After proceeding about three miles, we stopped in front of a neat
farmhouse, surrounded with a garden and spacious outbuildings, and forth
came a very pretty and modest-looking young woman, with a lovely child
in her arms, and leading another by the hand. It was the wife of my
driver; and I must confess she did not seem well pleased to have him
taken away from her. They evidently parted with reluctance. She gave him
many special charges to take care of himself, and commissions to execute
by the way. The children were then held up to be kissed heartily by
their father, and we drove off. This little family scene interested me,
and augured well, I thought, for my own chances of comfort and
protection.
When we had jogged and jolted on at a reasonable pace for some time, and
I had felt my way sufficiently, I began to make some inquiries into the
position and circumstances of my companion. The first few words
explained those discrepancies in his features, voice, and appearance,
which had struck me.
His grandfather was a Frenchman. His father had married an Irishwoman,
and settled in consequence in the south of Ireland. He became, after
some changes of fortune, a grazier and cattle-dealer; and having
realised a small capital which could not be safely or easily invested in
the old country, he had brought out his whole family, and settled his
sons on farms in this neighbourhood. Many of the first settlers about
this place, generally emigrants of the poorest and lowest description,
after clearing a certain portion of the land, gladly disposed of their
farms at an advanced price; and thus it is that a considerable
improvement has taken place within these few years by the introduction
of settlers of a higher grade, who have purchased half-cleared farms,
rather than waste toil and time on the wild land.
My new friend, John B----, had a farm of one hundred and sixty acres,
for which, with a log-house and barn upon it, he had paid 800 dollars
(about 200_l._); he has now one hundred acres of land cleared and laid
down in pasture. This is the first instance I have met with in these
parts of a grazing farm, the land being almost uniformly arable, and the
staple produce of the country, wheat. He told me that he and his brother
had applied most advantageously their knowledge of the management and
rearing of live stock; he had now thirty cows and eighty sheep. His wife
being clever in the dairy, he was enabled to sell a good deal of butter
and cheese off his farm, which the neighbourhood of Port Stanley enabled
him to ship with advantage. The wolves, he said, were his greatest
annoyance; during the last winter they had carried off eight of his
sheep and thirteen of his brother's flock, in spite of all their
precautions.
The Canadian wolf is about the size of a mastiff, in colour of a dirty
yellowish brown, with a black stripe along his back, and a bushy tail of
about a foot in length. His habits are those of the European wolf; they
are equally bold, "hungry, and gaunt, and grim,"--equally destructive,
ferocious, and troublesome to the farmer. The Canadian wolves hunt in
packs, and their perpetual howling during the winter nights has often
been described to me as frightful. The reward given by the magistracy
for their destruction (six dollars for each wolf's head) is not enough.
In the United States the reward is fifteen and twenty dollars a head,
and from their new settlements the wolves are quickly extirpated.
_Here_, if they would extend the reward to the Indians, it would be of
some advantage; for at present they never think it worth while to expend
their powder and shot on an animal whose flesh is uneatable, and the
skin of little value; and there can be no doubt that it is the interest
of the settlers to get rid of the wolves by all and any means. I have
never heard of their destroying a man, but they are the terror of the
sheepfold--as the wild cats are of the poultry yard. Bears become
scarcer in proportion as the country is cleared, but there are still a
great number in the vast tracts of forest land which afford them
shelter. These, in the severe winters, advance to the borders of the
settlements, and carry off the pigs and young cattle. Deer still abound,
and venison is common food in the cottages and farmhouses.
My guide concluded his accounts of himself by an eloquent and heartfelt
eulogium on his wife, to whom, as he assured me, "he owed all his _peace
of mind_ from the hour he was married!" Few men, I thought, could say
the same. _She_, at least, is not to be numbered among the drooping and
repining women of Upper Canada; but then she has left no family--no home
on the other side of the Atlantic--all her near relations are settled
here in the neighbourhood.