'T
hey wor very kind to us,' observed Andy, from his elevation in the waggon; 'an' this counthry bates all the world at 'ating and dhrinking.'
This to Arthur Wynn, who was seated rather despondingly in front of the collection of boxes, pots, and pails, which formed their stock-in-trade for bush life. Sam Holt and Robert were walking on before the horse, a furlong ahead; but Arthur had dropped behind for meditation's sake, and taken up his residence on the waggon for awhile, with his cap drawn over his eyes. I dare say Miss Bell had something to do with the foolish boy's regret for leaving Maple Grove.
'Every day was like a Christmas or an Aisther,' continued Andy, who had no idea that any one could prefer silence to conversation; 'an' the sarvints had parlour fare in the kitchen always, an' a supper that was like a dinner, just before goin' to bed. Throth, they had fine times of it—puddins an' pies, if you plaze: the bare lavins would feed a family at home. An' it's the same, they tell me, in all the farmers'houses round about. I never thought to see so much vittles.'
No reply could be elicited from Mr. Arthur Wynn but a grunt.
'Didn't you?' put in the driver, with a small sneer. Andy had deemed him too far distant to catch his words, as he walked beside his horse.
'Why, then, you've long ears, my man; but sure it's kind for ye,' retorted Mr. Callaghan, his eye twinkling wickedly. I fear that his subtle irony was lost upon its subject. 'Of coorse I'm not used to ye're foreign food. Our vittles at home are a dale dacenter, though not so common.'
And Arthur, through his half-drowsy ears, was amused by the colloquy that ensued, in the course of which Andy completely floored the Canadian by a glowing description of Dunore, delivered in the present tense, but referring, alas! to a period of sixteen or twenty years previously. But the smart black-eyed backwoodsman wound up with the utterly incredulous speech,—
'They left all them riches to come and settle in our bush! whew!' He jerked his whip resoundingly upon the frying-pan and tin-kettle in the rear, which produced a noise so curiously illustrative of his argument, that Arthur laughed heartily, and shook off his fit of blues.
The aspect of nature would have helped him to do that. The thousand dyes of the woods were brilliant, as if the richest sunset had gushed from the heavens, and painted the earth with a permanent glory of colour. A drapery of crimson and gold endued the maples; the wild bines and briars were covered with orangeand scarlet berries; the black-plumed pine trees rose solemnly behind. A flat country, for the most part; and, as the travellers slowly receded westward, settlements became sparse and small; the grand forests closed more densely round them; solitary clearings broke the monotony of trees.
The first of anything that one sees or experiences remains stronger than all after impressions on the memory. With what interest did the embryo settlers regard the first veritable log-hut that presented itself, surrounded by half an acre of stumps, among which struggled potatoes and big yellow squashes. A dozen hens pecked about; a consumptive-looking cow suspended her chewing, as also did her master his hoeing, to gaze after the waggon, till it disappeared beyond the square frame of forest which shut in the little clearing.
Again the long lines of stately oaks and firs, with a straight and apparently endless road between them, like the examples of perspective in beginners' drawing-books, but with the vanishing point always receding.
'I see they've turnpiked this road since I was on it before,' observed the driver.
'Where?' asked Andy, looking about. 'I don't see a turnpike—an' sure I ought to know a tollman's dirty face in any place. Sorra house here at all at all, or a gate; or a ha'porth except trees,' he added in a disgusted manner.
'There,' said the Canadian, pointing to a ploughed line along each side of the road, whence the earth had been thrown up in the centre by a scraper; 'that's turnpiking.'
'Ye might have invented a new name,' rejoined the Irishman, with an offended air, 'an' not be mislading people. I thought it was one of the ould pike-gates where I used to have to pay fourpince for me, ass and car; an' throth, much as I hated it, I'd be a'most glad to see one of the sort here, just for company's sake. A mighty lonesome counthry ye have, to be sure!'
'Well, we can't be far from Greenock now; and I see a bit of a snake fence yonder.'
It was another clearing, on a more enterprising scale than the last described; the forest had been pushed back farther, and a good wooden house erected in the open space; zigzag rail fences enclosed a few fields almost clear of stumps, and an orchard was growing up behind. A man in a red shirt, who was engaged in underbrushing at a little distance, said that 'the town' was only a mile away—Greenock, on the Clyde.
Alas for nomenclature! The waggon scrambled down a rather steep declivity, towards a dozen houses scattered beside a stream: stumps stood erect in the single short street, and a ferry-boat was the only craft enlivening the shore. A Greenock without commerce or warehouses, a Clyde without wharves or ships, or the possibility of either—what mere travestie effected by a name!
'A nest of Scottish emigrants, I suppose,' said Robert Wynn, as he contemplated 'the town.'
'Yes, and they'll push their place up to something,' replied Sam Holt: 'if pluck and perseverance can do it, they will. Only one enemy can ruin a Scotchman here, and that's the "drap drink." Ten to one that intwenty years you find this ground covered with factories and thousands of houses; that solitary store is the germ of streets of shops, and the tavern will expand into half a score hotels. Sandy will do it all.'
'I'm afraid you could not speak so well of Irish progress.'
'Because the canker of their religion continues to produce its legitimate effects in most cases; and the influence of whisky—the great bane of social life in our colony—is even more predominant than over the lower class Scotch settlers. Still, they do infinitely better here than at home; and you'll meet with many a flourishing Hibernian in the backwoods and pioneer cities.'
'I presume this is a pioneer city?' looking round at the handful of wooden shanties.
