EMPLOYMENTS OF A MAN OF EDUCATION IN THE COLONY.—YANKEE WEDDING.—MY
COMMISSION.—WINTER IN CANADA.—HEALTHINESS OF THE CANADIAN
CLIMATE.—SERACH FOR LAND.—PURCHASE WILD LAND AT DOURO.—MY FLITTING.—PUT
UP A SHANTY.—INEXPERIENCE IN CLEARING.—PLAN-HEAPS.
The employments of a respectable Canadian settler are certainly of a
very multifarious character, and he may be said to combine, in his own
person, several professions, if not trades. A man of education will
always possess an influence, even in bush society: he may be poor, but
his value will not be tested by the low standard of money, and
notwithstanding his want of the current coin of the realm, he will be
appealed to for his judgment in many matters, and will be inducted into
several offices, infinitely more honourable than lucrative. My friend
and father-in-law, being mild in manners, good-natured, and very
sensible, was speedily promoted to the bench, and was given the
colonelcy of the second battalion of the Durham Militia.
At this time there was no place of worship nearer than Port Hope, where
the marriage ceremony could be legally performed. According to the
Colonial law, if a magistrate resides more than eighteen miles from a
church, he is empowered to marry parties applying to him for that
purpose, after three written notices have been put up in the most
public places in the township, with the names and residences of the
parties for at least a fortnight previous to the marriage. I witnessed
several of these marriages during my stay in Darlington, some of which
were highly amusing.
One morning a near neighbour presented himself and a very pretty young
woman, as candidates for matrimony. He was an American by birth, and a
shrewd, clever, sensible person. After the ceremony, the bridegroom
invited me to partake of the wedding-dinner, and I went.
The dinner was very good, though not served exactly in the English
fashion. We, however, managed to enjoy ourselves very much. After tea,
dancing commenced, to the music of two fiddles, when country-dances,
reels, and French fours were all performed with much spirit. The music
was very good, the dancing but indifferent. I could not help thinking
“How ill the motion with the music suits,
So Orpheus fiddled, and so danced the brutes.”
During the pauses between the dances; some lady or gentleman would
favour the company with a song. Then plays—as they are called—were
introduced; such as hunt the slipper, cross questions and crooked
answers, ladies’ toilette, and several others of the same kind, in
which forfeits had to be redeemed by the parties making mistakes in the
game—a procedure of course productive of much noise, kissing, and
laughter. Refreshments were handed round in great profusion, and the
entertainment wound up with a dance, which, I believe, is of purely
American origin. A chair is placed in the middle of the room, on which
a young lady is seated; the company then join hands, and dance round
her, singing these elegant lines:—
“There was a young woman sat down to sleep,
Sat down to sleep, sat down to sleep;
There was a young woman sat down to sleep,
Heigh-ho!—heigh-ho!—heigh-ho!
“There was a young man to keep her awake,
To keep her awake, to keep her awake;
There was a young man to keep her awake,
Heigh-ho!—heigh-ho!—heigh ho!
“John R—— his name shall be,
His name shall be, his name shall be;
John R—— his name shall be,
Heigh-ho!—heigh-ho!—heigh-ho!
The gentleman named walks up to the lady, salutes her, raises her from
the chair, and seats himself in her stead, the rest dancing round, and
singing as before, only substituting the gentleman, and naming the lady
who is to release the gentleman in the same way, till all the ladies
and gentlemen have been seated in their turn.
As soon as this queer species of Mazurka was concluded, the company
broke up, seemingly well pleased with their entertainment. The
introduction of English manners and customs during the last quarter of
a century has tended greatly to improve society. It is now only amongst
the lower orders that parties of this kind would be tolerated.
On my return home, I found an official letter from the Adjutant-general
of the Upper Canada Militia, in which I was informed I was appointed by
his Excellency Sir P. Maitland to an Ensigncy in the first regiment of
Durham Militia. The effective militia of this province is, I believe,
about 150,000 men. All persons, from sixteen to sixty, must enrol their
names once a year, and all from sixteen to forty, must muster for
general training on the 28th of June in each year. The officers, in
time of war, receive the same pay and allowances as those in the line.
