is in- famous. " If a man work not, neither shall he eat," is a sound maxim ; but then, work must be given when demanded. There is, we hold, one thing which every man has a right to demand of his country — work. One thing which Fatherland has the right to demand of every man — his services as a soldier for national defence. If work cannot be found at home, it should be found abroad, and the nation be charged with the expenses. The cost ought not to be considered for an instant. So long as monej'^ is forthcoming in abundance for the con- version of the heathen, who have no claim upon our good offices, money can be found for our starving poor who have. We may laugh at EMIGRATION". Brigham Young and his Mormon absurdities; but one portion, at least, of the address which he is or was accustomed to deliver to newly arrived emigrants, shows sound common sense. ** Your first duty, my friends, is to learn how to build a hut, to grow corn, to plant potatoes, to raise your garden stuff — in a word, your first duty is to live." Turn and twist the matter as you will ; bring the Scriptures, or the Fathers of the Church, to prove to the contrary — if so it seems good to you — one conclusion must ultimately be arrived at by all save the stupid, the perverse, and the bigoted — man's first duty is to live. It is his country's duty that he be put in the way of doing so ; and how this can best be effected is a matter for the most serious conside- ration. To transport a number of penniless families to Australia, Canada, or New Zealand, and there to leave them with nothing more than a " Good luck to ye," would be little less cruel than to land them on some sterile rock in mid- ocean. Can anything more pitiable be imagined than a score of families with boxes and bundles of bedding piled around them, seated on the beach or jetty, where they have been landed, and staring about them in a helpless, bewildered B 2 EMIGRATION. manner, not knowing what on eartli to do in that far country, where everything seems so new and strange. We have witnessed such scenes before now, and we sincerely trust that we 11 ay be spared the pain of ever having to witness them again. So long as the transportation of emigrants is a private concern, almost altogether in the hands of a few Liverpool, London, and Glasgow ship- owners, no radical change can be effected. No matter how overstocked the labour market may be, the shipowner is always ready to affirm that never was there so great a demand for labour, and had he a vessel on the berth for Patagonia, would assure the applicant that that country was, as a field for emigration, second to none. Colonial emigration should, we opine, be to some extent under Government control. When vessel succeeds vessel in rapid succession, the labour market is glutted, the " Home" is over- crowded, and the immigrant is obliged either to accept a lower rate of wages than his fellow- labourers, or to live upon his own little capital until such time as the balance is restored. He often prefers the latter course, and pays the penalty for so doing. Hundreds and thousands of men who would have succeeded in life, had they only obtained remunerative employment on EMIGRATION. first landing, have, from being obliged to wait their turn, fallen into habits of idleness and dissipation, and become a public charge. Much has been done of late years in the United States and elsewhere for the protection of the newly- arrived immigrant ; but still the task of the various immigration commissioners is but half complete. Immigrant depots and homes are admirable institutions, insomuch that they afford temporary shelter to the stranger, and prevent his falling — for a time at least — into the clutches of the harpies who are on the watch for him. Further than this, they are not of much service. Like Sailors' Homes, there is more of tlie hotel about them than the asylum. To be of any real utility, they should be conducted in the same way as are our hospitals — the patient admitted, and not discharged until cured — that is to say, until such time as work shall have been found him, lie being properly lodged and fed in the interim. Instead of the emigrant being packed off as heretofore, to this or that colony to take his chance, he should be duly invoiced, John Bull, with correspondents in every British colony, himself conducting the business, like a line old merchant prince that he is. His ledger might be kept in very simple fashion — on one sheet, 6 EMIGRATION. the orders on the other, the expenses incurred for the completion of the same. To order received on such a date, from Otago, New Zealand, six hundred emigrants, of sorts, as follows : — Twenty carpenters, ten blacksmiths, &c. &c. To the fitting out of H.M.S. Speedwell, so much; to provisioning the same, so much. There would be as little diflficulty in the despatch of six hun- dred souls to order, as in the shipment of six hundred puncheons of rum. But it is not our intention to rush headlong into statistics. We know too well what would be the result of any attempt on our part to give even an approximate estimate of the numbers likely to apply at Uncle John's emigration office, or of the sums he would be called upon to dis- burse. We should have a score of amateur statisticians down on us like a shot. It will answer our purpose that X and Y, two unknown quantities, represent the emigrants, and the moneys to be expended, it will be at the reader's discretion to add what figures he may think fit. Emigrants may be divided into five classes. Firstly, emigrants with a considerable capital; secondly, emigrants with a small ditto ; thirdly, working farmers and respectable mechanics, who can afford to pay their own passage ; fourthly, artisans and labourers who are unable to raise EMIGRATION". the entire amount demanded for a passage ticket, but who are ready to contribute something towards it j lastly, those who are totally unpro- vided with funds, and who would have to be conveyed at the public cost. It is only for the last two classes that Uncle John would have to loosen his purse-strings, and this he would have to do for them did they remain at home. Is it too much to say, that under a proper system ot emigration the entire number could be easily ab- sorbed by the different British colonies through- out the world ? We think not. If in England an ever-increasing popidation means pauperism, it means wealth in a new country. Provided that the tide of emigration be under proper con- trol, the more the merrier. There can be no two opinions as to the advantages which must ulti- mately accrue to any colony from a steady influx of emigrants. The only question is, what arrangement can be made, so that the primary expenses may not be too grievously felt by either the Home or Colonial Governments ? This must ever be a matter of special agreement between the respective colonies and the mother country ; but if we were willing to pay one-half the ex- penses of transport, and a small capitation tax for each statute adult, the colonists would have every reason to be satisfied. If they went to » EMIGEATION. work in a practical way, their share of the ex- penses ought to be but little the heavier of the two. Huts having been erected, and provisions stored prior to the arrival of the immigrants, they would, immediately upon landing, be started up country to the scene of their future opera- tions— some tract of country, miles away from the high road, in the heart of the bush or wilder- ness. Instead of each man going to work on "his own hook" — digging a patch of ground here, cutting down a tree there, without having the remotest idea of what he was after — all hands would at once be set about the task of converting the rough log-road or bush track, over which they had so recently toiled with their packs and bundles, into a broad and substantial Macadam. There are many reasons why road- making should take precedence of all other labours. Employing the immigrant for the first few months on public works gives him breathing time, and allows his greenness to wear away. Were he to be at once given his lot of ground, and told to go to work and put in his crops, he would have, until those crops were harvested, to be fed at Government expense — a \ery bad beginning. Let the immigrant only once get it into his head that it is the duty of the Govern- ment to provide for him, and his wants are never EMIGEATION. 9 ending. Make him thoroughly understand that everything he gets at the store must be paid for, and instead of subsiding into a lazy mendicant, he becomes a thrifty, self-reliant man. Paid a fair wage for road-making, and purchasing every requisite at cost price from the Government store, not only would the immigrant be able to provide for his family, but to save a little money into the bargain. Unless a very lazy, helpless lot, his family ought to be adding something, if never so little, to the common stock. They might not be able to fell trees or wield the pickaxe, but they ou[^ht to manage to collect sufl&cient provender for a cow, and to plant squash, cabbages, and a few bushels of potatoes. Over and above the grant of the land, the only expenses likely to be incurred by the Colonial Government would be for hut building, the first year's seed, and farm implements, with perhaps the further donation of a cow and pigling to each family. A log-house or split cedar hut can be erected at a very small cost, especially when the future proprietor thereof gives his labour gratis ; farm implements suitable for bush work are of a very inexpensive description ; the seed would be a mere bagatelle ; the gift of a cow would not be ruinous. Supposing half the lots to. have been reserved for sale, their increased value would ■-•5- 10 EMIGRATION. I, more tlian counterbalance the money sunk on the remainder. The construction of a good road should double, or even quadruple the value of the land in its immediate vicinity. No people are more fully alive to this fact than the Americans. For the concession of a certa'.n quantity of land on each side the track, a company will often engage to lay down a line of railway through a howling wilderness. It is all outlay and no profit at first start, but the promoters well know that it must pay eventually, and they patiently bide their time. First one lot is taken up, then another, and before very many years have rolled away, the surrounding country is thickly populated, and the line paying a handsome divi dend. Civilization may not advance with such giant strides in a colony where a macadamized road has to serve in lieu of a line of railway ; but it must be indeed a poor spot where "opening up" the country is found to be a losing game, and where the lots along a new line of road do not forthwith double in value. Installed in his hut, or shanty, and his first year's crop garnered, the settler ought to be able to get along without any further assistance. Many a prosperous farmer with whom we have conversed in Canada and the United States has assured us, with a blush of honest pride, that he EMIGRATION. 11 began life without a "red cent" in his pocket. It was generally the same story. Unable to purchase a quarter section of land, even at govern- ment price, he had one fine morning humped his pack, and, accompanied by wife and children, struck boldly into the wilderness. For years he had wrestled with the forest, backing all his sup- plies into the woods, and existing he hardly knew how. But, little by little, he had managed to clear the land near his shanty ; field had been added to field, barn to barn, bullock to bullock, the land upon which he had been a squatter upon suiTerance had been purchased outright, and, thanks be to God, he has prospered. If men can thus make headway without assistance of any descrip- tion, "Assisted" emigrants ought surely to be able to do the same. It is the absence of a road that disheartens and retards the settler. Not only would the government emigrant have a road past his door, but he would have neighbours to assist him, and would begin his new career at a stage which could only be reached by the ordinary settler after long years of anxiety, toil, and privation. With proper men at the wheel. Colonial Emi- gration, on the reciprocity principle, could hardly fail to be a great success; but it would have to be a national undertaking. Private Emi- It EMIGRATION. i i i \ i gration Associations are of little use. They are spasmodic in their action, faulty in their organi- zation, expensive in their working ; and as their assistance is only extended to men of irreproach- able character, whilst relieving us of the thrifty, industrious mechanic, whom we would desire to keep at home, they considerately leave us the un- skilled and the improvident, with whose presence we could readily dispense. It would never do to send out only picked men. The vicious we are in honour bound to keep at home — we have the hulks ready for their reception — but that the country should reap some benefit from the trans- action, the good and the indiflferent would have to be shipped in fair proportions. When we say the indifferent, we mean those who are so owing to circumstances beyond their own control ; for there is many a man amongst us classed as a vagrant, who would be ready and willing to work if the chance were only given him. The genuine loafer would decline to emigrate, for he knows right well that it is only in densely popu- lated England that his peculiar dodges for obtaining a living without labour can avail him aught. If a National Emigration scheme be ever laid before Parliament, there would be, it seems to us, but some half dozen questions for consideration. V EMIGRATION. 13 Would the Colonies, according to their respective size, consent to take annually so many thousands of our surplus population ? Would not the supply always exceed the demand ? Would not the existence of a National Emigration Fund put a stop to the working of all independent emigra- tion societies and clubs, and tend to increase, rather than diminish, the improvidence of our labouring classes ? Would not an, emigration tax be excessively unpopular ? and if not, in what manner should it be levied ? The funds in hand, how should they be expended ? Of how many members should the emigration board be com- posed, and what should be the powers confided to it? As regards the first question, it is merely a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. The colonists want emigrants, but they naturally object to paying all the expenses incidental to their transportation and settlement. If we are benefited by the advent of your unemployed poor, they argue, so are you by their exodus. The advantage being mutual, it is but fair that the expenses should be so too. What offer do you feel disposed to make us ? If it be only a fair one, we shall be happy to close with you at once, and you can send us a first instalment of emigrants as soon as convenient. If the money be forth- mmmi u EMIGRATION. coining, on our side there will, we feel assured, be no backing out on the part of the Colonies. That the number of applicants would be over- whelming, is, we think, highly improbable. There would doubtless at first be a great demand for free and assisted passage tickets, and every man who had no work to do would declare his willing- ness to be off by the first ship to the Antipodes. But it would only be for a time. Write and lecture as one may on the charms of colonial life, emigration will never be really popular with the masses. The British workman is a home-loving mortal ; if he can obtain work he has no desire to leave Old England. If he cannot, he will consent to emigrate — under protest. There is besides a certain amount of pride about the British work- man. Unless he be a very bad specimen of his class, he hates the very name of charity. He wont go into the " House" until driven to it ; he will subsist on a crust rather than ask relief. Were it his desire to emigrate, he would sell his clothes and his tools rather than be carried at public cost. He has his faults, but sponging is not one of them. The applicants at a government emigration oflBce would consist chiefly of artisans who had neither work nor the wherewithal to raise sufficient money for their passage ticket, bankrup- tradesmen, servants of all work, ill-paid. EMIGRATION. 16 poorly fed, agricultural labourers, with large families, and a fair proportion of " Micawbers"— men to whom any change is a godsend. Of those physically disqualified for colonial life — sinewless mill operatives, effeminate clerks, shopmen, &c. — no account need be taken, nor yet of our Irish fellow-countrymen ; not because they have not as much right to government aid as the English and the Scotch, but that the vast majority of them would infinitely prefer paying their own passage to the United States, where their brethren have already " possission of the flure," to being carried gratis to Australia or New Zealand. Notwithstanding the existence of a National Emigration Office, the tide of independent emi- gration would roll on as before. The United States would still continue to receive her tens of thousands yearly — a new channel would have been opened, but it would only receive the over- flow, not drain the country. Ear from a National Emigration Board putting a stoppage to the working of all independent emigration societies and clubs throughout the country, it ought rather to increase their number and efficiency. What has hitherto been the greatest stumbling- block in the way of all such Associations ? That not one of them has been on a scale of sufficient magnitude to enable it to make the most of the le \^ EMIGRATION. i funds at its disposal. A few iamilies, all that could be despatched at a time, the incidental expenses were necessarily enhanced, the passage tickets had to be purchased at the highest rates, and the club money was dribbled away. A National Emigration Board once established in London, all the disadvantages under which these clubs labour would be removed ; for to it would be confided the most onerous part of the business — thatof providing the ships and embarking the emi- grants. The duties of the different provincial clubs might be confined to the collection of sub- scriptions and to the despatch to London, Liver- pool, or Glasgow, of such members as had been elected by their respective boards. As each club .would have the right to nominate members only in proportion to the amount it had paid into the general account, no misunderstanding could possibly arise. What that sum should be per head, and what the government subsidy, would be a matter for further Imperial legislation. If shipowners can afford to carry emigrants to Australia for thirteen or fourteen pounds per statute adult, a government with any number of ships (rotting for want of use) at command, ought surely to be able to do it at a considerably lower figure. Let the amount demanded of the emigraiit be only moderate, and instead of a r ^ '.ti: EMIGRATION. 17 shed in •h these ^ould be iiness — the emi- 'ovincial I of sub- 1, Liver- lad been lach club ►ers only into the could I be per T, would Dion. If y National Emigration Fund tending to augment the improvidence of the British workman, as has been predicted, it will have just tho contrary effect ; for it is the very magnitude of the sum that he has been required to raise — the time that it has taken to accumulate that has hitherto dis- heartened bim arid made him reckless. If that sum were only in fair proportion to his earnings, he would go to work with a will, and save every penny, until his little purse was made up. That the enterprise might be in a great mea- sure self-supporting, as it ought to be, and, still further, to prevent that "improvidence" which is so dreaded, seventy-five per cent, of the entire number of emigrants despatched might be Club or Government nominees (assisted passages), the remaining twenty-five being composed of such impecunious families, orphans, &c., as should have been recommended by the different Poor Law Guardians throughout the country. In this way the special emigration tax which would have to be levied would be comparatively insignificant. That it would be unpopular is highly probable ; all taxes are, but the diminished poor-rates would soon reconcile the wrathful taxpayer to the imposition. The amount required would have to be raised by direct taxation, for there are many reasons why parochial ratepayers should VOL. I. c I r 18 \ * EMIGRATION. not be called wpon to bear the entire burden. If parishes were to be mulcted in proportion to the number of inmates in their respective workhouses, some would be surcharged, whilst others would escape scot free. A tax upon all cultivable lands allowed for purposes of sport to remain uncul- tivated, would perhaps be the fairest of any. That every man has a right to do what he likes with his own, holds good only so long as the exercise of that right does not interfere with the commonweal ; which is not the case when lands which, if properly cultivated, would find employ- ment for a large number of people, are left uncultivated in order to minister to the sporting proclivities of the owner ; and the man who can afford to allow any portion of his estate to remain unproductive as covert for the /em natura, can afford to send the men who are thereby thrown out of employment to some colony where work is plentiful and where there is " room enough for all." There m.ay be a thousand ways of mitigating the sufferings of our unemployed poor, but only one, we feel assured, by which their perfect cure can be effected — by a well-organized system of Government emigration. The remedy is sharp, but it is effective. It is, no doubt, a hard thing to be forced to leave the land of one's birth) and to go forth into the world to seek a home amongst EMIGRATION. 19 n. If to the louses, would e lands uncul- )f any. lie likes as the iritli the m lands employ- are left sporting |who can remain [lira, can thrown ire work lough for iti gating [but only Ifect cure stem of |is sharp, ^rd thing |irth> and amongst 'B •B strangers. But the emigrant can have this assur- ance to console him — that, in all our wanderings, we have never yet come across an unsuccessful immigrant whose misfortunes could not be dis- tinctly traced either to laziness, intemperance, imprudence, or else to some one or other of those unforeseen disasters from which, alas ! there is no escape. That there should be at the present f^- moment thousands of people starving in New York, Boston, and other large American cities, proves nothing. Men who are so gregariously inclined that they cannot tear themselves away from the great cities, must pay the penalty. When we speak of settlers, we mean hond-fide settlers — those who have had the good sense to turn their attention to the cultivation of the soil. Such men, we repeat, be they only sober and industrious, are almost sure to prosper. But before advising any man to emigrate^ we would first put to him the following questions. If a gentleman by birth and education, have you a strong right arm and a sound constitution? Can you divest yourself of your gentility, and take it rough-and-tumble with those similarly circumstanced to yourself? No? Well, then, have you the equivalents of bone and muscle — Capital? c 2 >\ %f w EMIGRATION. You have not ? Then stay at ' home. You would be almost certain to go to the wall in a new country. If a working man, what has been the nature of your employment? Has your constitution been impaired by the noisome atmosphere of factory or workshop, or from bending over the loom, the desk, or the counter are your muscles relaxed, your tissues wasted, and your shoulders rounded? Yes ? Then stay where you are. You would only be in the way in the colonies. The only men likely to succeed in the colonies are, besides household servants and skilful mechanics, capitalists, both large and small, and those of iron thews and sinews. f :t: You ill in a nature bitution here of iver the e your id your u would in the nts and rgc and THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. A GENTLEMAN EMIGEANT!" cried an American backwoods farmer, to whom we were one day describing Australian bush life, " A Gentleman Emigrant ! Why, what on airth's that ? Guess he's a British institution." A happier guess our horny-handed, sun- embrowned Yankee friend could, we think, hardly have made had he kept on guessing for a twelve- month. The Gentleman Emigrant is a British Institution. France knows him not, neither does the German Fatherland. His counterpart will be searched for in vain among those countless thou- sands yearly leaving the ports of Hamburg, Bremen, Havre, for the shores of the New World ; for he is an institution altogether, owing his being to the existence amongst us of a variety of other institu- tions— ^institutions which, although they may flou- rish singly in many lands, are to be found united in no other country save England. If we gently whisper Law of Primogeniture, Law of Entail, the reader will, we feel assured, be able to com- plete the list to his own entire satisfaction. IPKWP^W^^^W^^W" mrmmm I ' THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. To judge from the heart-rending letters which he from time to lime addresses to the editors of our daily prints, paterfamilias, with large family and strictly entailed estate, is just now at his wit's end to know what he shall do with his younger children. Having had to " keep up hia position in the world," the amount he has been able to lay aside from year to year has been necessarily sm?ll, the sum total being barely sufficient to portion his daughters. There is the estate for Tom and the family living whenever it may chance to fall in for Jim, but what in Heaven's name is to be done with Bill and Dick and Harry? and in the agony of his despair he can think of nothing better than to impart his perplexities to the editor of the Times, and ask the sympathy of its readers. The complainant has invariably been the very best of fathers, and has done what he could for his lads. There have been no invi- dious distinctions made between the heir and his younger brothers ; all have received the very best education that money could procure. As boys, they were sent to Eton or Harrow ; as young men, to Cambridge or Oxford ; whilst at home, stables and stubbles were free to all. After such advantages as these, the youngsters ought surely to be able to make their own way in life without much pecuniary assistance. Were one to tell this THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 23 worthy English squire that, far from having done his best for his younger children, he had selected the very surest plan for ruining their prospects in life, how astonished he would be. And yet such an accusation would be but the plain truth after all. When preferment in the Church is next to hopeless without money for the purchase of a living ; when, in both Army and Navy, the pay of junior officers must be supplemented by an "allow- ance ;" when, out of every hundred young gen- tlemen called to the bar, there may perhaps be twenty who can find employment ; when there is no admittance into commercial circles without an investment of capital ; when almost every door to independence is locked, and only to be opened with a golden key — to give an impecunious younger son an education which, whilst it may or may not fit him for one of the learned professions, totally unfits him for a life of drudgery and privation, is not only unwise, it is cruel. Why is it that so many young men of good familyare now shepherd- ing in the Australian bush, tent-keeping for rough miners at the diggings, or begging for odd jobs in Melbourne and St. Francisco, when they ought to be employers of labour rather than the employed ? Because the father, after having brought up the unhappy youth as if he were heir to ten thousand per annum, has, in many instances, packed him n*wr»mfc1wii I r T 'WmiTTa 24 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. off to seek his fortune in the colonies, with perhaps* as many crowns in his pocket as the son of the vil- lage grocer Las received sovereigns from his father to start him in life — a liberal education being the sole makeweight. A liberal education, indeed ! How the words bring to our recollection many a poor heart-broken wretch whom we have come across during our wanderings in the Far West and in our explorations at the Antipodes ! The younger son question has been so thoroughly discussed of late years, that the subject is worn well nigh threadbare. Heaven Ibrefend that we should court the ill-will of England's firstborn by taking up the cudgels in behalf of Benjamin ! Were the laws relating to , primogeniture and entail to be straightway blotted from out the Statute Book, and all younger children be hencefurth legally entitled, as in other lands, to their fair share of the patri- mony, what, it has been plausibly asked, would become of Merry England ? Family estates, cut up into infinitesimal portions, fine old country mansions falling to rack and ruin, coverts con- verted into potato patches, and preserves into cabbage gardens ! No more splendid hospi- talities ! no more Christmas festivities ! no more hunting ! no more battues ! no more coming of age as in the olden time ! Leaving to heirs in i i THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. / tail and to their assailants the pleasant task of arguing the point, let us hark back to pater- familias, and to the question by him propounded — In the existing state of things, what can be done with the younger children? Under the heading " Shirkers," some letters made their appearance in the columns of the Field news- paper. The aim of the writer was to suggest a plan by which "those great lumbering, 'cute, good-natured noodles who sprawl about the pre- mises during consecutive vacations, and yawn until one cannot help feeling it would be justifi- able homicide to knock them on the head," might be put in the way of earning their living. Divested of all extraneous matter, the plan pro- posed was simply this : — That an emigrant col- lege, granting " testamurs " of efficiency, should be founded, where the sliirks, or such other wretches as proved themselves incapable of mastering the dead languages, or of shining in one of the learned professions, should be taught a trade, prior to their being packed off to the Antipodes. Plausible as such a project may seem to those having no personal experience of colonial life, it does not take the initiated long to discover that it carries failure on the face of it. At what aare would the probationer be admitted ? At sixteen ? / 26 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT at twenty ? It is too late ; and yet before that age it would be next to impossible to determine of what the lad might be ultimately capable. Like racers, some men are good to make the run- ning ; others come out strong at the finish. We have known lads who were always head of their class at school, and who brought home prizes every vacation, absolutely nowhere when it came to taking their degree ; and, on the other hand, many a lagger to the distance-post, who, rushing gamely to the front when a few strides from home, carried the winning colours. A very un- promising yearling may be a slashing horse at three years old, and there is no reason why the Eton or Harrow dullard should not ultimately develop into the first-class man. If you throw your son out of training simply because he does not promise well, you do him an injustice ; if he break down hopelessly when running his intel- lectual Derby, it is too late to begin his educa- tion anew. Sending a young man whose tastes and habits are already formed to an emigrant college to learn " turnery, the use of the file, farriers' forge work, joinery, cabinet work, .up- holstery, basket making, any useful manual trade by which he is sure to earn his bread," may be very well in theory, but it is unfor- tunately impracticable. Even supposing that he THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. could forget the old home, and conquer his craving for those luxuries to which he has been since childhood accustomed, what kind of a trade could he learn in a twelvemonth, or even in two years' time? If "in the learned professions mediocrity means failure," it does so no less in the lower walks of life. A bungling carpenter has as little chance of employment as a blunder- ing physician — less so, indeed, as the latter's handiwork cannot be produced in evidence against him. Is it to be supposed that the trade which it has taken a smart, hardworking lad five or seven years' apprenticeship to acquire can be picked up in a twelvemonth by the young gentle- man who has already proved himself a dolt ? We trow not. But even admitting that it were possible, and that the shirk could succeed in obtaining his testamur at the end of two years* time, how far advanced would he be on his road to independence ? Not much further than vrhen he started. He might be master of a handicraft, but how about obtaining employment? His testamur wouldn't help him. To represent him- self as a graduate of the Gentleman Emigrants' College would be to have the door shut in his face, for there is nothing that a master mechanic hates more than to have a workman in his employ who is above his business. " We don't 28 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. ;i f 1 want no gentlemen here I" would be the response to his application, and he would be politely re- quested to seek elsewhere for employment. But it would not be the employers alone that would snap at him. The real working bees — all artisans by vocation — would be down upon him to a man. The British workman is doubtless a fine, intelli- gent fellow ; but beware, 0 presumptuous inter- loper ! how you interfere with his blessed rights and privileges. Sheffield tactics are known, un- fortunately, beyond the confines of Yorkshire. No ! If a father be desirous that his son receive the education of a gentleman, and enter one of the learned professions, he must be pre- pared to furnish him with the means of subsistence in the event of failure. If he have no higher ambition than to see him a skilled mechanic, let him send tiie lad away from home before he has acquired a taste for luxuries which once launched in life will be beyond his means. It is, no doubt, highly desirable that every man — be he prince or peasant — should be master of a trade ; but to insure a livelihood by any particular calling, that calling must have been slowly and steadily learnt aj a craft, not picked up haphazard as a makeshift. All attempts to combine the gentleman with the skilled mechanic will assuredly prove a failure. Does the reader tzt: '■!?:—*-'-» 'M'~ .•*r^.