'Don't despise it; Rome had as small a beginning, and was manned by no more indomitable hands and hearts than our frontier emigrants.'
'We are producing quite a sensation,' said Robert. For the major part of the inhabitants came out of doors to view the strangers, with that curiosity which characterizes a new-born society; many of the men bethought themselves of some business at the wooden tavern by the water-side, where the waggon drew up and the new arrivals entered in.
A store where everything was sold, from a nail or a spool of 'slack' to a keg of spirits or an almanac: sold for money when it could be had, for flour or wool or potash when it couldn't; likewise a post-office, whither a stage came once a week with an odd passenger, or an odd dozen of newspapers and letters;likewise the abode of a magistrate, where justice was occasionally dispensed and marriages performed. The dwelling that united all these offices in its single person, was a long, low, framed house, roofed with shingles, and but one storey in height; proprietor, a certain canny Scot, named Angus Macgregor, who, having landed at Quebec with just forty shillings in the world, was making rapid strides to wealth here, as a landed proprietor and store-keeper without rivalry. Others of the clan Gregor had come out, allured by tidings of his prosperity; and so the broad Doric of lowland Scotch resounded about the tavern table almost as much as the Canadian twang.
All doing well. Labour was the sole commodity they possessed, and it sufficed to purchase the best things of life in Canada, especially that slow upward rising in circumstances and possessions which is one of the sweetest sensations of struggling humanity, and which only a favoured few among the working classes can enjoy at home. Robert Wynn was almost as curious about their affairs as they were about his; for he was energized afresh by every instance of progress, and little inducement was required to draw from the settlers their own histories, which had the single monotony running through each of gradual growth from poverty to prosperity.
'What sort of roads have you across the ferry to the Cedars?' inquired Sam Holt of mine host.
'The first part of the concession line is pretty good, but I canna say as much for the "corduroy" afterwards: the riding's not so easy there, I guess.'
'Corduroy!' ejaculated Arthur.
'Oh, wait till you feel it,' said Sam, with much amusement in his eyes. 'It's indescribable. I hope we won't meet in the dark, that's all.'
'Drivin' across ladders for ever, with the rungs very far apart,' explained a Canadian to Andy, in the background, as the latter rubbed his finger-tips over the ribs in the material of his pantaloons, and looked puzzled.
'An' what description of vahicle stands sich thratement?' asked Mr. Callaghan, 'an' what description of baste?'
'Oxen is the handiest, 'cos they've the strongest legs,' returned his informant, with a fresh puff of his pipe.
'Well, of all the counthries'—began Andy, for the twentieth time that day; and perhaps as many as ten additional utterances of the ejaculation were forced by the discovery that he and the gentlemen were to occupy the same sleeping apartment; but, above all, by the revelation that behind a ragged curtain in the corner reposed two wayfaring women, going to join their husbands in the woods, and having also a baby. The latter creature, not being at all overawed by its company, of course screamed in the night whenever the fancy seized it; and good-natured Andy found himself at one period actually walking up and down with the warm bundle of flannel in his arms, patting it on the back soothingly.
Next morning they left the little settlement, and, crossing the ferry again, plunged into the primeval forest. Robert felt as if that mock Clyde were the Rubicon of their fate.
'I leave the old degenerate life,' he murmured tohimself, 'with all its traditions of ease. I go forth to face Fortune in these wilds, and to win her, if ever sturdy toil of limb and brain succeeded.'
This spirit of independence was manly, but Robert did not at the moment join to it the nobler spirit of dependence on the Divine Disposer of events: self-trust filled his heart; and this is the great snare of youth.
'You are looking unusually valorous,' said Sam Holt, who marched alongside. He had volunteered to stay with them for their first fortnight of bush life, like a kind fellow as he was. Something about these young Wynns had attracted his regard, and perhaps a touch of compassion. He would, at least, help them to put up the shanty, he said.
And truly the road grew very bad; at a short bit of swamp they made their first acquaintance with 'corduroy.' Sam explained the structure when the waggon had done bumping over it: trunks of trees had been laid along the road as 'sleepers' in three continuous lines; and across them round logs, close together by theory, but in practice perhaps a foot or two apart, with unknown abysses of mud between.
They wished even for the corduroy expedient a little farther on, when the line became encumbered with stumps left from the underbrushing, and which caught in the axletree every few score yards. Now came the handspikes into action, which provident Sam had cut, and laid into the waggon when the road was fair and smooth; for the wheels had to be lifted high enough to slip over the obstacles. In the pauses of manual labour came the chilling thought, 'All this difficulty between us and home.'
Sunlight faded from the tree-tops; and soon night was descending darkly among the pines.
'We must either camp in the woods, or get shelter at some settler's,' decided Sam. 'We'll try a quarter of a mile farther, and see what it brings.' So away they went again, shouting at the oxen, and endeavouring to steer the equipage free of mud-holes and stumps.
'I am afraid our cups and saucers are all in a smash,' said Arthur. Robert had a secret misgiving to the same effect; but, then, crockeryware is a luxury to which no shanty-man has a right. Andy rescued a washing basin and ewer, by wearing the former on his head and the latter on his left arm—helmet and shield-wise; except at intervals, when he took his turn at handspiking.
A light gleamed through the trees, and a dog barked simultaneously: they were on the verge of a clearing; and, hearing the voices outside, the owner of the house came forth to welcome the travellers, with a heartiness widely different from the commonplace hospitality of more crowded countries.
