Life in the woods; a true story of the Canadian bush

Chapter I

Boy-dreams about travelling — Our family determines to go to Canada — The first day on board — Cure for sea-sickness — Our passengers — Henry's adventure — We encounter a storm — Height of the waves — The bottom of the ocean — A fossil ship — The fishing-grounds — See whales and ice-bergs — Porpoises — Sea-birds — Lights in the sea — The great Gulf of St Lawrence — Thick ice-fogs — See land at last — Sailing up the river — Land at Quebec pp. I — 17

Chapter II

Quebec — Wolfe — Montcalm's skull — Toronto — We set off for the bush — Mud-roads — A rough ride — Our log-house — How it was built — Our barn— We get oxen and cows — Elephant and Buckeye — Unpacking our stores — What some of our neighbours brought when they came — Hot days — Bush costumes — Sun-strokes— My sisters have to turn salamanders — Our part of the house- work pp. 18 — 39

Chapter III

Clearing the land — David's bragging, and the end of it — Burning the log-heaps — Our logging bee — What prejudice can do — Our fences and crops nearly burned — The woods on fire — Building a snake-fence — ' Shingle ' pigs give us sore trouble — / Breachy ' horses and cattle pp. 40 — 55 vi Contents.

Chapter IV

We begin our preparations for sowing— Gadflies— Mosquitoes — Harrowing experiences — A huge fly — Sandflies — The poison of insects and serpents— Winter wheat— The wonders of plant-life— Our first 'sport'— Woodpeckers— ' Chitmunks' —The blue jay— The blue bird— The flight of birds

Chapter V

Some family changes — Amusements — Cow-hunting — Our ' sideline ' — The bush — Adventures with rattlesnakes — Garter-snakes — A frog's flight for life— Black squirrels . pp. 73—86

Chapter VI

Spearing^fish — Ancient 'British canoes — Indian ones — A bargain with an Indian — Henry's cold bath — Canadian thunderstorms — Poor Yorick's death — Our glorious autumns — The change of the leaf— Sunsets — Indian summer- — The fall rains and the roads — The first snow — Canadian cold — A winter landscape — 'Ice-storms' — Snow crystals — The minute perfection of God's works — Deer-shooting — David's misfortune — Useless cruelty — Shedding of the stag's horns pp. 87 — -124

Chapter VII

Wolves — My adventure with a bear — Courtenay's cow and the wolves — A fright in the woods by night — The river freezes — Our winter fires — Cold, cold, cold ! — A winter's journey- Sleighing — Winter mufflings— Accidents through intense cold

Contents. vii

Chapter VIII

The aurora borealis— ' Jumpers' — Squaring timber — Rafts — Camping out — A public ^meeting — Winter fashions — My toe frozen — A long winter's walk — Hospitality — Nearly lost in the woods pp. 140 — 155

Chapter IX

Involuntary racing — A backwoods parsonage— Graves in the wilderness — Notions of equality — Arctic winters — Ruffed grouse — Indian fishing in winter — A marriage — Our winter's pork pp. 156 — 167

CHAPTER X. Our neighbours — Insect plagues — Military officers' families in

the bush — An awkward mistake — Dr D nearly shot for a

bear — Major M Our candles — Fortunate escape from a

fatal accident . pp. 168 — 178

CHAPTER XL

* Now Spring returns ' — Sugar-making — Bush psalmody — Bush preaching — Worship under difficulties — A clerical Mrs Partington — Biology — A ghost — ' It slips good' — Squatters

Chapter XII

Bush magistrates— Indian forest guides — Senses quickened by necessity — Breaking up of the ice — Depth of the frost — A grave in winter. — A ball — A holiday coat .... pp. 194 — 204 viii Contents.

Chapter XIII

Wild leeks — Spring birds — Wilson's poem on the blue-bird — Downy woodpeckers — Passenger pigeons — Their numbers — Roosting places — The frogs — Bull frogs — Tree frogs — Flying squirrels , „ , . . pp. 205 — 217

Chapter XIV

Our spring crops — Indian corn— Pumpkins — Melons — Fruits — Wild Flowers. . . . pp. 218— 224

Chapter XV

The Indians — Wigwams — Dress — Can the Indians be civilized ? — Their past decay as a race — Alleged innocence of savage \ life — Narrative of Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary

Chapter XVI

The medicine-man — Painted faces- — Medals — An embassy — Religious notions — Feast of the dead — Christian Indians — Visit to the Indians on Lake Huron — Stolidity of the Indians — Henry exorcises an Indian's rifle .... pp. 258 — 276