-*ccr ^■-•'rsa THE GENTLEMAN EMIOHANT. / ; m id rights 3wn, un- sliire. his son nd enter be pre- bsistence o higher anic, let he has aunched |at every le master by any ve been it picked [empts to lechanic le reader desire to know the reason why ? It is that he of gentle blood cannot forget the home of his youth, and keeps on hankering after the comforts and good cheer of the paternal mansion. Much worldly wisdom is displayed in the story of the prodigal. How came it that poor Prodigal, instead of keeping a stiff upper lip under his misfortunes, so quickly broke down and resolved to return to his father? It was that he remem- bered how many hired servants of that father had " bread enough and to spare." Had he not done so, he would doubtless have tried to labour, and to wait patiently until such time as he should find an occupation more to his taste than that of swineherd. The Australian Newchum (who need not necessarily be a prodigal), as he mnches his damper and gulps the poisonous ifusion supposed by bushmen to be tea, thinks ritli a sigh of the prime joints and sound home- )rewed gracing the board in his father's ser- rants' hall, and cries, in the words of his proto- type, " I will arise, and go to my father ;" and mother returned shirk is soon added to the ready lengthy list. Had Mr. Newchum not )een so thoroughly acquainted with the internal jconomyof his father's kitchen, the chances arethat fehe damper would have found its way down, and lat he would have tackled the tea without winking. >^. t--^ 80 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. si But although a college for the conversion of confirmed blockheads into skilful mechanics might prove a failure, there is no earthly reason why a school for emigrants of the better class should not be started in every county in Eng- land. There ought to be plenty of pupils to fill them all. By the better class, we mean the sons of men who can afford to start their children in life with a capital of from one to five thousand pounds. Less than one thousand pounds is no capital at all ; with upwards of five at com- mand, young men of average ability ought to be able to find an opening even in England. There is, so far as we can see, but one serious objection to the establishment of such schools, and it is this. Would the tender-hearted British matron consent to be separated from her bantlings ; for the child would have to leave his father's roof, never to return? To make an education such as the lad would receive at an emigrant school of any real service to him in after life, there must be no going home for the holidays. Six weeks at home, unless that home were very homely, would most assuredly nullify the half year's training. To teach a lad habits of thrift and order for nine months out of the tv/elve, only to pamper him with ever3r- luxury for the remaining three, would be time and labour w THE GENTLEMAN EMIGEANT. tl ersion of lechanics ly reason stter class in Eug- )ils to fill L the sons tiildren in thousand ads is no 5 at com- ight to be d. There objection and it is 1 matron antlings ; father's education emigrant fter life, holidays, ere very the half of thrift twelve, for the labour thrown away. If English parents are of so very affectionate a nature that they would scout such ian arrangement as cruel and heartless, useless to ^attempt the foundation of emigrant schools. But then, if the parent be too tender-hearted to deprive his child of his half-yearly holiday, he ought surely to be too tender-hearted to turn Ihim adrift in the world with an education which As valueless, and with a purse so poorly garnished Ithat the poor fellow might just as well have no ■purse at all. i Supposing, however, for the sake of argument, that paterfamilias would gladly send his younger ^ons to an emigrant schoot, if by so doing he ^uld assure to them a contented and indepen- dent, if not a very brilliant future; and that jjaaterfamilias would, for a like reason, consent to ♦lie separated from Ben-oni, the question naturally arises — given the lad, how would you train him ? ' It is a question much more easily asked than jMiswered ; and if we attempt its solution it is lore for the sake of pointing out where the ihemes hitherto proposed would in all proba- bility fail, than of offering one of our own to the iader. We have already given our reasons for believing lat all attempts to combine the gentleman with le skilled mechanic would be futile ; we may go ^Ififi^gmv^^w^^ 32 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGEANT. a little further, and add, that to teach our gentle- man emigrant a trade as a trade, would be like- wise useless. The most that can be expected of any ordinary mortal is, that he should be an expert in one particular handicraft. What is essential for the settler, is not so much that he be master of one trade, as that he be handy at half a dozen. The saying:, "Jack of all trades, master of none," may have exceeding point so far as the Old World is concerned ; but away from the townships, it does not hold good in the colonies. At an emigrant school, general handi- ness, rather than special dexterity, should be the order of the day. Handiness, but no fancy work. Chair-making, cabinet work, upholstery, basket- making, turnery, are all capital trades no doubt — in Europe — but of what earthly use would they be in the bush or backwoods ? Just imagine a poor wretch having to depend on chair-making for his daily bread in Canada, where chairs are turned out by machinery, at a ridiculously low figure — by basket-making in t?\e backwoods, where an Indian squaw will wen^ s^ :ne a clothes' - basket for an old shirt and a fig of tobacco — or on a knowledge of turnery in the Australian bush, where the transport of his lathe would more than swallow up all the possible profit ? In Melbourne or Sydney the skilled artisan might y THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 33 our gentle- id be like- (xpected of )uld be an What is . that he be ady at half all trades, ig point so but away- good in the leral handi- ould be the fancy work, ny, basket- no doubt — would they imagine a |iair-making chairs are ilously low backwoods, a clothes' - }obacco — or Australian ithe would >rofit? In lisan might probably be able to earn a living by such trades ; [but of what use would a superficial knowledge of thera be to our friend from the emigrant college ? Suppose we say of about as much real value as is knowledge of mat-making to the discharged onvict. No ! The professor's chair at an emi- rant college would have to be filled by a very different stamp of man to *' Mr. Holzapffell, the ^turner, of Charing Cross." With the exception f the head master or warden, none of the nstructors need necessarily be above the grade f journeyman artisan. In fact, they ought not 0 be so, and for this reason. Solidity, not nish, is what is wanted in the bush or back- ^%roods ; and a master mechanic would be too apt *lo sacrifice the former for the latter, and be look- ,iing to the appearance of his pupil's work rather. \ than to its utility. -If the pupils did not exceed , -bne hundred, the professorships at an emigrant r«chool might be limited to six. Firstly, the (Warden, whose qualifications for office would be, ot that he had taken a double first, or been senior wrangler of his year, but that he was a man of general information, qualified not only to impart a sound English education, but likewise competent to teach his pupils the rudiments of urveying, botany, geology, surgery, &c. — that e were, in fact, a walking cyclopaedia. Secondly, VOL. I. O X 34 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGEANT. the professor of carpentry, who ou^^lit to be an American, as he would be required to understand the construction and repair of " frame" houses, a branch of the business not generally known in England. Thirdly, he of the anvil, who, besides farriery, including the shoeing of oxen, should possess a thorough knowledge of veterinary surgery. Fourthly, the harness-maker, who with his trade might combine that of cobbler. Fifthly, the stonemason, whose teachings might be confined to the underpinning of wooden houses, the building of cellars and chimneys, and the construction of loose SwOne walls. Lastly, the professor of agriculture, who, fiir from being a graduate of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, ought to be a plain, hard-working farmer. And here let us lay down an axiom which will be found to hold good in all new countries — one to which we shall have to revert again and again before we write the word finis. No greater folly can be committed than to attempt to introduce into a country where land is cheap and labour dear, the costly high-class farming in vogue in England, where land is dear and labour comparatively cheap. High farming may answer very well in Norfolk, but it does not pay in a country where land can be purchased for, say two pounds an acre, and where your ploughman THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 35 demands for his services twenty, perhaps thirty dollars a month and rations. To own a model farm is doubtless very gratifying to one's vanity ; but what the wide-awake settler has to consider is, not if his farm be the model one of the district, but if he can make it pay better than his neigh- bour's. To teach the embryo settler our English system of high-class farming would be to ruin him. His head would be so crammed with sub- soiling and draining and Gurneyism and what ot, that when it came to simple backwoods arming, he would be nonplussed. Like a certain entleman of our acquaintance, after spending his capital on experiments, he would in the end ave to put in his crops in inore primitive shion than even the bumpkins whom he had ^S>een trying to teach. In colonial farming there ^ such a thing as knowing too much. If the ettler understand sufficient of chemistry to be ble to determine the texture and nature of soils nd their management, and the properties of the arious manures and their application, of scientific ■arming he has learned enough. Of practical arming he cannot well know too much. Not nly must he be thoroughly conversant with very thing appertaining to b(,th farm and garden, om preparing the swill for the pigs to grafting choice pippin, but he must be able and willing D 2 36 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. I to lay hold of the plough-handles and show his help how to turn a furrow, or to teach him how wheat is stacked in the " old country." The master's eye may suffice at home, it is the master's hand that is requisite in the Far West and at the Antipodes. That the pupil's education might be thoroughly complete, emigrant schools would have to be in a great measure dependent upon one another ; for it would never do to bring up a lad whose intention it was to try " squatter- izing" in Australia on a strong clay farm, nor one who had the backwoods in view, on a High- land sheep-walk. Four farms in different parts of the country might constitute an emigrant school — say a sandy-loam farm in Notts, a heavy clay ditto in Yorkshire, a dairy farm in Cheshire, and a Highland sheep-run. This arrangement would oii'er a double advantage, for not only would the pupils be thereby enabled thoroughly to comprehend the systems pursued on the different farms, but the change from one part of the king- dom to another would benefit their health, and eeem to them almost as jolly as going home for the holidays. Brought up in this way, any young man who, at the age of twenty-one, should prove unfitted for colonial life, might, we think, fairly be con- iV %>?■< 9«^: THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 37 show his I him how bry." The it is the B Far West 's education ant schools dependent do to bring ■ " squatter- f i'Axm, nor on a High- Ferent parts m emigrant )tts, a heavy in Cheshire, irrangement Qr not only horoughlyto the different of the king- health, and ig home for isidered an idiot, and be straightway transferred (to an asylum ; for were he not so he would have [Burely managed to pick up, during his ten or kwelve years' apprenticeship, the rudiments at least of half a dozen useful trades, and have icquired a practical knowledge of farming. If le were not sufficiently handy with awl and leedle to make a new set of harness, he ought, it least, to be able to mend an old one. If he Bould not undertake the building of a house from Sellar to attic, he might surely manage to mend broken door or rebuild a fallen chimney. If lis veterinary knowledge was incomplete, he rould be sufficiently wide-awake to know a l^lint from a spavin. Above all, he would have Hcquired habits of thrift and regularity; liave lliscovered that riches are not absolutely essential |o human happiness ; that enough is as good as § feast ; and last, not least, that manual labour, not exactly " dignified," is very far from being lerogatory. With average luck — ior there is ^uch a thing — the shrewdest man amongst us )eing but a puppet in the hands of Fortune, the )etting should be ten to one on him, two to one igainst, being a fair quotation for our friend of bhe gentlemanly education, whom we have lost right of altogether. Let us hasten to return to \\ 38 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. i*r, him; for the emigrant school question is but looming in the distance, whilst the gentleman emigrant question is a topic of tlie day. From information which we have from time to time received, and from our own personal expe- rience, we can arrive at no other conclusion than that the expedients by which young gentlemen who have been unfortunate in their examinations hope to escape the penalties attached to non- success are at present limited to three. Either they can wait until something turns up, or they intend to fall back on their own resources, or, if the worst comes to the worst, they will emigrate. " Waiting for something to turn up" signifies, so far as we can understand, the liiring of furnished chambers in town, and pestering one's friends and relatives to obtain for one a secretaryship or some other easy billet. " Falling back on one's own resources" — making a book (betting, of course) — pool-playing — loo — varied by an occa- sional letter to the " Gov." for a little more specie. What ultimately becomes of these young gentlemen it would be no easy task to discover. A small percentage find their way to distant lands, and die there ; but, as a rule, their oubliette lies much nearer home than the Antipodes. With the gentlemen belonging to the third category — those who, " if the worst comes to the THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 39 worst, will emigrate" — it is diflPerent. The story of their lives from year to year can be clearly traced from the hour they leave the Liverpool or London docks up to that in which they return home with a competency to end their days in their native land, or, weary and way-worn, lay them down to die in lonely bush or wild sierra — that is, always presuming that they do not return home at an early date in the character of vic- timized Newchums. Supposing the entire body of gentlemen emi- grants to represent an army, these form the infantry division ; the cavalry brigade being composed of men of comparatively independent means, who emigrate merely because they have not sufficient to keep up their position in England. Married men, for the most part with growing families to provide for, they have perhaps been appalled at the steadily increasing total of the monthly bills, or have been induced to emigrate by glowing accounts of cheap living, high interest for capital, profitable farming, or, more probably still, opportunities of sport not to be found at home at any price. Immigrants of this class are to be met with in all parts of the world; and to judge from the never-ending inquiries addressed to the editors of our sporting journals respecting desirable locations for the gentlemen ssac t \ 40 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. settler desirous of combining profitable farming with a little shooting and fishing, the number must be steadily on the increase. In the Field these inquiries usually appear under the heading " Notes and Queries on Travel." Utopia would, perhaps, be more appropriate. The would-be settler almost invariably wants too much. Not only must he find some spot where he can farm profitably and enjoy a little sport, but it is highly desirable, if not indispensable, that the climate be fine, the society genteel, education cheap and good, and the servants hard-working and trustworthy. If such a terrestrial paradise exist, we should particularly like to hear of it. Instead of writing on emigration for the benefit of others, we would ourselves emigrate thither without a woment's delay. Were it not for certain books purporting to be truthful descriptions of settlers' life in far-off lands, it would be difficult to under- stand how any reasonable being could believe in the existence of such Utopia ; as it is, no very great amount of book lore is necessary to enable one to determine the originator of the hoax which has been taken au serieuoc. How well we know the style ! Is the winter long and severe ? It does but increase the friability of the soil, and make the harvests more abundant. Is it short and mild ? The productions of both the tempe- THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 4t very M nable irhich 1 mow > It :■; , and i short mpe- 1 .ft! v.- 43 IS;; rate and torrid zones grow harmoniously tojjfether, and the process of vegetation goes on uninter- ruptedly during the whole year. In the North you glide over the frozen ground to the merry tinkle of sleigh-bells; in the South you steam cheerily along with your produce to market under a cloudless sky. Far be it from us to damp the ardour of the emigrant ; it is our desire to encourage rather than to dissuade. But that our writings be of any real service to the intend- ing settler, we must not draw upon our imagina- tion ; we must stick to facts. Good wine needs no bush ; a good country needs no trumpeter. There are plenty of noble fields for the enter- prising emigrant, but — alas ! that it should be so — there are no Edens ^^othing can well do more harm than overrating a colony, or describing as " paradisiacal" what is only commonplace. Of the two, it is better to disparage than to eulogize. I'he immigrant who has pictured to himself a terrestrial paradise, is so grievously disappointed when he surveys his burnt-up lot or heavily timbered section in the heart of the lonely forest, that he not unfrequeutly breaks down under the affliction ; whilst his neighbour, who finds things better than he expected, sets blithely to w^ork, and in the end prospers. Our gentleman emigrant, out of the romances he has THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. read, and from the answers he has received from *' disinterested" correspondents, creates for him- self a little fairy land. Forgetinp; that emigra- tion is, at best, but a remedy for a disease — consumption of the purse — and expatriation a bitter trial, he hugs himself with the belief that the settler's is a very jolly, independent sort of existence, and that a little extra roughing is all that he will have to encounter. Finding his mistake, he straightway rushes into the opposite extreme, and views everything with a jaundiced eye. The country is a howling wilderness ; the land is poor ; his neighbours are churls ; the cli- mate is detestable; and he inwardly curses the day upon which he resolved to ernigrate. It is a wise dispensation of vidence, that advantages and disadvantages should be so equally balanced in this world, that the best country as a residence must ever remain a moot question. We do not, of course, include countries having nothing but disadvantages to otier, like those on the West Coast of Africa, but only such as have attractions in a pre-eminent degree. The advantages offered by England, France, Germany, and Italy are of so widely different a nature, that individual taste can alone decide which of them is the most desirable residence. As in the Old World, so in the New. To arbi- / THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 43 trarily assert that this or that country is the one best adapted for tlie gentleman emijjrant, would not only be presumptuous— it would be foolish. Circumstances alter cases. The district that would be admirably suited to the married man with large family might offer but few attractions to the bachelor who had no one but himself to consider. In the choice of a locality, ever^' man must be guided by his own particular tastes and requirements. Whilst scrupulously avoiding all attempts to force our own private opinions on the reader, it shall be our endeavour as we proceed to point out to him what struck us as being the peculiar advantages and disadvantages of those three great fields of emigration — Canada, Australia, and the United States, across which we are about to journey together. We are perfectly willing that these impressions be appraised at whatever they may appear to be worth, for experience can alone determine whether we are right or wrong. But before proceeding on our visiting rounds, it would perhaps be as well to disabuse the : would-be settler's mind of certain fallacies which he may perchance have picked up in the romances of paid emigration agents, and expose to his [view some few of those hidden rocks and quick - jands upon which so many of his kind have made mmm . «l IIMI 44 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. shipwreck. We have already had occasion to mention one of them — high farming. Next in succession comes the " social" quicksand. Our Gentleman Emigrant would like to pitch his tent in a district where there is good society. Good society, that is to say the society of well- educated men and women, is to be found in America and Australia as elsewhere; cf that there can be no doubt. But whilst in the Old World the intellectual and refined are dissemi- nated throughout the length and breadtli of the land, in the New it is chiefly in the vicinity of the great centres of fashion and commerce that they are to be met with. Land in the immediate neighbourhood of large cities being proportion- ately dear, if the emigrant wants good society he must be content to pay for it, and so high a price that it is only by the very best of farming that a living can be made. 'Jo obviate this too evident disadvantage, it has been suggested by the emigration agents aforesaid that nothing would be easier than for emigrants of the better classes to form themselves into parties of say a dozen families, each making little coteries of their own, and dividing five or more sections of land amongst them. A more Quixotic scheme could not well be suggested. Supposing the families to be twelve in number, the farms of THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 45 3/0 acres each, and six sections — 3840 acres to have been taken up — how would the lots be apportioned? By the hazard of the die? It would be the first step towards a general collapse of the undertaking. Unless it be on the western prairies, or on the Australian downs, to find 3800 acres in a ring fence which could be sub- divided into twelve 300 acre farms of equal value would be almost impossible. Land varies in quality all the world over. The soil on one side of a river may be deep black loam, whilst on the other it is poor and stony. This farm may lie high and dry — that one be liable to inundation. There are besides other natural advantages which are seldom evenly distributed — springs, favour- able sites for use and farm buildings, southern slopes for gardens, and such like. It would be out of the question that every man's lot should be precisely as good as his neighbour's : and, as a matter of course, those who had the worst lots would be dissatisfied. But it is not this alone that would endanger the existence of the infant settlement. Allowing that the men of the party were a veritable " band of brothers," and alto- gether too magnanimous to squabble over such .trifles as good or bad lots, is it to be supposed [that little jealousies would not ere long spring Lup amongst the ladies respecting precedence, ^il "TfMWd •mm 46 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. A' family connexions, taste in dress, or over some one or other of those thousand choice bones of contention which arouse the bellicose tendencies of the fair sex ? Even supposing that the}^ had, with rare forethought, mutually agr to eschew all topics likely to cause dissent, h probable that a year would elapse without one of those twelve British matrons, grown weary of the monotony of the existence, having wheedled or worried her husband into taking his departure ? Mrs. Browne having carried her point, it would be Mrs. Greene's turn next. She only consented to expatriation because the Brownes were to be of the party. Her dear Emily flown, it would be cruel to ask her to remain, &c. &c. &c., and the Greenes would follow the Brov.aes. Eemove two of the foundation stones, and your house is on the totter. Unless there were some written agreement that no member of the party should have the power to dispose of his allot- ment without the consent of his associates — which would be highly improbable, it being the proud boast of every bold Briton that he can do what he likes with his own — Messrs. Browne and Greene would, prior to their departure, have sold their improvements to the highest bidder, pro- bably to the very man of all others whom it would be the desire of the remaining members to THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 47 exclude, for when one's own interests are at stake one is apt to forget the interests of others. To buy up the lots would be but to encourage seces- sion. The black sheep would have to be admitted, and there would be an end to your precious coterie. Again, in a new country, any attempt at exclusiveness would be sure to raise the ire of the " sovereign people." The " gen- tleman's " settlement would be held up to deri- sion in the district, it would be difficult to obtain labour, and any and every obstacle that human ingenuity could devise would be thrown in the way of the " aristocrats." And this brings us to another dangerous reef — superciliousness. Our gentleman settler is wont to give himself airs, and to treat his illi- terate neighbours with a certain degree of arro- gance. It wont do. If he desire to lead a )eaceful life, he must put his pride in his pocket, 'lo secure the good will and kind offices of his neighbours, not only must* he be courteous, he must be familiar. He must not be hurt by hear- ing himself spoken of as Browne or Greene with- out any prefix of Mr., nor be shocked when the wife of his bosom is inquired after as "the woman." " How's the woman ?" is a very common question in the backwoods. Instead of frigidly responding, "Mrs. Greene is tolerably 48 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. well, I thank you," the answer should be, " Spry, thank'ee ; how's yourn ?" We are, of course, speaking of one's intercourse with the neighbour- ing farmers. With hired servants or helps it is different. It is always advisable to make them treat you with a certain amount of respect, and with a little tact this can be managed even in the United States. Another quicksand is greed. The gentleman emigrant, from the lying representations that have been made to him, often forms the most preposterous ideas of the profits to be derived from farming. Fortunes are not so easily made by husbandry. Large fortunes have, we are aware, been amassed in India by the cultivation of indigo, tea, and coffee, by the ** raising" of cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar in the Southern States and West Indies, and by sheep farming in Australia; but the first outlay has in almost every instance been heavy, and the risk incurred considerable. A distinction must be made between the planter or squatter and the ordinary farmer. The former, from the heavy investments made and the risks run, reasonably expects large returns; but the settler, who has only a few thousands at command, should be content if, in addition to a fair interest on his capital, he can manage to make a comfortable subsistence. Our ■' 1 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGEANT. 49 own experience is, that farming, whilst the plea- santest and most independent of all occupations, [is about the very last by which a fortune can be realized. One more quicksand, and we have lone. That quicksand is sport. It is essential khat there be some shooting and fishing in the ricinity of the settler's abode. The man who ^migrates with the intention of combining farm- ing with sport may rest assured that his farm rill never be the best paying one of the district, md he should consider himself extremely for- tunate if he do not go to the wall altogether. ]'here may be, for aught we know, hundreds and lousands of instances to the contrary ; but we m conscientiously say that in all our travels we ive never yet met with a sporting settler who ks a thriving one. In Canada and the Northern bates, the fishing season is the one when he ight to be getting his crops in — the hunting ^ason that in which he ought to be getting them it, or be doing his "fall" ploughing. In a >untry where farming operations can be carried with little or no intermission during the ^tire year, the loss of a day or two, even in the isiest season, is a matter of small importance ; ^t in a country where there are only six short )nths between the first spring ploughing and setting in of frost, an hour lost is not to be ^OL. I. u ^!^55PHI 50 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. i • I' i i recovered. We do not mean that the settler, in order to succeed, must needs lock up his gun and fly-rod in a cupboard, and throw the key into the river. What we would impress upon him is simply that he cannot be at one and the same time a Nimrod and a thriving farmer. Shooting and fishing for a little relaxation is one thing, going in for hunting as a pursuit is another. The settler who can content himself with whip- ping the adjacent streams for trout, or with beating the surrounding woods for ruffed grouse or *' rabbits," is all right ; it is he who must have big game that is all wrong. The man who imagines that in the forest primeval one has only to take onf^^s gun and beat about for an hour or two in order to bring home a fat buck or bear, or a dozen brace of wild fowl, will find himself most grievously disappointed. With the excep- tion of wild duck and the passenger pigeon in their respective seasons, ruffed grouse and the Virginian hare, game is not plentiful in tbe backwoods. Unless systematically hunted, months — a}'-, years — may elapse without the settler's eye having been once gladdened by the sight of bear, deer, moose, or caribou. Does he want them, he must seek for them, not in his clearing, but away back in the heart of the wil- derness. If he be a very good backwoodsniaii THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 61 land hard as nails, he may venture to start off lunaccompanied j if not, he must take at least )ne guide or Indian with him, and everything lecessary for a prolonged camping out. All this iame his farm is left to take care of itself, and, IS may be imagined, it is seldom the better for Autumnal hunting in the grand old North Lmerican forests is delightful, but it unfor- tunately does not pay. There is certainly some lunting to be had in the winter, when work is ^lack, but it is not so pleasant as in autumn. It not every man who cares to take up his night's )dging in a snow-drift, and snow-shoeing, Ithough very jolly along the flat, is apt to grow rearisome when pursued amongst the windfalls id cedar swamps of the dense forests. In the Sunny South, it is not alone the loss of [me tliat the sporting farmer has to fear, but cewise the expense he will inevitably incur, in le pursuit of his favourite amusement. In the Forth, the difficulty is to find a man not so over jad and ears in business as to be able to ac- ^mpany you. In the South, to escape being rer whelmed with invitations to join a party. Unless they have greatly changed of late years, ^e Southerners are the most genial beings in ustence. Once let your neighbours know that ^u are fond of field sports, and unless you can E 2 52 THE GENTLEMAN EMIGEANT. afford to engasfe an ovierseer, to take your place at home, you may as well give up farming. One friend wants you to come up his way, to have a crack at a deer, another insists upon your giving the canvas-backs, in his neighbourhood, a trial. Even the very niggers will present themselves at the door, and ask if Massa wouldn't like go hunt 'possum by torch-light. If you decline, you are considered churlish ; if you accept, the least you can do is to return the invitation, and then away flies the money. The only way to get out of it is to say that you are unlucky with fire- arms, and never fire a shot in couipany without dreading some accident. The man whose powder is notoriously crooked is seldom considered a great acquisition to a hunting party, either in America or elsewhere. If the Australian settler, or squatter, leave his crops, or his flocks, to hunt with horse and hound, the bounding kangaroo, or to shoot the wonga-wonga, it will most assuredly not be owing to the force of bad example that he does so. No body of Englishmen has less of the sportsman about them than Australian squatters. One rarely sees a fine kangaroo dog on a station, and shooting for shooting's sake would be con- sidered by most squatters as a terrible waste of time and powder. Kangaroo hunting knocks THE GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT. 58 up the horses required for station use ; and when the kangaroo want thinning out, there is a short drive and a battue. Shooting under a fierce Australian sun, and tearing one's way through the dense myall scrubs, is very much like hard work, and there is always plenty of that to be had on the station without going a- field to look for it. And so the squatter's shooting is limited to the potting of some screaming cockatoo, an evening's stalk along the banks of a neighbour- ing creek in quest of wild-duck, and not unfrequently, on distant stations, a little harmless " rubbing out" of aborigines. The more dangerous reefs and quicksands being plainly laid down on our chart, we can now safely cat-head our anchor, top our boom, and fill away for the shores of the New World. vmmmmmmmmm I \ THE CANADAS. THAT man must indeed be a Stoic who can bid his native land farewell without emo- tion. We can hardly believe in the existence of such a mortal. He may have resolved to emi- grate without one pang of regret ; he may have gone through the ordeal of bidding friends and relatives adieu without any visible agitation; but when, from the deck of the outward-bound b, .p, he sees the shores of Old England slowly sinking beneath the horizon, the tear will start, and the lip quiver, in spite of him. He is not invariably the stoutest-hearted who shows the least emotion. '* The moistened eye, the trembling h"p. Are not the signs of doubt or feur ;" and a man may be bold as a lion, and yet impressionable as a child. There are few more touching sights than the one which meets the eye on the deck of an emigrant ship at the moment when it becomes known that the headland looming in the distance is the vessel's point of departure ; and that the THE OANADAS. W words are passed along, " Come on deck, and see the land ; it is the last glimpse we shall catch of the * Old country.