A
roaring fire of logs upon the wide hearth, logs built up into walls and roof, logs wrought into rough furniture of tables and stools—here, within the emigrant's hut, the all-encompassing forest had but changed its shape. Man had but pressed it into his service; from a foe it had become a friend; the wooden realm paid tribute, being subjugated.
The still life of the cabin was rude enough. No appliances for ease, not many for comfort, as we in England understand the words. Yet the settler's wife, sitting by her wheel, and dressed in the home-spun fruits thereof, had a well-to-do blooming aspect, which gaslight and merino could not have improved; and the settler's boy, building a miniature shanty of chips in the corner, his mottled skin testifying to all sorts of weather-beating, looking as happy as if he had a toyshop at his command, instead of the word being utterly unknown in his experience; and the baby, rolled up in the hollowed pine-log, slept as sweetly as if satin curtains enclosed its rest. Back to Sam Holt's mind recurred words which he knew well:'A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth.'
The woman rose and curtsied. She had not been accustomed to make that respectful gesture for a long time back; but something in the appearance of the strangers half involuntarily constrained it.
'I needn't ask if you're Canadian born,' said Mr. Holt; 'you've the manners of the old country.'
'My father and mother were from Wiltshire, and so be I,' she answered, setting back her wheel, and looking gratified at the implied commendation. 'But that be so long ago as I scarce remember.'
'And she made amends by marrying me,' said the settler, entering from the outer door, and latching it behind him. 'Mary, get the pan and fix some supper quick. Them duck I shot won't be bad. You see, I've been expectin' you along rather;' and he flung down an armful of wood, which he began to arrange with architectural reference to the back-log and fore-stick.
'Expecting us?' exclaimed Robert Wynn.
'You're for lot fifteen in ninth concession, township of Gazelle? Wall, so I guessed; for I heard from Zack Bunting who lives at the "Corner," that it was sold by Landenstein; and I calc'lated you'd be along presently:' and he finished his fire-building by a touch with his foot, which appeared to demolish much of his labour, but in reality conduced to his object of intensifying the heat and blaze.
'Benny,' to the boy, who had sat on the ground staring at the new-comers, 'go tell your mother to be spry.' The little fellow went accordingly, by the side door through which she had disappeared a few minutespreviously; and the Irish servant, planting himself on the vacated spot with his toes to the fire comfortably, commenced to erect of the child's chips a two-storied mansion.
'You've got a good slice of bush there, back from the pond; though the cedars will be troublesome, I guess.'
'Oh, we bargained for the cedars,' said Sam Holt. 'There's enough to clear without laying an axe tothemfor many a day.'
'It's all the doing of that spring creek, running through the middle of the lot, as fine a water-privilege as ever I see; but the cedars are where it gets to the pond. If the bed was deepened down below, it's my opinion the swamp would be drained.'
'You seem to know the ground well,' said Robert, with interest.
'I guess I ought to, that have shot over it before ever a blazed line ran through them woods. We was farthest west once, but that's over by a long spell; the neighbourhood's pretty thick now, and the "Corner" will be a town shortly.'
'Well, if this is a thick neighbourhood, I should like to know his idea of a thin one,' said Arthur,sotto voce, to Sam Holt. 'We have met only this house for miles.'
'Oh, they ain't many miles, only you thought they was, cos' I guess you ain't used to the stumps,' put in the settler. 'The back lot to ours, of the same number, is took by a Scotchman, and last week I run a blazed line across to his clearing through the bush; for you see I'm often away, trapping or still-hunting, and Mary here thought she'd be a trifle less lonesome if she had a way of going over the hill to her friendMrs. Macpherson. The other way is round by the "Corner," which makes it five miles full; but now Benny can run across of a message, by minding the marks; can't you, my lad?'
'Yes, father,' answered the boy proudly. 'And I can chop a blaze myself, too.' Benny was not much taller than an axe handle.
Arthur looked from the child round at the wife, who was often left alone in this solitude of woods, and longed for the slender chain of a scarred line of trees between her and some other woman. A healthy, firm outline of face, wholly unacquainted with nervousness; quiet, self-reliant, hard-working; perhaps of a Dutch type of character. Her husband was a sturdy broad-set man, with lithe limbs, and quick senses looking out from his clear-featured countenance: he had a roving unsubdued eye, befitting the hunter more than the farmer.
'I wouldn't desire,' said the latter, seating himself on the end of the table, while his wife superintended a pan of frizzling pork on the coals—'I wouldn't desire, for a feller that wanted to settle down for good, a more promising location than yourn at the Cedars. The high ground grows the very best sorts of hard wood—oak, sugar maple, elm, basswood. Not too many beech, or I'd expect sand; with here and there a big pine and a handful of balsams. The underbrushing ain't much, except in the swamp.'
'I'm glad to hear that,' said Mr. Holt, 'for the fall is going fast, and we'll have to work pretty hard before snow comes.'
'So I'm thinkin'. Butyouain't going to settle: you haven't the cut of it: you're settled already.'
'How do you know?'
'Oh, you didn't listen as they did,' pointing his thumb towards the Wynns, 'when I fell to talkin' of the ground. I know'd my men at once. Nor you didn't stare about as they did, as if the house and fixins was a show at a copper ahead.'
'You must excuse our curiosity,' said Robert politely.
'Surely; every man that has eyes is welcome to use 'em,' replied the backwoodsman bluntly. 'We ain't got no manners in the bush, nor don't want 'em, as I tell Mary here, when she talks any palaver. Now, wife, them pritters must be done;' and he left his seat on the table to pry over her pan.
