Part 16 (2/2)
Both girls and boys seemed to act upon the principle, that nothing is disgraceful but that which is immoral and improper.
Hospitality without extravagance, kindness without insincerity of speech, marked the manners of our worthy friends. Every thing in the house was conducted with attention to prudence and comfort. The living was but small (the income arising from it, I should have said), but there was glebe land, and a small dwelling attached to it, and, by dint of active exertion without-doors, and economy and good management within, the family were maintained with respectability: in short, we enjoyed during our sojourn many of the comforts of a cleared farm; poultry of every kind, beef of their own killing, excellent mutton and pork: we had a variety of preserves at our tea-table, with honey in the comb, delicious b.u.t.ter, and good cheese, with divers sorts of cakes; a kind of little pancake, made from the flour of buck-wheat, which are made in a batter, and raised with barm, afterwards dropped into boiling lard, and fried; also a preparation made of Indian corn-flour, called supp.o.r.ne-cake, which is fried in slices, and eaten with maple-syrup, were among the novelties of our breakfast-fare.
I was admiring a breed of very fine fowls in the poultry-yard one morning, when my friend smiled and said, ”I do not know if you will think I came honestly by them.”
”I am sure you did not acquire them by dishonest means,” I replied, laughing; ”I will vouch for your principles in that respect.”
”Well,” replied my hostess, ”they were neither given me, nor sold to me, and I did not steal them. I found the original stock in the following manner. An old black hen most unexpectedly made her appearance one spring morning at our door; we hailed the stranger with surprise and delight; for we could not muster a single domestic fowl among our little colony at that time. We never rightly knew by what means the hen came into our possession, but suppose some emigrant's family going up the country must have lost or left her; she laid ten eggs, and hatched chickens from them; from this little brood we raised a stock, and soon supplied all our neighbours with fowls. We prize the breed, not only on account of its fine size, but from the singular, and, as we thought, providential, manner in which we obtained it.”
I was much interested in the slight sketch given by the pastor one evening, as we all a.s.sembled round the blazing log-fire, that was piled half-way up the chimney, which reared its stone fabric so as to form deep recesses at either side of its abutments.
Alluding to his first settlement, he observed, ”it was a desolate wilderness of gloomy and unbroken forest-trees when we first pitched our tent here: at that time an axe had not been laid to the root of a tree, nor a fire, save by the wandering Indians, kindled in these woods.
”I can now point out the identical spot where my wife and little ones ate their first meal, and raised their feeble voices in thankfulness to that Almighty and merciful Being who had preserved them through the perils of the deep, and brought them in safety to this vast solitude.
”We were a little flock wandering in a great wilderness, under the special protection of our mighty Shepherd.
”I have heard you, my dear young lady,” he said, addressing the companion of my visit, ”talk of the hards.h.i.+ps of the bush; but, let me tell you, you know but little of its privations compared with those that came hither some years ago.
”Ask these, my elder children and my wife, what were the hards.h.i.+ps of a bush-settler's life ten years ago, and they will tell you it was to endure cold, hunger, and all its accompanying evils; to know at times the want of every necessary article of food. As to the luxuries and delicacies of life, we saw them not;--how could we? we were far removed from the opportunity of obtaining these things: potatoes, pork, and flour were our only stores, and often we failed of the two latter before a fresh supply could be procured. We had not mills nearer than thirteen miles, through roads marked only by blazed lines; nor were there at that time any settlers near us. Now you see us in a cleared country, surrounded with flouris.h.i.+ng farms and rising villages; but at the time I speak of it was not so: there were no stores of groceries or goods, no butchers' shops, no cleared farms, dairies, nor orchards; for these things we had to wait with patience till industry should raise them.
”Our fare knew no other variety than salt pork, potatoes, and sometimes bread, for breakfast; pork and potatoes for dinner; pork and potatoes for supper; with a porridge of Indian corn-flour for the children.