* " In an instant the 'tween decks are deserted; the top-gallant forecastle is taken tiy storm; the bulwarks are lined with wistful faces ; every eye is strained in the direc- tion of the shore. It is then, and then only, that the full meaning of that magic word Home can be realized. To nine-tenths of those ^oor crea- tures England has been a home but in name ; it is little they have to thank her for. If a foster- mother, she has been a flinty-hearted one. And yet no sooner does the moment arrive to take one last look at the fast-receding shore, than all past neglect is forgotten, all bitterness vanishes ; and it is with streaming eyes and in broken accents that the word Farewell is uttered. Although more subdued, the anguish is as great in the cabin as in the steerage. However bright the prospect — however great the probability of a happy return — it is with a heavy heart that the gentleman emigrant, his eyes fixed on the land, whispers to himself, " What changes may not happen, what vicissitudes of fortune may I not have to undergo, before I see those shores again ?" That the cabin is the proper place for the mar- ried gentleman emigrant who has a few thousands lodged to his credit in the Bank of British North y^:^:^H. 6# THE CANADAS. America, the Bank of New South Wales, or the Bank of Otago, there can be no question whatso- ever ; but we very much doubt if it be the best place for the young unmarried man whose capital is limited to hundreds In fact, we are sure that it is not. Every young man going forth into the world v'ith a determination to rough it, should drop his individuality at his father's hall-door. Sooner or later he must come down a peg or two, and by far the wisest plan is to lower away at once. Has his Either furnished him with the amc'int necessary to pay for a cabin passage ? So much the better. Let him put the ditierence in his pocket, and go intermediate or steerage ; the satisfaction of knowing tliat he has made a good start will more than compensate him for every discomfort. If he be bound for America, the passage is a short one, and he can select a season when there ure few emigrants. If to Austraiij.1 or New Zealand, he will find many rospeota\)i3 men amongst his fellow-passengers. After the comforts of an English home, the 'tween deck accommodation will perhaps startle him; but if he be of the right stuff, he will manage to put up with it ; and should he never, m his journey througli life, have to encounter greater hardship, he will have every reason to be thankful. The old Americfiu "l^'iiars" excepted, 'k'-^v THE CANADAS. 87 a great change for the better has of late years been effected in the internal economy of emigrant ships. Not only has the accommodation been improved, but the dietary likewise. On board most Transatlantic steamers the provisions served out are excellent in quality and unlimited in quantity ; and the question is no longer " How do the emigrants manage to exist on the voyage ?'* but " How on earth can they stow away all that is provided for them ?" Considering the modest sum demanded for a passage-ticket, the living is absolutely sumptuous. But it is not alone for the sake of the money to be saved that we would advise the young unmarried man of limited means to take a steerage passage. It is rather that he may thereby avoid being thrown into the society of men who would lead him into unneces- sary extravagance, and who, by their overcoloured descriptions of colonial life, would be pretty cer- tain to raise expectations in his breast never to be realized. The gentleman emigrant should have no high-flown notions in his head ; and, if economy be requisite, he should be economical from the very start. The misadventures of many a fine young fellow now eating the bitter bread of dependence in one or other of our colonies, may be traced to his having taken up his abode upon landing in some expensive first-class hotel, THE CANADAS. instead of in the second-class boarding-house suited to his finances. " It will only be for a day or two;" " Once clear of this place, I shall be able to economize ;" " A pound more or less is of little consequence." These are the quick- sands upon which many a well-intentioned youth has made shipwreck. " Ce iiest que le premier pas qui codte'' says the French proverb. If the young gentleman emigrant will only keep it in mind, his chances of success will be increased tenfold. We are bound for Quebec by one of Allan and Co.'s magnificent steamers, and amongst the passengers are two gentlemen emigrants whose movements it is our intention to follow — one a married man, with a cppital of five thousand pounds J the other a bachelor with twelve hundred. We are steaming up the smooth waters of the noble St. Lawrence. Our vessel's deck, which had but few attractions for the majority of the passengers during the earlier portion of the voyage, is now completely blocked up with men, women, and children, many of them in holiday attire, all of them anxious to catch a glimpse of that land of promise which is henceforth to be their home. As old hands ourselves, and ablcy in the profundity of our experience, to exclaim with Solomon, " There is no new thing under the THE CANADAS. 69 sun," we wrap ourselves in our toga of apathy, and listen to the exclamations of delight and surprise which on every side resound. Steadily we steam along under the cloudless sky, past the cottages of MM. lea Habitants — which can- dour obliges us to confess are much fairer out- side than in — ^past little village churches with glittering spires and cross-bedecked God's-acres, past patches of primeval forest and humble clearing, past Orleans Island, and then Cape Diamond — with its impregnable citadel, the quaint old town, its tin roofs flashing in the sun- light, the busy harbour, with its forest of masts and rafts innumerable— bursts upon the view, and the voyage is ended. A couple of hours more and we are safely installed at our hotel, and by a familiar voice in the corridor we are soon apprized that our married friend has taken up his abode in the same cara- vansary. What has become of our other friend we know not, but he will be sure to turn up when wanted. There is nothing to detain him in Quebec. One day will suffice to do the old town and the new, to visit the plains of Abraham, and to admire the prospect from the citadel. The river Saguenay, the Falls of Montmorency, and the Chaudiere can be left for a future visit ; and if we are not greatly mistaken, both he and •vm. ^•^"'■l.L-.. maBwuyyiKiiii*'. ""WH 60 THE CANADAS. Mr. Benedict will be found on board the Montreal steamer to-morrow evening. We are not mis- taken. From the hurricane deck of the steamer we witness both arrivals — Coelebs in light marching order, with a couple of portmanteaus, a bundle of rugs, and a gun-case, which he guards with the most anxious care ; Benedict, in very heavy ditto, with wife, two children, nurse, and a couple of dray loads of luggage, a portion of which is evidently furniture. Were our friend not as green as grass, he would have given the stewardess of the Austrian a couple of sovereigns to take charge of the bairns, and so have saved the nurse, and sold his furniture at an awful sacrifice before leaving, and saved the cost of transport. That nice-looking girl will have found herself a mate before she has been six months in the province. That furniture will, before it finds a final resting-place, have cost in transport charges alone more than its original value. When will our fellow- country men cease to act like the Chinese, and learn that the appli- ances of civilized life are to be found in other lands besides their own, and that it is not neces- sary to drag one's household gods along with one ? Let the gentleman emigrant beware of taking " a couple of good English servants along with him," as we have seen recommended. Unless THE OANADAS. 61 those servants be very old and tried family retainers, he will live to repent him of his folly, for they will be sure to leave him whenever the whim seizes them. Have they signed an agree- ment that they will remain in his service a certain number of years ; or, in the event of leaving, refund their passage 'noney ? That agreement, however carefully it may have been drawn up, will in the backwoods be of even less value than was the king's writ fifty years ago in the county Galway — not worth the paper upon which it is written. He may have the law on his side, but they will find a way of evading it ; and to avoid backwoods' litigation he will be only too glad to let them go. As regards the personal effects to be taken by the emigrant, all that is necessary is clothing sufficient to last for some years ; a good supply of substantial house linen, plate, cutlery, firearms, and such little nick-nacks as the better- half (if he has one) may insist upon keeping ; and the fewer they are the more reason will he have to be thankful. If he have a library, or any fur- niture pr'zed as an heirloom, let him have it well packed up and stored before leaving England; when he is settled, it will be time enough to send for it. To bring out with one agricultural implements, seed, &c., is little short of lunacy. it.i,ii.j.,_ .'■■jjjiM.j J Mfvmmmmmmmmmm THE CA.NADAS. At length the haggage is all checked, and we are off. With the wretched cabin accommoda- tion of English river and channel steamers still fresh in their recollections, the saloon of the Cliodaio seems palatial to our immigrants. How soft the carpets ! how comfortable the chairs ! how cosy the state-rooms ! Why, the cabins on board the Austrian were nothing to them. Slowly and steadily we stem the rapid current. Had we taken the "cars," we should have been whisked up to Montreal in a twinkling ; but when time is not an object, the silent highway is not only the cheapest, it is the best. There is one advantage that the American has over the Britisher — he can really enjoy a steamboat trip on his lakes and livers. Instead of being limited to a " fisherman's walk " — two steps and over- board, with the alternative of being cooped up in a stuffy cabin — like poor John Bull, Jonathan, if active, has the entire length of the hurricane deck for a promenade ; if lazy, a gorgeoui; saloon, where he can lounge and read ; if sleepy, a cosy state-room wherein to snooze ; if hungry, a table provided with all the delicacies of the season ; if thirsty, a bar where he can " liquor up," in defiance of Neale Dow and the Maine law ; if unshaven, a barber's shop, where he will be '• fixed" in a jiffy, and where he can likewise, in THE CANA.DAS. 63 case of need, provide himself with a clean collar and dicky. In England, the stranger is often at his wit's end to know how to while away the time ; in America, he the weather only fine, and sea, lake, or river " convanient," it is his own fault if he cannot amuse himself. All he has to do is to walk straight up to the clerk of his hotel, and consult with him concerning steamers and ferry-boats, and then walk straight down to the landing'stage and take his ticket. For a dollar or two he will have his day's . ating, and instead of returning hot, grimy, and worn out, he will be fresher than when he started in the morning. When there is opposition on any line, the fares are merely nominal. We have before now been carried gratis, and the clerk of the boat has assured us with sly humour that, were it not for the encouragement it would offer to loafers to take up their residence permanently on board, the company would be happy to throw breakfast, dinner, and supper into the bar- gain. • Although there is for us no longer the charm of novelty, we can, after an absence of five years, fully appreciate the substantial comforts provided on board the Choctaw. We glide into our old ways as though we had been absent but a fort- night, and call for porter — house steak, and hot ?.v-;:.:?aai»ar^— 64 THE CANADAS. cakes and apple sass, like a genuine native. Verily, man's adaptability is wonderful ! Before arriving at Montreal, we sound our immigrants as to their intentions. Wiser than the generality of would-be settlers, they have determined to take a leaf out of Brother Jona- than's book, and are going to have a look around before fixing on a location. The time will surely not be wasted ? Far from it ; it is the very best thing to do. And so, with much hand-shaking, and promises to visit them whenever they may be settled, we bid them farewell for a time, and continue our journey. Notwithstanding the immense extent of the Canadas, it will be to a comparatively small area that the investigations of the moneyed gentleman immigrant will in all probability be confined. Draw a line on the map of Canada from Kingston westwards to Lake Huron, the tract of country lying south of that line is Canada Felix. By calling it Canada Felix, we do not mean to imply that the rest of the country is a desert, but merely that, from its geographical position, its superior climate, its advanced state of civilization, it oflfers more attractions to the gentleman settler than any other section of the Dominion. The married man who, with capital at command, would voluntai'ily choose for a permanent resi- THE CANADAS. 65 dence some wild region, where his labours would be those of a pioneer, must be, to say the least, eccentric. Nothing can be more amusing than those advertisements, addressed to men of capital, which from time to time make their appearance in the English newspapers. " Splendid Oppor- tunities ! ! ! In Texas ! ! ! In Arkansas ! ! ! In THE ASSINEBOINE CoUNTRT ! ! ! In THE ARGEN- TINE REPUBLIC !!!! Climate SUPERB ! Shooting hrst-rate!! Land tip-top!!! A Fortune certain !!!!" Bosh ! a man must be a born fool to be gulled by such nonsense. As we once heard a phleg- matic Teuton remark to a Yankee land-agent who had been trying for two hours or more to effect the sale of a block of land in Minnesota, by describing the said state as a terrestrial paradise — " Ja ! dat toes soundt ferry gut — 'most doo gut I denks do be drue." That's just it. It all sounds very well, but it is much too good to be true. When thousands of farms, ready prepared for the hand of the sower, are for sale in Canada West and in the Northern, Middle, and Southern States, why bury oneself in the Red River district, in Texas, in La Plata, in Arkansas? Time enough to think of Fort Garry when a railway runs through that much- belauded " fertile belt," of Monte Video, when vol. I. » 66 THE CANADAS. the law is no longer a dead letter, of Little Rock, when "toothpicks" are less lethal than at present. Let them do the pioneering who have no money. If he will only take time to look about him, the man of small capital, who is desirous of settling in the Canadas, can find plenty of locations much nearer home than Fort Garry. There is plenty of good land still lying waste eastward of Lake Huron, and, although for reasons hereafter to be given,, we cannot recommend the maritime provinces to the gentleman settler, millions of fertile acres are for sale vt government price in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. But let the immigrant be on his guard, land can be too cheap. When the locality is so far removed from market, that it takes three bushels of wheat or potatoes to pay the carriage of the fourth, the land would be dear as a gift. In most cases, cheap land will prove a delusion and a snare, and much the dearest in the end. If the immigrant have the means, far wiser to give two, or even three pounds an acre for medium land in a district where there is rail or water communi- cation, and a market within easy reach, than three shillings for the richest of loams in the wilderness. We speak from a monetary point of view. If money making be not the great deside- THE OANADAS. 67 ratum, and the settler have resources within him- self, a grazing farm, remote from town and clearing, is to our mind infinitely preferable to an improved arable ditto in some semi-civilized township. Our reason for thinking so will appear anon. Farms in the Canadas may be divided into four classes. Firstly, choice farms in the im- mediate vicinity of the larger towns ; secondly, those on a line of railway ; thirdly, such as may enjoy the advantages of direct water communi- cation, a good road, an adjacent market, &c. ; fourthly, those in the wilderness. Notwith- standing the constant demand for wholly, or partially cleared farms, there are always plenty of them in the market. It is one characteristic of the genuine American, that he is seldom or never contented with his belongings. He is generally ready to make a trade, and to sell any- thing in his possession, from the old homestead to the new cradle. Let his farm be the best in the township, he is open to an offer. If he be a Yankee, he is tired of farming, and intends trying storekeeping, or running a saw-mill, or a meet- ing-house for a spell. If a Canadian, it will generally uurn out that his head has been com- pletely turned by some specious paragraph or advertisement which has caught his ey?>, in the columns of his weekly paper, to the effect that p 2 • wa 68 THE CANADAS. farming in the British provinces is all moonshine, and that the only place for the industrious hushandman with small r !••»- ■»» II. ifc«>«Oi.<» 5d THE CLEARED FARM. — the contents of his tray proving sufficiently tempting to many of the men, and perfectly irre- sistible to the women and children. Candy ! lozenges ! ! popped corn ! ! ! Not if we know it, friend. Sell thy wares to those whose digestive organs are already so impaired that a little dys- pepsia more or less is a matter of no consequence. Despite backwoods fare — despite pork and sass, pork and beans, pork and molasses, hot bread, hot slap-jacks, hot johnny-cake, pumpkin-pie, mince pie, lemon pie, green tea, and " forty-rod," we have, thank Providence, some little gastric juice left. - Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong ! how we do bump and thump to be sure over the badly laid road ! The engine-driver's sweetheart must surely be a " Buffalo girl," and awaiting him ; for by " Appleton's Eailway Guide" the train is not more than half an hour behind time — an event to be remembered. Past many a frozen lake and ice-bound river, over crossings where huge sign- boards with the notice " When the bell rings, look out for the locomotive," do duty for signal-men ; across bridges so frail of construction that it makes one wink to look at them; through snow-drift tun- nel and cutting, until, amidst much bell-ringin^; and bellowing, the train runs into the station, where dinner is prepared for the hungry traveller. THE CLEARED FARM. 17 Having long since cast aside our insul'.r ceremo- niousness, out we jump before the train has come to a standstill, and, by dint of much pushing and elbowing and scrambling, succeed in securing a place at the table. By forking a piece here, pouncing on a dish there, and apostrophizing the waitresses, whose duties are apparently con- fined to giggling and collecting the money, we manage to eke out a meal, and, much the better for it, continue our journey. But our satis- faction is of short duration. What with the hearty dinner we have eaten, the heat of the stove, the closeness of the atmosphere, and the vibration of the car, we are soon completely over- powered, and fall into that most horrible of all sleeps — a sleep in an American railway carriage. Do what we will, we can't shake off our drowsi- ness ; and without any support for our throbbing head, we doze and nod and start, until, upon some one opening the door, our ear catches a muffled sound ; we listen, and recognise the dis- tant thunder of Niagara. In another fifteen minutes we are across the bridge, and once again in British territory. It may be imagination, but we fimcy that we can already detect a diiTerence in the general appearance of our fellow-passengers — that the men are shorter and broader built, the women I I if ■ >'\:''mnmssm 78 THE CLEARED FARM. I plumper and rosier. The- style of dress is cer- tainly differer fc. Across the frontier chimney-pot hats, Melton or beaver overcoats, bonnets, and mantles were most in vogue ; here fur caps, frieze, and homespun dreadnoughts, hats with " clouds" drawn over them, and stout Scotch plaids. That in our eyes they should seem a more prepossessing race is only natural — are they not our own people ? And so we speed along, none the less cheerily that we are over the border. It is ten o'clock before the train reaches the ** way"-station, where we are to descend ; but, late though it be, Benedict, scarcely recognisable in his hooded fur codi, is there to meet us. How hearty is his welcome ; how cordial the grasp of his hand ; how afraid he was that we had broken down or stuck fast in a snow-drift ; how long we havebeenin fulfilling our promise ; how delighted the better-half will be to see us ! Surelj'^ never is our old-fashioned English greeting half so cheering as when it is given in a far country. We have a six-mile drive before us ; but it is bright moonlight, and the ponies will cover the distance under forty minutes. We jump into the sleigh, bury ourselves beneath a pile of buffalo- robes, the ponies are given their heads, and off we dash at a tremendous pace over the hard smooth road. THE CLEARED FARM. 7^ "A fine night, isn't it?" observes Benedict, as he gives the near pony a touch witii the whip. A fine night! . Had the rascal been raised in Paradise instead of in murky, foggy England, he could not possibly speak of the weather with more supreme indifference. Fine, indeed ! It is glorious ! Sublime ! ! Transcendeni, .1 ! ! ! Of how deep a violet is that vault above us, how silvery the moonlight, how exhilarating the pure frosty air! Just look how the snow sparkles, how gracefully those pines are bending beneath their loads of hoar-frost, how those huge fantastic icicles fliish as we flit past 1 If he cannot find a better word tlmn^ne to express all that, he has no poetry in his composition. Friend Benedict hastens to assure us that, althouo"h no poet, he can thoroughly appreciate it all, and grows quite enthusiastic on the subject of sleighing — sleighing by daylight, sleighing by moonlight, sleighing by torchlight — until, in the midst of it all, we turn in at an open gate- way, and the white farmhouse, with its barns and outbuildhigs, stands before us. The vigilant watch-dog hears the bells, and rushes to meet us, heralding our approacli with prolonged barkings ; shutters are opened, a curtain is drawn aside, the bright firelight comes streaming forth, casting a ruddy glow on the snow-covered ground, and. 80 THE CLEARED FARM. (?■ as we pull up at the door, we perceive tlie pleasant English face of our friend's wife smiling us a welcome through the frosty window-panes. More hearty greetings and hand-shakings, ten minutes' thaw before the blazing wood fire, and we sit down to supper. A woman's hand, and that a cunning one, is everywhere visible — in the graceful folds of the window-curtains, in the simple, yet artistic arrangement of the furniture, in the laying out of the table and sideboard. We are in a Canadian farmhouse ; but for any difference we can see in the dining-room and its appointments, we might be in an English villa. Snowy damask table-linen, well-cleaned plate, glass, china, everything, to the moderateur lamp and the Christmas holly and ivy, or their Canadian sub- stitutes, are there before us. The fare is excel- lent, and mostly home raised. Mrs. B. it was who spiced the round, and, what is more, cooked it. The ham before us is of her own curing, and every other edible en the table of her own pre- paring, except the pickles. Crosse and Black- well's pickles are so cheap, she confidentially tells us, that home-made pickles are hardly an economy, unless indeed it be red cabbage. The spiced round, and the ham, and the pickles, and half the interest on sunk capital is recouped ; add the interest on the amount I should have had to pay Master Seth for his rubbish, and you will find that my gains do not fall short of fifty pounds annually. But not only is money saved; there is anxiety. By the use of these machines, I am in a mea- sure independent of help, and have the satisfac- tion of feeling that I am not altogether at the l> H THE CLEARED FARM. mercy of a lot of impudent harvestmen. That reaper, with two horses and a driver, represents a dozen men armed with scythes and sickles ; that thresher does more in the day than would a regiment of flail-swinging Paddies. The Mickeys and Biddys of the Canadas and United States have been of this much service: they have by their impudence and ignorance sharpened the inventive faculties of the Yankee. Driven to desperation by bad servants, the American be- thought him how he could dispense with their assistance ; and the result has been hundreds of labour-saving machines, which mhe had never been invented. My wife says that for new- fangled inventions I am a very Yankee ; and she is right. I never hear of an improved plough, or harrow, or cultivator, without going and having a look at it. I am always glad to see the pedler of Yankee notions, and ready to overhaul his wares. Has he an improved wash- ing and wringing machine, I buy it. My wife tells me the one we have will do well enough. My answer is, this will do better ; it saves soap and labour, and will be sure to pay for itself in time. Is it an improved potato- parer he has for sale — a cucumber slicer — an egg-beater — I invest. They may only save a few minutes' labour each time they are used ; but minutes a THE CLEARED FARM. 96 day art^ hours a month, days in the year, and time is money. " Now come and have a look at the beasts. I have only a few, but there isn't a bad one amongst them. Without being fancy articles, they are A 1 of their kind. I could have pur- chased Seth's cows for a little over one-half what I gave for these. I wouldn't take them at any price. If it doesn't pay to have old-fashioned farming gear, still less does it pay to have poor stock. In a country where beasts have to be stall-fed for five months out of the twelve, to make any profit from them, they must be good milkers. A little butter more or less a week don't much signify, my neighbours tell me ; I think otherwise. There is just the ?m i V 110 THE CLEAEED FARM. has completely conciliated her American consins, as she calls them. Conciliate the devil ! Men who will slaughter their own brothers rather than yield a point are not the guess sort of men to be very scrupulous with their cousins twenty times removed. Jonathan will never be content sa long as his venerable and exceedingly guUable parent has anything worth taking. Every one can understand that but herself. "When she complains that she ain't treated with respect, she forgets that her own conduct isn't particularly dignified. If a man have the grit, let him fight. If he hasn't, let him try and look pleasant. Tall talk, when there ain't no grit, is contemptible. Squirt ! Hiss ! Now that she has got Jonathan's dander riz, she is going to take away her troops. It isn't that she thinks about the expense of keeping them here. Oh no! She ain't so mean as all that. It isn't that she wants every man Jack of them for home protection. Lord bless you ! she is stronger and greater nor ever she was. It is just because we are old enough and ugly enough to take care of ourselves, because the presence of iLese few red-coats is irritating to them narvous Yankees because we are happily confederated. There is no longer any fear of Fenians ; and if THE CLEARED FARM. Ill ,'/■ they do come, why, ain*t we the boys that can give 'em a welcome ? Squirt ! Hiss ! It is in order that we may be the better able to do it that she is going to put up at Vandoo them old guns she has down to Quebec — in order that there may be a fair field and no favour, that she advertises them for sale in the New York Herald. A government that will do that ain't desarving of a colony — a country that will stoop to such meanness as that ain't desarving of a friend. Squirt — Squirt ! Hiss-ss I We would gladly hear more, but Benedict puts his arm into ours, and quietly draws u» away. This being the slack season, a time when there is neither farming nor fishing nor shooting, our day's routine varies but little. Substitute diiving and hunting for sleighing and skating, and we might be in England instead of in Canada "West. The skies have changed, but not the manners and customs of the exiles. When seated of an evening round the cheerful wood fire, our conversation is much more frequently of England and the English than of Canada and the Ca- nadians. Although the forest primeval is but a • few miles distant, we talk Dickens, not Cooper. Although there is just now a stirring debate in • B ' il 112 THE CLEARED FAEM. the Provincial Parliament our conversation is not of Cartier, Howe, and Ottawa, but of Glad- stone, Ben Dizzy, and Westminster. Although the Fenians are at the door, we take, strange as it may appear, more interest in the mischief that their brother rascals are doing in Ould Ireland. England might be just over the border, instead of three thousand miles away across the sea. A month has slipped away — to-morrow we start for Nova Scotia, on a visit to Coelebs. Whilst studiously avoiding everything that might seem like interference, we have, during our sojourn, striven hard to put matters in the pleasantest light, and have never lost an oppor- tunity of endeavouring to bring about an entente cordiale between the Benedicts and their neigh- bours. And to a certain extent we have been successful. The hatchet is happily buried, and there is peace between the houses of Benedict and Heffernan. Having kept our eyes and ears wide open, we have, we think, obtained a pretty <5lear view of the situation, and are now in a position to offer an opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of life in the Canadas. Were our experiences limited to those which we have picked up during our month's visit, we should not presume to do so ; but we have served our time on other farms beside Benedict's — cleared v a a: u tl THE CLEAEED FARM. lliJ iarms, improved farms 'and backwoods farms, and we therefore think ourselves competent to argue the question. According to Benedict there are in the Canadas four great drawbacks to human felicity. Bad servants, uncultivated, slanderous neighbours, the long dreary winter, the comparatively small re- turn on capital invested in farming operations. "VVe will begin with the last plaint on the list, the comparatively small return on the farmer's sunk capital. Friend Benedict asserts, that on this his farm of two hundred and fifty acres, be the same more or less, all that he can hope to realize is a living, plus five per cent, on invested capital, and that in England any tenant farmer can do the same. Admitted. And who may this same tenant farmer be ? In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a man whose father and grandfather, and great- grandfather before him, were all tenant farmers, and who has himself been brought up to farming as a vocation. A man who has a thorough know- ledge of everything connected with a farm, wh6 understands the rotation of crops, the feeding and fattening of cattle, the application of manures^ and who can make the most of every acre. Such a man can make a comfortable living out of his three hundred acre farm, and live per cent. Cn in- VOL. I. I . 