'Then take the cakes out of the bake-kettle, will you?' said Mary; 'and if them ducks be raw, 'tain't my fault, remember.' She was evidently a woman of few words, but trenchant.
Thus warned, her husband did not press the point, but took the stewing fowl under his own care, displaying a practical experience of cookery won in many a day of bush life.
'These duck was shot on your pond, stranger; if you be a good hand with the gun, you'll never want for fresh meat while that water holds together. The finest maskelonge and pickerel I ever see was hooked out of it.'
Arthur's face brightened; for the sportsman instinct was strong in him, and he had been disappointed hitherto by finding the woods along their track empty of game.
''Cos the critters have more sense than to wait by the road to be shot,' explained the backwoodsman, ashe dished up his stew—a sort of hodgepodge of wild-fowl, the theory of which would have horrified an epicure; but the practical effect was most savoury.
Now the boy Benny had never in his small life seen any edifice nobler than a loghouse on the ground-floor; and the upper storey which Mr. Callaghan had built with his chips seemed to him as queer a phenomenon as a man having two heads.
'Well, only think of that!' exclaimed Andy; 'the boy doesn't know what a stairs is.'
'And how should he?' asked the father, rather sharply. 'He ha'n't seen nothin' but the bush. One time I took him to Greenock, and he couldn't stop wonderin' what med all the houses come together. For all that, he ha'n't a bad notion of chopping, and can drive a span of oxen, and is growin' up as hardy as my rifle—eh, Benny?'
'He cut all the wood I wanted while you were away last time, Peter,' chimed in the mother. So the strangers saw that the principle which leads parents to bore their unoffending visitors with copybooks and the 'Battle of Prague,' is applicable to backwood accomplishments also.
As a general rule, conversation does not flourish in the bush. The settler's isolated life is not favourable to exchange of thought, and events are few. Silence had fallen upon the woman in this house to a remarkable degree, and become incorporated with her. She went about her work quietly and quickly, speaking but five sentences in the course of the evening. The last of these was to notify to her husband that 'the skins was ready.'
'We've no beds,' said he, with equal curtness.'You must try and be snug in a wrap-up on the floor to-night. More logs, Benny;' and additional wood was heaped down, while he brought forward a bundle of bear and buffalo skins, enough to blanket them all. Mary had already picked up the pine-log containing her baby, and taken it into the other room out of sight, whither her husband followed; and Benny crept into a sort of bed-closet in the far corner.
All night long, through the outer darkness, came a sound as of a limitless sea upon a lonely strand. Robert knew it for the wind wandering in the forest, and even in his home dreams it mingled a diapason, until the early sun gleamed through the chinks of the door, and flung a ray across his face. Simultaneously the poultry outside and the infant within woke up, commencing their several noises; and the farmer, coming out, built up the fire, and hung down the bake-kettle to heat for the breakfast bread. Then he invited his company to 'a wash' at the spring; and, leading them by a wood path beside the house, they came to a pellucid pool fed by a rivulet, which, after flowing over its basin, ran off rapidly to lower ground. Here Benny was flung in by his father, though the water was quite deep enough to drown him; but he dived, and came out buoyant as a coot.
'Now go fetch the cow, my lad, and help your mother to fix breakfast, while we walk round the clearing.' But this morning she had an efficient coadjutor in the person of Andy Callaghan, who dandled the baby while the cakes were being made, his sharp eye learning a lesson meantime; and milkedthe cow while the child was being dressed; and cut slices of pork, superintending its frizzling while the room was being set to rights. Three or four attempts to draw the silent woman into conversation were utterly abortive.
'Troth, an' you're a jewil of a wife,' remarked the Irishman, when everything seemed done. 'I'll engage I won't have the good luck to get one wid her tongue in such good ordher.'
Mary Logan laughed. 'It be from having no folk to talk with,' she said.
'An' a sin an' a shame it is for himself to lave you alone,' rejoined Andy, looking complimentary. 'Now I want to know one thing that has been botherin' me ever since I came in here. What's them strings of yallow stuff that are hangin' out of the rafthers, an' are like nothin' I see in all my days, 'cept shavin's?'
'Sarce,' answered Mrs. Logan, looking up; 'them's sarce.'
'I'm as wise as ever,' said Andy. Whereupon she went to the compartment which acted as store-closet, and, bringing out a pie which had a wooden spoon erect in it, proffered him a bit.
'Ah,' quoth Mr. Callaghan with satisfaction, 'that's English talk; I know what that manes well. So ye calls apples "sarce!" I've heerd tell that every counthry has a lingo of its own, an' I partly b'lieve it now. But throth, that way of savin' 'em would be great news intirely for the childer at home!'
So thought Robert Wynn afterwards, when he found the practice almost universal among the Canadians, and wondered that a domestic expedient so simpleand serviceable should be confined to American housekeepers.
'Peter planted an orchard the first thing when we settled, and maples be plenty in the bush,' said Mrs. Logan, with unusual communicativeness.
'Yes, ma'am,' rejoined Andy suavely, and not in the least seeing the connection between maple trees and apple-pie. 'I wondher might I make bould to ax you for one of them sthrings? they're sich a curiosity to me.' And he had the cord of leathern pieces stowed away in one of the provision hampers before the others came in from the fields.
There they had seen the invariable abundance and wastefulness of bush-farming; no trace of the economy of land, which need perforce be practised in older countries, but an extravagance about the very zigzag fences, which unprofitably occupied, with a succession of triangular borderings, as much space as would make scores of garden beds. 'Nobody cares for the selvedges when there is a whole continent to cut from,' remarked Sam Holt, in a sententious way he had.