The winters of 1825 and 1826 were considered cold, even for Canada. The
sleighing was good from the middle of December to the middle of March,
with the exception of the January thaw, which continued for upwards of
a week, and took away nearly all the snow. This thaw, though
periodical, is not every year of the same duration, nor does it always
take away the snow. Sometimes it is attended by strong gales of wind,
from the southward, and with heavy thunder and lightning, which was
particularly the case last January. The month of February is generally
considered the coldest of the winter months. I have frequently known
the thermometer range from 16 degrees to 20 degrees below zero, for a
week together. On one day of the winter of which I am speaking, it was
as low as 35 degrees. This, however, is unusual.
The coldest day I ever remember was in the winter of 1833. It was
called the “Cold Sunday.” The quicksilver in Fahrenheit’s thermometer
was frozen in the ball, which marks 39 degrees below zero. It was,
however, stated in the papers, both in Canada and the State of New
York, that the real cold was 40 degrees below zero, or 72 degrees below
freezing point. I dined at a friend’s that day, who resided three miles
from my farm in Douro. The day was clear, not a cloud being above the
horizon. The sun was of a dull copper-colour, and the horizon towards
the north-west tinged with the same hue. Not a breath of wind was
stirring. The smoke from the chimneys rose straight up into the air,
and appeared unable to disperse through the atmosphere. My horses were
as white as snow from the steam of their bodies freezing upon them; the
reins were frozen as stiff as rods; the air seemed to cut like a knife.
I was only a quarter of an hour upon the road, but even in that time I
felt the cold severely, and was very glad when I got into the house to
a large wood fire. The cold obliged the whole party at dinner to take
their plates upon their knees and sit round the fire. But, as I said
before, this is only an extreme case, and might not happen again for
twenty years.
The excessive cold seldom lasts more than three days at a time, when it
generally moderates, though not sufficiently to soften the snow. The
dryness of the atmosphere and snow makes you feel the cold much less in
proportion than in England. You do not experience that clinging,
chilly, damp sort of cold in Canada that you do in the British Isles.
For my part, I much prefer a Canadian winter, where the roads are good,
the sleighing good, and your health good. Sickness is scarcely known
here in the winter months.
If I could have purchased land on the lakeshore, I should have liked to
settle in Darlington; but I found the farms I fancied much too
high-priced for my pocket. So at last I made up my mind to go back to
the new settlement of Peterborough, and see what sort of a place it
was, and what it was likely to become.
Accordingly, I started on my journey, and travelled east, along the
Kingston road, parallel with the shore of lake Ontario for about
twenty-four or five miles to the boundary line, between the townships
of Hope and Hamilton. After this I walked for twenty-seven miles
through Cavan and Monaghan, to the town of Peterborough, which, at that
time contained one log-house and a very poor saw-mill, erected some
five or six years before by one Adam Scott to supply the new settlement
of Smith with lumber.
I found several hundreds of Mr. Robinson’s Irish emigrants camped on
the plains. Many had built themselves huts of pine and spruce boughs;
some with slabs and others with logs of trees. Three or four Government
store-houses and a house for the Superintendent, the Hon. Peter
Robinson, were in course of erection. I had letters of introduction to
that gentleman, and also to the Hon. T. A. Stewart, and Robert Reid,
Esq. The two latter gentlemen resided in the township of Douro, and
were at that time the only settlers in that part of Canada.
As I did not much like the appearance of the lodgings I was likely to
obtain in the new town, I went on to Mr. Stewart’s house, and presented
my credentials. Nothing could have been more cordial than the welcome I
received from him. This gentleman and his brother-in-law, Robert Reid,
Esq., obtained a grant of land from the Colonial Government, on
condition that they would become actual settlers on the land, and
perform certain settlement duties, which consisted in chopping out and
clearing the concession lines.[1] Before the Crown patent could issue,
the party contracting to perform the settlement duties was obliged to
appear before a magistrate, and make an affidavit that he or they had
chopped and cleared certain concession lines opposite the lots of land
mentioned in the certificate.