114 THE CLEAEED FABM. i; si h '■ vested capital. There are many who realize considerably more. But what does that prove ? Absolutely nothing. Without desiring to wound his tender susceptibilities, we confidently assert that were he, John Benedict, to enter into posses- sion of a high-class English farm to-morrow, and endeavour to work it without the assistance of a bailiff, he would be eating his capital before his second year's tenancy had expired. Farmers, like violin players, may be divided into three categories — those who farm well, those who farm badly, and those who do not farm at all. Benedict has so far progressed that he is now in the second category. He farms badly. "We have said supposing he were to enter into the tenancy of a high-class farm in England, and it is only supposing, for what chance would he have of obtaining a farm that could be worked to a profit ? Not very much, we imagine. Benedict is a worthy good fellow, but he is not precisely the sort of man to whom an astute English Bquire would care to rent a farm, unless it were out of compliment. For a first-rate farm he would require a first-rate tenant, who could keep his land in good heart — not an amateur who hardly knew the difierence between wheat and barley. If a gentleman wants to play farmer in England he must either take up land which is so poor that THE CLEAEED FARM. 115 it can't well be poorer, or consent to pay so high a rent that profit is out of the question. And now as to the profits of farming at home. The English farmer makes, we are told, a living out of his farm. Well, it is no more than his due. The labourer is worthy of his hire. If he be a good farmer, he is entitled to live well — if a poor one, at least to his bread and butter. But how about the interest on capital invested? When Benedict speaks of his invested capital he alludes to the sum total which this farm has cost him — land, house, barns, furniture, stock, farm implements, &c. But is this what the Eng- lish tenant farmer means when he talks of his sunk capital ? Far from it. Sunk capital with him means, we believe, the amount he has given the outgoing tenant for growing crops, manure, &c., plus whatever sums he may have expended on horses, stock, farm implements, labour, &c., prior to his selling his first year's crops. The land and buildings do not enter into the calcula- tion. For them he pays a certain rent. The two cases are so totally dissimilar, that no com- parison can be instituted. The Canadian farmer is his own landlord — he has no rent to pay — ^but few taxes. Let him farm ever so badly he must be a noodle if he cannot manage to swing clear of insolvency. If the harvest is bad he T O 116 THE CLEARED FARM. L' \\\ I 4 i (I ; II • 1^ makes no money, and there is an end of the matter. Should he lose some stock it is not ruination, beasts are cheap in the Dominion. .Better luck next year. Having purchased his farm out and out for the same amount that he would have been obliged to disburse in England for incoming and stock alone, he can afford to lose occasionally. How very different is the position of his English brother. With him a bad year is not merely a mischance, it is a dire calamity. Xot only does he make no profit, but lie has ta meet quarter-day. Unless he be a man of sub- stance, two bad years in succession, or the break- ing out of rinderpest amongst his beasts, means bankruptcy, for the greater portion of his capital has been sunk in cropping his fields and in the purchase of live stock, and he has not the land as a sheet anchor. If he can manage to make more out of his land than the Canadian farmer, he deserves to do so, for his is the greater risk. . Farming is farming all the world over. If a comfortable living can be made out of the land, and a fair interest be obtained on the invested capital, it is the most that can be expected by ordinary mortals — he who can effect more is either a man of very superior intelligence, or he must have more capital at command than most farmers. THE CLEARED FARM. 117 We now come to the second point for con- sideration— the long, dreary Canadian winter. Long it is, no doubt, and towards the commence- ment, and close more especially, there are weeks of raw, cutting, disagreeable weather. But is it so very terrible afcer all? Is it, may we ask, half as detestable as an English one with its eternal round of damp and fog and drizzle ? Has it not attractions which almost counterbalance its defects? Does not one fine Canadian winter's day go far to make one forget a week's bad weather? Does the snow make the landscape look cold and cheerless? It puts the roads in such capital condition that it is a pleasure to drive along them. Is it the ice that troubles you? Only think what the Australian squatter would give for a lump to cool the tepid water that he is forced to drink. Is the cold severe ? It heightens the attractions of the blazing wood fire, engenders a ravenous appetite, makes one appreciate home in a way that one would never do were oub the denizen of a more genial clime. That the climate of Upper Canada is ver}'' far from being perfection, we admit ; we have yet to find the one that is paradisiacal. We wish that we could suggest a remedy for the third evil on the list — rude, uncultivated neighbours. Unfortunately there is none, unless n I 1 118 THE CLEARED FARM. li it l)e patience. In every new country uncon- genial society is an evil that has to be endured. Biding the high horse only makes matters worse ; one must dismount sooner or later; and by far the wisest plan is to slip off quietly at the com- mencement of the journey. Should the gentle- man settler's pride be wounded, let him console himself with the reflection, that however dis- agreeable it is to be obliged to live on terms of equality with one*s inferiors, it is not half as bad as having to live on terms of inferiority with one's equals. There is a considerable amount of consolation to be derived from the reflection — " However hard one's lot may be, there is always something worse." If, for instance, Benedict would only calmly compare his present position with that of the self-made man who has, in an un- lucky hour, fixed upon some fashionable English watering-place for a residence, half his mortifi- cation would vanish. , Even admitting that his neighbours refuse to admit any social superiority, he is at least their equal; and if he have no reason to be particularly proud of his status, neither has he need to be ashamed. But supposing that, instead of beicg an Eng- lish gentleman in a British colony, he happened to be a colonial gentleman in Great Britain itself, on what footing would he stand with his • miirtl-lr^fi-'' '-'If THE CLEARED TABM. 119 l- i. .r i- e t a f 3 b genteel neighbouvs there ? Very probably on no footing at all. He would not even have the poor satisfaction of standing upon his dignity, for his existence would be as completely ignored by them as though, instead of having just arrived from the colonies, he had just dropped down from the moon. He says that there is no analogy between the two cases. There is. To these provincials he is nothing more than a provincial would be to him, were he in England— a stranger. What right has he to expect that he should be treated with more deference in Canada than is the Canadian in England? And yet he is so treated. Rude and illiterate as are many of his neighbours, not a man is there amongst them, we warrant, who would not give him a hearty wel- come were he to demand his hospitality, nor assist him should he chance to be in want. And yet were these same men to call upon him in England, it is nine cliances to one that they would be met with a " not at home." He says that they are scandal-mongers. Why, scandal is the only amusement these good people have from year's end to year's end ; deprive them of it, and they would die of ennui to a certainty. It would bft little short of barbarous to attempt to interfere with the one diversion which enlivens the monotony of their existence. They have no '>»H m THE CLEARED FARM. 141 ? '. (I \ 0 I V I theatres, no balls, no concerts ; they ha^o not even a circulating library ; every story book in the village has been read and re-read, until its leaves are the consistency of blotting-paper, and grimy as unwashed fingers can make them. When the wife of the parson, or the doctor, or the lawyer, gives a tea party, it is an event — a day to be marked with a white stone. Great is the jealousy of the uninvited. Who is the parson's wife, or the doctor's wife, or the lawyer's wife, they should like to be informed, that she makes herself so exclusive ? She was only Sally This or Kitty That, and it is said And they libel the poor woman. If neither the doctor who brings them into the world, nor the parson who baptizes and marries them,, nor the lawyer who makes their last wills and testa- ments, can avoid being maligned, how shall he, a stranger — and an arrogant stranger to boot — escape ? For an Englishman to call a provincial slander-monger is as ridiculous as for one nigger to call a brother nigger black man. The Back- bites and Candids thrive best on British soil. And here let us ask, what have the Benedicts left behind them in England that they have any real cause to regret? Is it the climate? the expensive living ? the taxes ? the hunting ? the fishing ? They say it is the societ}'. «p THE CLEARED FARjr. i^r ' 1 ^ "What society ? The society which in liijgjuncl is of all others the most truly detestable— i^ ho society of people who are for ever pinching, screwing, squeezing to keep up what they call ^'appearances." Benedict is a poor gentleii m, and poor gentlefolk would be his associates. His presence would not be in much request at the houses of the great and wealthy, for he is not in a position to entertain in return, and our boasted English hospitality is more or less on the reciprocity principle. As the untutored Indian would express it, it is, " You *vitee mc ; I 'vitee you." Were he a bachelor, he might receive an odd invitation to ball or picnic, for oii such occasions bachelors can be made useful. But he is not a bachelor ; he is a married man. His wife would have to be invited likewise, and wives are in the way, unless they are the wives of men who can in their turn entertain. Sup- posing that he lived in a town like Bath, or Olifton, or Cheltenham, his society would consist of half-pay captains of the line, commanders in the navy, retired surgeons of both services, the second-class pensioners of John Company, and men of like stamp. His intercourse with them would be mainly in the club reading-room ; where he would interchange an occasional " How 4'ye do ? fine day !" his wife's, a morning call. 122 THE CLEARED FAKM. V ' with now and then the fearful dissipation of a tea party ; for on two hundred and fifby pounds a year dinner parties would be out of the question. Their amusements would consist of a stroll in the park, a constitutional along the high road, and once or twice a year a flower show or archery meeting ; for although there might be one con- tinuous round of concerts, balls, and theatrical performances, their means would not permit of their assisting. "We can thoroughly appreciate the charms of refined and intellectual society, well ordered establishments, good dinners, the pomp and circumstance of wealth ; but what we cannot appreciate is, the imitation. Of all the dead and alive existences under the sun, the one which a poor gentleman is forced to lead at a fashionable English watering place, is surely the deadest. What with the constant struggle to keep up appearcnces, the dread of outrunning the constable, the want of employ- ment, the total absence of anything like hearty, agreeable companionship, the paltriness of his surroundings, the feeling, that do what he may, he cannot compete with his wealthier neigh- bours, are together sufficient to turn the poor fellow's hair grey, and drive hiir to self-destruc- tion. And yet this is the sort of existence for which [^they both yearn. If they could only %k. -mtKiam THE CLEARED FARM. 128 bring themselves to believe it, they are infinitely happier here on their little Canadian farm, than they would be, were they living in the most fashionable town in England, on an income of even five hundred per annum. The talk which Benedict hears at Anderson's store may not be particularly intellectual, but it is much more amusing than is the twaddle which passes muster for conversation in a county club smoking-room, where there is nothing but " shop" from morning till night. The military shop of the Bobadils, the naval shop of the Trunnions, the Indian shop of the Copper Captains, and Justice Qui — His— the club shop of all. Mrs. Benedict complains that the wives of the professional men at X are dreadfully insipid, and so they are, no doubt. But then they have no pretensions. Had they been brought up at a select boarding'school, and their education been finished at one of the fashionable towns we have named, they would, with precisely the same amount of intelligence, have been able to set up for wits and fine ladies. So far, then, as society is concerned, we cannot for the life of us perceive how they have been the losers in transporting their household gods to Canada. For the rich there is, we admit, no country like England ; but for the poor married *!■; / 124 THE CLEARED FARM. gentleman it is a very purgatory. There is but one place where he can feel really independent, and that place is London. In that great Babel he can live as unrestrainedly as though he were in the heart of the backwoods, or in the desert of Sahara — spend as much or as little as he pleases, snap his fingers at appearences. But then where is his society ? If he have no society, where is ihe gain ? Putting society and the luxuries of life out of the calculation, and considering comfort only, there is no comparison between the two countries. On the little they have, the Benedicts can live much more comfortably than whey could on twice the amount in England. Not only that, they can do whatever they see their neighbours doing — ^they are as good as the best, if no better. They are not devoured with envy, for " what the eyes don't see, the heart does not grieve after." Their greatest affliction or infliction is the >: wives to emigrate to that particular country or colony from which the author hails. " Fields look green at a distance." Had they emigrated to Australia or New Zealand, the chances are that \ ^ THE CLEAEED FABM. 127 long ere this they would have repented them of their choice, and have wished that they had selected Canada or the United States as a resi- dence ; for there is a great deal of human nature in a man, and contentment is not a human attribute. By their own admission, their griev- ances are limited to four ; do they imagine that they would have had fewer to encounter had they emigrated to Australia? If so, they are very much mistaken. The servants are as try- ing to the temper, the neighbours are as rude, the road to wealth is as wearisome at the An- tipodes as in the New Dominion. As to the climate, that is altogether a matter of taste. For our own part, we prefer the climate of Ontario to that of New South Wales or Queensland. The disadvantages are pretty evenly balanced. Can as much be said for the advantages? Hardl}'. So far as they themselves are concerned, the advantages are, so at least it seems to us, greatly on the side of Canada. Were Benedict a bachelor instead of a married man with a growing family, were he a hard-workin^r farmer instead of a gentleman, had he a capital of ten thousand pounds instead of five, we should, perhaps, think differently, for circumstances alter cases. In giving our opinion, we have to bear in mind to whom it is that we are giving it, and circumstanced ; / 128 THE CLEAEED FARM. as be is, we cannot but tbink tbat be bas acted wisely in coming to Canada. Tbe advantages wbicb tbe province of Ontario offers to tbe gentleman emigrant are briefly tbese : — It is but ten or twelve days' journey from England. It bas a climate wbicb, altbougb one of extremes, is undoubtedly bealtby. Tbe necessaries of life are cbeap. Taxes are merely nominal ; capital commands a bigli rate of in- terest. Tbere are good scbools and colleges. Tbe most distant parts of tbe province can be reacbed by eitber rail or steamboat in a few bours' time, and at a very trifling outlay. Tbe gentleman emigrant wbo is possessed of a moderate independence is not obliged, as in many otber colonies, to turn recluse as well as farmer, tbere being plenty of good society in Toronto and tbe otber large towns, and as mucb gaiety at Niagara during tbe season as at Scar- borougb or Brigbton. Sbooting and fisbing are to be bad gratis ; and lastly, no very great amount of capital is necessary for tbe purcbase of a farm, nor mucb outlay to work it, and if tbe profits to be derived from busbandry are comparatively small, so are tbe risks incurred likewise. Witb ordinary care and attention, and a fair sbare of luck, failure is next to impossible. » To tbe vast majority of emigrants tbese ad- »**^ THE CLEARED FARM. 129 vantages mean nothing, for the simple reason that they are not in a position to profit by them. With Benedict it is otherwise. He emigrated not that he might avoid starvation or the work- house, as do ninety emigrants out of every hundred, but in the hope that he might be able to find some spot where, on the little he had, he could live more at his ease than in England. His ambition was not to grow rich by trade or by speculation, but to quietly subside into a gentle- man farmer. There are no gentlemen farmers in the New World. All farmers are gentlemen in their own estimation, but they are not gentle- men farmers in our acceptation of the term. The nearest approach to the life led by an English gentleman farmer is the one which Benedict is now leading. He is not altogether dependent on the proceeds of his farm for his daily bread ; he lives well, if not sumptuously. He resides in what for Canada is a long-settled district. He is but a short distance from the capital and within easy reach of one of the most fashionable watering-places on the continent. He has shoot- ing, fishing, and boating, horses for his carriage, books from the library at Toronto, papers and magazines from London and New York. His wife has her piano, her flower-garden, her poultry- yard, and notwithstanding her household cares, VOL. I. m 130 THE CLEARED FARM. she manages to find time for recreation. It is only in the matter of manual labour that Benedict's life differs from that of the English gentleman farmer. Whilst his duties are limited to walking round and round his farm with a dog at his heels and a gun across his shoulder, or to going through the account books with his bailiff — Benedict's are more those of the working farmer. He is his own overseer and boss work- man. In his inexperience he imagines that his is the life of the ordinary settler ; that he is a backwoodsman, if not exactly a pioneer. Were he to remove to a newly settled district he would find out his mistake. He complains that his farm looks cheerless in the winter ; when com- pared with a backwoods clearing it is radiant. He thinks his neighbours rude and ignorant. After a month's sojourn amongst the Irish of the Far West, they would seem to him polished and intelligent. He finds the life somewhat humdrum and monotonous. Were he to take up his abode for a season in so"^'^ out of the way settlement, fifty miles removed from town or railway, he would wonder how he could have been so discontented. If he find it lonesome when both rail and water communication are but a few miles distant — out of the world when such cities as Boston and New York are within a day's THE OLEAEED FARM. m journey — slow when the daily papers containing European intelligence not twelve hours* old lie on his study table — ^what would he find it in the Australian bush, or in the wilds of South Africa? Let us calmly reconsider the case. Have we said anything that is not strictly true ? Have we made any statement that would be likely to mislead or mystify ? We cannot perceive that we have done so. We have made the most of our brief certainly, but we have neither added nor suppressed one iota. We might doubtless have made the picture much gloomier (he is a poor lawyer who cannot argue plausibly on both sides a question) ; but that we have been too free witli our colours we deny. We have not endeavoured to prove that Canada is the most desirable place of residence to be found in the world, but that it is one of the best, if not the best, field for the mar- ried man who has a family to provide for, and whose means are too limited to permit of his re- siding in England. That it is a cheap country to live in. We would lay particular stress on this very important point, for the reason that we have seen it frequently denied. Here is one letter bearing on the subject, which we copy from The Meld — "Emigration to Canada. "Sir, — ^I have read with much interest the ' K 2 mm mm mm^mmt 180 THE CLEARED FARM. letter from the friend of * Cariboo' in T/ie Field of Dec. 10. I am glad that this letter has been pub- lished, as it confirms in every particular the allegations which I advanced in my communica- tions on the same subject some months ago. Glad, indeed, am I to find from letters received from gentlemen proposing to emigrate to Canada, that I have in many instances prevented another unit from being added to the sad list of heart- broken bankrupt gentlemen farmers of this de- mocratic country. Much abuse did I receive from the natives for having thus, as they consider, vilified their Dominion by preventing the acces- sion to it of wealth and respectability, and by having stated facts which have come under my notice during a too long residence. The friend of * Cariboo' came down, as a matter of course, to the level to which all gentlemen farmers inevit- ably come sooner or later in Canada — ^to that of the farming community by which he is sur- rounded; and if he engages any of them as "helps," he would indeed be " stuck up" if he didn't permit them to dine with ^im. Fortified by the opinions of 'Cariboo's' friend, I assert again that ignorance is the only excuse which a gentleman can urge for coming to Canada-—- igno- rance which is culpable if he hazards such an ' THE CLEARED FARM. 183 experiment without the most diligent inquiries, and involves a wife and family in the wretchedness and degradation which are invariably the result of the venture. He is told, perhaps, that Canada is a cheap country. In reply to this, I say unhesi- tatingly that it is one of the dearest countries in the world. Excepting bread and meat, every other necessary is much dearer than in England. As to servants, there are none, properly so called, except in the large cities. There, if they are allowed to have pretty much their own way, they will oblige you by their services at a guinea and a half a month. As to climate, persons may judge for themselves when they are told that the thermometer varies from 95 deg. in summer to 20 and 30 below zero in winter — a charming little variation of only about 100 degrees. In the month of June I have seen frost which mad© the forest look as if the breath of a destroying^ angel had passed over it. As I have heard, farmers often say in Canada, the whole energy of their lives during the short summer is to pro- vide fuel and food to keep them and the stock of their farmyards alive during the long, terrific winter. I write this pour encourager Ics autres who may be tempted to follow the friend of Cariboo. I may have something else to commu* mmmt mmimmmmm 134 THE CLEAEED FAEM. nicate about emigration to America, and inci- dentally to Canada at some future time. "Canadian Owl.'* Very plausible is thy letter, 0 most sapient bird ! but, alas ! that we should have to say so ! — one tissue of misrepresentations and prevarica- tions from beginning to ending. Pray who may be this friend of Cariboo to whom thou so feelingly alludestP A man who, having some few thousands at command, purchased himself a cleared farm in some civilized district, and who was ruined in his endeavour to work it to a profit? Is he a man who has his wits about him — a man of ordinary shrewdness ? What is he? By his own showing a. greater simpleton was never entrusted with the management of his own affairs, for we have his letter before us. An ex-officer of the line, he has, during a ten years* service in different parts of the world, learnt how to "ride creditably to hounds, to shoot more than fairly, and to tie and throw a fly, either for trout or salmon, as well or better than any man of his acquaintance;" and is, of course, for these reasons, just the sort for the colonies. That the thousand pounds which remain to him after paying his debts may be made to go as far as possible, he takes unta THE CLEARED FARM. m himself a wife, " not of the cheese and butter stamp ;" and that done, he " rushes into all sorts of inquiries about the colonies." The upshot is that he purchases, 6^ telegraphy a farm in a " straggling settlement in the midst of the wil- derness ;" for the satisfactory reason that " there is good shooting in the vicinity, and such a salmon river." On taking possession, he finds that he has been done. He commences legal proceedings, and gets backwoods justice. He is stuck right and left by his neighbours, whom he divides into two lots — those " who bled him with an oath, and those who bled him with a pious ejaculation." His helps leave him, because he objects to their society of an evening; whilst " loafers drunk and loafers sober, loafers profane and loafers n^'" i, make his house their tavern, and will tal denial." He becomes a " drudge on his farm, and a watch-dog about his premises." As a last resource he turns lumberman, makes a mess of it, gets hopelessly into debt, becomes bankrupt, and is now reduced to such a quandary that his highest ambition is to earn a dollar per diem as guide to sportsmen. Comment upon such a history as that would be superfluous. We can only pity the poor fellow, and return to the letter of The Owl. When he says that the friend of " Cariboo'^ 136 THE CLEARED 1 ^t.xt,0 il. |l came down as a matter of course to the level to which all gentlemen farmers inevitably come sooner or later in Canada, &c. &c., we can only presume that he considers every gentleman emi- grant to be of a similar stamp — an idiot ; and having had some little intercourse with the class whom he thus honours, we must politely deny the accusation. From first to last we have employed many helps, both Canadian and American, and except when camping out, not one of them has ever sat down to eat with us ; nor can we remem- ber to have seen helps seated at the table of any friend of ours. That " ignorance is the only excuse that a gentleman can urge for coming to Canada as a farmer," is as the case may be. If he mean that men ^ the stamp of the ex-lines- man are better at 1 -, we are perfectly of his opinion. If that men of very limited means, and with no experience, are likely to make a mess^ of farming, we do not say him nay. But if he would insinuate that men with a few thousands at command, and with average intelligence and energy, can do detfer in England than they can in the more favoured districts of Canada West, we join issue. Had the lines of the gallant Captain been cast in the very pleasantest of all the pleasant places of the habitable globe, instead of in that " remote corner of the Dominion'* ^'^^- ■ ■ - — THE CLEARED FARM. 137 which he so unwisely selected as a habitation, the upshot would have been precisely the same — bankruptcy. To make headway in this age of brass, the man who is master of no trade, profes- sion, or calling, by which to earn a livelihood, must have one of two things, money or money's equivalent — wit. He who can dispense with both the one and the other, live comfortably, and make no debts, is a very remarkable man — the most remarkable man of the period. We are not that individual. We cannot think, just at present, of any place where a gentleman can live at his ease upon nothing a year. All that we can do is to name a country or countries where the man of small means and average intelligence can make the little he has got go further than in England. And, Canadian Owl to the contrary, we confi- dently assert that to the married man, who has children to educate and provide for, few countries offer so many advantages as Canada. But as the Canadas are of vast extent, we had, perhaps, better name the province — Ontario. We know not in what section of the Dominion The Owl may have built his nest ; but it cannot be in the more favoured districts of Canada West, or he would never hoot in the way he does of the >vretched- ness and degradation which are invariably the lofc of the gentleman immigrant. That many 138 THE CLEAEED FARM. I men are in the same plight as the ex-ofiicer is unfortunately true enough ; and considering the numbers that emigrate yearly to the Canadas in the hope of being able to live like English country gentlemen upon nothing a year, it is surprising that there are not more of ohem. It is very hard to be obliged to live in a straggling settlement in a remote comer of the Dominion, when there are so many desirable residences in the vicinity of Toronto and Niagara, and liard, no doubt, to live in Whitechapel when there is such a place as Grosvenor Square. But beggars can't be choosers ; and when to have what one would like is impossible, the truest philosophy is to try and like what one has got. We do not say that we could live happily and contentedly in a back settlement, for we think the life detestable ; but had we to choose between a cheap lodging and short commons in London, and a comfortable house and plenty in the clearings, we should undoubtedly choose the clearings, just as we should in like manner prefer the cheapest of lodgings in the closest of London streets to a coal-pit. What Canadian Owl and many others beside himself appear to forget, is that advantages and disadvanta&^es are altogether relative, and that in this world everything goes by comparison. The iVi THE CLEAEED FARM. 139 fiicer is ing the adas in country prising ry hard lement 1 there ricinity ubt, to place in't be ildUke ry and lat we a* back e; but ig and brtable should as we >est of s to a question is not whether this man or that man has done well or ill in the Canadas, but whether he would have been better off had he remained at home. We are no optimist. We never hesi- tate to point out the disadvantages of colonial life, and we therefore feel ourselves in honour bound to say whatever can be said in its favour, and to confute the aspersions of pessimists of the Canadian Owl class. When he says that Canada is one of the dearest countries in the world, either his knowledge of the world is exceedingly limited, or he is guilty of gross misrepresenta- tion. It is not bread and meat alone that are •cheap, but nearly all the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life. Fine clothing, although learer than in England, is but little over one .alf the price that it is in the United States, whilst apparel fit for every day use is inexpen- sive, good Canadian tweed being sold for a dollar a yard, and ordinary " dry goods" in proportion. Sheffield ware, house linen, glass, porcelain, and nick-nacks of every description are dear, but then how very little of the poor man's income goes in the purchase of these articles. His house once furnished, perhaps three per cent. We now come to another of Canadian OwVa grievances — the servants. That they are a great nuisance — the greatest plague in life — we have THE CLEARED PAEM. already admitted — so they are in other countries besides Canada. But when he says that they demand a guinea and a half a month for their services, we must contradict him. From five to six dolhirs, not seven .nd a half dollars a month, is the current ra f wages ; if he gives more than that amount, ino help must be a very exceptional help indeed. It is only when Canadian Owl begins to abuse the climate of his adopted country that we have an inkling of his whereabouts. When he tells us that the thermometer varies from 95° in summer, to 20° and 30° below zero in winter, we know at once that he must be either a Lower Canadian Owl, or an Owl who has alighted in one of the maritime provinces — w** should think !New Brunswick. In that case, what he says is true enough. We know that the climate is one of extremes— that the thermometrical variations are as great as he represents them to be — an ^ that a June frost is no uncommon occurrence. But for the encouragement of those who might be disheartened by the doleful cries of birds of the Strix species, we would respectfully observe, that although New Brunswick may be now called Canada, Canada is not New Brunswick, and that there is almost as much difference between the climate of Toronto and St. John's as there is THE CLEARED FARM. 141 between that of St. John's and the northern part of Labrador. If, with Ontario open to receive him, a man chooses .to emigrate to New Bruns- wick, that is his look out. No one shall ever have the opportunity of saying that it was owing to our advice that he purchased land in the maritime provinces ; and when we assert that the small capitalist can live comfortably and inde- pendently in Canada, we mean that he can do so in Canada West. If the emigrant have not the means to purchase a farm in that section of the Dominion, he must, of course, go further afield, and the further he has to go, the more unplea- sant he will find it. He has our deepest sym- pathy. For the present, it is all we have to bestow. But that there may be no mistake as to our meaning, we will be more explicit still. To the married man who has children to educate and to start in life, and to those whose capital is limited to say five thousand pounds, no country that we know of offers greater advantages than Ontario. But everything hinges upon that first clause — if he have a family to educate and to start in life ; for if he be an unmarried man with an indepen- dence, or a married man in easy circumstances and without a family, he would be a fool to emigrate at all. Provided that it be not indis- 142 THE CLEAEED FAEM. pensable to his happiness that lie herd with his compatriots in such British colonies as Boulogne, Brussels, Florence, Nice, &c., he can find plenty of places on the continent of Europe where his two hundred and fifty or three hundred pounds a year could be made to go just as far as in Canada. But those places are not suited to the family man ; for although education may be just as good and as cheap as in Canada, no opportunities of starting his children in life would present them- selves. In Canada, on the contrary, there would be no lack of such opportunities, and for this reason, if for no other, it is a more desirable residence for paterfamilias than any part of over- crowded Europe. The gentleman emigrant who had a capital of five thousand pounds, would have no need to turn farmer — ^he could live on the interest of his money. We have put that interest down at six per cent. ; but if he were wide-awake, there is no reason why he should not get eight, ten, or even twelve, with good security. So much depends on the man himself, that it would be impossible to give the minimum of capital that would be required to enable the gentleman emigrant with a wife and three or four children to live respectably in Canada. If at a low rate of interest it can be done with five thousand pounds, at a high rate THE OLEAEED PAEM. 143 we suppose three thousand might be made to suffice. Upon the interest of a smaller sum than three thousand, he would find it a difficult matter to rub along; and unless he were a shrewd business man, farming would be the only occupa- tion to which he could turn his hand. Unless he went very stupidly to work, he could hardly fail to make a living out of his land ; more than that no man, save a practical farmer, has any right to expect. As a general rule, the more land that he undertakes to farm, the less will be his proportionate profit. Many a man can manage a boat who would come to grief were he to attempt the command of a clipper. THE BACKWOODS FARM. TF the voyage between Toronto and Annapolis, -*- Nova Scotia, be easy and pleasurable during the summer months, it most assuredly is not so during the winter. Lake and river being fast bound with ice, the journey to the sea coast has to be performed by rail, and for one half the distance — ^between Montreal and Portland — over what is perhaps the worst laid road in America. Shall we attempt the description of a mid- winter's trip over that infernal line ? No ! the story is too harrowing. The second portion of our journey from Portland to St. John, New Brunswick, is made in a fearful tub belonging to the International Steam Navigation Company — the New Brunsmck — without exception the most uncomfortable, ill- found vessel it has ever been our misfortune to light upon in any quarter of the globe ; and it is not therefore surprising that, standing on her deck, our first impressions of the maritime provinces are the reverse of favourable. On leaving Eastport, the stenmer at once enters THE BACKWOODS FABM. m British waters, and shaping her course to the northward end and eastward, is soon breasting the waves of the Bay of Fundy. Between Eastport and St. John there is little diversity in the aspect of the coast. A succession of low hills, covered with stunted pine trees, rugged weather-beaten headlands utterly devoid of vegetation, Stygian caverns, and yawning fissures, rocks and boulders, breakers and reefs, an iron-bound coast in every sense of the term, sufficient to strike terror into the heart of the most intrepid sailor, and make even the sanguine emigrant gloomy and despondent. The traveller fresh from the United States will find little in the outward appearance of the city of St. John to attract his attention. It is a Kew England seaboard town come northwards. There are the same " frame" houses, white-painted, green-shuttered, looking as if they had only just been unpacked from some Brobdingnagian Nuremberg toy-box, the same besteepled churches, the same stores in which everything appears to be sold, from mess pork to patent medicines, from b^t bower anchors down to Connecticut clothes- pegs, the same plank side walks that are seen over the frontier. During the winter months, which in New Brunswick may be said to last half the year, the great centre of attraction is undoubtedly [the VOL. I. L 146 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. I i| i Sic Ji skating rink. It is the Champs Elysees, the Kroll's Garten, the Crystal Palace of St. John. Deprived of it, the life of the Johnian would be a blank, the long winter unendurable. Here it is that the city beaux exhibit their gallantry and address, and the belles their charms and finery ; and certainly the sight which meets the eye on entering the rink on any fine afternoon during the skating season is sufficiently lively and attractive. Accompanied by a subscriber, who kindly volunteers to procure us admission, we pay a visit to the Elysium in question. A quarter of an hour's weary trudging through streets, knee-deep in half-congealed snow, brings us to the place — a circular building surmounted by a dome, and not unlike a, huge locomotive engine-shed. The first thing that strikes us upon entering is the almost total absence of noise, the only sounds heard being the monotonous patter of skates over the smooth ice and the rustle and flutter of feminine apparel. This stillness is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the ice is alive with skaters, all in full swing — experts cutting the figure of eight on the outer edge, medium performers going round and round with steady, measured sweep, and tyros (amongst whom several officers of the garrison are painfully conspicuous) making fearful