Chapter XVII

The humming-bird — Story of a pet — Canada a good country for poor men — A bush story of misfortune — Statute labour — Tortoises — The hay season — Our waggon-driving — Henry and I are nearly drowned — Henry falls ill — Backwood doctors pp. 277 — 295

Contents. ix

Chapter XVIII

American men and women — Fireflies— Profusion of insect life — Grasshoppers — Frederick and David leave Canada — Soap-making — Home-made candles — Recipe for washing quickly — Writing letters — The parson for driver . . . pp.296 — 310

Chapter XIX

Americanisms — Our poultry — The wasps — Their nests — * Bob's' skill in killing them — Racoons — A hunt — Racoon cake — The town of Busaco — Summer ' sailing ' — Boy drowned — French settlers pp. 311—324

CHAPTER XXIV. The Canadian lakes — The exile's love of home — The coloured

people in Canada — Rice — The Maid of the Mist — Home-spun

cloth — A narrow road — A grumbler — New England emigrants

-A potato-pit — The winter's wood .... pp. 372 — 387

Chapter XXV

Thoughts for the future — Changes — Too -hard study — Education in Canada — Christmas markets — Winter amusements — Ice-boats — Very cold ice— Oil-springs — Changes on the farm — Growth of Canada — The American climate— Old England again pp. 388 — 405

LIFE IN THE WOODS.

Chapter I

Boy-dreams about travelling— Our family determines to go to Canada — The first day on board — Cure for sea-sickness — Our passengers — Henry's adventure — We encounter a storm — Height of the waves — The bottom of the ocean — A fossil ship — The fishing-grounds — See whales and icebergs — Porpoises — Sea-birds — Lights in the sea — The great Gulf of St Lawrence — Thick ice-fogs — See land at last — Sailing up the river — Land at Quebec.

WONDER if ever there were a boy who did not wish to travel ? I know I did, and used to spend many an hour thinking of all the wonderful things I should see, and of what I would bring home when I returned. Books of travel I devoured greedily — and very good reading for boys, as well as for grown men, I have always thought them. I began with ' Robinson Crusoe/ like most boys — for who has not read his story ? Burckhardt, the traveller, found a young Arab reading a translation of it in the door of his father's i

2 Dreams adotct Travelling.

tent in the desert. But I don't think I ever wished to be like him, or to roam in a wild romantic way, or ' go to sea,' as it is called, like many other boys I have known, which is a very different thing from having harmless fancies, that one would like to see strange races of men and strange countries. Some of my schoolmates, whom nothing would content but being sailors, early cured me of any thought of being one, if ever I had it, by what I knew of their story when they came back. One of them, James Roper, I did not see for some years after he went off, but when I met him at last among the ships, he was so worn and broken down I hardly knew him again, and he had got so many of the low forecastle ways about him, that I could not bear his company. Another, Robert Simpson, went one voyage to Trebizond, but that cured him. He came back perfectly contented to stay at home, as he had found the romance of sailoring, which had lured him away, a very different thing from the reality. He had never counted on being turned out of his "bed every other night or so for something or other, as he was, or being clouted with a wet swab by some sulky fellow, or having to fetch and carry for the men, and do their bidding, or to climb wet rigging in stormy weather, and get drenched every now and then, without any chance of changing his clothes ; not to speak of the difference between his nice room at home and the close, crowded, low-roofed forecastle, where he could hardly see for tobacco-smoke, and where he had to eat and sleep with

The First Day on Board. 3

companions whom he would not have thought of speaking to before he sailed. He came back quite sobered down, and, after a time, went to study law, and is now a barrister in good practice.

Yet I was very glad when I learned that we were going to America. The great woods, and the sport I would have with the deer and bears in them, and the Indians, of whom I had read so often, and the curious wildness there was in the thought of settling where there were so few people, and living so differently from anything I had known at home, quite captivated me. I was glad when the day of sailing came, and went on board our ship, the Ocean King, with as much delight as if I had been going on a holiday trip. There were eight of us altogether' — five brothers and three sisters (my father and mother were both dead), and I had already one brother in America, while another stayed behind to push his way in England. The anchor once heaved, we were soon on our way down the Mersey, and the night fell on us while we were still exploring the wonders of the ship, and taking an occasional peep over the side at the shore. When we had got into the Channel, the wind having come round to the south-east, the captain resolved to go by the northern route, passing the upper end of Ireland. All we saw of it, however, was very little ; indeed, most of us did not see it at all, for the first swell of the sea had sent a good many to their berths, in all stages of sickness. One old gentleman, a Scotchman, who had been