[1] Every township is laid out by the surveyor in parallel lines,
sixty-six chains apart. These lines are sixty-six feet in width, and
are given by government as road allowances, for the use of the public,
and are called concession lines. Cross lines run at right angles with
the former every thirty chains, and are called lot-lines: they
subdivide the township into two hundred acre lots: every fifth cross
line is a road allowance.
This was a bad law, because many of these lines crossing high hills,
swamps or lakes, were impracticable for road-purposes: many thousand
pounds consequently were entirely and uselessly thrown away: besides,
it opened a door for perjury.
Land-speculators would employ a third party to perform their settlement
duties; all they required to obtain the deed, or “lift” as it is called
in Canadian parlance, was the sworn certificate for cutting the road,
allowances, and the payment of certain fees to Government. The
consequence of this was, that many false certificates were sworn to, as
few persons or magistrates would be at the trouble and expense of
travelling thirty or forty miles back into an uninhabited part of the
country, to ascertain if the parties had sworn truly or not.
A magistrate in my neighbourhood told me that a Yankee chopper came to
him one day and demanded to be sworn on a settlement duty certificate,
which he did to the following effect, “that he had cut a chain between
two posts opposite lots so and so, in the concession of—— township. The
road allowances are a chain in width, and posts are planted and marked
on each side of the concession, at the corners of each lot.
“I had some suspicions,” he said, “in my own mind that the fellow had
sworn falsely, so I determined to ascertain the truth. I knew a person
residing within a mile or two of the place, to whom I wrote for
information, when I found, as I expected, that not a tree bad been cut
on the line. I therefore summoned the Yankee, on the information of the
farmer, to appear before a brother magistrate and myself to answer for
his delinquency.
“So, sir,” I said, “you came before me and swore to a false
certificate. Do not you know you have committed perjury, which is a
very serious offence. What have you to say for yourself?”
“Wal, I guess, Mister, I han’t committed no perjury. I swore I cut a
chain between two posts opposite them lots, and I can prove it by Ina
Buck, for he was with me the hul time I was doing on’t.”
“Now, Mr. Buck, what can you prove?”
“Wal, gentlemen, I was along with Jonathan Stubbs when he went to chop
the settlement duties, and when we got to the posts opposite the lots,
he said, ‘Wal, this looks plaguy ugly any how! I calculate I must fix
these duties the short way,’ so he pulled out of his pocket a short
piece of trace-chain which he laid on a stone in a line between the two
posts, and with a stroke or two of his axe severed it in two. ‘Now,’
said he, ‘Ina Buck, I guess you are a witness that I cut a chain
between two posts, so they can’t fix me nohow?’”
“He was, however, a little out of his calculation, for we did fix him,
and sent him to jail, where I dare say he had ample time to plan some
new device for performing settlement duties.”
My new friend advised me to purchase land adjoining his grant, which
was very prettily situated on the banks of the Otonabee, in the
township of the same name, within a mile of Peterborough. The price
asked was fifteen shillings per acre, which was high for wild land at
that time, but the prospect of a town so near had improved the market
considerably.
I took his advice, closed the bargain, and became a landed proprietor
in Canada West. On the 16th of May, 1826, I moved up with all my goods
and chattels, which were then easily packed into a single horse waggon,
and consisted of a plough iron, six pails, a sugar kettle, two iron
pots, a frying pan with a long handle, a tea kettle, a chest of
carpenters’ tools, a Canadian axe, and a cross-cut saw. My stock of
provisions comprised a parcel of groceries, half a barrel of pork and a
barrel of flour.