exhibitions of them- m^^ THE BACKWOODS FARM. 147 selves, and apparently desirous of throwing them- selves into the arms of the fair damsels, to whom they are acting the " muffin." Imagine a vast <5ircus, the " ring" laid down with ice instead of saw-dust, an outside promenade of some fifteen feet in width in lieu of chairs and benches, and a circular staircase from the centre to the dome, and the reader will have an idea of the St. John skating rink. At the foot of the staircase is the orchestra, where, on certain days, sweet music is discoursed by the band of the regiment in gar- rison, and round the orchestra sweep the skaters in a sort of endless Polonaise. For a couple of hours we amuse ourselves by watching the crowd file past. Here comes the city belle — an expert of the first water, as she herself is perfectly aware — gliding along with a scarcely perceptible motion of her pretty feet, and evidently on capital terms with herself and all the world. How encourag- ingly she smiles on the captain at her elbow, who is labouring might and main, poor wight, to keep in the ranks, and in a fearful state of mind lest his post of honour should be usurped by some admirer less shaky on the pins. After them, hand-in-hand, a la Quaker, come two sisters, tittering at the ludicrous manceuvres of the son of Mars in front, and expressing, by a series of sly nods and winks, their private opinion that the •Tt l2 i ll 143 THE BACKWOODS FARM. artful little minx, his companion, is doing her utmost to allure him into the meshes of matri- mony. Then comes a knot of children — a boy with a little girl on either side, the trio getting over the ground at a great pace and distancing with the most perfect facility a hirsute gentle- man in undress uniform who comes next in order. The evolutions of this gallant gentleman afford unbounded amusement to the bystanders, and certainly the figure he cuts is sufficiently grotesque. His course is not unlike that of a vessel in a head sea. First he lurches to one side and then to the other. Now he brings up with a " round turn," now forges wildly a-head. At one moment his body is at an angle of forty- five, and at the next he appears to be going down stern foremost. Somehow or another he never altogether goes over, and as every one gives him a wide berth, the damage he does is confined to the straining of his own timbers, which must h& considerable. And so they go round and round to the inspiriting strains of the music until the band marches off. And our friend asks us what we think of it all, and American-like, enters into lengthy details for our edification as to how much it cost, how it is supported, how much larger and better it is than the one at Montreal, and so back to our hotel. THE BACKWOODS FAEM. U9 The passage across the Bay of Fundy to Annapolis is a short one. Four hours after leaving the wharf at St. John we are in Digby, and two hours more sees us at our destination. Calebs is to meet us at a way- side public fifty miles from Annapolis on the road to L . Fifty miles !. It is a mere nothing. Six times eight are forty-eight — a little over eight hours will do it. A short day's journey. But we count without our host, or rather without our driver. There has been a heavy fall of rain, the road is bare of snow, wheels have to take the place of runners. Not eight, but sixteen hours does it take io cover the distance ; and it is long past midnight when we pull up at the door of the little tavern. Everything is as still as the grave, the lights are all out, the inmates sleeping. But a war- wlioop, given with all the strength of our lungs, soon changes the aspect of affairs, bringing the landlord scurrying to the door and Coelebs to the window. Oh, there we are at last ! Yes, and cold and Imngry as a man well can be. " Ah, Coelebs, old boy ! how goes it ? With that great beard of yours, we hardly recognised you." A Coelebs more totally dissimilar from tho Calebs of eighteen months ago it would be diffi- 150 THE BACKWOODS FARM. cult to imagine. The Coelebs from whom we parted on the wharf at Montreal was, if we can trust to our memory, of a remarkably fair com- plexion, and of slender rather than robust build. Immaculate as to linen, faultless as to his gloves and boots, habited in a summer suit of unmistakable London build, he had about as much resemblance to a backwoodsman as has a Lifeguardsman to a Sioux brave. The Coelebs who now stands before us is bearded like the pard; his cheeks are ruddy, his frame is mus- cular ; he looks as if he could carry a bullock and digest nails. He wears a blue flannel shirt, with turn-down collar ; a black silk handkerchief, knotted sailor fashion, round his neck ; shooting- coat and continuations of thick grey homespun j and heavy knee boots. A leathern belt does duty for braces, and to tue belt are attached two sheaths — one for the reception of a bowie- knife, the other for a hatchet. Were it not that in address and manner he is still the gentleman, the metamorphosis would be complete. " Tired and hungry ?" he asks. " Eegularly grueled, eh ?" " Tired, yes — grueled, no. Why ?" "Because iP not absolutely ' worn out, it is better that we sit quietly by the stove until morning, for the people are Irish, and the beds of questionable cleanliness." To this we readily THE BACKWOODS FARM. 1# agree, and in pleasant chit-chat the night wears away. At peep of day we sling our packs, shoulder arms, and quietly take our departure. Between the public and the shanty, whither we are bound — eight miles as the crow flies — there is not, Ccelebs smilingly informs us, a single human habitation, unless a couple of lumber- men's camps can be so considered. The road lies through the heart of the forest, and, bad at the best of times, it is now, owing to the late heavy rains, almost impracticable. The brooks are swollen, the mud-holes broad and deep, and the swamps Well, the swamps must be seen to be duly appreciated. Are we game to go right through without stopping? Of course we are ; but when we think of our laced boots, we cannot repress a shudder. Climbing over the paddock fence, we strike at once into the forest. For a couple of miles or so we get along capitally, for our course lies over a hard wood ridge, and the road, although rough and wet, is not particularly swampy. But just as we are beginning secretly to congratulate ourselves upon the unexpected solidity of the road, and to calculate how long it will take us at the pace we are going to reach our destination, the green woods heave in sight, and Coelebs, who i if n V >i 152 THE BACKWOODS FABM. is aliead, yells out, "Prepare for first mud- hole !" Although we advance smilingly, it is not without a certain trepidation, for backwoods mud-holes are old acquaintances of ours, and we know what is in store for the unhappy wight who is forced to wade through one with no better protection for his feet and legs than " Balmorals." Alas ! our worst fears are realized. It is a mud- hole of the very vilest kind — a mud-hole worthy of Illinois — foul, black, slimy, a hundred yards in length, and deep as Tophet. " Is there no way of getting round?" we ask, desperately. " None. Off the road it is even softer, and encumbered with a pack, it would be next to im- possible to force one's way through the dense thickets." And so we roll up our trousers as far as the knee, cant our pack well on to the shoulders, bring our gun to the trail, and — are at the very first step, not only ankle, but knee- deep in the mire. Vain precaution that of rolling up the trousers ! If we don't sink in up to the Lips, we may consider ourselves lucky. Slosh — slosh — slosh. Well, this is pleasant ! " Many more sloughs of this description to wade through, friend Coelebs ?" Ccelebs, cheerfully — " Oh no ! Only five THE BACKWOODS FARM. between this and the shanty: — two worse than this one." Slosh — slosh — slosh. Coelehs, still more cheerfully — "Just five mud-holes, three swamps, and two places where the road is flooded ; but then that is clean water, you know, and a wade' through will be as good us a sponging." " Verily, friend Ccelebs, a comforter art thou in affliction ! Only five mud-holes, three swamps, and two overflows in the six miles which lie betwixt this and thy forest mansion ! An Appiari way, this road of thine, truly ! And then the bath that we have in perspective — ^that refresh- ing wade through the limpid waters of woodland streams which thou hast in store for us ! The very thought of it sends a thrill through one's system, and Just have the kindness to hand us the brandy-flask. Oh, Coelebs, Coelebs ! Penny wise art thou and pound foolish ! For one-half wliat it has already cost thee in wear and tear of clothes and boot leather (here we cast a melancholy glance at our unfortunate Balmorais, ooaing with foul black mud, and at our nether garments, hopelessly stained and ruined) — ay, for less than one-half that amount — thou couldst have had log bridges thrown athwart the streams, and corduroy laid over swamp and mud-hole. Better far to spend ! II m 154 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. " For goodness sake, my dear fellow," inter- rupts Coelebs, in evident alarm, " don't mention such a thing. I wouldn't exchange this rough, muddy, swampy road for the best Macadam in America ; for it was its very impracticability that tempted me to take up land at its further extremity, and to make me a home in this Nova Scotian wilderness. When out on a fishing ex- cursion I first travelled this road, I had re- linquished all idea of settling in the Canadas. Por eleven weary months had I been hunting the New Dominion over, in the hope of finding a location suited to my tastes and to my finances. I had been northward to the Saguenay, westward to Lake Huron, eastward to Prince Edward's Is- land, southward to St. John, New Brunswick. Time thrown away. The localities suited to my finances were not to my taste, and those to my taste were not suited to my finances. The longer settled districts of Canada West were first honoured with a visit, and a very cursory in- spection sufficed to convince me that it was not in the vicinity of such towns as Toronto and Hamilton where was to be found that of which I was in search — a cleared farm at a low figure. If I wanted a cheap farm, I must look for it in a clieap district, not in the best and dearest section of the province. I must go back, back, back, and V 11 .._,: 'A. THE BACKWOODS FARM. tm^ even then content myself with one partially cleared. What could I expect for six or eight hundred pounds ? And so hsuck I went ir a re- mote, I may say a very remote, settlement, where I arranged with a farmer to board and lodge me for six months ; for although burning with impatience to commence operations on my own account, I thought it only prudent to give the life a trial prior to irretrievably committing myself by the purchase of a farm. Before three months had elapsed I was flying that settlement as if it were plague-stricken. Had I remained there another month, I verily believe I should have gone melancholy mad. I had not been so green as to expect that life in the clearings would really turn out to be the Arcadian existence described by Canadian pamphleteers, nor that the hard-working farmers, my neighbours, would prove on acquaintance to be anything superior to the ordinary run of hard-working farmers ; but I certainly hoped to be able at least to endure the one, and to accommodate myself to the rude manners of the others. I had made the experi- ment and failed. I could have put up with the poor living — it was v^ry poor — cheerfully endured the isolation, made merry over my uncongenial tasks; but submit to the' patronizing airs and the ' cool impertinences of the boors by whom I was 156 THE BACKWOODS FARM. surrounded, that I could not do. Nature's noblemen, indeed ! Mostly Irish of the very lowest class, to the cunning, ignorance, and bigotry of their race, they united all the arro- gance and pretension of the Ti'ankee ; and they hated me not because I gave myself airs — or treated them superciliously, for I did nothing of the sort — but for the simple reason that I was a gentleman. At first I thought that matters would be sure to mend; I should grow more used to the people and they to me. But instead of matters mending, they daily grew worse ; and the more I tried to like my neighbours, and to discover in their characters something to esteem and admire, the more reason I found to loathe and despise them. At the end of the second month I saw that the battle was hopeless, owned myself vanquished, and threw up the sponge. The confession does not redound to my credit, you will say — it shows a sad lack of moral courage, of adaptability, of perseverance. In- stead of being disheartened, I ought to have shown myself all the more resolute — put a bold face on the matter — have endeavoured to live down the ill-will of my neighbours — stood my ground like a man. For all that, I feel con- vinced that had you been in my place you would have acted precisely as I did. It is all yery -a».":-.-.-»«S3*SK!>r' ■I THE BACKWOODS FARM. 157 well for poets, whose greatest trial in life has been the perusal of some adverse criticism of their own writings, to sing how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong; but singing is one thing and doing is another. There is a limit to human forbearance, and after a certain point the sublime merges into the ridiculous- — resignation becomes stupidity. That 1 was un- fortunate in the choice of a locality I willingly admit. Had I searched a little further I might no doubt have found me settlement where the Irish were in a minority, or at least not in such an overwhelming majority as they were at B . There are such happy valleys even in the Canadian backwoods. But so far as I can judge, from the little experience I have had, a new settlement, no matter what may be the nation- ality of its inhabitants, is not the place for an emigrant of the better class. The owner of an improved farm in a new settlement is a hybrid — a cross between a farmer and a backwoodsman — but enjoying neither the comforts of the one nor the rude independence of the other. Neither can he proudly point, like the farmer, to his well- tilled fields and snug homestead, nor exclaim with the backwoodsman, " I settled, I built, I cleared, I planted." His farm is in a transition state, and he himself but an improver. To the ordinary • 158 THE BACKAVOODS FARM. immigrant it matters little what may be the pre- cise condition of his farm — whether he be origi- nator or improver it is the same to him. Is his house inconvenient and badly built? It is a hundred times better than the one he occupied in the old country. Are his neighbours ignorant and boorish ? They belong to the same class as himself; were they more refined he would be out of his element. Are his fields full of blackened stumps, pine roots and cradle hills, badly fenced and worse cultivated ? "What's the odds? Fine farming does not pay in a new country ; and the man must be a born idiot who would trouble himself about appearances. He makes a living out of the land, and is contented. With the gentleman immigrant it is alto- gether difierent. Unless he be a very rare specimen of his class, he is more or less governed by appearances. Accustomed from childhood to see everything around him kept in apple-pie order, the very sight of the half-cleared fields of the infant township, with their ugly black stumps and still uglier snake fences, is sufficient to give him the horrors. His farm, instead of being a source of pleasure to him, is just the reverse. Everything about it betrays the barbarous taste of its late owner. The house has been run up jinyhow, and is as ugly and as uncomfortable as 'Hi )> ■■i THE BACKWOODS FARM. 159 a house well can be. The barn is jammed right against his sitting-room windows ; the clearing is a clearing with a vengeance, for not a tree has been left standing. He cannot farm if he would ; for his fields are full of half«decayed stumps, and he has to go to work Indian fashion — scattering a handful of seed here, sticking in a piece of potato there, doing double labour for half a crop. Tree stumps take a long time to rot (seven years), and until they are rotted his land cannot properly be cultivated. He may be an earth grubber, but a farmer he is not. The chief difference between the backwoodsman and himself is, that whilst he has neighbours, the backwoodsman has none; and in this respect he is much more deserving of pity than of envy. Not a single taste, not a single idea, has he in common with his fellow- settlers. They hate him, because he is so dif- ferent to themselves; he loathes them for their ignorance and pretension. Put it in which way you will, the existence is a fearful one. Even should he be a married man, his lot is none the less hard to bear. True, he has a ministering angel to cheer him under his manifold afflictions ; but that his wife should have to put up with the impertinences of ignorant helps, and with the coarse familiarities of gawky country wenches, is agonizing. No 1 The more I think the matter i ii 100 THE BACKWOODS FARM. over, the more convinced am I that it is little short of madness for any man, having the tastes and habits of a gentleman, to try farming in a new settlement. If he cannot afford to purchase a farm in a highly civilized district, the best place for him is the wilderness. After my ignominious flight from B town- ship, I made for the newly sur\''eyed districts in the vicinity of Lake Huron. My desire was to find some spot sufficiently near to a settlement to enable me to procure supplies, and yet sufficiently out of the way to deter others from following in ray footsteps. A location of this description was not to be found in Canada West; at least I could not find it. The demon of progress was abroad in the land ; and what was wilderness to-day would in all probability be clearing to- morrow. " Needn't be afeared to take up land in this township," were the comforting words with which I was everywhere greeted. " Pretty lonesome now, but you'll have plenty of neighbours to- morrow." Neighbours ! Just what I desired to avoid. Again I skedaddled. From Ontario I journeyed to Ottawa, from Ottawa to Quebec; and just ten months from the day on which I first steamed up the St. Lawrence, I was steaming down again, a sadder THE BACKWOODS FARM. 161 and a wiser man. In those ten months I had learnt to my cost that in Canada money is the first thing needful; and that, whatever may be said or written to the contrary, little can be done without it. That, although the immigrant who has a few thousands can undoubtedly live more comfortably in the Canadas than he could on the same amount in England, and farm both pleasantly and profitably, the man whose capital is limited to hundreds must either make up his mind to take it rough and tumble with the tag- rag and bob-tail of all lands, or else hide himself in the wilderness. That good farms are not to be purchased for a trifle — that to reclaim wild land costs money, and that it is but little assis- tance the gentleman settler will get from his neighbours. They will come to his Bee fast enough, but for every dollar worth of work that they do for him they will drink two dollars' worth of whisky. That in a back settlement it is much easier to buy than to sell, that the cost of carry- ing produce to market swallows up a goodly portion of the proceeds, and that to " truck" with a village storekeeper is a very losing game. That, whilst nothing is easier than to pay away money, it is a very diflScult matter to collect it when owing ; that whilst the necessaries of life are in abundance, superfluities there are none ; and, VOL. I, M 162 THE BACKWOODS FARM. ;i finally, that the utmost any poor gentleman settler can reasonably hope is to be able at his death to leuve his children sufficient money to open a little village store or to commence farming on their own account. " Was it to work like a naygur, and to ate pork and banes, that I came three thousand miles acrass the say?" asked Mr. Pat Maloney of his employer. " No, be jabers ; I could have done that same at home." Was it to be buried alive in some wretched back settlement, work like a galley-slave, live on the coarsest fare, and see my children growing up around me wild and uncouth as young Indians, that I emigrated to Canada, I asked myself on my return to Quebec ? No, be jabers ! I could have done as well as that at home. I would visit the maritime provinces, and if I should find nothing to suit me in Prince Edward's Island, New Brunswick, or Nova Scotia, give up all thoughts of settling in the New Dominion, and try what could be done in the United States. In two days I had seen as much of Prince Edward's Island as I cared to see ; had crossed the Straits to Shediac, and commenced my explo- rations of New Brunswick. They were not of very long duration. I went up the river St. John, as far as Frederickton ; coached it thence THE BACKWOODS FARM. 163 to Woodstock ; visited on my return the settle- ments on the Nashwaak, Washadamoack, and Kenebecasis, and at the end of a fortnight found myself once again in the foggy capital. If the province of Ontario be preferable to Lower Canada, Lower Canada is in its turn pre- ferable to New Brunswick. In civilization it is twenty-five years behind Quebec, half a century behind Ontario. In Canada lumbering is one of the resources of the inhabitants ; in New Bruns- wick it is the resource ; lumbering first, ship- building second ; all other trades and callings fairly distanced. The St. John custom-house returns may be thus briefly summed up : — Ex- ports, lumber; imports, everything except lum- ber and — ice. Notwithstanding the vaunted fertility of the soil, the farmers of the province cannot manage to raise suflicient produce for home consumption. Manufactures there are next to none. Apart from lumbering and ship- building there would seem to be no enterprise whatsoever. A lumber country — furniture, turnery, ever3rthing down to pails and axe-helves imported in more or less quantities from the United States — a country where agriculture is said to pay, flour, pork, beans, butter, eggs, all farm produce, ditto — a country where there is SI 2 I'l 164 THE BACKWOODS FAUM". perhaps more available wiitor [lowcr than in any other of the same extent — one factory, where there niif^ht be fifty. It is stated in the " Emigrant 'h Iliin(ll)ook * to the province, that New Brunswick is a {^ood poor man's country. What that may bo 1 know not. If it means that the fruj^al, hard-workini^ man can manage to make a living there, and eventually become the possessor of a i'arm, I concur. If it means that he can do better there than elsewhere, I deny it in foto. That there are plenty of places where theindustrious immigrant can do betterthan in New Brunswick, is evident from the compiler's own admission, for after having proved, to his own entire satisfaction, that the soil of the pro- vince is more fertile, that the harvests are more abundant, that the (jlimate is more healthy than that of any other country ; after making out a splendid case in favour of emigration thither, he naively tells the intending emignint that im- proved farms can always be purch;.\sed for less than the value of the improvements ; or in other words, that real estate, instead of increasing in value, decreases, and that the settler who desires to realize, is almost invariably out of pocket. So far as I could judge from a cursory inspection of the province, it is about the very last place I would advise any friend of mine, be he rich THE BACKWOODS B'ARM. 165 k* to 1 poor not. man tuiilly If it where, places prthan ipiler's I to his le pro- •e more ly than out a ;her, he lat im- for less in other ising in I desires :et. So iction of place I he rich •**>- or poor, to select as a residence. When the pineries are exhausted, and lumbering ceases to he the business of the people, when the climate iu»|>roves, and the river St. .John is clear of ice before the end of April, when the shores of the Bay of Fundy are free from fog, when the Inter- colonial Railway is completed, and the Inter- national Steamboat Company runs better vessels, when the roads are kept in decent repair, and a stage journey into the interior can be contem- plated without a shudder, when the city of St. John presents a less dreary a[)pearance, and there are more houses and fewer lumber- stacks, it will be time enough to speak of New Brunswick as a home for the gentleman emigrant. From St. John I crossed over to Annapolis, and hearing that there was some good salmon fishing in tiio vicinity, 1 started on a fishing ex- cursion, and it was whilst out on that same excursion that I first travelled this road. Here it wp>* ;t this second mud-hole — be careful where yi)u sir;, there are stumps at the bottom which ?i.re u])' 0 trip a fellow up — at this second mud- ).ok' :>>fc as I was floundering about as you are now, that my companion, a dry, a.nusing Yankee, IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 2.5 1.0 s ^ L£ 12.0 III I.I ^I!i4li4 I Fhotographic Sciences Corporalion 4!S ^■^ \ ^. % irfc»Mi»i,^^ S14 THE BACKWOODS FARM. firewood — a rash proceeding in rtost cases, dangerous alike to the chopper and all those in his immediate vicinity — ^anothcr collects hemlock boughs for the common bed, a third fetches water from the brook, whilst the remainder unpack the hampers, or make themselves useful in the culinary department. In an incredibly short space of time the lumberer's tent or bough wig- wam is in position with the hemlock branches piled beneath, the huge log-fire is cheerfully crackling and darting its forked flames high into the air, and such an appetizing smell of fried ham, or similar backwoods delicacy, pervading the surrounding forest as to make the visit of some convivial bear an event of no improbable occurrence. Supper over> a chairman is elected, and each one in turn favours the company with a song or story, the Indians looking on the while with their usual imperturbable gravity, express- ing their private opinion of the evening's per- formance by the occasional interchange uf a few words spoken in the soft Micmac tongue. The turn in is delayed as long as possible, but at length the last pipe is smoked out, the last story ended, the blankets are spread on the fragrant hemlock, every man composes liimself to sleep, and in a few minutes nothing is heard but the crackling of the blazing pine knots and the 1. THE BACKWOODS FARM. 215 sighing of the night wind amongst the branches over head. In spite of the flies, our builders have been making rapid progress. We have had some little trouble with our men, but very little considering the country. We were thrown back a week by the desertion of the stonemason's assistant, who *' couldn't stand them darned midges," and another six days by the decampment of the stonemason himself. Our teamster, who had been engaged at the rate of thirty dollars a month, struck for rafting wages and got them, and our shingle-maker turning sulky at some- thing that was said to him, hung up his draw- knife and started for the settlements, as did also our cook, who, on reaching home, sent poor Coelebs a summons for wages due, accompanied by the following sarcastic epistle : — "Mr. Celibs — i suppose you think it very Strang of me leafing you but you must remember i am not a beest and if there is such cattle in the country you come from i would advise you send fech them. i am a man not a beest as you say we all is and so i hope you will emport some of your countrymen as can do your work to your liking as i don't entond to do any more for you. " Joseph Donelly." But defalcation and desertion notwithstanding. X iij 216 THE BACKWOODS FARM. we have managed to rub along, and we now only muster nine hands without the cook — ^Mrs. Mao doing the " bully " one's work jpro iem. Coelebs's mind is at rest, for Mac and his wife have no desire to- quit him ; the carpenters, paid by the job, are not likely to forfeit what they have already earned by leaving their work in an un- finished state ; the teamster guesses he shall be able to " worry it through ;" whilst the " chore- boy," who is not worth his salt, would rather oblige by taking his departure. Until we are ready for the plasterers, we shall need no more help. To day, July 18th, the " roofing in " has been completed, acd, supper over, Ccelebs produces a demijohn of whisky, and announces that it is his intention to brew a joram of punch in honour of the event. The announcement is received with applause. It is the first time that grog has been served out, for knowing, by past experience, how very little thanks one gets for any extra liberality, we have advised our host to keep his liquor and not to dispense a drop except in case of sickness. To-night is to be the one exception to the rule, and we sit round the blazing camp fire and make merry. We are a rather tuneful lot. The boss carpenter plays the concertina, two of the party sing very fairly, all can join in a chorus — so ours is a " swarry," convivial and musical. There has THE BACKWOODS FARM. 217 been a very lurid sunset, the air is hot and op- pressive, and our weather-prophet prognosticates raiu. We are no prophet, but we don't like the look of the horizon. It reminds us of a certain night in the West Indies which we would wil- lingly forget. The sky has the same leaden hue, the atmosphere the same sultry feel, whilst Ccelebs's big Newfoundlander sniffs the air in the same uneasy way as did our poor old Cato. About eleven the party breaks up, the four carpenters and the chore-boy retiring to their board wigwams, Mac and ourselves to the shelter of our more comfortable shanties. Before turning in we have a look at the barometer. It is very low and the mercury is still falling. There is little wind stirring, and that little makes a dismal wailing amongst the branches of the giant oak which shelters our shanty. As we extinguish our light we hear the heavy drops of rain pattering on the shingles, and Coelebs shouts to us, through the partition, that we shall have a good night's rain and fine weather in the morning. We are awakened by the rumbling of distant thunder, and, looking out of the window, we see the lightning flashing at the upper end of the lake. The storm is travelling in our- direction — we shall have it over head in a few moments more. Well ! it is not the first storm 'V' I ^18 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. we have slept through, let us try to " calk" it out. We oan't exactly manage it. Louder and louder rolls the thunder ; so vivid is the light- ning that we can see every cranny and crevice in the log walls — the wind has increased to a hurricane, and our solid shanty trembles. Jupiter ! What a crash ! We are so stunned that we cannot recollect where we placed the matches , " Coelebs, ahoy ! Are you awake ?" No need to ask that question. He is up and dressed, and dreadfully anxious about the build- ings. Will the house stand it — ^the new house ? Time enough to think of the house when we are out of danger. If the wind increases, that big oak outside wont stand it, and if it fall on the shanty we shall both be laid out as flat iis floundera. Let us try to find some spot where there are no trees — see if we cannot manage to reach the landing. Dazzled by the lightning, stimned by the crash of falling trees, and scarcely able to keep our feet from the violence of the wind, we succeed in reaching the spot. " Just look at the camp,'* groans poor Coelebs. The camp, indeed ! Not much sign of a camp there. The wigwam has been blown bodily into the river, and the hemlock branches scattered far and wide, the burning brands from ^he fire THE BACKWOODS FARM. 219 round which we were all so lately gathered are flying about in every direction, whilst, worse than all, a pile containing six thousand feet of lumber is no longer to be seen. The men look scared, and the chore-boy is hanging on to the stock of a warping anchor with all the energy of despair. All eyes are fixed upon the house, which is ex- posed to the full fury of the blast. If it does not stand firm what chance would an ordinary frame house have had ? Those walls are built up with ten-inch balks of timber, securely bound together with oak-tree nails, and are seve^*'! tons in weight. The foundations are extra solid. It would take a pretty considerable strong puff to damage the body of the building, but will the great roof be able to withstand the pressure? That is the question. Some of the party wag their heads ominously, but our master builder is confident that not a shingle will be started, or if the roof should go the walls will go too. And then it will be the last house blown down in the county. Sad but consoling reflection ! If we are doomed to perish, the universe (as represented by the said county) will perish with us. Shades of Pliny junior 1 we thank thee for the happy thought With a tremendous crash and s^^ iking of 220 THE BACKWOODS FARM. the ground beneath us, down comes some giant tree in our vicinity. "Where was that, Tom?" strikes him hard by the shanty. A vivid flash suffices to show us that he is correct in his surmises. It is the big oak by the shanty, but as far as we can judge it has fallen clear of the building. An- other tremendous peal, and down comes the rain in torrents. The big oak can't well fall a second time, so here goes for dry clothes and the shelter of the shanty. Away we scurry, as fast as our legs can carry us ; the others follow, and for the remainder of the night we sit round the stove and speculate on the amount of damage that will be done before morning. Our esti- mates prove to be rather under than over the mark. When the storm subsides, and we can venture out without our lives being endangered by falling trees and flying branches, the sight which meets our eyes in the cold grey light of morning is the reverse of cheering. Stately pine trees snapped like pipe stems, great oaks up- rooted, torn leaves and riven brano^ies littering the ground, ruin and desolati,/ everywhere. The buildings have received no damage, but our pile of selected lumber for the flooring of the house has been scattered to the four winds. All hands are at once piped to salvage. Four of us man THE BACKWOODS FARM. 221 the skiff, whilst the remainder, armed with pike and boat-hook, hunt amongst the logs in the river for the missing lumber. Our labours are attended with a greater amount of success than we had dared to hope. By midday most of the boards have been hauled ashore, and piled up in a less exposed position, the carpenters resume their work, and we hasten to visit that portion of the domain which foT two months or more has been seldom out of our thoughts night or day — the garden. Oh, what a falling off is there ! Our Champion of England ^Q2l'& biting the dust, or rather the mire, our Scimitars cut to pieces, our Scarlet Manners skedaddled, our Kenyan's Improved CMCMm- hers improved from off the face of the earth. We are " a broken-hearted gardener, and know not what to do.'