Canada in the years 1832, 1833, and 1834 : containing important information and instructions to persons intending to emigrate thither in 1835

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CANADA

CHAPTER I. Page

Emigration — Canadian Prospects — Difference in the management of Farms — Danger of being defrauded in the purchase of Land — Value of Land— Mills and Mill-streams — Comparative desirability of a the Bush" and of a " cleared Farm" — Incivility and rudeness of the lower classes 4

On Cattle and Live Stock — Browse for Cattle — Pigs — Canada Pigs — Difficulty of keeping Sheep in Canada — Purchase and Sale of Cattle — Price and Advantage of Horses 83

Chapter VI

Barn — House — Sawing Timber — Root Houses — Dairies — "Bees" — Garden — Crops: Wheat, Oats, Indian Corn, Potatoes, Turnips — Price of Wheat— Barter System , 103

CANADA.

CHAPTER L

EMIGRATION — CANADIAN PROSPECTS, &e.

Within the last three or four years very many persons have emigrated to Upper Canada, among whom were no few of the class I would address ; that several of these have met with a degree of success, sufficient to justify the step they have taken is, no doubt, perfectly true ; but that a great number have failed in doing so, and have been much disappointed, is equally true. I mention this " in limine," not for the purpose of founding thereon any general arguments, but because that I have remarked the idea of failure is seldom at all connected with Canada ; on the contrary, that country has become invested with such glowing colours, as not only to bid defiance to the fear of disappointment, but also to have induced many to

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turn their thoughts to it, as a residence, who were in no wise so necessitated, and who, but a short time previously, had hardly known there was such a place. This I ascribe much to works lately written by interested individuals, in which all the advantages attending on an emigration thither are strenuously set forth, and which abundantly quote instances of satisfaction and success: gentlemen purchase these, without sufficiently remembering the object for which they have been written, and the class for whom they are chiefly intended, viz. labourers ; and reading them with very great interest, imbibe from them ideas not always the most just. Now, Canada is pre-eminently a country for the labourer — universally to him it may be said, " Be sober and industrious, and you will surely rise, not to independence only, but to affluence ;" remember that is, the affluence of a labourer. To a gentleman, on the contrary, it might be said with as much earnestness and truth : " you will certainly not rise — but be active, energetic, and prudent, and in a few years you will be independent, that is, you will have abundance of all the necessaries and comforts of life ; you can eat, drink, and sleep, and be clothed in a plain manner ; and you will posses^ a few hundred acres of forest, not very valuable, and not very readily converted into cash, but which, while you remain on them, will supply

CANADIAN PROSPECTS, &c.

you to this extent/' This is the goal that may be termed " success," and in order to attain it you have every need of energy, activity and prudence; or a great deal of money, in favour of which there is ever an exception, " dives est omnia !" It is only, therefore, as long as emigration is confined to gentlemen, possessing such qualities, and satisfied with the ultimate prospect of such success, that it may be strictly deemed applicable to their class, and desirable to them as a pursuit. However, were I asked even by them, the question so often asked of me — " would you advise us to go to Canada ?" I should answer it, using an Irishman's privilege, by two other questions : first, " do your circumstances and situation here demand a change?" and secondly, 44 are you prepared to meet sundry little privations and roughnesses, such as we seldom meet in Ireland ?" That the latter is quite unavoidable, I rather think the testimony of every gentleman settler will readily corroborate ; and unless the former be equally so, you are very unwise to leave your country.

I am perfectly aware of the difficulty of advancement here, and of the number of eager candidates there are to be met with on every side, and am ready to admit that superiority of intellect, or very considerable interest, may be deemed nearly necessary for success, while in Canada a

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very moderate share of intellect, and no interest at all (except interest of money) suffices for all the settlers purposes — yet, notwithstanding, on any thing approaching a comparison between the two countries, or in any case permitting a choice, I would certainly repeat again and again that trite maxim, " let those stay at home who can stay this may with great safety be laid down as a most general rule, and were it more commonly adhered to, we would not meet with, in Canada so usually, persons regretting the day they had first beheld it.