A yield of from twenty to five-and-twenty bushels per acre of wheat, and two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes, were mentioned by the farmer as an average crop. His barns and root-house were full to repletion. Nothing of all this property was locked up: a latch on the door sufficed.
'I suppose, then, you have no rogues in the bush?' said Robert.
'Where everybody's as well off as another, there ain't no thievin',' was the pithy answer. 'A wolf now and then among our sheep, is all the robbers we has.'
After breakfast the bullocks were yoked afresh.
'I guess as how you've stumps before you to-day, a few,' said the farmer, coming out axe on shoulder. ''Tain't only a blaze up beyond your place at the Cedars, and not much better than a track of regulation width from the "Corner" to there. Only for that job of underbrushing I want to get finished, I'd be along with you to-day.'
He and his boy Benny walked with the travellers so far as their way lay together. The wife stood at the door, shading her eyes with her hand, till the lumbering waggon was lost to view round the edge of the woods.
The day's journey was just a repetition of yesterday's, with the stumps and the mud holes rather worse. The 'Corner' with its single sawmill and store, offered no inducement for a halt; and a tedious two miles farther brought them to 'hum.'
'W
ell!' exclaimed Robert Wynn, 'here is my estate; and neither pond, nor swamp, nor yet spring creek do I behold.'
He looked again at the landmark—an elm tree at the junction of the lot line and the concession road, which bore the numbers of each, 'Nine, Fifteen,' in very legible figures on opposite sides. A 'blaze' had been made by chopping away a slice of the bark with an axe about three feet from the ground, and on the white space the numbers were marked by the surveyor. All roads through the forest, and all farm allotments, are first outlined in this way, before the chopper sets to work.
The new townships in Upper Canada are laid out in parallel lines, running nearly east and west, sixty-six chains apart, and sixty-six feet in width, which are termed concession lines, being conceded by Government as road allowances. These lands thus enclosed are subdivided into lots of two hundred acres by other lines, which strike the concession roads at right angles every thirty chains; and every fifth of theselot lines is also a cross-road. We have all looked at maps of the country, and wondered at the sort of chess-board counties which prevail in the back settlements: the same system of parallelograms extends to the farms.
Robert's face was a little rueful. Twenty yards in any direction he could not see for the overpowering bush, except along the line of road darkened with endless forest. The waggon was being unpacked, for the driver sturdily declared that his agreement had been only to bring them as far as this post on the concession: he must go back to the 'Corner' that evening, on his way home.
'An' is it on the road ye'll lave the masther's things?' remonstrated Andy.
'I guess we han't no masters here, Pat,' was the reply; 'but if you see anywar else to stow the traps, I ain't partic'ler.' And he stolidly continued unloading.
'Come,' said the cheery voice of Sam Holt, 'we will have daylight enough to explore the lot, and select a site for a camp. I think I can discover the tops of cedars over the hardwood trees here. The boxes will take care of themselves, unless a squirrel takes into his head to inspect them. Let's follow the concession line along westward first.'
Callaghan stayed by the luggage, feeling by no means sure of its safety, and saw the rest of the party gradually receding among the trees, with sensations akin to those of a sailor on a desert island. Sitting upon the tool-chest, like an item of property saved from a wreck, Andy looked from the base to the summit of the huge walls of forest that encompassed him, andalong the canal of sky overhead, till his countenance had fallen to zero.
The shipwrecked sensation had gone farther; Mr. Holt saw it lurking in other faces, and forthwith found all advantages possible in the lot. The soil was sure to be the best: he could tell by the timber. Its height proved the depth of earth. When the trees grew shorter, a hidden treasure of limestone flag lay beneath the surface, useful for drains and building. And even the entangled cedar swamp was most desirable, as furnishing the best wood for rail-fences and logs for a house.
But nothing could look more unpromising. Blackish pools of water alternated with a network of massive roots all over the soil, underneath broad evergreen branches; trunks of trees leaned in every direction, as if top-heavy. Wilder confusion of thicket could not be conceived. 'The cedars troublesome! I should think so,' groaned their owner.
'This is the worst bit,' acknowledged Sam. 'Now, if we could see it, the lake is down yonder; perhaps if we strike a diagonal across the lot, we may come to some rising ground.' With the pocket compass for guide they left the blazed line, which they had followed hitherto. After a short distance the bush began to thin, and the forest twilight brightened.
'A beaver meadow!' exclaimed Sam Holt, who was foremost. Green as emerald, the small semicircular patch of grass lay at the foot of gentle slopes, as if it had once been a lakelet itself. 'Two acres ready cleared, with the finest dairy grass only waiting to be eaten,' continued encouraging Sam. 'And the clearing on the hill will command the best view in the township;there's the site for your house, Wynn. Altogether you've had rare luck in this lot.'
'But why is that green flat called abeavermeadow?' asked Robert.
'Do you see the creek running alongside? No, you can't for the underbrush; but it's there all the same. Well, they say that long ago beavers dammed up the current in such places as this with clay and brushwood, so that the water spread over all level spaces near; and when the Indians and French were at war, the red men cut away the dams and killed the beavers wholesale to spite their enemies. You're to take that just as anon dit, recollect.'
'And is all that verdure an appearance or a reality?'
'Something of both. I don't say but you will occasionally find it treacherous footing, needing drainage to be comfortable. See! there's the pond at last.'
They had been climbing out of the denser woods, among a younger growth on the face of the slope; and when they turned, the sheet of water was partially visible over the sunken cedar swamp.