* We can only gaze on the ruin around us and soliloquize. What anxiety has not that garden caused us — what tortures have we not uncomplainingly en- dured that it might be fully stocked with vege- tables? When that "usual June frost" was expected, did we not spend the greater portion of three consecutive evenings in covering the tender j'lantlets with old newspapers ? and during the " merry month of May" did not the black flies drain our life's blood whilst we hoed and delved and weeded ? Did we not " waddy" an un- •\ 222 THE BACKWOODS FARM. suspecting porcupine found trespassing inside the railings, and stone an innocent chip-monk whom we imagined had an eye to the greens ? Nay, did we not ruthlessly shoot a wretched blackbird whom we caught in the act of bolting a pea, and hang up his mangled carcass as a warning to his brethren ? There he swings from yonder stake, and in the branches of the tree over head greets the wife of his bosom just as she has been greeting ever since her partner was cruelly murdered before her eyes a week since. Were we Sambo, we should at once declare her " fetich," and worship her in the full belief that it was her incantation that raised the storm. A prosaic Briton, we bless the storm, and set to work to repair damages. In the midst of our earthing up and staking, Coelebs pops his head over the fence, and a very long face it is. The teamster has just returned with the news that the storm has made terrible havoc in the green woods, and that the road is impassable. Will we take our axe and accompany him as far as the first windfall ? things may perhaps, on inspection, prove to be not quite so bad as reported. To the green woods we accordingly repair, and a single glance is sufficient to tell us that the damage done has not been exaggerated, and that the task of cutting out the road will be Herculean. THE BACKWOODS FARM. 225 The pine trees have been bowled over like nine- pins, and in some places are piled one on top of the other to a height of twelve feet or more. If to scale them is no easy matter, what will it be when it comes to cross-cut sawing and chopping out? For a short space we hope that the first windfall is the worst; but as each succeeding one proves more extensive and impracticable than its predecessor, poor Coelebs completely loses heart. What is to be done? We seat ourselves on a prostrate pine and deliberate. The only men that can be spared are the teamster and the boy. Even supposing that we lent our valuable assistance, it would take three weeks, perhaps more, to clear the road; for the only good axeman of the party would be the teamster, and cross-cut sawing is slow work. But one or other of us must remain at head-quarters, and in ten days at furthest a load of doors and window- sashes will have to be hauled out, or we shall have the carpenters complaining that the work has been stopped for lack of materials, and demanding compensation. As the road must be cut out sooner or later, better that it be done at once. So far as the expense is concerned, whether eight men are employed for one week or two men for four, comes to precisely the same in the end. 224 THE BACKWOODS FARM. ul Agreed on this point, the next question is how to get men ; for it is haying time, and hands are scarce. A bright idea occurs to Coelebs. A short distance from the wayside tavern where he met us, stands a miserable log cabin in which reside lovingly together fourteen human beings — old man and his wife, four stalwart sons, two daughters-in-law, and six grandchildren. They belong to that particular caste known in America as white Indians — white as to their skin, Indian as to their habits and mode of life. They have land, and farm not; timber, and build not; health and strength, and lumber not. They lead a from hand-to-mouth existence, never doing a stroke of work so long as there is anything remaining in the flour barrel. When the last baking is in the oven, they will make a few bundles of staves or a few thousand shingles — just sufficient to pay for another barrel or two of flour, a few pounds of tea and sugar, and a little tobacco ; and that secured, they have , »ther lazy spell. There are but two occupations to which they take kindly — hunting and fiddling; but they have not the patience necessary to excel in the one calling, nor the talent to shine in the other. When a moose is killed it is a red-letter day with them. There is a continuous smell of broiled meat pervading the atmosphere in the vicinity of THE BACKWOODS FARM. 22& their shanty, and the fiddle can be heard " sqawking" from morning till night. No need asking them if they feel disposed to work ; they wouldn't do a hand's turn for St. Hubert unless forced to do so. Luckily for us July is a month in which their larder is generally empty. Hunting has not yet commenced; the trout don't rise freely. Porcupine and eels is the daiLymenu for the month; that, and whatever berries may be collected by the children. Unless it be that the wilderness of weeds which they call their garden stands in need of the hoeing which it never gets, they will hardly be able to invent an excuse for refusing the job which we have to oflfer them. That they will be away haying is not very probable; for they are looked upon as " unco bad examples to ony weel-regulated family," and their room is considered more valuable than their company. Their hands are against every man, and every ttian's hand is against them ; and if anything is lost, stolen, or strayed in the district, it is sure to have been ** them darned white Indians down to the twelve mile as has done it." The greatest difficulty will be in making them complete their task once they have begun it. Coelebs proposes one plan, we another ; and the shanty heaves in sight before any definite line of action has been determined. We must open fire VOL. I. Q '-\. \l 226 THE BACKWOODS FARM. cautiously, find the weakest point, and then blaze away. We knock at the door. It is opened by the old woman. She wants to know ! Why, if it ain't Mr. Coelebs and his friend ! Wont we walk in, and take a seat. Leaving Coelebs to open the first parallel, we have a quiet inspection of the room and its occupants. The shanty, like the one which we inhabit, has a central partition — kitchen on one side, bedrooms on the other; the only difference — and it is a great one — being that, whereas ours measures twenty-two fiset by eighteen, theirs is eighteen by fourteen. The kitchen in which we are seated cannot be more than ten by twelve ; and in it are now collected eight " humans," two dogs, and a squirrel. We are aware that there is always room for one more, but we should like to see the apartment when all hands are mustered round the porcupine stew. At present we have only the old man and his wife, one strapping son, the two daughters-in< law, and the eldest grandchild. Th«3 younger members of the family have, doubtless, received their customary whipping instead of some bread, and been sent to their lair in the garret. If the absent members of this interesting family bear any resemblance to those now present, we are not surprised that the neighbours fight shy of i 11 THE BACKWOODS FARM. 227 them, for tliey are a " hard - looking crowd." The old man is a hickory-faced individual, with a nose like a danger-signal, and a voice like a nutmeg-grater. The son is a yawning, stretch- ing, gum-chewing savage, whom laziness has perhaps saved from a formal introduction to the circuit judge; for there is something in his eye which is not assuring. The daughters-in-law are slatternly hussies, whose general appearance savours strongly of the soldiers' quarter in Hali- fax; the grandchild is a squaw in miniature. The old woman is the best of the bunch, and she has a deary-meary way of addressing one which is far from pleasing. " And deary me, however did ye manage to git out? The road must be blocked up awful." Here we cut in — " Get out ! Not much difficulty in that. Two or three ugly windfalls ; the others hardly worth mentioning. Easy to get round." Elderly savage, with a chuckle — " Much easier to get round nor to cut through. Cost a pile of dollars to clear that thar road. 'Spect it must be cleared though, and that right away." Ccelebs — " Why right away ?" Savage Junior, with a derisive giin — " Why, that you may git yer stuff out, to be sure." Coelebs, with sudden inspiration — " The stuff Q 2 ?■:■ !M 1 m\ H 11 rU\ {. u m 228 THE BACKWOODS FARM. can be hauled to the head of the big lake, and thence rafted or boated down to the house." Elderly savage, with animation — "But that 'ud be a round of twenty mile or more. As the road must be cut out, why not have it done right away ?" Coelebs, after a pause — '* Because I prefer leaving the work of clearing to others ; it's less trouble, and cheaper." Junior Savage, with a scowl — "And who's a-going to do it? Think to git up a bee^ perhaps ? Good, that ! A bee, and it haying time !" Ccelebs — " Haying or no haying, there would be small chance of getting any man hereabouts to volunteer me his assistance. No ! I mean that when logging commences, the lumbermen will have to cut out the road. Must get out hay and provisions. Nothing to be done without them." Chorus — " And yer going to leave the road in that state until Christmas ?" Coelebs — " Yes, unless you want to get those shingles you have at the half-way camp. In that case I don't mind helping you, and paying my fair share towards cutting out the road." Youthful Savage, looking tomahawks and scalp- ing-knives — " And what may yer call yer fair share ?" Coelebs, after a moment's hesitation — " Twenty dollars." Chorus — " Twenty dollars !" Elderly Savage, with a sneer — " Yer mean sixty ?" THE BACKWOODS FARM. 229 Coelebs — " No I don't. I say twenty, and I mean it. Take them or leave them, just as you please. Why should I pay even twenty dollars for doing that which I can have done for nothing?" Here our astute friend rises, and makes for the door; but when his hand is on the latch, he suddenly turns round and fires one parting shot, which hits the mark plumb-centre. " Oh, by-the-bye, can you let me have a loaf of bread ? I came away in a hurry, and forgot to bring any with me." Old squaw, after a very embarrassing pause — " Guess we hain't none baked, Mr. Coelebs." Coelebs, smilingly — " Oh ! Then can you let me have some flour?" Savage Junior, despe- rately— "Flour be ! There ain't no flour in this ranch, nor T' - to be." Coelebs — "No flour? I'm sorry for that. Bad to be out of flour when game is out of season, and potatoes not yet ripe. But, of course, accidents will happen. I suppose I shall be able to ^et some at the tavern. We shall pass the night at Freeman's Camp. Good even- ing And exit. Friend Coelebs is getting so sharp that he will cut himself before long, if he isn't careful. We had quite forgotten that our white Indians have been shingle making lately at a spot some five miles down our road. Probably, owing to some i \ I I n L 230 THE BACKWOODS FARM. member of the family standing in need of a dress, or a shirt, or a new pair of pants, the " boys" have been surprisingly industrious for the past three weeks, and have made several bundles of shingles. The shingles are made; but how to get them? If they want them, which they undoubtedly do, they must either back them out, or clear the road sufficiently to let a waggon pass. Were Coelebs a lawyer by profession, he could not have argued more plausibly, and the way in which he managed to find out the nakedness of the land was masterly. We think, with him, that the chances are ten to one that an envoy extraordinary from the hive will wait upon us at "^reeman's Camp before morning. We get on pplies at the tavern, and reach the camp a little before sundown. When the logging season is over, and the crews have taken their departure, a night may be very pleasantly spent in a lumberman's camp. If nothing have been left in it but a couple of tin pannikins and an old fryingpan, so much the better. It will be more a la Robinson Crusoe. Fingers for forks, splinters for spoons, wedges of bread or strips of bark for plates, the only carver a jack-knife. It is really astonishing how soon one gets into backwoods ways. The excessively refined gentleman, who in civilized THE BACKWOODS FARM. 231 society would as soon think of cutting his own throat with his knife as his salmon, has not been forty-eight hours in the woods ere he can be seen using the said knife with a recklessness that would strike terror into the heart of an Arab juggler. Breeding will tell, and when the gentleman goes in for the knife, it is with all the skill of a professor. He uses it as deftly as does a Chinaman his chopstick. After our last night's vigil and the labours of the day, we are both pretty well tired out, and no sooner is supper over, and a pipe smoked, than we shake up the feathers, and coiling down in our respective corners, prepare to sleep. Dimmer and dimmer grows the firelight; our heavy eyelids droop and close. We may have given a premonitory grunt or two — we are beginning to reel it off in genuine backwoods style — when we are aroused by hearing Coelebs whisper in our ear, " Do you hear that ?" We are sitting up and wide awake in an instant. In the silent woods, the words, " Do you hear that ?** convey a very diflCerent meaning to that which they would do were they uttered in the busy haunts of men. "Do you hear that?** falling from the lips of a backwoodsman in the stillness of the night, means, " Be ready — something is wrong." To the backwoodsman the voices of the i\ f \ \ 232 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. wilderness are so familiar that he heeds them not. The cry of the loon, the hoot of the owl, the shriek of the crane, may startle the tyro ; they do not move him. He can account for every sound, from the crash of p falling tree to the rustle of the squirrel amongst the withered leaves. If he cannot do so, it is hecause the noise is so urnsual as to be unacconntahie, and then comes the whispered inquiry, " Do you hear thatr Yes, we do hear it. " A bear, by Jove !" mutters Coelebs. " And wo haven't a gun with us." " No it isn't — the step is too rapid. A two- legged bear of some sort." And as we utter the words the door is pushed open, and in stalks one of our white Indians from the twelve mile. Why, who would have expected to see him at this time of night? Going to Blackbrook to fish, perhaps ? Not a bad place for eels. " No, it ain't eels he's arter. Has come to see if he can't make some agreement about that thar road." About the road ! Coelebs is distressed beyond measure that he should have given himself the trouble. " Has determined to haul his stuflf to the head of the big water, and leave the cutting out of the road to the lumbermen. Has he had his supper?" "Wal, yes! but he doesn't mind having THE BACKWOODS FAEM. 238 another bit, if there's anything handy." " Plenty of flour, bacon, tea, and sugar on the shelf over his head, and he will find tin pots and a frying- pan in that box in the corner. He has only to help himself." Help himself he does without more ado, and it is a pity that the whole British army is not present to watch him prepare his meal. Those shiftless gentlemen who will not attempt to cook unless they have a patent range provided for them, and who cannot cook when they get it, might, perhaps, pick up a wrinkle or two which would prove serviceable in the event of another Crimean campaign. Our friend's first move is to fill a pannikin with water and set it to boil — his next, to find two pieces of birch bark, which he sera s and fashions, with the aid of his knife, into a L iple of platters. Out of a chip he makes himself a spatula, fills the second pannikin two- thirds full of flour, adds some water, and proceeds to beat up his batter. The batter mixed to his tiatisfaction,he cuts some slices of pork, fries them, and puts them to keep hot by the fire until such time as he shall have his first pancake ready. By the time one side of his pancake is done the water is boiling, and he chucks in the tea. Pancake and tea are ready at the same time — the pork is as hot as ever. Whilst he is throwing himself outside the first edition of flap-jack the .:•*(» .'.J,- 284 THE BACKWOODS FARM. second will be frying, and so on, until there is no more batter left. '* Pooh ! What a fuss about nothing ! Not much difficulty in all that," sneers Mr. Wiseacre, Cut bark, whittle chip, boil wat>r, mix batter, fry pork, ditto pancake, anc* ^y-presto! the thing's done. Easiest thing in lue world. And so it is when one knows how. When one does not, it is marvellous how the very simplest culinary operation comes to grief. The pannikin has been insecurely placed on the fire, and over it topples just as the water is beginning to boil The batter is too thick or too thin, it sticks to the pan ; when tossed it falls all of a heap. It is raw on one side, burnt on the other. It is all accidental, no doubt; but such accidents never happen to the experienced backwoodsman. That we are in for another night of it is evident. The fried pork and flap-jacks have imparted new life to our white Indian, and he grows exceedingly communicative. He tells us of his wooings and his huntings and his fightings, and of the " high old time" he has had down to Halifax lately. Fine place, Halifax, by his account. A sort of Natchez-under-the-Iiill with a dash of Gomorrah. " Would like to live there — ^fust-rate — but hasn't the spondoolioks. No way of getting along thar without money. If he could only manage to THE BACKWOODS FARM. 23& raise five hundred dollars or so, might do a splendid business. Would keep a ho-tel. Pile of money to be made out of a ho-tel. Knows of a fust-rate one near the wharf, which could be purchased cheap. Sailors and long-shore men drinking thar all day long — dollars flying about like chips a-breaking. What do we say to pur- chasing the good-will, and putting him in as manager ? Think, may be, that he'd drink more f(yrty rod nor he'd selL Well, p'rhaps he might take a drain occasionally/' And so on, until the small hours of the morning. It is only after a deal of fencing on both sides that the road question is finally settled. But Coelebs has all along the best of it. He stands on the defensive, and lets his antagonist tire himself out. He will give twenty dollars, no more, and, in the end, the man yields the point and accepts it. At peep of day we separate, Coelebs returning with his captive to the tavern, there to draw out the agreement in black and white — we to head-quarters. For the next month we are busy haying. Armed with bush scythes, Mac, two hired men, and ourselves, keep cutting away at the blue- joint with unflagging energy. Coelebs has more stock and less hay than he expected to have, and will require at least twenty-five tons of I' wmmm^mm 236 THE BACKWOODS FABM. " meadow" hay to see him through the winter. There is any quantity of blue-joint on the ad- jacent meadows, t'lt it is bad mowing, and the weather is insufferably hot. We rise at four o'clock, have some bread and coffee, and then pull to the head of the lake, where are the nearest beaver meadows. We work till ten, when we have our second breakfast, and that over, sit quietly in the shade until three. At three we have a snack, and then work along steadily until we cannot see to work any longer. In this way we get ten hours good work out of the men, which we should not do had they to mow during the heat of the day. As the hay is cured it is stacked on the ground, there to await the arrival of No- vember frost and snows, when it will be sledded down the lake and re-stacked in the haggard — English hay being alone placed under cover. Twenty- five tons are stacked at last ; but it has been a weary job and an expensive one. There are meadows close at hand where twice the quantity might have been cut with half the labour ; but these meadows are private property, or are supposed to be so, which amounts to the same thing. They have not been purchased, nor rented, nor *' improved ;" but they are private property notwithstanding, for they have been THE BACKWOODS FARM. 23y selected. Mr. Josh This or Eb* That, when out a fishing or a huckleberrying, takes a fancy to a piece of meadow, and forthwith honours it with his patronymic ; from that date it is no longer part and portion of the East or "West brook bog, but Jobbings' or Buggings' meadow. Jobbings may live thirty miles off, Buggings never have owned a beast in his life, neither the one nor the other has the remotest intention of cutting an ounce of hay ; but they have a right to do so if they choose, and if they don't, it is. nothing to nobody. In the United States or Canada, per- mission to cut would be freely accorded — not so hereabouts. If any man wants their hay be must pay for it, and such a price that prime English hay would come nearly as cheap in the end. The best meadow in Coelebs's vicinity be- longs, or is supposed to belong, to a certain Ehino — a man who must have been the original of Sam Slick's lazy man, who declared that, " Of all the work which Providence had given mortal man to do he liked potato-hoeing the best, but would any day rather die than do that" — the said Ehino being the very incarnation of laziness. There is as much chance of Mr. Ehino cutting his meadow as there is of his becoming a mil- lionaire by dint of hard work and thriftincss. I w> V 1 1- y 11 1 m h M 238 THE BACKWOODS FARM. About a fortnight before haying commenced, Mr. Bhino, accompanied by his flibbertigibbet of a son, honoured us with a visit. " He had run short of provisions — not the first time in his life by a many — could he have some ?" "Certainly. Supper would be ready shortly," Coelebs said, *' he had only to peg away.'* When seated round the camp fire that evening, Coelebs not knowing the gentleman by sight, asked him whence he hailed — if he lived in the county. "Wal,yes! He guessed so. His name was Ehino, and he owned a farm down to the Corners. Had some land nearer nor that though. Had a fine piece of meadow up to the head of the lake. He, Ccelebs, had no doubt heered tell of Ehino's meadow ?" " Oh ! he was Ehino, was he ? Had he any intention of cutting his meadow ?" " Wal ! he couldn't say for sure. Pr'aps he might, pr'aps he mightn't." " If he shouldn't cut it, would he allow him, Coelebs, to do so?" "That would all depend." "On what?" "On what he was willing to pay." "WiUing to pay ! Why, it was better to have the hay cut than to let it rot on the ground ! cutting im- proved a meadow." " Maybe it did — ^may be it didn't. But whether or no, if he didn't get paid, and well paid, rot it would have for sure." "And what would he consider well paid ?" " Four dollars THE BACKWOODS FARM. 239 a ton on the ground as it stood." " And if he, Mr. Rhino, were to cut and stack it ?" " Eight dollars." A burst of laughter, in which we heartily joined, was Coelebs*s only response. If the man had asked one dollar a ton as it stood, he might very probably have felt annoyed ; but four dollars ! It was such a capital joke that he couldn't be angry. Not so Mr. Rhino. He felt aggrieved and insulted at the treatment he had received, and left us the following morning in high dudgeon, without so much as saying good day and thankee. Unfortunately the Rhinos are numerous in the province, and although poor Ccelebs affects to be amused at their barefaced attempts to impose upon him, v/c caii see that he writhes under the infliction. However satisfied a man may be as to his own cleverness, it is not pleasant to be considered a fool even by a born idiot, and if one must needs be victimized, better to be so by a clever rogue than by a stupid one. A rude, boorish lot are these Acadian backwoodsmen. As we pass a lumberman's camp we ask one of the men if Mr. T. is in the woods, the individual for whom we are inquiring being a man having authority, a colonel of militia, a mill owner, and a magistrate, of course. Not knowing, he asks his mate. Does he repeat our question verbatim? i I -4 f, 240 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. " Is Mr. T. in the woods ?'* Not he. Does he say, " Is the boss out ?" No. Does he even de- mand " Is T. out ?" Not a bit of it. What he does yell out is, " Halloo, Jack ! do yer know if Al.'s out ?" — ^Allen being the Christian name of the gallant colonel. An outsider ourselves — one whose sojourn in the province is a matter of a few months, and not of years' duration — we rather like to listen to the jabber of these very original aborigines. Their egotism and self-sufficiency is very amusing. We are working in our garden, when we see marching towards us, in Indian file, half a dozen straw-hatted, blue-shirted, grey-panted, knee- booted individuals, each man bending beneath a pack. We recognise our friends at a glance, and know what is their errand. They are going to look for timber land. All the timber land worth having has been purchased from government years ago, but timber land they are going to hunt up notwithstanding. To speak plainly, they are " on the rampage." They have cut their bit of hay upon which their " keow" will have to starve during the winter, hoed their patch of potatoes, earthed up their dozen stalks of maize, which they speak of grandiloquently as their " corn," and have left their wives, their families, and their work — we beg to correct ourselves— and THE BACKWOODS FARM. 241 their loafing, that being their ordinary occupation when the lumbering season is over — in order that they may look alter some pine land which they have "heered tell" is worth taking up. They seem hot and tired, but the most fatiguing part of their journey is now over. They have a boat cachid amongst the alders down by the lake yonder, and will accomplish the remainder of the distance by water, never pulling a stroke so long as there is a breath of wind stirring. They are in no hurry. Time was made for slaves, not for free and independent Acadians. From here they will go to the "Hopper" — a capital place for fishing— and there they will camp for the night. The following day their camping-ground will be three or four miles further up the lakes, the next a mile or two further, and so on, until their pro- visions are exhausted, when they will return home and tell their expectant helpmates that they have seen any number of moose-tracks, and caribou-tracks, and bear-tracks, and have caught trout by the thousand, but they have found no timber of any account, and have only brought home some huckleberries for " sass." They slip off their packs, and, hanging them on the garden fence, troop into the enclosure. " Wal I and how are we gittin' along with our garden ?" " First rate. The storm did consider- VOL. I. R 1 I. !. I '■!> ; }. ii ■ 242 THE BACKWOODS FARM. able damage, but everything is now growing well. Never have we seen such tomatoes and squash and beets and cucumbers. Were it not for the distance, we shoi^ld certainly send a few speci- mens to the Horticultural Exhibition at Toronto." We have good reason to be proud of our garden ; for everything, with the exception of the melons and turnips, have thriven wonderfully, and it is not surprising. The seed was the best that Carter could supply, and was sent to Coelebs from London direct ; the ground is so rich, that were we to plant a vine walking-stick it would burgeon, and the wooden nutmeg that wouldn't grate would grow. " Did he, Zoe, ever see finer squash than those now before him ?" " Wal, yes ! he guesses he has. Old Uncle Palfrey riz some as war weU- nigh double the size. His mate Eb here seed 'em." As Eb guesses that " that's so," there is no more to be said on the subject, although we guess that twice forty pounds is, in Nova Scotia, " some" even for a pumpkin. " What does he think of the tomatoes ?" " Oh, the toraartars air big, sartingly ; but it's no wonder — we've thinned them out so. His tomartars ain't so big ; but lie has five to our one, and chance it." " And the beet ?" " Not a patch on Squire More's. More THE BACKWOODS FARM. 2^3 has some as is over twenty weight." The rascal is thinking of mangold, and lies to the teeth even then ; for we have seen the garden in question, and a worse cultivated, worse stocked piece of ground we have never seen out of Nova Scotia. There are fine gardens in the province, hut not in our section of it. Even on the hest cultivated farms the garden is always a secondary consideration. The only vegetables grown are potatoes, beans, beet, cabbages, onions, turnips, carrots, squash, and occasionally tomatoes. Such well-known vegetables as spinach, cauliflowers, broccoli, celery, artichokes, sprouts, savoys^ radishes, &c., have not only never been eaten by the vast majority of the population, but not so much as seen ; and yet to hear them talk one would imagine them to be prize medallists of the Royal Horticultural Society. Their pumpkins are pumpkins, and no mistake. Other men's po- tatoes are " very small pertaters, and few in a heap." As with garden produce, so with every- thing else. They are clothed with self-sufficiency as with a garment, and a garment of so impene- trable a texture that no sarcasm, however cutting, can find its way through. We turn the conver- sation. " How does he like the house ?" " Wal I The house ain't amiss, but no one but a born fool R 2 i 2U THE BACKWOODS FARM. would have thought of buildiD^; it on that thar hummock. It ought to have been sot right agin the barn down in the swale yonder." " But there is no view from there." " Hang the view. What he looks at ain't the view, but the conveniency. Nice thing for the hired man to bave to walk a couple of hundred yards to milk the keows of a winter's evening. Wouldn't be Coelebs's help if he war to oflfer him double wages." "But the hired man will live in the shanty which is close to the barn." " Oh ! will he? And why not in the house? Old Uncle Mac not good company enough for Mr. Coelebs." At which piece of irony there is a general guffaw. We take a fresh departure. , " What does he thirk 01 the land?" " He has seen worse; but give him Uncle Ford's land on the other side of the river. Something like lanu that is. Why dicln't Coelebs buy his land of Uncle Ford ? He would have sold it cheap. Can't see how Coelebs is going to make a living out of the place. If it war to be done, the land would have been taken up by some one — sure. But it ain't. And then so lonely and out of the way as it is ! No neighbours — ^no company of any sort." The very thought of such terrible seclusion makes him shiver , and when we think of what mK THE BACKWOODS FARM. 245 is implied by neighbours and company, we shiver too. " No ! He can't see how it can be made to pay. Guesses Ccelebs will be ' on the limits' before he's done with it; and then some one as does know how to go to work will get the place a bar- gain— for a couple of hundred dollars or so. Good thing if some more sich men as Coelebs would come along, spend all their money, and then clear out. Guesses them sort of ' feeders' is wanted in the province bad." General guffaw, and " that's so." But it's time they were jogging ; and nodding us a patronizing farewell, they sling their packs, and stride off in the direction of the lake. Haying over, our services are no longer in such great requisition, and we have plenty of time for amusement. In the cool of the morning we launch the birch bark canoe, and quietly paddle along until the sun is high in the heavens, when we make for some shady spot, where we read, and Ush, and smoke until the midday heat is over. Then we take our baskets, and pick berries for Mrs. Mac to convert into luscious jams and jellies for winter's use. The blackberries are magnificent, being double the size of our English variety, and of a delicate muscatel flavour. Blue- berries and huckleberries can be gathered by the bushel; and besides wild cherries, strawberries. tmm 246 THE BACKWOODS FARM. ^ raspberries, and gooseberries, in their seasons, there are hazel-nuts, tea-berries, and high and low-bush cranberries. When CcBlebs gets settled he intends to grow cranberries as a specu- lation ; and if he only sets to work in the right way, he ought to be able to make it pay hand- somely. Cranberries fetch a dollar a bushel in the settlements, and from two to two and a half in the Boston market. In Massachussetts three hundred bushels have been raised on one acre of land; and what can be done there can be done here. And yet no one thinks of growing them. If cranberries could be made to pay, they argue, some one 'vould have surely tried it before now ; and as everybody says precisely the same thing, it will be some stupid old-countryman like Coelebs who will have to make the experi- ment. There is a capital site for cranberry - growing close to the house. By constructing a dam, and cutting a short channel, the ground could be laid under nrater at all seasons, and drained by merely lifting a flood-gate. The cost of the work could not well exceed a hundred dollars ; and we would be happy to sink them in the^^luice for a third share in the profits of the undertaking. With the September moon come the moose- callers. Our red-skinned friends, who for the I THE BACKWOODS FARM. 247 last eight months have been lying perdu in their miserable shanties in the vicinity of the settle- ments, are the first to make their appearance, and close behind them come the pale faces. Again we are asked to make one of a party, and once again we accept the invitation ; for, like Sambo, we " are bound to see de fun out." We get our gun and blankets, take a sorrowful leave of Coelebs, who, poor fellow, cannot leave the pre- mises, and jumping into the boat, steer for the happy hunting-grounds known as Ka-dou-sac. Ka-dou-sac presents a pretty lively aspect j for not only is there an Indian encampment, but another strong party of hunters have, we find to our dismay, just arrived from the Harmony settlement, and are already in possession of the ground. Nine birch-bark canoes and three boats are drawn up on the beach, and no very great inventive power would be required to compose a chapter a la Cooper from the scene before us. The lake, with its wooded islands and sandy beach, the Indian encampment, with wigwams, camp fires, mangy cur dogs, all " kirrect," the adult Indians in counsel with the pale faces, the younger squaws preparing dinner, the elderly ladies crouching over the fire, juvenile savages rolling on the green sward — paint, feathers, and a few scalps alone are wanting to complete tho 248 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. picture. It is a glimpse of savage life such as is seldom chanced upon nowadays, save in the very " Far West," and we are most agreeably sur- prised. The little we have as yet seen of these Micmacs has been in their civilized abodes, any- thing more truly wretched than which can hardly be imagined. Here in their native forests they are seen to better advantage ; they are degenerate red men still, but they are picturesque — and that is something. They are squalid enough in all conscience, but the surroundings make their squalor less painfully apparent ; indeed seen from a distance their goods and chattels present quite a respectable appearance, whilst they themselves seem hearty and well-to-do. Great is the jabber and chatter amongst the womankind on seeing our boat added to the num- ber of those already in line in front of the encampment. These " gentle flowers of the forest," to express ourselves in the Aimard style, have tongues of their own, and use them in a way which shows pretty plainly that if their sex was doomed to silence in the olden time, they have latterly taken a leaf out of the white squaw's book, and are bound to have the last word if " they die for it." If flowers, they are of the chamomile variety — yellow, shrivelled, napless, neither pleasing to the eye nor grateful THE BACKWOODS FARM. 249 to the nostril. The youngest and best favoured amongst them is, to use the mildest expression, excruciatingly ugly, whilst the elderly ladies are hideous to behold. These Micmacs, a branch of the great Iroquois nation, are getting fast played out, both in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Civilization has siowly, but surely done its work, and the time is not far distant when th 3 last of the Micmacs shall have departed to join the last of the Mohicans and the other extinct North American tribes " who have left us only their footprints." Except when under the influence of Uquor, they are a harmless, peaceable race, and if somewhat a nuisance about the settlements, are in every respect less objectionable than the irrepressible negro wliom one sees monopolizing the side- walks in the provincial seaboard towns. How they manage to eke out a living it would be difficult to say. Were it not for the fur they collect during the first two months of the trap- ping season, and the sale of the baskets woven by their squaws, they would starve to a certainty ; for they are too lazy to still-hunt, object to any kind of farm work, and have a decided predilec- tion for whisky. The government does some- thing for them, but so very little that it is hardly worth mentioning. Lands have certainly been reserved for their use, and a commissioner \ I i'a*?