4 Cure for Sea-sickness.

boasting that he had a preventive that would keep him clear of it, made us all laugh by his groans and wretchedness ; for his specific had not only failed, but had set him off amongst the first. He had been told that if he took enough gingerbread and whisky, he might face any sea, and he had followed the advice faithfully ; but as the whisky itself was fit to make him sick, even on shore, you may judge how much it and the gingerbread together helped him when the ship was heaving and rolling under his feet. We boys did not fail, of course, when we heard him lamenting that either the one or the other had crossed his lips, to come over their names pretty often in his hearing, and advise each other to try some, every mention of the words bringing out an additional shudder of disgust from the unfortunate sufferer. My eldest sister had sent me, just before coming on board, for some laudanum and mustard, which she was to mix and apply some way that was sure, she said, to keep her well ; but she got sick so instantly on the ship beginning to move that she forgot them, and we had the mustard afterwards at dinner in America, and the laudanum was a long time in the house for medicine. For a few days everything was unpleasant enough, but gradually all got right again, and even the ladies ventured to reappear on deck.

Of course, among a number of people gathered in a ship, you were sure to meet strange characters. A little light man in a wig was soon the butt of the cabin, he

Our Passengers* would ask such silly questions, and say such outrageous things. He was taking cheeses, and tea, and I don't know what else, to America with him, for fear he would get nothing to eat there ; and he was dreadfully alarmed by one of the passengers, who had been over before, telling him he would find cockroach pie the chief dainty in Canada. I believe the cheeses he had with him had come from America at first. He thought the best thing to make money by in Canada was to sow all the country with mustard-seed, it yielded such a great crop, he said; and he seemed astonished at all the table laughing at the thought of what could possibly be done with it. There was another person in the cabin — a stiff, conceited man, with a very strange head, the whole face and brow running back from the chin, and great standing-out ears. He was a distant relation of some admiral, I believe ; but if he had been the admiral himself, he could not have carried his head higher than he did. Nobody was good enough for him. It seemed a condescension in him to talk with any one. But he soon lost all his greatness, notwithstanding his airs, by,, his asking one day when we were speaking about Italy, * What river it was that ran north and south along the coast ? ' in that country. We were speaking of a road, and he thought it was about a river. Then he asked, the same day, where the Danube was, and if it were a large river ; and when some one spoke about Sicily, and said that it had been held by the Carthaginians, he wished to know if these people held it now. Boy as I

6 Henry's Adventure.

was, I could not help seeing what a dreadful thing it was to be so ignorant \ and I determined that I would

never be like Mr (I sha'n't tell his name), at any

rate, but would learn as much as ever I could.

I daresay we were troublesome enough to the captain sometimes, but, if so, he took his revenge on one of us after a time. One day we were playing with a rope and pulley which was hooked high up in the rigging. There was a large loop at the one end, and the other, after passing through the block, hung down on the deck. Henry had just put this loop over his shoulders and fitted it nicely below his arms, when the captain chanced to see him, and, in an instant, before he knew what he was going to do, he had hauled him up ever so high, with all the passengers looking at him and laughing at the ridiculous figure he cut. It was some time before he would let him down, and as he was a pretty .big lad, and thought himself almost a man, he felt terribly affronted. But he had nothing for it when he got down but to hide in his berth till his pride got cooled and till the laugh stopped. We were all careful enough to keep out of Captain Morrison's way after that.

One way or other the days passed very pleasantly to us boys, whatever they were to older people. It was beautiful when the weather was fine and the wind right, to see how we glided through the green galleries of the sea, which rose, crested with white, at each side. One day and night we had, what we thought, a great storm. The sails were nearly all struck, and I heard

We encounter a Storm. y

the mate say that the two that were left did more harm than good, because they only drove the ship deeper into the water. When it grew nearly dark, I crept up the cabin-stairs to look along the deck at the waves ahead. I could see them rising like great black mountains seamed with snow, and coming with an awful motion towards us, making the ship climb a huge hill, as it were, the one moment, and go down so steeply the next, that you could not help being afraid that it was sinking bodily into the depths of the sea. The wind, meanwhile, roared through the ropes and yards, and every little while there was a hollow thump of some wave against the bows, followed by the rush of water over the bulwarks. I had read the account of the storm in Virgil, and am sure he must have seen something like what I saw that night to have written it. There is an ode in Horace to him when he was on the point of setting out on a voyage. Perhaps he saw it then. The description in the Bible is, however, the grandest picture of a storm at sea : 1 The Lord commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves of the deep. They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths : their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end.' ' The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet' Yet I have found since, that though the waves appear so very high, they are much lower than we sup-