The roads were so bad that it took me three days to perform a journey
of little more than fifty miles. We (that is to say myself and my two
labourers) had numerous upsets; but at last reached the promised land
without any further trouble. My friend in Douro turned out the next day
and assisted me to put up the walls of my shanty and roof it with
bass-wood troughs, which was completed before dark.
I was kept busy for more than a week chinking between the logs and
plastering up all the crevices, cutting out a doorway and place for a
window, casing them; making a door and hanging it on wooden hinges, &c.
I also made a rough table and some stools, which answered better than
they looked. Four thick slabs of lime-stone, placed upright in one
corner of the shanty with clay well packed behind them to keep the fire
off the logs, answered very well for a chimney with a hole cut through
the roof directly above, to vent the smoke.
I made a tolerably good bedstead out of some iron-wood poles, by
stretching strips of elm-bark across, which I plaited strongly together
to support my bed, which was a very good one, and the only article of
luxury I possessed.
I had very foolishly hired two Irish emigrants, who had not been longer
in Canada than myself, and of course knew nothing either of chopping,
logging, fencing, or, indeed, any work belonging to the country. The
consequence of this imprudence was, that the first ten acres I cleared
cost me nearly 5 pounds an acre[2]—at least 2 pounds more than it
should have done. Experience is often dearly bought, and in this
instance the proverb was fully verified.
[2] The usual price for clearing land, and fencing it fit for sowing,
is, for hard wood, from eleven to twelve dollars per acre; for
evergreen, such as pine, hemlock, cedar, or where that kind of timber
predominates, from twelve to fourteen dollars per acre. There is no
fixed price for swamp.
I found chopping, in the summer months, very laborious. I should have
underbrushed my fallow in the fall, before the leaves fell, and chopped
the large timber during the winter months, when I should have had the
warm weather for logging and burning, which should be completed by the
first day of September. So, for want of experience, it was all up-hill
work with me.
This was the season for musquitoes and black flies. The latter are ten
times the worse of the two. This happened to be a bad fly year, and I,
being a new comer, was nearly devoured by them. Luckily, they do not
last more than a month, and it is only before rain that they are so
very annoying. I have seen children whose necks were one mass of sores,
from the poisonous nature of their bite: sheep, calves, and foals, are
sometimes killed by them. Nor is this, indeed, an unfrequent
occurrence. It must be, however, borne in mind that, as the country is
cleared up, and the woods recede, the flies disappear. In the clearings
along the front townships, the flies are not more troublesome than they
are in England.
The farm on which I now reside used to swarm terribly with flies,
lying, as it does, near the water; but, for the last three years, it
has been entirely free from them, especially from the black flies.[3]
[3] These insects are always much worse, and more numerous, when the
spring is backward, and the floods are higher than usual. From close
observation, I believe the larvae are deposited during high water on
the rocks, when, as soon as the water falls, the heat of the sun
hatches the insects. I have remarked large stones, which had been
under water during the flood, covered over with small brown coloured
cells, exactly the shape, and very little bigger than a seed of
buckwheat. From out of these cells, on a sunny day, the flies rise in
clouds, for they bite through the envelope, and emancipate themselves.
Being provided with a sharp appetite, they will attack you the minute
they are at liberty. These pests begin to appear between the 10th of
May and 1st of June, according to the earliness or lateness of the
season. Towards the end of June, numbers of small dragon-flies make
their appearance, which soon eat up all the black-flies, to which
repast, you may be sure, they are heartily welcome.
A person who understands chopping, can save himself a good deal of
trouble and hard work by making what is called a plan-heap. Three or
four of these may be made on an acre, but not more. The largest and
most difficult trees are felled, the limbs only being cut off and
piled. Then all the trees that will fall in the same direction, should
be thrown along, on the top of the others, the more the better chance
of burning well. If you succeed in getting a good burn for your fallow,
the chances are, if your plan-heaps are well made, that they will be
mostly consumed, which will save a great many blows of the axe, and
some heavy logging.