The young and energetic, with from £300, to £1000, who can find no open here congenial to their dispositions and their situations in life — who can use their hands and eyes to some purpose — and who, content with plain comfortable mediocrity, seek and expect nothing more brilliant, are, of the better classes, those of all others the best adapted for Canada. We have heard much of the suitability of the country to men with families, but this is more applicable to the labouring classes than to gentlemen — for of them the elderly seldom bear expatriation over well — and young families brought up in such a class of life, are not over useful in "the bush" — where every one must work, at least of those whose finances are at all limited. To the fathers of families I would rather say, strain every point to remain where you are yourselves, and send out your sons as they grow up ; — but let their minds previously be as much formed and as much improved as possible, for Canada is a bad country for very young unformed minds — it is a place rude and rough, and offers not a few temptations to wildness. Moreover, its pursuits are so very " matter of fact," so ingrossing, and gross — being altogether the substantialities of life—that mental improvement is lost sight of : now, though a deficiency in this respect may not be very material, or much refinement very valuable to a " bushman," yet one would regret to see their son differ nothing in mind from the mere workman he hired. Every kind of information becomes proportion ably valuable to you, the more you are thrown upon your own resources, and the less it is within your reach to gain advice or assistance from others ; and here I may remark, laying this down as an axiom, I never can agree in the assertion you have so often heard, u that those perfectly ignorant of any thing like improved farming in this country, are the best adapted for Canadian farming." There is certainly a great difference between the two, but if you have not sufficient observation and intellect to find where and when this exists, and to apply your information accordingly, you must be a very dunce in-

a 3

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deed, and will live and die a poor one wherever you be.

But it is not my intention to waste your time and my own, in any attempt at enumerating the individuals, or even the classes whom emigration would or would not suit, for this must always depend on a thousand little circumstances in each case, that have nothing in common, and that can be only known well to the one man himself. I have given you a few data, and a case to which they are applicable ; and from these and their own knowledge, capabilities, and feelings, my readers must determine for themselves. I would only endeavour to induce them to do so with strict impartiality, and not to permit the love of novelty, hopes too bright, or statements perhaps a little too glowing to mislead them.

It is perhaps equally vain to attempt laying down any general rule, for the sum of money, necessary on starting, to reach within a reasonable time, the goal that I have mentioned, viz. — a comfortable farm, with eighty or one hundred acres cleared, producing enough for the consumption of a house, and a sufficient surplus to exchange for every thing else you can require ; money so much varies in its capabilities, according to the hands in which it is placed. I spent a day with a gentleman who had been settled two years ; he had

CANADIAN PROSPECTS, &c.

brought G or £7000 with him, and had at that time expended 14 or £1500, but for this he had very little indeed to show ; about twenty acres were cleared and cropped, and pretty well done, but his log house, which had cost him an immensity, was the ugliest and most uncomfortable edifice I had ever beheld ; his barn was not half finished, he had no kind of farm yard or offices, and no passable road to his clearing — scarcely a foot-path, yet he liked the country, and was going on well ! He certainly had some very nice cattle, but he had also several workmen, who idled most industriously, were miserable hands, and were paid two dollars a month more than any others were receiving, even of the best. From his house I went to another gentleman's a few miles distant, and would never have believed such a difference could have been between the clearings of two, whose situations were so similar, and whose opportunities were exactly equal; nothing could more forcibly illustrate the difference between men. This gentleman had one year start of the other, and he had only built a small log cottage, that perhaps cost two hundred or two hundred and fifty dollars — it was very pretty and very comfortable ; but he had eighty acres cleared, a fine barn, farm yard and offices, fine cattle, meadows, crops, fences ; every thing about him was

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flourishing, every thing he grew was sought for seed, and the highest price paid for it ; he had a store also* and in fact made money of every thing he looked at ; still he maintained his rank as a gentleman, was a very gentlemanly man, and was considered the first person in that part of the country : nor was he out of pocket one-third of the same the other had wasted ; he did not like Canada, and meditated soon leaving it. Now both these were, as I have said, precisely equally situated, they had both been in his Majesty's service, and had gotten their land free. While such a difference, therefore, exists between men, it is impossible to say generally what money will do ; there are, moreover, very many different ways of going out, travelling, living, &c, and as many different grades of expense to correspond : thus you may expend forty pounds on your voyage across the Atlantic, or go for eight pounds ; you may travel to Toronto for three pounds, or lay out thirty pounds, &c. ; however, this much may be said generally, the more straitened are your finances, the longer and harder you must work, and the more privations you must encounter ; you must also seek land proportionably cheaper, and a situation less desirable. I have said from £300 to £1000, for I can hardly think less than £300, to start at all as a gentleman, sufficient, and