^ my\ L 250 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. appointed to look after their interests ; but as they are not allowed to dispose of the one, and have no particular interests to confide to the other, that their gratitude should be small is not surprising. They are a doomed race, and they know it. It takes the entire afternoon to enlist the Indians in our service, and when they do at length consent to call, it is more, we fancy, to be rid of our importunities than to assist us in getting a moose. Five parties are formed, two white men and an Indian (white or red) in each, and an hour and a half before sunset the fleet is got under weigh, the canoes standing across the bay at widely divergent angles, so as to preclude the possibility of one party interfering with the other. On reaching the opposite shore, our canoe is hauled out of the water, and cachid in the bushes, and off we stride, in Indian file, through the dense forest, a halt being called from time to time by our file-leader, a wizen-faced, parchment- skinned man of some fifty years of age — a white Indian even to the turning in of his toes — to allow him to sniff the air, examine the ground for " sign," and enjoin silence and circumspec- tion. It is a long tramp, and we are pretty well tired out when we reach the spot where our guide proposes to call — a knoll standing at the eastern THE BACKWOODS FARM. 251 extremity of a large bog, and from whose summit a good view can be obtain'^d of the surrounding country. Slowly and solemnly "Old Moose," as we have mentally christened our caller, un- slings his blanket, dons his hunting costume, a green plaid jumper and Scotch cap, and producing his " call" (a strip of birch bark twisted horn fashion), mounts the knoll, and commences his performance. Calling would scarcely, we imagine, be considered melodious, even by a Chinaman. If the animal, whose amorous cry the sound is intended to imitate, really does call the object of her affections in the tone adopted by Old Moose^ she catinot be of opinion that a soft voice is an excellent thing in woman. The gentleman's solo is most certainly neither soft nor musical, being in fact a sort of compromise between the hooting of an owl and the braying of a jackass. To describe the sounds which issue from his call, would be impossible. In order to comprehend what calling really is, one must hear an expe- rienced performer like our friend, " speaking," as the Indians express it, across some treeless bog or barren, on an autumnal evening, when every- thing is still as the grave, until the hunter's cry wakens up the echoes. Then and then only can the performance be thoroughly appreciated. Calling is considered by the red men as an » L \ in I I Ni \\ M' \ lifii 1 «, I mm '> ■1 ^ in'' m • I' 1 \ :t:'i J ■ i \ t> 250 THE BACKWOODS FARM. " Well, ye-e-es ; me think-um. Away back there." And the redskin waves his hand in the direction of the wilderness country lying any- where between E.N.E. and W.S.W. A pause of a few minutes^ and then the sound again ; this time much fainter, and from what appears to us, a totally different direction. This trifling circumstance we notice to our red friend; but he, doubtless averse to committing himself by offering an opinion on the subject, merely gives utterance to the usual Indian "A-a-a-a-ah," and keeps his eyes steadily fixed on the moonlit scene before him. Another and yet another call, following in such rapid succession as to make the one seem but the echo of the other, serves to render us still more sceptic as to the genuineness of the music, and after the sounds have been thrice repeated from precisely the same points as before, we can come to no other conclusion than that they emanate from human, not from bestial lungs. The Indian, finding that we have struck the right trail, sullenly admits that it can't be a moose, and as there is no earthly use in pro- longing the farce, we pile more wood on the fire and make ourselves comfortable for the night. Not so the other callers. They keep at it with the most unflagging energy, and the last sound that strikes on our ears before falling asleep and THE BACKWOODS FARM. 257 the iirst that greets us on waking in the morning, is the Ugh-a-mi, ugh-a-mi, ugh-a-mi — who-o-o-o-o-o ah ! of the mooseless ones. "With this, our second night's experience, our moose- calling comes to an end, for we steadfastly resist aV attempts to cajole us into having "just one more try," charter an Indian and his canoe, and return to head-quarters. Our faith in the calling powers of red men has been considerably shaken, and as for white men, we feel assured, that in nine cnses out of ten their caterwauling, instead of attracting the moose, frightens them. For any man, be he white or red, to assert that he can call up his moose whenever he has a mind, is simply absurd, and the hunter who can succeed in killing two or even one moose during the rutting season, may consider himself particularly fortunate. In all probability there will not be more than eight or ten favourable nights for the business during the entire season, for if there be any wind stirring it is almost useless to make the attempt. Then the hunter must be sufficiently fortunate to have selected a calling-ground which he can have entirely to himself, for should another caller have taken up his position anywhere in the vicinity, his chance of getting a shot will be of the slenderest. Even in that great wilderness country which Wretches away to the westward VOL. I. s t Uh If 1 2&8 THE BACKWOODS F^^RM. of US, this is not an easy matter, lor it is acces- sible in canoes, and at least a dozen parties make straight for it at the commencement of the season. The sportsman might certainly strike so far into the wilderness as to be certain of having no one within calling distance ; but then if he killed a moose he would have to leave it, as any attempt to " back him out" would be futile. Finally, there must happen to be a moose within reach of his call. So that under ordinary circumstances, ten favourable nights, plus his chances of having selected a sufficiently isolated calling-ground, plus there being a moose within sound of his call, plus his being able to call him up if he is there, exactly represent the hunter s chances of killing a moose during the rutting season. But as it is extremely improbable that our backwoods settler will be deterred from making the attempt by tales of non-success, we offer him the following advice: — Never ongage an Indian by the day on a moose calling expe- dition, nor promise to give him so many dollars for every moose he calls up ; for if he is hired by tlie day, the longer he can keep you pottering about the better it will be for him ; and should his wages be dependent on the number of moose he can succeed in " calling up," he will certainly do his best to bring them info view, but will THE BACKWOODS FARM. 2&9 take precious good care to destroy your chance of a shot. We have had considerable experience of ye noble red man, and we know that it is gall and wormwood to him to see the white man kill a deer. That he should have dispossessed him of the soil, is hard enough ; but that he should still further despoil him by the slaughter of the beasts, which the Great Spirit has given him for food, is rather more than he can bear. The only way to have any sort of hold on an Indian is by entering into an agreement to give him so much for bringing the quarry into range. It is far more satisfactory having to pay him ten, or even fifteen dollars for bringing a moose " right up," than five for the pleasure of seeing the beast wandering along the further side of a thousand acre barren. It is not every Indian that will entertain such a proposal ; but money will effect much, and if the gentleman insists upon the " sight-um pay-um " arrangement, the less you have to 'M with him the better. Thirdly and I'^^tly, In/e nothing whatever to do in the r,iaimu)p .f a campaign. Should the Indian ask lour o]> ixon on the matter, which he most likely will, answer, curtly, that it is his business to de- termine the route, not yours. Let him distinctly understand that the entire responsibility rests on his shoulders, and that you decline taking any s 2 \\ J ^w« mtmmmmm''mmmmmmmmm mmm/m 260 THE BACKWOODS FARM. share of it, and he will be less likely to attempt to play the knave. The sight of our home-returning bark brings all hands to the landing, and great is the merriment when we tell them that we have not even heard a moose, much less killed one. We have been all the way to Ka-dou-sac with- out even so much as seeing an antler, whilst they have killed a fine four-year-old buck within half a mile of the shanty. " We don't believe it ? Well, we have only to go as far as the ice-house to satisfy ourselves — there he hangs, and no gam- mon !'* To the ice-house we go accordingly, and there, sure enough, is the moose. " We are not jealois ?" " Jealous ! oh dear no. The poor brute was butchered, not fairly killed; thank heaven we are no butcher. How was he slaughtered P" *' Mac called him up, and when he was distant some twenty paces Coelebs potted him." « Called up by old Mac ! Capital !" Mac's calling has been a standing joke for the last two months, and he had only to produce his call to bring down the house. He has, according to the best authority, about as much idea of calling as he has of Micmac, and yet no sooner does he begin his bellowing than up comes a moose. The only way to account for it is that the unhappy young bull must have imagined the sounds to emanate THE BACKWOODS FARM. 26t from some amorous dowager with a cold in her head — the noise from Mac's instrument being such as an old cow would make if suffering from influenza. We forgive Mac, and we no longer pit}' tlie moose. Any moose that Mac can bam- boozle deserves to be shot. Our larder is now so full that liad we not an abundance of ice we should have fish, flesh, and fowl going bad upon our hands. In the back- woods, unless one has a well-stocked poultry-yard to fall back on, it is generally a feast or a famine. During February and March the larder was empty, or nearly so. In April, May, and June it was trout, trout, trout, and the capture of a snap- ping turtle was considered a rare piece of good fortune. Through July and August we were limited to eels, perch, fruit, and vegetables. We killed a few ducks, but only sufiicient to make us wish that we could get some more. Now the question no longer is, " How on earth are we going to eke out a dinner ?" but " How shall we eat what we've got ?" It is a real embarras de richesses. Moose, grouse, wild-duck, snipe, trout, perch, eels, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, beans, melons, cranberries, &c. &c. &c. Costing us nothing but a little trouble, we sit down daily to a better dinner than could be had in London for twenty shillings a head. The man who cannot I 9 i I* I T I ' 'I U ' H mmmf^mmm nPH 262 THE BACKWOODS FARM. get a moose with a leaden bullet has only to try a silver one — purchase whatever he wants from the Indians, and if he have work to do it is far the cheapest in the end. Had Coelebs not killed a moose he could have had his pick of five — three bulls and two cows — and have bought the hind- quarters for six cents a pound ; and for four, were he mean enough to swap, flour, tea, tobacco, and sugar for moose meat, at the usual backwoods rate of exchange. The best meat we ever eat was a piece of barren cow moose, which we purchased from an Indian for six cents a pound. The red gentleman would have much preferred taking in exchange an old shooting-coat — a ver^ old shoot- ing-coat— on which he had set his affections, but we declined to trade, and gave him the specie. Sixty pounds weight of solid meat for an old shooting-coat, or for three dollars sixty cents cash ! How the heart of poor British pater- familias would rejoice if h^s butcher would agree to supply him with meat at that figure. About the first of September the ruffed-grouse come into season, and thence until the close of the year there is no lack of small game in the wilderness — ruffed and Canada grouse on the beech ridges, hares in the hemlock woods, snipe in the bogs and intervales, and duck on the lakes and rivers. Hereabouts the srouse shoot- THE BACKWOODS FARM. 263 ing is capital — we mean capital for Canada — FiX or eight brace being no uncommon bag. In the woods there is some difficulty in flushing these birds, very ostriches for stupidity, but on the barrens they are wilder, and afford good sport. A Clumber, or spaniel of some description, is absolutely indispensable to the] grouse shooter, especially whilst beating the woods in early autumn. Many a time have we passed and re- passed a covey without seeing a twig move or hearing a leaf rustle. The only objection to a liver and white or red dog is that the colour seems to possess a magnetic attraction, and the birds are inclined to " tree. * Black is the best colour, but Clumbe is the best breed. The duck-shooting in this province is like- wise excellent, but to enjoy it in perfection one must make for the sea coast at the very time when the forests oflfer their greatest attractions to the sportsman. On these lakes there are black duck, blue-winged teal, wood-duck, and sheldrake, but not in any very great numbers — when we kill three brace we consider that we have done well. Hares, though plentiful, are too wild to be easily shot, but any number of them can be snared by the hunter whose larder requires re- plenishing. The smaller varieties of the feathered tribe are much the same as in the other provinces 264 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. of the Dominion, consisting of robins, kingfishers, humming-birds, &c. They are mostly migratory, and during the winter months there is not a sound to break the stillness of the forest save the chirp of the " chickadee" and the sharp tap- tap of the woodpecker. Of the animals hunted for their fur, the bear, both for size and for the marketable value of his pelt, ranks first. Bears, except in the woods "away back" from the settlements, are not particularly plentiful nowadays either in Canada or the United States ; but so far from this being the case in our neighbourhood, that even the Indians admit that " Mooin," as they call him, is in as flourishing a condition as ever. And not only is he flourishing, but impudent likewise, waddling into the clearings and forcing his way into the lum- bermen's camps with all the coolness imaginable. Our innkeeper's wife was nearly frightened into fits one fine summer's morning by seeing a great bear unconcernedly snuflling about the paddock in which her child was playing, whilst another still more brazen rogue walked straight into a lumberer's camp, in which a bright fire was blaz- ing and the men sleeping, and endeavoured to appropriate a piece of pork, and so determined was he, that it was not before he had been half killed by a blow from an axe, that he consented T1 ',' THE BACKWOODS FARM. 265 to drop his booty and clear out. Caches in these woods are of no use whatsoever. Let the lumber- men hide their stores with what care they may, Mr. Mooin is pretty certain to ferret them out. Nothing comes amiss to him — ^pork, molasses, salt-fish, biscuits, all go into his capacious maw, and when the cache is revisited, a few broken staves and bent keg-hoops are all that will remain of the hidden stores — -just sufficient to enable the owner to fasten the guilt upon the real delinquent. Even the Indians fight shy of Mooin, and it is seMom that they sally forth for the express pur- pose of beating him up in his summer quarters. If, whilst setting their traps, they chance to meet him face to face, they trj'- the efficacy of an ounce of lead, but they have more faith in their traps than in their Brummagem shooting irons, and not without reason. A bear-trap is a formidable affair, and its con- struction a work of time and trouble. It is almost invariably on the " dead fall" principle, and weighted in accordance with the supposed strength of the animal, which, to judge by the size of the boulders piled on by the Indians, must be great indeed. The bait is a piece of salt-fish, a delicacy much relished by Mooin, and which has the advantage, moreover, of diffusing its aroma over a greater superfices than any other I *i* '' 266 THE BACKWOODS FABM. eatable, save am excepting Mont d' Or cheese, which fortunately is not procurable in the wilderness. These dead-falls, though rudely con- structed, act eflBciently. Once let the bear touch the trigger with his snout, and it is all up with him ; if not killed instantaneously by the fall of the log, he is none the less a gone bear — a blow from an axe will speedily put an end to his existence. These Micmacs are too lazy to do much in the bear trapping line. A mink trap, they reason, can be set in a tenth part of the time that it takes to make a dead-fall for a bear, whilst a mink skin is worth fully one-half as much as Mr. Moova s. Why then give oneself the extra trouble when the pecuniary advantages are so trifling ? Much better stick to the mink, and to the mink they stick accordingly. And yet in the wilderness country lying between the rivers Mersey and Tusket, thirty miles as the crow flies, bear are proportionately as numerous as mink. We have been twice a bear trapping with the Indian who hunts this section of the wilderness, and have killed on each occasion — that is, v^'e found nothing on our first visit to the traps, but two bears were there the second. On the hard- wood ridges, on the opposite side of the river, the bear tracks cross and recross in every direction, and on no less than three different occasions THE BACKWOODS FABM. 267 since our arrival have woods-bound individuals been brought up all standing by seeing a bear shuffle across the road a few yards in ftv it of them. We have traversed the same road a dozen times at the very least, but no bear has ever crossed our path, and although we have beaten the hardwood country in every direction, time and again, not a single glimpse have we caught of Bruir. except in the traps aforementioned. On one occasion we might have had a shot, but did not, for the satisfactory reason that we were unaware of the gentleman's proximity until it was too late. It was whilst sleeping in a lumberer's camp that Bruin paid us this visit, and that it had been a lengthy one we plainly discerned in the morning. The chips in front oi' the shanty had been carefully turned over, every vestige of refuse, fish-bones, pork-rind, &c., cleared away, and a string of trout — secreted by ourselves the previous evening in what we imagined a nice cool spot — looted. To insure sport, the bear must be hunted as in Russia. A lengthy cordon of beaters formed a simultaneous advance, and then an inwards wheel in the direction of the hunters. There is certainly one slight objection to this mode of hunting. A beater is not unfrequently mistaken for a bear b}- some over- anxious huntsman, and If 'ii !■ : i \ THE BACKWOODS FARM. potted ; but then, in Bassia, a moujik more or less is a matter of so very little importance that his safety is not worthy a thought. Here it would be otiierwise. It would be the hunter, not the beater, who would run the risk of being potted ; for to imagine that any bold Acadian would consent to act as beater, without being permitted to have a share in the sport, would be to imply that the gentleman acknowledges a superior, which he does not. If the backwoods settler wants bear shooting, his best companion will be a cur dog, not to beat, but to snap at Bruin's heels until he will consent to present the "broadside of his full front" to the rifle, or rather to the double-barrelled smooth-bore ; for, to our mind, the latter is pre- ferable. The coolest hunter may, in the uncer- tain light of the thick woods, fail to ** draw a bead" on his rifle; but he must indeed be nervous who can miss a bear at twenty or thirty yards distance with one of Eley's S.G. cartridges. After the bear comes the beaver, once so numerous on all the Canadian streams, now seldom met with, except in the howling wilder- ness stretching awa}'- to the northwards and westwards of the great lakes. Unlike the sable, THE BACKWOODS FARM. 269 the mink, and others of the furred tribe, the value of the beaver's coat has not increased in proportion to the difficulty experienced by the trapper in relieving him of it. Since silk hats have replaced the " beavers" of former years, his pelt has become a drug in the market. A value it certainly has, but a small one. If mink pays better than bear, bear pays better than beaver, and few are trapped by the Indians. Even in this wilderness, beaver are getting scarce, not through their numbers being thinned by the trappers, but owing to their dams having been destroyed by the log " driving" of the lumbermen. On the less frequented waters, however, their dams are still to be seen, whilst the squeak of their half-brothers, the musk-rats, can be heard by any one who chooses to " paddle his own canoe" up any of the adjacent streams on 11 still summer's evening. The only kind of trapping into which the Micmac Indian enters with energy is mink trap- ping. From the commencement of the trapping season, which can hardly be said to begin before October, until the end of November, when, alarmed at the approach of cold weather, he beats a hasty retreat to the settlements, the Indian traps in earnest. Daybreak sees him on *l ; . -^ ] H\ i. V:[ U ; i ^ ^m'm 270 THE BACKWOODS FARM. his visiting rounds, and it is generally dark before his return to the wretched bough wigwam where he squats. The noble red man of the American forests has been portrayed in such glowing colours by poet and novelist, that it seems almost cruel to dissi- pate the halo of romance which surrounds him, and to exhibit him in all his native squalor und debasement — a savage, without a single noble attribute save stoicism, if stoicism rank as a virtue — which he possesses in common with Maori and a score other savage tribes. In the " good] old days" of witch-burning and intole- rance, when to drive out the nations from before them, and to go in and possess the land, was the self-imposed task of the Pilgrim Fathers, these red men did doubtless appear mighty warriors to the pious Puritans, just as did the sons of Anak to the Israelites. But a wholesome dread of tomahawk and scalping-knife tended not a little to magnify the prowess of these Indian braves in the eyes of the earlier colonists, and fear made them ascribe to the enemy qualities which he did not possess. That the red man on the war- path could outmarch the stoutest Briton seemed to them " passing strange," that he could manage to exist without a commissariat was wonderful, but that without compass or signboard he should THE BACKWOODS FARM. 271 / be able to find his way through the pathless forests was nothing short of miraculous. Things which appeared inexplicable in those days are plain enough i ow. Men have learnt a good many wrinkles since the days of the Pilgrims, and, amongst others, how to beat the Indian on his own hunting-ground. The western trapper can hunt better, travel faster, and make a bee- line straighter than any Indian on the continent, and the white man who could not, in a fair stand-up fight, whip the best Indian that ever wore mocassins — we do not mean such wretched specimens as are yet to be found eastward of the Mississippi, but the real, genu-wine, unadul- terated article on his native prairie — must, in American parlance, be " a poor cuss at best." If nobility consist in bartering away one's freedom and independence for a few blankets and a little fire-water, these red men were undoubtedly noble ; if cunning and treachery make the war- rior, dusky Paladins were they and no mistake j and if a swinging of the arms and vehement gesticulation are eloquence, their sachems must have been so many Demosthenes in paint and feathers. To learn what doughty champions they really were, one has only to cast an eye over the pages of American history, where their exploits will be V m '( -'i -fy IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 1.1 1.25 US ^^ '^^ lu AM 12.2 "f lis 12.0 U 1 1.6 Fhotograiiiic Sdenoes Corporati^^^i 23 WUT MAIN STRStT WnSTII.N.V. 1 4510 ( 71* ) •73-4503 ^^^\ 4^^^ ^ \ 5^ 272 THE BACKWOODS FARM. ■A h' I found duly recorded. The page is not a spotless one, and no man with generous impulses can read it without a feeling of horror and indig- nation; but that he will find anything in it to establish the red man's title to a single one of the many virtues which have been ascribed to him is more than doubtful. All the nobility, dignity, valour, eloquence conjured up for the occasion by the romance writer fade away before the prosaic pen of the historian. But to return to our Micmac mink-trapper. For two short months out of the twelve he works with a will, and makes moiey. The hard- favoured gentleman, whose hunting-ground lies on the opposite bank of the river, caught last year seventeen mink and three bears in six weeks ; and he does not seem to think that his luck was more than "pretty good." We can never manage to learn from any of them the precise number of pelts that it would take to make the luck veri/ good; but we have reason for believing that five and twenty, and even thirty pounds* worth of fur is not an uncommon take in favourable seasons. If the tUgante^ so cosily wrapped in her costly pelisse, could only behold the grimy beings to whose labours she is mainly indebted for her soft raiment, she would shiver. The diamond and THE BACKWOODS FARM. 273 pearl must pass through many an unwashed hand before they finally recline on the neck of be., uty ; but the contact cannot tarnish the lustre of the one nor sully the purity of the other. Not so with fur. The injury done it by being tossed about a filthy wigwam for a couple of months or more, must be considerable. There is our noble friend, Mr. Jeremy, over yonder, who has at the present moment some eight or ten pounds' worth in his possession : let us paddle across the river, and have a look at liim and his surroundings. Our approach to his forest pavilion is duly heralded by the barking of curs innumerable, all of them mangy as mangy can be ; and we step ashore amidst a lively chorus of alternate yelping and shrieking as the squaws administer the customary " tickle Toby" to their four-footed retainers. A few steps bring us to the encamp- ment ; and the ex-lord of the forest, in all his native grandeur, reclines before us. The pavilion consists of two crotched sticks planted upright in the turf, seven feet apart, with a pole laid across — ^the ridge-pole of the structure — ^half-a- dozen saplings placed slantwise for rafters, and a few green boughs inartistically woven between them to represent thatch. The furniture is equally primitive — a pile of hemlock boughs doing VOL. I. T h. 1. 1 ■ fi ■i i 274 THE BACKWOODS FARM. duty for bed, table, chairs, and carpet, a few dirty rags for sheets and blankets. In front of the camp is a fire, and on the fire a large iron pot — Mrs. J.'s sole culinary utensil, in which she makes the tea, bakes the bread, concocts the porcupine-stews, which her soul loveth, and, if we are not greatly mistaken, occasionally boils the garments of her lord and master. Our friend's family circle is a large one for the woods j for in hopes, probably, of being able to levy black mail from the Englishman, he has thought proper to bring along with him, in addition to his wife, two little Jeremys, and a pappoose Jeremy — a little hunchbacked squaw, an adept at basket-making — and a suspicious-looking, saucy rascal, whom he has introduced to us as an "Indian man from down Quebec way" — a direction in which Coelebs has strongly advised that Huron gentleman to wend his way with as little delay as possible. Mr. Jeremy greets us with a grunt, the squaws silently resume their basket work, the little savages peer at us from behind an adjacent bush, and the Quebec Indian scowls from his corner of the v/igwam. The outward appearance of this happy family is not prepossessing. Jeremy pere has the mumps, and his head is swathed in dirty flannel ; Jeremy mhre^ the Masters Jeremy, and Jeremy pappoose, -IT» THE BACKWOODS FABM. 275 are all more or less suffering from ophthalmia, the result of uncleanliness, smoke, aud fly-bites combined ; and the visitor from Quebec way has his face seamed with small-pox, and is a very Indian Mirabeiiii for ugliness — the little hunch- backed squaw, despite her painful deformity, being the least repulsive of the lot. Mr. Jeremy thinks the occasion a good one for begging, and, Indian-like, runs over the gamut of his wants with surprising volubility. He is in need of every- thing. He would like some flour and sugar and tea and tobacco and saleratus, and whatever else, indeed, may come under the heading "back- woods commissariat." His wants having been duly enumerated, his ministering angel hastens to add a few articles to the list, although, woman- like, it is not 80 much for herself as for her hus- band and children that she is importunate. It is her man that is very bad — could we not give him something to do him good? And the baby would like a little milk; and can she have a needle and thread to do a little mending ? Even the surly gentleman from Quebec gruffly demands powder, the little hunchback alone having no wants ; but then she has been educated by the nuns, and has most likely been taught that to beg is not pretty. Knowing our Indian friends " like a book," the sum total of their wants does T 2 1 \ i '■ ! 