8 Height of the Waves.

pose, our notions of them being taken from looking up at them from the hollow between two. Dr Scoresby, a great authority, measured those of the Atlantic in different weathers, and found that they seldom rise above fifteen feet, a great storm only causing them to rise to thirty-five, or, at most, forty feet, as the height of the Atlantic storm-waves, which is very different from i running mountains high/ as we often hear said. I could not help pitying the men who had to go up to the yards and rigging in the terrible wind and rain, with the ship heaving and rolling so dreadfully, and work with the icy cold sheets and ropes. Poor fellows ! it seems a wonder how they ever can hold on. Indeed, they too often lose their hold, and then there is no hope for them ; down they go, splash into the wild sea, with such a scream of agony as no one can ever forget after having heard it. My brother, on crossing some years after, saw a man thus lost — a fine, healthy Orkneyman, whom some sudden lurch of the ship threw from the outside of the yard. Though it was broad daylight, and though they would have done anything to help him as they saw him rising on the wave, farther and farther behind them, swimming bravely, they were perfectly unable even to make an effort, the sea rolling so wildly, and the ship tearing on through the waves so swiftly. So they had, with hearts like to break, to let him drown before their very eyes.

As we got further over we heard a great deal about the Banks of Newfoundland, and, naturally enough,

The Bottom of the Ocean. 9

thought the shores of that island were what was meant ; but we found, when we reached them, that it was only the name given to the shallower part of the sea to the south of the coast. The soundings for the electric telegraph have since shown that from Ireland on the one side, and Newfoundland on the other, a level table-land forms the floor of the ocean, at no great depth, for some hundreds of miles, the space between sinking suddenly on both sides into unfathomable abysses. What the depth of the Atlantic is at the deepest is not known, but I remember seeing a notice of a surveying ship, which had been able to sink a line in the southern section of it to the wonderful depth of seven miles, finding the bottom only with that great length of rope. The banks are, no doubt, formed in part from the material carried by the great ocean current which flows up from the Gulf of Mexico, washing the shores all the way; and then, passing Newfoundland, reaches across even to the most northern parts of Europe and the Arctic circle. If the quantity of mud, and gravel, and sand deposited on the Banks be great enough to bury some of the many wrecks of all sizes which go to the bottom there, what a wonderful sight some future ages may have ! The floor of the ocean has often, elsewhere, been gradually or suddenly raised into dry land ; and if the Banks should be so, and the wrecks be buried in them before they had rotted away, geologists of those days will perhaps be laying bare in some quarry, io A Fossil Ship.

now far down in the sea, the outline of a fossil ship, with all the things it had in it when it was lost!

We met a great many fishing-boats in this part, some from Newfoundland, some from Nova Scotia, others, again, from the northern coasts of the United States, with not a few all the way from France. We were becalmed one day close to some from the State of Maine, and one of them very soon sent off a boat to us with some as fine looking men in it as you could well see, to barter fish with the captain for some pork. For a piece or two of the sailor's mess-pork, which I thought dreadful-looking, it was so yellow and fat, they threw on board quite a number of cod-fish and some haddocks, giving us, I thought, by far the best of the exchange. I am told that a great many of these fishing-vessels are lost every year by storms, and occasionally some are run down and sunk in a moment by a ship passing over them. They are so rash as to neglect hanging out lights in many cases, and the w r eather is, moreover, often so very foggy, that, even when they do, it is impossible to see them. The ships, if going at all fast, sound fog-horns every now and then on such days — that is, they should do it — but I fear they sometimes forget. There is far less humanity in some people than one would like to see, even the chance of causing death itself seeming to give them no concern. I remember once going in a steamer up the Bay of Fundy, over part of the same

See Whales and Icebergs. 1 1 cb * ground, when we struck a fishing-schooner in the dead of the night ; but the captain only swore at it for being in his way, and never stopped to see if it were much injured or not, though for anything he or any one knew, it might be in a sinking state. Whether it be thoughtlessness or passion at the time, or stony hardheartedness, it is an awful thing to be unkind. Uncle Toby, who put the fly out of the window rather than kill it, makes us love him for his tenderness even in an instance so slight.