I would not advise the expenditure of more than £1000 generally, for I do not think the best Canada can give you, worth more. Were I limited to the latter sum as my capital, I would not expend more than one-half of it on a farm, and I would seek to place the remainder at interest, at all events until the improved state of my farm offered me a very plain opportunity of employing it with advantage connected therewith. Government, I believe, give five per cent, but you will not find it difficult to procure six per cent, on good security ; this I consider a better mode of employing surplus money than in any speculations foreign from your pursuits as a farmer ; keeping a store, it is true, is money-making in some hands, but it requires more than ordinary tact and cleverness, or "to have been born in the trade," as Anna Comnena wras born in the purple ; indeed I suspect there is no great open to make money in any merchandize way, at least to the uninitiated. I have known several who vested sums thus, and expected they would have received them considerably increased by the time they were ready to depart into " the bush,'* but were in this sadly disappointed.

British goods are often a complete drug in the chief towns of both provinces, and are not unfrequently sold, when the possessors are pressed for

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ready money, at twenty per cent, less than they have cost in England. However, your temptations to speculation on this head will probably not be great; but when you reach Canada, so many things will be said to you about land — the sudden local rises which have taken place in its value — the sums of money thereby realized — the gradual increase in the value of all land in Canada — the great bargains offered for ready money, &c, that you will run no small risk. Many, expecting a certain and early profit, are unwarily led thus to employ money, for which, during many years they get no return, and the want of which they perhaps find not a little inconvenient and injurious. Now, in the first place, as a stranger and a new comer, you are open to very great fraud — there are no more greedy or unconscionable sharks in the world than the "land sharks" of Canada; every misrepresentation will be made to you, arid so plausibly, that until you have acquired a considerable knowledge of the country, you will not find it easy to detect them ; again, of this you may be pretty certain, that where there are lots to be sold very cheap, or land in the market offering any very probable advantage, there are always knowing hands ready to snap at it, for every store and tavern keeper in the province is a land jobber, and many hundreds besides, who have

CANADIAN PROSPECTS, &c.

better opportunities, and buy on much better terms than you can possibly. But passing all these by, land affords at best a very slow return ; ready money is hard to be gotten, and the increase in value is very uncertain indeed : for my part, I am satisfied in nineteen cases out of twenty, money placed out at common interest will, in a given number of years, make a better return than in the best land speculations. However, I would only warn you against plunging into such at once. Buy a lot or two lots, and go to live on them as speedily as you can ; and afterwards, if you have money to spare, and wish to possess land, look out for some fair offer in your own neighbourhood, where you are as likely to find it as elsewhere, when you have had both leisure and experience to be certain of its desirability, and cannot be readily deceived touching its value.

Much has been said on the general value of land in the province, and the rapid increase that has had place in it within the last seven or eight years; interested individuals flatter themselves this will still go forward, until, as I have heard some assert will be the case in a very few years, land in Canada will be worth as much as land in England. This is absurd : it is true land sells in some spots enormously dear ; I saw lately a gentleman's house advertised for sale near Niagara,

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and as much land as the purchaser would wish, at seventy-five pounds an acre; I have known twenty-five pounds paid for some near Peterborough, and building lots and houses set and sell for as much in Toronto as they do in Dublin. Perhaps several such instances might be adduced, but still these are quite fictitious values — they will be found so I have no doubt ; and whether they stand or fall, afford no rule whereby to judge of land generally. To the exertions of the Canada Company, and the notice into which they have brought the country, may be very mainly attributed the past rise ; but to argue thence that such will continue, is attributing to them a very great extent of power indeed ; nor have I heard any arguments whereon to found this creed of continued advance in the value of land, of much more solidity than the very innocent one — " that such and such progression has been, and why shall it not be ?" Without, therefore, entering on any general or learned arguments to establish the contrary, I shall only say for myself, I look over the maps of the upper province, and I see large tracts of well-situated land, that the chain of the surveyor has never yet crossed. I see a number of townships that have not yet been settled, and thousands and thousands of acres in the oldest and best settled still unoccu-

CANADIAN PROSPECTS, &e. 17

pied ; I then turn to the states, and I see as fine land as any in the world offered for l^th dollar an acre, possessing as many advantages fully as that of Canada to those who do not object to the government; moreover, I read a recommendation in one of the President's late speeches, to reduce this price, as the increase of population obtained from Europe, was of infinitely more value to them than any thing to be made of their land ; and I am very much inclined not only to doubt that any rise in the present prices will take place for many years, but even that the present scale will be maintained.