1 1 i 1 w Pi m i ■ f 276 THE BACKWOODS FAEM. not startle us in the least. We have a stereotyped answer for them. " Oh yes ! Plenty flour, plenty tea, sugar, tobacco at the house. You want *em ; you work for 'em. You too sick ? Well, let Quebec man come over and cut cord-wood. Quebec man don't want ? All right ! Then we trade for mink skins. Give you medicine, milk, needle, and thread; but no flour, no tea, no tobacco, until you earn them." "How much you give for mink?" growls Jeremy. •* Let us see them, and we'll tell you." Whereupon Mrs. Jeremy proceeds to ferret out from amongst the folds of a dirty blanket the furry spoil Cestus of Venus ! To think that those frousy, greasy, unsavoury skins will some day form the lining of a velvet mantle, or, in the shape of a muff, impart warmth to the delicate fingers of a beauty ! But " sich is life." The fetid pelt that one would hardly consent to touch with a pair of tongs to-day, reposes on the lap of Circe to-morrow, whilst the secretions of diseased mollusks encircle her neck, and are en- twined amongst her tresses. Notwithstanding their unpromising surround- ings, the skins are, we can see at a glance, in j>rime condition, and we offer to take the entire parcel at four dollars each, an offer which Mr. J. unceremoniously declines, preferring, doubtless. I.' II p. ■apBBiPiPilPlBV THE BACKWOODS FARM. 277 to dispo '3 of them to some village storekeeper for three and a half, and take the amount in groceries, for which he will have to pay iifty per cent, more than the value. Indian all over. And so our visit terminates ; for as it never answers to argue the point with an Indian, we cut short his palaver by telling him that we will not purchase them at any price, and leave him to replenish his larder as best he may. Mr. Jeremy and his brother red-skins were disposed at first to be saucy to Coelebs, but they soon altered their tone, and finding that bounce did not answer, endeavoured to come the " poor Indian" game over him. That failing, they, to speak figuratively, shook the dust off their mo- cassins, and consigning him and his belongings to their Indian Tophets, forthwith cut liis ac- quaintance. When safe in the settlements, and primed with a glass of rum, Mr. Tony, or Noel, vow vengeance, and threaten him with an ounce of lead, but they invariably think better of it. Nay, so terrified are they of his big Newfoundhmder, that not one of them will approach the house without permission, and even when it is granted they ask him to shut up the dog before venturing to run their canoe up to the landing. But although he will not have any of them hanging about the place, he scrupulously avoids all inter- » : ', Ml f'i 278 THE BACKWOODS FARM. ference with their trapping pursuits ; not from any fears he may have of their power to injure him, but solely because he has not the heart to divide the spoil with beings so truly forlorn and wretched. And yet the temptation is great From the knoll we can see the mink nlaying on the opposite side of the river ; otter frequent a brook half a mile distant ; whilst bear, as we have already stated, are roaming about the woods in every direction. With good American traps he might collect a considerable amount of fur in the season, but he would have to rise early in the morning, and keep his eyes well open, or the Indians would soon steal every trap in his pos- session. Not only do we forego trapping, but that we may not have laid at our door the charge of scaring the moose, from hounding likewise, al- though the lynx — the loup-cervier of the French Canadians — abound in the hemlock woods, and foxes on the adjacent barrens. There is a sport- ing doctor in the nearest settlement who is passionately fond of this kind of hunting, and who kills many a lynx and fox in the course of the season. He has a good stamp of hound for the purpose — a large bony animal, a cross, we fancy, between an English foxhound and the sleuth-hound of the Southern States. His THE BACKWOODS FARM. 279 ,1 ^ mode of hunting is simple. Armed with rifle, or revolver, he heats ahout the woods until he finds a fresh track, upon which he lays the liound, and then lighting his pipe, seats himself on some fallen tree, and quietly listens to the music. If from the cry of the hound the quarry seems to be making off hot-foot for some distant quar- ter, he hastens to follow up the trail ; if, on the contrary, to circle is its game, he remains sta- tionary. On some occasions, before his pipe is well smoked out, the steady baying of the hound will notify to him that the varmint is " treed," and waiting to be potted. On others he will follow the trail up hill and down dale for miles, and be forced at last to give up the chase and return, tired and footsore, to his quarters. These wild cats, although not particularly formidable to the well-armed hunter, are justly dreaded by the settlers, whose farms lie remote from the townships ; for when pressed by hunger, they will fearlessly invade the strawyard, and make mincemeat of any lamb, goose, or juicy pigling that may be caught napping. They are ugly- looking brutes, thick-legged, short-tailed, and have paws garnished with claws, which could, we doubt not, inflict severe wounds in a scrim- mage. Stories are told of their having attacked men ; but we are inclined to tliink that the I .1- ' s l: 280 THE BACKWOODS PARF animal, taken for a loup-cervier by the party assailed, must have been in reality the panther, or catamount, a very different sort of customer. Neither catamounts nor wolves are found in this wilderness ; and the playful skunk has hitherto, notwithstanding confederation, studiously avoided crossing the frontier. The New Brunswick forests are, however, gladdened by the presence of all three, and the solitary hunter may have his evening's meal enlivened by seeing the friendly eyes of a " painter" glaring on him from a neighbouring thicket, or his slumbers soothed by the cheerful howling of a pack of wolves. The foxes killed are all of the common kind. Indeed, we have not heard of either black or crossed fox having been trapped or shot in the district. That the Indians believe in their immediate presence is certain, our amiable neighbour, Mr. Jeremy, having repeatedly come across their tracks, so he informs us, when trap- ping "away back" in the vicinity of Blue Mountain. Although it has, we believe, long been satisfactorily settled that red, black, and cross foxes are one and the same variety, all three having been seen in the same litter, there is, if we ma" credit our Indian informant, a marked difference in the shape and size of their * 1 THE BACKWOODS FARM. 281 footprints, the impress of the pad of the black fox being considerably smaller than that of either his grey or red-coated brother. He is, in fact, the swell of the family, not only as to dress, but even to the very tips of his toe-nails. The fox completes our list of animals hunted for their fur in this wilderness, the fisher and pine-marten being so rarely seen as to make their very existence in this section of the province problematical. There is one animal, however, deserving of mention, not from any beauty he may possess — for he is the ver}' picture of ugli- ness— nor yet from the value of his epidermis — it being of no use to any one save the owner, or to the squaw deep in the mysteries of bead and basket work. We allude to our stuck-up friend he porcupine, bad cess to him ? What a truly detestable nuisance this brute is no one can form any idea who has not had valuable dogs ruined by his infernal quills. Every time we take a dog out with us, we are in a fever until we return to the house, fearing each instant to see the poor beast tearing madly after us, with his head resembling an enormous pincushion. Not a single member of that rather numerous Hystrix family ever crosses our path without paying dearly for his temerity. We slay him then and there, without mercy j not that we may convert *> I I"*-. H W I -I ^ II "^^ I **-^*** im^m «> 282 THE BACKWOODS FARM. him into toothsome stew, for we can never summon up sufficient courage to taste his ugly carcase, but solely from a spirit of vengeance. They say that the flesh is good, being not unlike juvenile porker. We recommend him, therefore, to the favourable consideration of the Acclimati- zation Society, the members of which august body may possibly discover " points" about him other than those which to us and our dogs have been so painfully apparent. Until the end of September the weather is delightful. The evenings are gradually gettin;^ colder, and a little fire is pleasant after sun- down ; but as yet there has not been, wonderful to relate, the slightest sign of frost. On the evening of the thirtieth we draw out our pro- gramme for October. House and barn are nearly finished, the builders will take their departure in a day or two, and then wont we make holi- day? We'll creep the barrens for moose and caribou, and beat the beech woods for bear, aid have such grouse shooting and duck shooting "as never was." We may depend on having fine weather to the end of the month, and then there will be at least ten days' Indian summer. By Jove! it will be jolly. So to bed we go, and on looking out of the window in the morn- ing find, instead of ruddy autumn, hoary-headed "^ THE BACKWOODS FARM. winter. There are six inches of snow on the ground, and it is still snowing heavily. October ushered in with a snowstorm 1 How we do bless the Acadian climate ! We go to where Mac is chopping firewood, in the hopes that the old fellow will have a few crumbs of consolation ready for us — a snowstorm on the first of October is the sure sign of a fine fall, or some- thing of. that sort. But the old fellow is a veritable Job's comforter. " A snowstorm on the first of October out of the common? He guesses not. Last year there was a black frost on the nineteenth of September. Frost in June, frost in September j that may always be expected. Six months' winter, and six months' bad weather; that's just about the right description of the r^limaiti ), Indian summer? Well, he has heard tell of it . but during the thirty years he has been in the province he has never once seen it — leastways, not to his knowledge." It is enough. We return to the shanty, get the stove to a red heat, pull our rocking chair to it, and read Evangeline. Coelebs stands in no need of a fire ; he has a summons in the breast-pocket of his shooting- coat which keep? him nice and warm. It is the tinrd summons he has received since building il )) S84 THE BACKWOODS FARM. coramenced. First it was the shingle maker who sent him a billet-doux, then the cook, now it is the teamster. He settled with the others, because he was too busy at the time to answer their summonses in person ; but if they think to gammon him, Ccelebs, again they are mistaken. The teamster was engaged by the month, and left in the middle of it, without so much a* saying he was going, and not one cent of his wages shall he get. He has the law on his side, and he intends to enforce it. We hope he may be able to do so. " Do so ! Of course he will. What is there to prevent him ? The case is to be tried on the morrow before a certain Solon Quirk. Squire Quirk will mete out justice." " And who may Squire Quirk be when he's at home ?" "A storekeeper living down at the Corners^ but a cut above most of his class, for he is an ex-county member, an ex-legislator, one who will in all probability be re-elected, a probable envoy to Downing Street, a possible minister of the Crown in that portion of Her Majesty's domi- nions known as Nova Scotia. Just the right sort of man to give Mr. Teamster a proper dressing." We hope so. It is the evening of the third day before we THE BACKWOODS FARM. 285 hear our poor friend's well-known footsteps, and as he strides into the shanty we can see that to him all the world is out of joint. His noble brow is contracted, the nostrils of his Grecian nose are distended, his eagle eyes flash fire, his very beard has an angry kink in it which it has never had before. He pitches his hat to the further end of the room, and, without saying a word, flings himself full length on the settle. " Well ! And what's the news ?" Up he jumps, as if he had received an electric shock. "The news? The news is this — that he is going to advertise the place for sale, and if he cannot find a purchaser, set fire to the house and barn, cut down every tree, and sow the garden and cleared land with burr, Scotch thistle, and nettles." " Whew t What is the matter ?" " Matter ! That such a thing as justice is unknown in the province— that the law is a dead letter — ^that there is not a magistrate in the county who does not deserve to be put in the pillory — ^that the people are divided into two classes, knaves and fools, and that as he, Coelebs, belongs to neither category, he purposes clearing out with all the speed he may. We know how the case stood between him and that rascally teamster, and saw with our own eyes, in the * Justices' Manual,' I I; ■\\ 'I m THE BACKWOODS FARM. what the law said on the subject. Was it not that any servant engaged by the month leaving his employer's service before the expiration of that month, forfeited his wages ?" " Yes. That is how we understood it." "Well, then, will we believe that in open defiance of that law, Squire Solon Quirk — with whom may the devil fly away — has condemned him to pay the amount claimed and costs ?" Poor Coelebs ! to offer him advice or consolation in his present mood would only make matters worse. He has just discovered another phase of settler's life passed over as unworthy of notice by the author of " Perfect Beatitude ; or, Life in the Canadian Backwoods." He will, in all probability, discover a few more similar ones before he has done ; and if he live long enough and travel far enough, will ultimately arrive at the conclusion that perfect beatitude is no more to be found in the Canadian backwoods than it is in any other portion of the globe. The builders are gone, and Coelebs's indigna- tion at Nova Scotian justices' justice is almost counterbalanced by the joy he feels at their departure. We do not know what his sensations may be, but ours a*e those of Sindbad when he shook off the Old Man of the Sea. To add to our enjoyment, the cold snap is over ; the clouds THE BACKWOODS FARM. 287 have cleared away, and the weather is once again bright and warm. But Father Winter, although rebuffed, has left his mark behind him. His icy- touch has changed the aspect of nature, and the forest, which a short week since was still in summer dress, is now arrayed in the gorgeous livery of autumn. The view from the house is perfectly dazzling, for the opposite bank of the river is hardwood land — birch, oak, ash, beech, maple — one more brilliant than the other. Amber, yellow, and orange ; rose, crimson, and scarlet; brown, russet, and purple, all mingled together in picturesque confusion. The most brilliant colourist that ever lived would fail to do it justice ; to attempt to word-paint it would be ridiculous. All the pictures, all the descriptions in the world would fall far short of the reality. To have any idea of the autumnal splendour of these North American forests, they must be seen at the turn of the leaf, in the month of October. Although we have not removed to the new house, it is ready for our reception. It is rather a picturesque-looking edifice — bastard Gothic as to the style, Acadian as to the interior arrangements, and not dear, all things considered, having cost a trifle over two hundred and eighty pounds. It consists of a main building, and what our carpenters call a little L, or as we I I ' I •if s '\ • •288 THE BACKWOODS FARM. should express it, a set-oif, whicli serves as the kitchen. The outside measurement of the main building is 32 by 30. The walls, laid up with ten-inch logs, are thirteen feet in height and clapboarded. Length of rafters twenty-one. Below are three rooms, which measure respec- tively, 14 by 13—14 by 13 and 10 by 9, and a hall, which has been made purposely large, 17 by 14, that it may serve as a sitting-room in the hot weather. A winding staircase leads from the back hall to the upper story, which consists of a landing with Gothic door leading out on the roof of the verandah — a large bedroom with small dressing-room adjoining, and two others, each 12 by 11. The lower rooms are ten feet in height, the upper, eight feet ten inches. The kitchen, or little L, 16 by 16, has servants and store-rooms above and a cellar beneath, and in the event of Coelebs requiring more accommoda- tion, all that he will have to do is to tack on to it a duplicate of the main building, and he has it without destroying the symmetry of his house. The bam, which will hold forty head of cattle, has cost six hundred dollars, and is likewise cheap. By cutting into the hill-side and building over the excavation, both space and material have been saved In the basement is the stabling ; in the bam above is stored the hay. Cojlebs has some THE BACKWOODS FARM. 289 J twenty beasts there already, and when all the stalls and styes are full, the place ought to be self-supporting. As it is, he has managed to make 50/. by butter alone, and this clear profit, for since the first of May the beasts have been turned into the woods to graze, where they have thriven wonderfully. We have already given an estimate of the cost of living like a gentleman in the more civilized districts of Canada ; we will now proceed to cal- culate for how much per annum two men of Coplebs's stamp could live in the backwoods, sup- posing that they farmed a merely nominal quan- tity of land, say four acres. But as prices vary all over the Dominion, we must select our province and our district. Let us take the very spot where we now are. The first outlay would be as follows: — 11 Land, 100 acres. It would be difficult to purchase a ' / / / Aa* /3f jcI smaller quantity 112.' /»,^^ ^ ^ \ak/iS Clearing and fencing 4 acres ^*<2M** So 6 *'«!:"'** v/ *^) Log-house (shingled) >. 130 Log-barn ^30 Furniture, linen, crockery, stove, washing-machine, &c., say 300 Tools, grindstone, &c 40 Boat 35 Canoe 12 JtOow, &c 40^''' Sundries 50 $842 VOL. I. /^^7 290 THE BACKWOODS FARM. Provisions for 1«< Year. 4 barrels flour $32 1 ditto pork 20 120 lbs. ham 20 20 bushels potatoes 10 30 lbs. tea 15 60 ditto coffee 10 100 ditto sugar 9 Bice, buckwheat, beans, peaa, dried apples, soap, petro- leum, <&c 35 Teaming 30 Sundries 50 $231 Half the amount might be made to suffice, but there would be a corresponding loss of comfort. After the first year, the annual ex- pense would hardly exceed 30/., for everything, with the exception of flour, tea, coflee, and petro- leum, would be home raised. Add one pound for teaming and twenty for clothes, and that would make 50/., or twenty-five pounds per head. And now that we have shown how small is the sum upon which the backwoodsman can ' manage to live, a word to those who may feel inclined to make the experiment. If you don't desire to be jeered at as a " white Indian," do something else beside shoot, fish, and trap — farm, if only to save appearances. A rich man can please himself ; the poor one must endeavour to please others, and you wont please your neigh- bours if your mode of life be different to theirs. THE BACKWOODS FABM. 291 If you imagine that you would be regarded in the district as a sort of Bobin Hood, you are very much mistaken. You would be spoken of as "that durned lazy white Indian down to Ka-dou-sa<;," or wherever your shanty might be. Whenever a man saw a chance of doing you an ill-turn he would do it. To conciliate would be impossible, you would have to make yourself feared. By making hunting subsidiary to farm- ing, you would change the aspect of affairs, and presuming that you are a hunter and not a husbandman — that you turned backwoodsman for the sake of the hunting and the fishing, and for no other reason — that you farm solely to save appearances, you would doubtless like to know how to do so with the least outlay of capital and at the smallest possible risk. By farming on shares. You would have to build a second log-house and a frame barn or bams large enough to contain thirty or forty head of cattle, and forty or fifty tons of hay. The second log house and the barns built, and fifty acres of land cleared, fenced, and laid down under grass and clover, your next move would be to get a man willing to work on shares, you finding land, building and stock, he the labour. What his share would be, and what yours, would altogether depend on the number of beasts, and u 2 292 THE BACKWOODS FARM. the hay that was available for them. On such a place as this, with an extra outlay of four or five hundred pounds, one ought not to have much difficulty in finding a man willing to work on shares for fifty per cent, of the profits, and assuming Ccelebs's calculations to be correct, which we have no doubt they are, the remaining fifty would be more than sufficient to cover all expenses. In this way two bachelors might rub along very comfortably, always presuming that they were sufficiently independent to be able to leave whenever the life grew wearisome. Much de- pends upon that. The garden of Eden would be unendurable if the gates were locked. To in- vest the whole of one's capital in a backwoods farm is an act of folly for which there can be but one excuse — that the sum total is so small that it will not bear dividing, and Ccelebs would have been wiser had he deferred building until he was perfectly assured that the life suited him. And yet he is just the sort of man for the woods — tough, handy, cheerful ; not afraid of his own shadow — fond of fishing and shooting, fonder still of his independence. Were he not going to be married, we should have no fears for him. But his wife — will she be able to accommodate herself to the life ? We have not the pleasure of knowing our friend's betrothed, but if she do THE BACKWOODS FARM. 293 80 she is no ordinary woman. There is certainly no reason why she should not. " Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage ;" and the wilderness is no dreary solitude to those who love nature, and have resources within them, selves. But it is not every woman who can be brought to see things in their proper light. Hyde Park is Hyde Park and the wild woods are the wild woods, and most of th m perversely prefer the former to the latter. Should Mrs. C. not like the place^ and induce her husband to move to livelier quarters, he will be obliged to sell at a heavy loss — if he get back a third of his money he will be fortunate. If it be difficult to realize in the settlements, in the backwoods it is next to impossible. The rutting reason over, or towards the close of October, the moose prepare to yard, but it is not until the snow lies on the ground that still-hunting can be attempted with much chance of success. Whether it be that the moose is warier than the Virginian deer we know not; this much is certain — that whilst in the Canadian forests we were always able to get a shot or two before the snow came, here we have not as yet so much as seen an antler, although we have crept the adjacent bogs and barrens late and early since the commence- 294 THE BACKWOODS FARM. ment of the season. And yet the surrounding country is completely ploughed up with moose tracks ; and as we have on more than one oc- casion come upon fresh droppings, we must have heen pretty close to the quarry. The Indians seldom try their luck on the " moose-walk" before the snow comes. To fol- low up a moose-track over bare ground, requires more patience and perseverance than the red man is willing to bestow on any pursuit or calling save begging. Indeed, we very much doubt whether the degenerate Micmac is sufficiently master of the noble science of venery to be able to do so were he to make the attempt. Keen eyesight he undoubtedly possesses ; but to make the backwoods still-hunter, more than that is re- quisite. To the eye of the lynx must be added the cunning of the fox, the tread of the mole, and the stealthiness of the cat, and even when en- dowed with all these attributes, the aspirant to backwoods hunting honours must be content to serve a lengthy apprenticeship before he can hope to graduate Grand Master of the craft. To be able to tell by a single glance at some torn leaf or ill-defined hoof-print, the exact time that has elapsed since that particular sign was made, re- quires a considerable amount of woodcraft — ^to unerringly determine the direction in which to ■ f THE BACKWOODS FARM. 295 strike, so that whilst avoiding the animal's de- vious course the trail can always be refound at pleasure, an instinct which to the tyro seems little short of miraculous. When the ground is covered with a light coating of snow, half the science Sitticos. Any man with an eye in his head can follow the trail ; little experience is re- quired to determine the exact freshness of the hoof-prints, and should there be any doubt in the hunter's mind as to his ability to " circle" cor- rectly, he has only to stick to the track, and keep his eyes and ears wide open. Having said this much, let us introduce Mr. Peter Bobby- eye (we do not respond for the correctness of our Micmac orthography), the oldest Indian in the district ; for not being an authority on the habits of the moose, we think it best to give the ex- periences of one who is. Let Mr. Bobbyeye, then, speak for himself " Moose you see — yard from north to south, most time ; yard sometime quarter mile, sometime two mile long. Sometime only three moose in yard ; other time five — six — seven. You want to shoot-um moose ; you think which way wind blow. Blow two — three day north — moose north end yard ; moose travel 'gainst wind most time. You find yard — you keep lee-side. You mind you no go into yard — you scare moose sartin ! "■^-'^•' 296 THE BACKWOODS FARM. >f / You keep outside urn yard — you wait — ^you listen. No hear-um moose — you creep on a- piece. No hear-um — bit furder, and so on. By- an'-by you hear-um. You keep still — wait you see-um, then you shoot. You load 'gain, quick, quick — ^you p'raps get 'nother shot. Moose he no smell you — he maybe stand still bit. You lee-side yard — little noise — not much matter. Me shoot big fellow once. He stand look, while I fire one — two — three shots. Plenty yard near lumberman camp. Chop — chop — chop all day, no scare-um. Some one strike yard — then go some place else. Ah ! me good hunter once. Heart all right now — legs no good. White man not mucli account; he too flurry. Burn more powder than shoot-um moose ! Deep snow come — first-rate then. Hunt-um down on snow shoe. Deep snow — eight — ten year back — plenty moose killed that time. Most all moose these parts killed that time. Plenty moose now — no deep snow come late year." By comparing the information thus graciously volunteered by Mr. Bobby eye with that obtained from other sources, we are of opinion that that elderly Indian is in the main correct. The word yard very imperfectly describes the winter habitat of the moose. Moose-" walk" would be nearer the mark, it being nothing more than a tract of THE BACKWOODS FARM. 297 country of varying extent, up and down which the moose browse and wander, until such time as vegetation is in a sufficiently advanced state to allow of their grazing on the bogs and barrens. The caribou do not yard. They winter it out on the bogs, where they can be stalked in the same way as are the red deer in the Highlands of Scot- land, and nice cold work it is. Mid-November. The winter has now fairly set in, and lumbering has commenced in ear- nest. From dawn to dark these pine woods are resonant with the ringing stroke of the lumberer's axe, the crash of falling trees, and the eternal " Hoof, Bright !" " Haul, Buck !" of th3 teamsters, as they urge their panting bullocks over the rough log roads. During the logging season these bold backwoodsmen have little time for indulging in their favourite pastime — politics. Their work commences at daybreak and finishes at dusk, the only inter- ruption being for half an hour or so at dinner- time. No one can say that he has seen the backwoods unless he has passed a night in a lumberer's camp ; and as they are all pretty much alike, we will take the one owned by the gallant colonel before-mentioned as a sample. Seen from a distance, the encampment does not present a very picturesque appearance. A log m THE BACKWOODS FARM. shanty, with low walls and high-pitched hoard and hatten roof, a rudely constructed ham, a grindstone '* rigged" to a tree stump, a hroken sled, half a dozen empty flour-harrels, a pile of firewood — seen together, a dirty brown blotch on a field argent. Such is the aspect of the encampment, as, emerging from the green woods, we come upon the little clearing. Squeezing ourselves through the aperture which does duty as a doorway, we boldly enter the shanty. Throw- ing our pack on the ground, we leisurely knock the snow from our feet, and look around us. An enormous fire of birch-logs is blazing in the centre of the camp ; and after the dreary prospect outside, the place looks particularly snug and cheerful. The men have not yet returned from the woods ; and as the cook is hard at work pre- paring supper, we light a pipe and watch him. Whatever ma)' be the gentleman's social virtues, cleanliness is not one of them. He is at the present moment tearing a salt cod-fish into strips, preparatory to its conversion into fish- balls or some similar backwoods delicacy; and the fingers with which he performs his task are fearful to contemplate. His fingers not being suflBciently strong for the work, he holds the fish firmly between his kn^ses ; and as we inspect the *' pants" with which those knees are covered, we THE BACKWOODS FARM. 29d shudder, and inwardly resolve to eschew cod, let it appeal in whatever guise it may. Being ravenously hungry, we anxiously inquire what may he the contents of that large pot now sim- mering on the fire. " Oh ! it is pork, rice, and molasses" — an excellent dish, but rather too rich for some stomachs. " And in the other pot ?'* " Tea — boiled tea. Capital !" On either side of the fire, in two large tin " reflectors," bread is baking. With bread and tea we can make a supper. Let us hope that when the dough was kneaded the cook's ablutions were of a more recent date than at the present moment. But here come the men trooping in from their work j what a rough lot they are ! , " What has the cook got for supper ?" " Eice and molasses." " Bully for him ! let them have it." And down they all squat at the table. " Come, cook, hurry up the cakes there, will yer? " Say, Tom ! Lend us yer jack-knife, will yer ? — mine's broke." " Now then, mates, which of yer has stolen my spoon ? Its you, Pete, ain't it ? Don't be gassing thar, but pass along the molasses. Say, Ike, can't you squeeze in a bit thar, and make room for the stranger ?" " Got any more of yer medicine thar, cook ? If 800 THE BACKWOODS FARM. SO let's have another dose," &c. &c. &c. Amidst the clatter of knives and forks we can only catch a word here and there, and as we munch our hunk of dry bread, and gulp down our bowl of tea, ample opportunity is afforded us for admiring the prodigious masticatory powers of lumbermen. Plateful after plateful of the greasy mess is gobbled up before we can manage to dispose of our first crust, and in less than five minutes the contents of the large iron pot has disappeared from sight. Wedges of bread smeared with molasses constitute the second course, the dessert beii^g raw kraut, or ** grout," as they pronounce it, which they extract by the handful from a barrel standing in one corner of the shanty. But the stowage capacity of a lumberman's maw has, like everything else, its limit, and the ablest trencherman of the party is at length compelled to cry ** enough." Pipes are lighted, each man in succession stretches himself on the hemlock boughs which form, as usual, the common bed, and with a grunt of satisfaction prepares to assist digestion by a quiet smoke. The crew being a large one, they are pretty closely packed, and there is not much room for the stranger. So we appropriate a three-legged stool, and by drawing out the move intelligent members of the party, endeavour to improve the occasion. It is not an easy task, for the aboriginals (as distinguished THE BACKWOODS FAEM. m from the aborigines) are shy before strangers. We progress but slowly. " Yes ! lumbering is very hard work, and not over-well paid, particularly towards the end of the season, when daylight comes so early, and the sun sets so late. Fifteen dollars a month ain't much to brag about, that's a fact, but when river-driving and rafting comes, then a man gets well paid for his labour. Two dollars a day is something like wages. Pity the work's so soon over, but even if it lasts four weeks, that's forty-eight dollars, and chance it. Has hardly ever a dry stitch on him when rafting or driving, and the black flies are trouble- some, and no mistake, but then the pay is first- rate. Is obliged to work sixteen hours out of the twenty four, and supposes that two dollars for sixteen hours' work is the same as one dollar for eight, but doesn't look at it in that way. For the month or six weeks which intervene between the close of the logging season and the com- mencement of rafting, does nothing in partic'lar. Stays home and rests a bit. Eafting would certainly interfere with his farm work if he farmed ; but he doesn't farm. Just cuts enough hay for his cow, that's all. " During the six months when there is neither logging nor rafting, tries to pick up a job here and there, works in the saw-mill when they THE BACKWOODS FARM. want extra hands, or helps them as has land to get in their hay and potatoes. Might, pYaps, make more money by doing a little farming on his own account, but doesn't like the work, and besides, couldn't think of losing his two dollars a day for driving. Knows very well that lumber land is getting played out in these parts. When it is completely so. will make tracks for the States. Has been in the States. Some- thing like a country that ! Wishes the Yankees would annex Nova Scotia. Would be some chance for a man then. Yankee capital would flow into the province, and there would be, in course, plenty of work for all. Confederation is the ruin of the country. All very well for Howe and Tupper and M'Lellan to tell them that everything will be sure come right in time. Knows better. Will any man persuade him ." Here our informant, who is evidently the master mind of the crowd, rushes headlong into politics, and we begin to fear that he pur- poses keeping at it " right along," when, to our great joy, there is a savage growl, and a gruff demand if he, the speaker, "intends to let a fellow sleep at all to-night ?" " Oh yes ! All right. Needn't be so durned crusty !" And, with a sigh of resignation, our backwoods Minos draws his blanket over his M THE BACKWOODS FARM. 303 head, and in another minute is snoring the snore of the backwoodsman. We endeavour to follow his example, but without success. Having no blanket the hemlock twigs feel anything but grateful to our hump ribs ; our eyes, unused to the glare of so large a fire, obstinately refuse to close ; the wind is moaning dismally amongst the pines outside, whilst inside a concert is going on that would have aroused the seven sleepers. The grout is doing its work, and every sleeper seems possessed by the demon of indiges- tion. Such muttering and mumbling, such snoring and snorting, such grinding and gnash- ing of teeth, we have never heard before, and trust we may never hear again. Sleep being impossible, we rise from our bed of backwoods feathers, and drawing a stool close to the fire, ruminate. " Necessity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows." Where could one chance upon stranger than those snoring yonder ? Were we an ethnologist, we could doubtless write a highly instructive article on the idiosyncrasies of the Acadian lower orders, and the causes which have led to their development. Not being so, we can only think on them, and wonder. Al- most every people under the sun have certain well-defined characteristics. What is the distin- 304 THE BACKWOODS FARM. guishing mark of the Nova Scotian ? It seems to us to be melancholy. They are a sad people. To them life appears to be anything rather than a pleasure ; it is a sad reality. For Puritanism in its harshest form one must not go to New England, but to Nova Scotia. Daily contact with Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics has knocked much of the starch and stiffness out of the New Englanders. Not so with these gentle Acadians. They are just as intolerant as their Puritan ancestors, and, if possible, rather more inconsistent. There's our shock-headed friend over there would be filled with pious horror at seeing the Sabbath desecrated in the settlements, but here, in the woods, he rafts the livelong Sunday through, in order to gain two dollars. He would lend a willing hand to oust from the settlements any man guilty of the heinous crime of liquor selling, but would take a dram on the sly without blushing. The sin lies, not in the act itself, but in its being witnessed by others. An abject slave is he of Mother Grundy. And so he plods along life's highway, a melan- choly man. Those innocent pleasures which cheer the spirits of more rational wayfarers are to him unknown. The merry dance, the social glass, the inspiriting strains of " profane" music, are strictly tabooed, and his pleasures are limited .Vk^ ■■ THE BACKWOODS FARM. 805 ? It seems L sad people, rather than Puritanism go to New lily contact leretics has less out of ;hese gentle nt as their ather more ided friend 5 horror at ettlements, le livelonff ivo dollars, fc from the e heinous s a dram on es, not in nessed by ?r Grundv. ', a melan- res which ^farers are the social le" music, re limited to a temperance lecture, a dirge executed by the skule-marm on the village organ, or harmonium, and a peep at the " wild beasteses," when the caravans pass through the settlement. Even those few choice spirits who so recklessly rush into the dissipation of moose-hunting, are unable to shake ofif the cjares of this world during their brief holiday. They shout and kick up their heels, and try hard to lie jolly dogs, but it wont do. Their laughter lacks the ring of the genuine metal, and their antics are those of the clown rather than the bacchanal. And then our thoughts wander off to the ** good old days" of the colony (as described by Longfellow and other trustworthy historians), when Acadie was the *' home of the happy," where " the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance," and sigh when we think what a dreadful change for the worse has taken place in y* manners and cus- toms of y* people since those halcyon days. And as we drop into an uneasy slumber, Evan- geline in Norman cap and kirtle of blue, and gold earrings brought in the olden time from France, and Bene le Blanc, and Basil the black- smith, and Father Felicien arise from out the glowing embers, and we are in the midst of the peaceful Acadian village, seriously contemplating a farm on the Basin of Minas, when a snore of VOL. I. X 806 THE BACKWOODS FABM. more than ordinary volume recalls us to the stem realities of backwoods life — a rude shanty, and a crew of unkempt, unpicturesque, unpoetical lumbermen, and so the night wears away. Long before daybreak the cook slowly uncoils, like a huge snake, from the folds of his blanket, and with dishevelled locks and bloodshot eyes, yawningly sets about the task of preparing break- fast. One by one the sleepers emerge from the feathers — a hard-favoured crew. The breakfast, consisting of salt fish, saturated with pork fat, bread, and molasses, is bolted in silence, and then each man shoulders his axe, and takes his depar- ture. END OP VOL. I. 0 the lanty, tetical icoils, anket, ; eyes, break- tn the ikfast, k fat, dthen depar-