'A pond!' exclaimed Arthur; 'why, it must be three miles across to those limestone cliffs. What pretty islets! Such endless varieties of wood and water!'
'I think we Americans are rather given to the diminutive style of parlance,' quoth Mr. Holt. 'We have some justification in the colossal proportion of all the features of nature around us. What is this pretty lake but a mere pool, compared with our Erie and Superior?'
PREPARING_FOR_THE_FIRST_NIGHT_IN_THE_BUSH.PREPARING FOR THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE BUSH.Click toENLARGE
'It is one of a chain,' remarked Robert, taking from his breast pocket a map of the district, which had hisown farm heavily scored in red ink. Often had he contemplated that outline of theterra incognitaon which he now trod, and longed for the knowledge he now possessed, which, after its manner, had brought him both good and evil. Like balls threaded on a cord, a succession of lakes, connected by cascades and portages, or by reaches of river, stretched away to the north-west, sorely marring the uniformity of the chess-board townships.
As they picked their way back along the lot line northward, Mr. Holt stopped suddenly. 'I hear a very singular noise,' he said, 'for which I am wholly at a loss to account, unless there be Indians about in the neighbourhood. Even then it is totally unlike their cries. Listen!'
His sharper senses had detected before theirs a distant wail, proceeding from some distance in front, apparently—weird and wild as it could be, dying away or surging upon the ear as the wind swept it hither or thither. Arthur shrugged his shoulders. 'You have no ghosts in these forests, Holt, I suppose?'
'The country's too new for anything of the sort,' replied he gravely.
'Nor any mocking birds that can be playing us a trick? Or dryads warning us off their territory?'
He had recognised the performance of Andy Callaghan, who, when they turned the corner of the allotment, was discovered seated on the boxes as when they saw him last, and crooning the dismalest melody. But he had, in the meantime, recovered himself sufficiently to gather brushwood, and kindle a fire beside the road; likewise to cook a panful of rashers as the shadows grew longer and the day later.
'But sure I thought ye wor lost entirely; sure I thought ye wor never comin' at all, Masther Robert, avourneen. 'Twas that med me rise the keen. A single livin' thing I didn't lay my eyes on since, barrin' a big frog. I'm afeard thim are like sticks, Masther Arthur, they're so long fryin'.'
'No matter, Andy, they'll do first-rate. I'd only advise you to chop up more. I feel like eating all that myself;' and, trencher on knee, they dined with real backwood appetites.
A shelter for the night was the next consideration. Mr. Holt constituted himself architect, and commenced operations by lashing a pole across two trees at about his own height; the others cut sticks and shrubs for roofing. Three young saplings sloped back to the ground as principal rafters, and on these were laid a thatch of brushwood; the open ends of the hut were filled with the same material.
'Now,' said Sam Holt, contemplating the work of his hands with professional pride, 'when we have a big fire built in front, and a lot of hemlock brush to lie on, we shall be pretty comfortable.'
And he instructed his novices further in the art of making their couch luxuriously agreeable, by picking the hemlock fine, and spreading over it a buffalo skin. Sam Holt had evidently become acquainted with 'considerable' bush lore at his University of Toronto.
T
hree men stood with their axes amid the primeval forest. Vast trunks rose around them to an altitude of thirty or even fifty feet without a bough; above, 'a boundless contiguity of shade,' and below, a dense undergrowth of shrubs, which seemed in some places impenetrable jungle. Three axes against thirty thousand trees. The odds were immensely in the dryads' favour; the pines and hardwoods might have laughed in every leaf at the puny power threatening their immemorial empire, and settled thatvis inertiæalone must overcome.
If, as Tennyson has bestowed upon the larkspur ears, the higher vegetation can listen also, the following conversation would that day have been heard from the triad of axe-men beginning their campaign against the forest, and 'bating no jot of heart or hope' in the contest.
'Here's the site for your shanty,' said Mr. Holt, dealing a blow on a fine maple before him, which left a white scar along the bark. 'It has the double advantage of being close to this fine spring creek, and sufficiently near the concession line.'
'And I'm sanguine enough to believe that there will be a view at some future period,' added Robert, 'when we have hewed through some hundred yards of solid timber in front. By the way, Holt, why are all the settlers' locations I have yet seen in the country so destitute of wood about them? A man seems to think it his duty to extirpate everything that grows higher than a pumpkin; one would imagine it ought to be easy enough to leave clumps of trees in picturesque spots, so as to produce the effect of the ornamental plantations at home. Now I do not mean exclusively the lowest grade of settlers, for of course from them so much taste was not to be expected; but gentlemen farmers and such like.'
'I dare say they contract such an antipathy to wood of every species during their years of clearing, that it is thenceforth regarded as a natural enemy, to be cut down wherever met with. And when you have seen one of our Canadian hurricanes, you will understand why an umbrageous elm or a majestic oak near one's dwellings may not always be a source of pleasurable sensations.'
'Still, I mean to spare that beautiful butternut yonder,' said Robert; 'of all trees in the forest it is prettiest. And I shall try to clear altogether in an artistic manner, with an eye to the principles of landscape gardening. Why, Holt! many an Englishparvenuplanning the grounds of his country seat, and contemplating the dwarf larches and infantine beeches struggling for thirty years to maturity, would give a thousand guineas for some of these lordly oaks and walnuts, just as they stand.'