Mills and mill-streams are another subject on which you will be assailed. If you inquire about a lot which happens to have as much water running on it, as would fill your hat in twenty-four hours, you are told of " a never- failing creek,'* with extensive " water privileges, and great opens for a saw-mill, &c/' Take these all as matters of course, but. when you meditate thereon, do not add much on account of them to your estimation of the lot. Mills are occasionally, and in certain hands, no doubt, profitable, but they are a rank speculation ; I was very particular in my enquiries about them, for I had intended building a saw mill and a grist mill, and gave up the plan in consequence of the information I received. I never met with any

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person who had actually made money by them ; on the contrary, I have known some possessing them with apparently considerable advantages, plain industrious men, who were in very distressed circumstances, and becoming poorer and poorer every day — mortgaging, begging, and borrowing to live at all. By a particular friend, one of the highest officers of the crown in upper Canada, who himself had mills, and whose brother had mills also, I was strenuously advised to have nothing to do with them ; he told me he had lost more by his, which were very fine, and in a fine old country, in a very few years, than he had ever hoped in his most sanguine moments to have made by them. They are very expensive to build and uphold — every thing about them costs great sums of money: and often your flour will cost you as much to convey it to the market, as it will sell for when there. In the old settlements, the business, I suspect, is all occupied, and the " old country gentleman" will not likely be preferred to the yankee or common man ; in the new settlements, the wheat is seldom good for the first three or four years, it goes in too late, or comes off too late, or some littleness or other prevents its being prime, and bad wheat never pays the mill ; moreover, in new settlements the mills are much oftener idle than at work. Of the two, a saw-mill is the more likely to pay, and this it possibly may do, provided you be an active, clever man — that your mill cut fair, and your dam be well-built, and a substantial one — that there be a brisk demand for your "lumber " by people who can pay for it — and that you keep your mill working to its best ; this, last is quite necessary — it should cut day and night, and to do so you will require four men and two yokes of oxen. The expense of keeping a mill going thus, will be perhaps six hundred pounds a year or more, after which is to come the interest of your money, and the value of your time. A saw-mill costs to erect from eight hundred to two thousand dollars, and a flour mill from four thousand to twelve thousand, according to the facility or difficulty of building the dam. But even on a saw-mill, with the greatest apparent open, I would be most cautious of speculating, and a flour-mill I would have nothing to say to ; however, though I would not set before me building a mill, or be very anxious in seeking sites, yet I would prefer giving eight or ten per cent, more for a lot with a good mill-stream ; for some chance may come — a town may be built near you, or something else may make a site valuable ; beside, the power of speculating in cautious hands is not so undesirable. There is yet another subject very interesting

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to a new settler, and on which, both here and in Canada, you will meet with no little difference of opinion— viz. on the comparative desirability of " the bush " and of a " cleared farm " to gentlemen with some money ; for my part, I would much prefer clearing a farm for myself in " the bush," and I consider " cleared farms " more adapted for those who have been farmers here, and who have not been exactly classed with gentlemen, but a rougher, plainer grade of emigrants ; for, in the first place, farming in Canada is not as agreeable a pursuit for a gentleman as it is here, for the difficulty of getting trustworthy people to act for you is so much greater, and their pay so much higher, the sale of your produce, therefore, is attended with divers little unpleasantnesses it is not here — and you are more brought into contact with persons naturally rude, and whose interests and objects in your dealings with them do not render much civility on their part necessary ; meeting this all at once is very apt to disgust — I would prefer trying it by degrees, as one does in u the bush,1' where also agreements with the store-keepers are more easily made, which may obviate it altogether. Again, considering the badness of the roads, the dearness of labour, and the low prices of farming produce, I am pretty much inclined to think no where can more be made, than a living ;

I would, therefore, take "the bush," where I have a fair chance of some society, and avoid the old country, where nine-tenths of my neighbours will be " Canadian Yankees," than which I can imagine no character more revolting to a gentleman, except it be a yankified Irish labourer — he is certainly the acme of ignorance and insolence. There is also a very serious objection in the price of these cleared farms ; they generally consist of two hundred acres (" a lot,") of which perhaps sixty or eighty are cleared, and you may be pretty certain not in their pristine vigor, and their price is commonly three or four times as much per acre, for the two hundred acres, as wild land is worth in the neighbourhood ; this, you will perceive, makes the cleared part very dear.

