The road continued very tolerable during the greater part of this day,
running due west, at a distance of about six or ten miles from the shore
of Lake Erie. On either side I met a constant succession of farms
partially cleared, and in cultivation, but no village, town, or hamlet.
One part of the country through which I passed to-day is settled chiefly
by Highlanders, who bring hither all their clannish attachments, and
their thrifty, dirty habits--add also their pride and their honesty. We
stopped about noon at one of these Highland settlements, to rest the
horses and procure refreshments. The house was called Campbell's Inn,
and consisted of a log-hut and a cattle-shed. A long pole, stuck into
the decayed stump of a tree in front of the hut, served for a sign. The
family spoke nothing but Gaelic; a brood of children, ragged, dirty, and
without shoes or stockings (which latter I found hanging against the
wall of the best room, as if for a show), were running about--and all
stared upon me with a sort of half-scared, uncouth curiosity, which was
quite savage. With some difficulty I made my wants understood, and
procured some milk and Indian corn cakes. This family, notwithstanding
their wretched appearance, might be considered prosperous. They have a
property of two hundred acres of excellent land, of which sixty acres
are cleared, and in cultivation: five cows and forty sheep. They have
been settled here sixteen years,--had come out destitute, and obtained
their land gratis. For them, what a change from abject poverty and want
to independence and plenty! But the advantages are all outward; if there
be any inward change, it is apparently retrogradation, not advancement.
I know it has been laid down as a principle, that the more and the
closer men are congregated together, the more prevalent is vice of every
kind; and that an isolated or scattered population is favourable to
virtue and simplicity. It may be so, if you are satisfied with negative
virtues and the simplicity of ignorance. But here, where a small
population is scattered over a wide extent of fruitful country, where
there is not a village or a hamlet for twenty, or thirty, or forty miles
together--where there are no manufactories--where there is almost entire
equality of condition--where the means of subsistence are
abundant--where there is no landed aristocracy--no poor laws, nor poor
rates, to grind the souls and the substance of the people between them,
till nothing remains but chaff,--to what shall we attribute the gross
vices, the profligacy, the stupidity, and basely vulgar habits of a
great part of the people, who know not even how to enjoy or turn to
profit the inestimable advantages around them?--And, alas for them!
there seems to be no one as yet to take an interest about them, or at
least infuse a new spirit into the next generation. In one log-hut in
the very heart of the wilderness, where I might well have expected
primitive manners and simplicity, I found vulgar finery, vanity,
affectation, under the most absurd and disgusting forms, combined with a
want of the commonest physical comforts of life, and the total absence
of even elementary knowledge. In another, I have seen drunkenness,
profligacy, stolid indifference to all religion; and in another, the
most senseless fanaticism. There are people, I know, who think--who
fear, that the advancement of knowledge and civilisation must be the
increase of vice and insubordination; who deem that a scattered
agricultural population, where there is a sufficiency of daily food for
the body; where no schoolmaster interferes to infuse ambition and
discontent into the abject, self-satisfied mind; where the labourer
reads not, writes not, thinks not--only loves, hates, prays, and
toils--that such a state must be a sort of Arcadia. Let them come
here!--there is no march of intellect here!--there is no "schoolmaster
abroad" here! And what are the consequences? Not the most agreeable to
contemplate, believe me.
I passed in these journeys some school-houses built by the way side: of
these, several were shut up for want of schoolmasters; and who that
could earn a subsistence in any other way, would be a schoolmaster in
the wilds of Upper Canada? Ill fed, ill clothed, ill paid, or not paid
at all--boarded at the houses of the different farmers in turn, I found,
indeed, some few men, poor creatures! always either Scotch or Americans,
and totally unfit for the office they had undertaken. Of female teachers
I found none whatever, except in the towns. Among all the excellent
societies in London for the advancement of religion and education, are
there none to send missionaries here?--such missionaries as we want, be
it understood--not sectarian fanatics. Here, without means of
instruction, of social amusement, of healthy and innocent
excitements--can we wonder that whisky and camp-meetings assume their
place, and "season toil" which is unseasoned by anything better?