One day we saw two whales at a short distance from the ship, but their huge black backs, and the spout of water they made from their breathing-holes when they were taking a fresh breath, was all we saw of them. Some of the youngsters, however, made some sport out of the sight by telling a poor simple woman, who had got into the cabin, how they had read of a ship that once struck on a great black island in £he middle of the sea and went down, and how the sailors got off on the rock, and landed their provisions, and were making themselves comfortable, when one of them unfortunately thought he would kindle a fire to cook something ; but had hardly done it before they discovered that they had got on the back of a sleeping whale, which no sooner felt the heat burning it than it plunged down into the waves with all on it ! It is a part of one of the boys' stories we have all read, but the poor creature believed it, listening to them with her eyes fixed on their faces,

12 Icebergs.

and expressing her pity for the sailors who had made the mistake.

We had two or three icebergs in sight when near Newfoundland, and very beautiful they were. Only think of great mountains of ice shining in the sun with every colour that light can give, and cascades of snowy-white water leaping down their sides into the sea. Those we saw were perhaps from eighty to a hundred feet high, but they are sometimes even two hundred ; and as there are eight feet of ice below the water for every one above, this would make a two hundred feet iceberg more than the third of a mile from the bottom to the top. They are formed on the shores of the icy seas in the north, by the alternate melting and freezing of the edge of those ice-rivers which we call glaciers, which get thrust out from the land till they are undermined by the sea, and cracked by summer thaws, and then tumble into the waters, to find their way wherever the currents may carry them. Dr Kane and Captain M'Clintock both saw them in the different stages of their growth ; and I don't know a more interesting narrative than that of the ascent to the top of the great frozen stream, on the shore of Washington's Land, by the former, and his looking away to the north, east, and south, over the vast, broken, many-coloured continent of ice, which stretches in awful depth and unbroken continuity over Greenland. The icebergs often carry off from the shore a vast quantity of stones and gravel, which gets frozen

Porpoises and Sea-birds. 13

into them. Dr Scoresby says he has seen one of them carrying, he should think, from fifty to a hundred thousand tons of rock on it. It has, no doubt, been in this way that most of the great blocks and boulders of stone, different from any hi their neighbourhood, which lie scattered over many parts of the world, have been taken to their present places.*

I must not forget the porpoises — great pig-like fish, which once or twice mocked us by racing alongside, darting a-head every now and then like arrows, as if to show us how slow we were in comparison — nor the birds, which never left us the whole way, and must sleep on the water when they do sleep — nor the beautiful lights which shone in the sea at night. We used to sit at the stern looking at them for long together. The ridges of the waves would sometimes seem all on fire, and streaks and spots of light would follow the ship with every moment's progress. Sometimes, as the water rushed round the stern and up from beneath, they would glitter like a shower of stars or diamonds, joining presently in a sheet of flame. Now they would look like balls of glowing metal; then, presently, they would pass like ribbons of light. There was no end to the combinations or changes of beauty; the very water joined to heighten them by its

* What is known as the * boulder clay,' however, seems rather to be the moraine of ancient glaciers — that is, the wreck of broken rocks torn away by them in their passage through the valleys, and now left bare by their having melted away.

14 Lights in the Sea.

ceaseless mingling of colours, from the whitest foam, through every shade of green, to the dark mass of the ocean around. These appearances come from the presence of myriads of creatures of all sizes, chiefly the different kinds of Sea-nettles,* some of which are so small as to need a microscope to show their parts, while others form large masses, and shine like the suns of these watery constellations. They are luminous by a phosphoric light they are able to secrete ; their brilliancy being thus of the same kind as that which smokes and burns in the dark from the skin of fish, and makes the lights in so many different insects. The phosphorus used in manufactures is obtained from burned bones. I have often seen a similar light in the back woods on the old half-rotten stumps of trees which had been cut down. The glow-worm of England and the fire-fly of Canada are familiar examples of the same wonderful power of self-illumination. Indeed, few countries are without some species of insect possessing this characteristic. One can't help thinking how universal life is when they see it as it is shown in these sights at sea — millions on millions of shining creatures in the path of a single ship ; and the happiness which life gives us in our youth makes us admire the kindness of God, who, by making everything so full of it, has crowded the air, and earth, and waters with so much enjoyment.

* The jelly-fish, or medusa, which we so often see on our beaches, is a familiar example of the class.