Sometimes we had the change of pork without potatoes, and potatoes without pork; this was the first year's fare: by degrees we got a supply of flour of our own growing, but bruised into a coa.r.s.e meal with a hand- mill; for we had no water or windmills within many miles of our colony, and good bread was indeed a luxury we did not often have.
”We brought a cow with us, who gave us milk during the spring and summer; but owing to the wild garlic (a wild herb, common to our woods), on which she fed, her milk was scarcely palatable, and for want of shelter and food, she died the following winter, greatly to our sorrow: we learned experience in this and in many other matters at a hard cost; but now we can profit by it.”
”Did not the difficulties of your first settlement incline you to despond, and regret that you had ever embarked on a life so different to that you had been used to?” I asked.
”They might have had that effect had not a higher motive than mere worldly advancement actuated me in leaving my native country to come hither. Look you, it was thus: I had for many years been the pastor of a small village in the mining districts of c.u.mberland. I was dear to the hearts of my people, and they were my joy and crown in the Lord. A number of my paris.h.i.+oners, pressed by poverty and the badness of the times, resolved on emigrating to Canada.
”Urged by a natural and not unlawful desire of bettering their condition, they determined on crossing the Atlantic, encouraged by the offer of considerable grants of wild land, which at that period were freely awarded by Government to persons desirous of becoming colonists.
”But previous to this undertaking, several of the most respectable came to me, and stated their views and reasons for the momentous step they were about to take; and at the same time besought me in the most moving terms, in the name of the rest of their emigrant friends, to accompany them into the Wilderness of the West, lest they should forget their Lord and Saviour when abandoned to their own spiritual guidance.
”At first I was startled at the proposition; it seemed a wild and visionary scheme: but by degrees I began to dwell with pleasure on the subject. I had few ties beyond my native village; the income arising from my curacy was too small to make it any great obstacle: like Goldsmith's curate, I was.
'Pa.s.sing rich with forty pounds a year.'
My heart yearned after my people; ten years I had been their guide and adviser. I was the friend of the old, and the teacher of the young. My Mary was chosen from among them; she had no foreign ties to make her look back with regret upon the dwellers of the land in distant places; her youth and maturity had been spent among these very people; so that when I named to her the desire of my paris.h.i.+oners, and she also perceived that my own wishes went with them, she stifled any regretful feeling that might have arisen in her breast, and replied to me in the words of Ruth:--
”'Thy country shall be my country; thy people shall be my people; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.'
”A tender and affectionate partner hast thou been to me, Mary,” he added, turning his eyes affectionately on the mild and dignified matron, whose expressive countenance bespoke with more eloquence than words the feelings pa.s.sing in her mind. She replied not by words, but I saw the big bright tears fall on the work she held in her hand. They sprang from emotions too sacred to be profaned by intrusive eyes, and I hastily averted my glance from her face; while the pastor proceeded to narrate the particulars of their leaving England, their voyage, and finally, their arrival in the land that had been granted to the little colony in the then unbroken part of the towns.h.i.+p of ------.
”We had obtained a great deal of useful advice and a.s.sistance from the Government agents previous to our coming up hither, and also hired some choppers at high wages to initiate us in the art of felling, logging, burning, and clearing the ground; as it was our main object to get in crops of some kind, we turned to without any delay further than what was necessary for providing a temporary shelter for our wives and children, and prepared the ground for spring crops, helping each other as we could with the loan of oxen and labour. And here I must observe, that I experienced every attention and consideration from my friends. My means were small, and my family all too young to render me any service; however, I lacked not help, and had the satisfaction of seeing a little spot cleared for the growth of potatoes and corn, which I could not have effected by my single exertions.
”My biggest boy John was but nine years old, Willie seven, and the others still more helpless; the two little ones you see there,” pointing to two young children, ”have been born since we came hither. That yellow-haired la.s.sie knitting beside you was a babe at the breast;--a helpless, wailing infant, so weak and sickly before we came here that she was scarcely ever out of her mother's arms; but she grew and throve rapidly under the rough treatment of a bush-settler's family.
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