Nothing, believe me, that you may have heard or read of the frantic
disorders of these Methodist love-feasts and camp-meetings in Upper
Canada can exceed the truth; and yet it is no less a truth that the
Methodists are in most parts the only religious teachers, and that
without them the people were utterly abandoned. What then are our church
and our government about? Here, as in the old country, they are
quarrelling about the tenets to be inculcated, the means to be used: and
so, while the shepherds are disputing whether the sheep are to be fed
on old hay or fresh grass--out of the fold or in the fold--the poor
sheep starve, or go astray.
I supped here on eggs and radishes, and milk and bread. On going to my
room, I found that the door, which had merely a latch, opened into the
road. I expressed a wish to fasten it, on which the good lady of the
house brought a long nail, and thrust it lengthways over the latch,
saying, "That's the way we lock doors in Canada!" The want of a more
secure defence did not trouble my rest, for I slept well till morning.
After breakfast, my guide, who had found what he called a "shake-down"
at a neighbouring farm, made his appearance, and we proceeded.
For the first five or six miles the road continued good, but at length
we reached a point where we had to diverge from the Talbot road, and
turn into what they call a "town line," a road dividing the Howard from
the Harwich township. My companion stopped the team to speak to a young
man who was mixing lime, and as he stood talking to us, I thought I had
never seen a better figure and countenance: his accent was Irish; his
language and manner infinitely superior to his dress, which was that of
a common workman. I soon understood that he was a member of one of the
richest and most respectable families in the whole district, connected
by marriage with my driver, who had been boasting to me of their
station, education, and various attainments. There were many and kind
greetings and inquiries after wives, sisters, brothers, and children.
Towards the conclusion of this family conference, the following dialogue
ensued.
"I say, how are the roads before us?"
"Pretty bad!" (with an ominous shake of the head.)
"Would we get on at all, do you think?"
"Well, I don't know, but you may."
"If only we a'n't _mired down_ in that big hole up by Harris's, plaze
God, we'll do finely! Have they done anything up there?"
"No, I don't know that they have; but (with a glance and a
good-humoured smile at me) don't be frightened! you have a good stout
team there. I dare say you'll get along--first or last!"
"How are the mosquitoes?"
"Pretty bad too; it is cloudy, and then they are always worse; but there
is some wind, and that's in your favour again. However, you've a long
and hard day's work, and I wish you well through it; if you cannot
manage, come back to _us_--that's all! Good-bye!" And lifting the gay
handkerchief knotted round his head, he bowed us off with the air of a
nobleman.
Thus encouraged, we proceeded; and though I was not _mired down_, nor
yet absolutely eaten up, I suffered from both the threatened plagues,
and that most severely. The road was scarcely passable; there were no
longer cheerful farms and clearings, but the dark pine forest, and the
rank swamp, crossed by those terrific corduroy paths (my bones ache at
the mere recollection!) and deep holes and pools of rotted vegetable
matter, mixed with water, black, bottomless sloughs of despond! The very
horses paused on the brink of some of these mud-gulfs, and trembled ere
they made the plunge downwards. I set my teeth, screwed myself to my
seat, and commended myself to Heaven--but I was well nigh dislocated! At
length I abandoned my seat altogether, and made an attempt to recline on
the straw at the bottom of the cart, disposing my cloaks, carpet-bags,
and pillow, so as to afford some support--but all in vain; myself and
all my well-contrived edifice of comfort were pitched hither and
thither, and I expected at every moment to be thrown over headlong;
while to walk, or to escape by any means from my disagreeable situation,
was as impossible as if I had been in a ship's cabin in the midst of a
rolling sea.
But the worst was yet to come. At the entrance of a road through the
woods,
If road that might be called where road was none
Distinguishable,
we stopped a short time to gain breath and courage, and refresh the poor
horses before plunging into a forest of about twenty miles in extent.