The objections against "the bush" for gentlemen, are chiefly, the privations which must be there encountered, and the difficulties of communication with more settled parts ; now the comparative privations of the bush will be always in an inverse ratio to the money you can afford to lay out ; and as a, choice between cleared and uncleared land, in the first instance, implies the possession of money, this objection cannot be said to lie in much force ; the other is a more serious one, and I confess, one that sometimes made me regret my choice, but it only holds good for a

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year or two at most, and is much more than counterbalanced by the difference of your neighbours, and the unexhausted state of your ground, to which, for a beginner in the science, there is an additional recommendation, in the very great simplicity of " bush farming."

I have said the mind and its improvement is not much an object of consideration in Canadian forests ; this must, of course, be a matter of regret to any one who has been accustomed to, or has learned to admire intellectual refinement in however slight a degree : yet it is not often a matter of complaint, for most are obliged during daylight to be earnest in far different pursuits and occupations ; and they who are actively busied from daybreak until dark, are seldom capable of much mental exertion in the evening, nor are they in much danger of suffering from ennui ; but they who are comparatively independent of personal exertion, and who have not any particular taste for coarse work, have leisure to remark this defi-^ ciency, and being deprived of the thousand little alternatives that are in this country, whereby to shun the tedium of idleness, find their time not unfrequently pass very heavily ; and this might, perhaps, not unjustly be brought forward as an argument against such making Canada their country. As to society, we are here rather under a.

false impression with regard to it, for we are prone to think there is none to be had, and that the want of it is the greatest drawback against Canada—but this is not so universally ; in many parts you will meet with as good society, as numerous and as genteel, as in most of the country parts of Ireland, and consisting of people generally much more inclined to conciliate each other and be obliging, than they had ever been in the " old country.' ' These parts are of the latest settled, for thither most of the late respectable emigrants have gone, and grouped themselves pretty much together; and in them, after a very few years, when the great hurry of " bush pioneers/' has subsided, and that improved roads and the introduction of horses have facilitated intercourse, complaints of the want of agreeable neighbours, and of the loneliness of the woods, will not be very numerous or very just. These gentlemen settlers are for the most part ex-officers of the army and navy, who have quitted the service, and who when they assume the axe and sickle, make generally capital farmers, and very agreeable companions ; but there are also young surgeons, church of England clergymen, private gentlemen, sons of respectable persons at home, graduates of the colleges, &c. I was much surprised at a meeting held in January or February last, about six miles

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from me, touching the improvement of a road in the neighbourhood, to see the room, which was no small one, filled with gentlemen ; we had some speeches made that would not have disgraced a nobler subject, and our local vanity, (if I may use the expression) was quite flattered at the eloquence and extent of our resolutions, memorials, and petitions ; but it was more substantially so, when we read that the legislature had given us one hundred and fifty pounds towards carrying our projected repairs into effect — a considerable sum under the circumstances, and all that we had ventured to ask for.

But there is a very serious drawback against Canada, of which we have all heard, viz. — the great incivility and rudeness of the lower classes ; believe me, this has not been exaggerated; their assumption not of equality only but even of superiority is very galling, and I consider it by far the most trying and disagreeable thing, as gentlemen, you have to encounter in America. There is also a great difficulty in procuring house servants, particularly in the woods, and you are obliged to submit to many inconveniences and unpleasantnesses in consequence that are not a little irksome. For my part, these two things I found so exceedingly annoying, that they would be quite sufficient to prevent my return to Canada while I could possibly remain in

Ireland. It is true, while you remain in your own clearing, the former does not so much reach you, for by being stern to your workmen you can prevent their familiarity, though you will be hardly able to obtain from them respect ; but the moment you go forth, their manners are forced upon your notice, notwithstanding the most anxious wish you may feel to be blind to them.