Sam Holt refrained from expressing his convictionthat, after a winter's chopping, Robert would retract his admiration for timber in any shape, and would value more highly a bald-looking stumpy acre prepared for fall wheat, than the most picturesque maple-clump, except so far as the latter boded sugar.
'To leave landscape gardening for after consideration,' said he, with some slight irony, 'let us apply ourselves at present to the shanty. I think, by working hard, we might have walls and roof up before dark. Twenty by twelve will probably be large enough for the present—eh, Robert?'
Oh yes, certainly; for the house was to be commenced so soon, that the shanty could be regarded only as a temporary shelter. Blessed, labour-lightening sanguineness of youth! that can bound over intermediate steps of toil, and accomplish in a few thoughts the work of months or years.
So Mr. Holt measured the above dimensions on the ground, choosing a spot where the trunks appeared something less massive, than elsewhere, and set his auxiliaries to cut down all the trees within the oblong, and for a certain distance round; arranging also that the logs should fall as near as might be to where they were wanted for the walls.
Now, the settler's first-felled tree is to him like a schoolboy's first Latin declension, or a lawyer's first brief—the pledge of ability, the earnest of future performances. Every success braces the nerves of mind, as well as the muscles of body. A victory over the woodland was embodied in that fallen maple. But Andy was so near getting smashed in the coming down of his tree, that Mr. Holt ordered him to lay by theaxe, and bring his spade, to dig a hole in a certain spot within the oblong.
'An' its mighty harmless that crathur 'ud be agin the wood,' muttered the Irishman; 'throth, the earth in this counthry is mostly timber. An' in the name of wondher what does he want wid a hole, barrin' we're to burrow like rabbits?'
But the others were too busy felling or chopping trees into lengths of log to heed Andy's wonderment; and the novices were agreeably surprised to find how dexterous they became in the handling of the axe, after even a few hours' practice. Their spirits rose; for 'nothing succeeds like success,' saith the Frenchman.
'Now I'll give you a lesson in basswood troughs,' said Mr. Holt. 'This shanty of yours is to be roofed with a double layer of troughs laid hollow to hollow; and we choose basswood because it is the easiest split and scooped. Shingle is another sort of roofing, and that must be on your house; but troughs are best for the shanty. See here; first split the log fair in the middle; then hollow the flat side with the adze.'
Robert was practising his precepts busily, when he was almost startled by a strange nasal voice beside him.
'Considerable well for a beginner; but I guess you put a powerful deal too much strength in yer strokes yet, stranger.'
The speaker was a tall lank man, with black hair to correspond, and lantern jaws; little cunning eyes, and a few scrubby patches of rusty stubble on chin and cheeks. Robert disliked him at once.
'Why didn't you stop at the "Corner" yesterday?'Twarn't neighbourly to go on right away like that. But it all come, I reckon, of Britisher pride and impudence.'
Robert looked at him full, and demanded, 'Pray who are you, sir?'
'Zack Bunting as keeps the store,' replied the other. 'I'm not ashamed neither of my name nor country, which is the U—nited States, under the glorious stars and stripes. I come up to help in raising the shanty, as I guessed you'd be at it to-day.'
Young Wynn hardly knew what to reply to such an odd mixture of insolence and apparent kindness. The Yankee took the adze from his hand before he could speak, and set about hollowing troughs very rapidly.
'You chop, and I'll scoop, for a start. Now I guess you hain't been used to this sort of thing, when you was to hum? You needn't hardly tell, for white hands like yourn there ain't o' much use nohow in the bush. You must come down a peg, I reckon, and let 'em blacken like other folks, and grow kinder hard, afore they'll take to the axe properly. How many acres do you intend to clear this winter?'
'As many as I can.'
'Humph! you should blaze 'em off all round, and work 'em reglar. You han't more than a month's "brushing" now. Are you married?'
'No,' replied Robert, waxing fierce internally at this catechism. 'Are you?' by way of retaliation.
'This twenty year. Raised most of our family in the States. The old woman's spry enough yet, as you'll see when you come to the "Corner."'
All this time Mr. Bunting was chewing tobacco,and discharging the fluid about with marvellous copiousness, at intervals. Robert thought his dried-up appearance capable of explanation. 'What made you come to settle in the bush?' was his next question.
'Holt!' called out Robert, quite unable patiently to endure any further cross-examination; and he walked away through the trees to say to his friend,—'There's an intolerable Yankee yonder, splitting troughs as fast as possible, but his tongue is more than I can bear.'
'Leave him to me,' answered Sam; 'his labour is worth a little annoyance, anyhow. I'll fix him.' But he quietly continued at his own work, notwithstanding, and kept Robert beside him.
Mr. Bunting speedily tired of manufacturing the basswood troughs alone, and sloped over to the group who were raising the walls of the shanty.
'Wal, I guess you're gitting along considerable smart,' he observed, after a lengthened stare, which amused Arthur highly for the concentration of inquisitiveness it betrayed. ''Tain't an easy job for greenhorns nohow; but you take to it kinder nateral, like the wood-duck to the pond.' He chewed awhile, watching Sam's proceedings narrowly. 'I guess this ain't your first time of notching logs, by a long chalk, stranger?'
'Perhaps so, perhaps not,' was the reply. 'Here, lend a hand with this stick, Mr. Bunting.'
Zack took his hands from the pockets of his lean rusty trousers, and helped to fit the log to its place on the front wall, which, in a shanty, is always higher than the back, making a fall to the roof. Mr. Holtmanaged to keep the Yankee so closely employed during the next hour, that he took out of him the work of two, and utterly quenched his loquacity for the time being. 'He shall earn his dinner, at all events,' quoth Sam to himself.
'Wal, stranger, youarea close shave,' said Zack, sitting down to rest, and fanning himself with a dirty brownish rag by way of handkerchief. 'I hain't worked so hard at any "bee" this twelve month. You warn't born last week, I guess.'
'I reckon not,' replied Sam, receiving the compliment as conscious merit should. 'But we're not half done, Mr. Bunting; and I'd like such a knowledgeable head as yours to help fix the troughs.'
'Oil for oil in this world,' thought Robert.
'Throth, they'll build me up entirely,' said Andy to himself; 'an' sorra door to get out or in by, only four walls an' a hole in the middle of the floor. Of all the quare houses that iver I see, this shanty bates them hollow. Masther Robert,' calling aloud, 'I wondher have I dug deep enough?'
'Come out here, and get dinner,' was the response. 'We'll see to-morrow.'
''Tis asier said than done,' remarked Andy, looking for a niche between the logs to put his foot in. 'I hope this isn't the way we'll always have to be clamberin' into our house; but sorra other way do I see, barrin' the hole's to be a passage ondherground.'
'You goose! the hole is to be a cellar, wherein to keep potatoes and pork,' said his master, overhearing the tale of his soliloquy. Andy departed to his cookery enlightened.
Before the pan had done frizzling, whole rows ofthe ready-made troughs were laid along the roof, sloping from the upper wall plate to the back; and Mr. Bunting had even begun to place the covering troughs with either edge of the hollow curving into the centre of that underneath. Robert and Arthur were chinking the walls by driving pieces of wood into every crevice between the logs: moss and clay for a further stuffing must be afterwards found.
If the Yankee were quick at work, he fulfilled the other sequent of the adage likewise. His dinner was almost a sleight-of-hand performance. Arthur could hardly eat his own for concealed amusement at the gulf-like capacity of his mouth, and the astonishing rapidity with which the eatables vanished.
'While you'd be sayin' "thrapstick," he tucked in a quarter of a stone of praties and a couple of pound of rashers,' said Andy afterwards. 'Before the gintlemen was half done, he was picking his long yellow teeth wid a pin, an' discoorsin' 'em as impident as if he was a gintleman himself, the spalpeen!'
All unwitting of the storm gathering in the person of the cook, Mr. Bunting did indulge in some free and easy reflections upon Britishers in general, and the present company in particular; also of the same cook's attendance during their meal.
'Now I guess we free-born Americans don't be above having our helps to eat with us; we ain't poor and proud, as that comes to. But I'll see ye brought down to it, or my name's not Zack Bunting. It tickles me to see aristocrats like ye at work—rael hard work, to take the consait out of ye; and if I was this feller,' glancing at Andy, 'I'd make tracks if ye didn't give me my rights, smart enough.'
The glow in the Irish servant's eyes was not to be mistaken.
'I guess I've riled you a bit,' added the Yankee wonderingly.
'An' what's my rights, sir, if yer honour would be plasin' to tell me?' asked Andy, with mock obsequiousness; 'for I donno of a single one this minit, barrin' to do what my master bids me.'
'Because I calc'late you've been raised in them mean opinions, an' to think yerself not as good flesh an' blood as the aristocrats that keep you in bondage.'
'Come now,' interrupted Sam Holt, 'you shut up, Mr. Bunting. It's no bondage to eat one's dinner afterwards; and he'll be twice as comfortable.'
'That's thrue,' said Andy; 'I never yet could ate my bit in presence of the quality; so that's one right I'd forgive; and as for me—the likes ofme—bein' as good blood as the Masther Wynns of Dunore, I'd as soon think the Yankee was himself.'
With sovereign contempt, Andy turned his back on Mr. Bunting, and proceeded to cook his dinner.
'Wal, it's the first time I see a feller's dander riz for tellin' him he's as good as another,' remarked Zack, sauntering in the wake of the others towards the unfinished shanty. 'I reckon it's almost time for me to make tracks to hum; the ole woman will be lookin' out. But I say, stranger, what are you going to do with that heaver meadow below on the creek? It's a choice slice of pasture that.'
'Cut the grass in summer,' replied Sam Holt, tolerably sure of what was coming.
'I've as fine a red heifer,' said the Yankee confidentially, 'as ever was milked, and I'd let you haveit, being a new-comer, and not up to the ways of the country, very cheap.' His little black eyes twinkled. 'I'd like to drive a trade with you, I would; for she's a rael prime article.'
'Thank you,' said Mr. Holt, 'but we don't contemplate dairy farming as yet.' Zack could not be rebuffed under half-a-dozen refusals. 'Wal, if you won't trade, you'll be wantin' fixins from the store, an' I have most everythin' in stock. Some of my lads will be along to see you to-morrow, I reckon, and any whisky or tobacco you wanted they could bring; and if you chose to run a bill'—
Refused also, with thanks, as the magazines say to rejected contributions. This, then, was the purport of Mr. Bunting's visit: to gratify curiosity; to drive a trade; to estimate the new settlers' worldly wealth, in order to trust or not, as seemed prudent. While at dinner he had taken a mental inventory and valuation of the boxes and bales about, submitting them to a closer examination where possible. At the time Robert thought it simply an indulgence of inordinate curiosity, but the deeper motive of self-interest lay behind.
'In their own phrase, that fellow can see daylight,' remarked Mr. Holt, as Zack's lean figure disappeared among the trees. 'I never saw little eyes, set in a parenthesis of yellow crowsfeet at the corners, that did not betoken cunning.'