The inn--the only one within a circuit of more than five-and-thirty
miles, presented the usual aspect of these forest inns; that is, a rude
log-hut, with one window and one room, answering all purposes, a lodging
or sleeping place being divided off at one end by a few planks; outside,
a shed of bark and boughs for the horses, and a hollow trunk of a tree
disposed as a trough. Some of the trees around it were in full and
luxuriant foliage; others, which had been girdled, stood bare and
ghastly in the sunshine. To understand the full force of the scripture
phrase, "desolate as a lodge in a wilderness," you should come here! The
inmates, from whom I could not obtain a direct or intelligible answer to
any question, continued during the whole time to stare upon me with
stupid wonder. I took out a card to make a sketch of the place. A man
stood near me, looking on, whose appearance was revolting beyond
description--hideous, haggard and worn, sinewy and fierce and squalid.
He led in one hand a wild-looking urchin of three or four years old; in
the other he was crushing a beautiful young pigeon, which panted and
struggled within his bony grasp in agony and terror. I looked on it,
pitying.
"Don't hurt it!"
He replied with a grin, and giving the wretched bird another squeeze,
"No, no, I won't hurt it."
"Do you live here?"
"Yes, I have a farm hard by--in the bush here."
"How large is it?"
"One hundred and forty acres."
"How much cleared?"
"Five or six acres--thereabout."
"How long have you been on it?"
"Five years."
"And only five acres cleared? That is very little in five years. I have
seen people who had cleared twice that quantity of land in half the
time."
He replied, almost with fierceness, "Then they had money, or friends, or
hands to help them: I have neither. I have in this wide world only
myself! and set a man with only a pair of hands at one of them big trees
there!--see what he'll make of it! You may swing the axe here from
morning to night for a week before you let the daylight in upon you."
"You are right!" I said, in compassion and self-reproach, "and I was
wrong! pray excuse me!"
"No offence."
"Are you from the old country?"
"No, I was _raised_ here."
"What will you do with your pigeon there?"
"O, it will do for the boy's supper, or may be he may like it best to
play with."
I offered to redeem its life at the price of a shilling, which I held
out. He stretched forth immediately one of his huge hands and eagerly
clutched the shilling, at the same moment opening the other, and
releasing his captive; it fluttered for a moment helplessly, but soon
recovering its wings, wheeled round our heads, and then settled in the
topmost boughs of a sugar-maple. The man turned away with an exulting
laugh, thinking, no doubt, that he had the best of the bargain--but upon
this point we differed.
* * * * *
Turning the horses' heads again westward, we plunged at once into the
deep forest, where there was absolutely no road, no path, except that
which is called a _blazed_ path, where the trees marked on either side
are the only direction to the traveller. How savagely, how solemnly wild
it was! So thick was the overhanging foliage, that it not only shut out
the sunshine, but almost the daylight; and we travelled on through a
perpetual gloom of vaulted boughs and intermingled shade. There were no
flowers here--no herbage. The earth beneath us was a black, rich
vegetable mould, into which the cart-wheels sank a foot deep; a rank,
reedy grass grew round the roots of the trees, and sheltered
rattlesnakes and reptiles. The timber was all hard timber, walnut,
beech, and bass-wood, and oak and maple of most luxuriant growth; here
and there the lightning had struck and shivered one of the loftiest of
these trees, riving the great trunk in two, and flinging it horizontally
upon its companions. There it lay, in strangely picturesque fashion,
clasping with its huge boughs their outstretched arms as if for support.
Those which had been hewn to open a path lay where they fell, and over
their stumps and roots the cart had to be lifted or dragged. Sometimes a
swamp or morass lay in our road, partly filled up or laid over with
trunks of fallen trees, by way of bridge.
As we neared the limits of the forest, some new clearings broke in upon
the solemn twilight monotony of our path: the aspect of these was almost
uniform, presenting an opening of felled trees of about an acre or two;
the commencement of a log-house; a patch of ground surrounded by a
snake-fence, enclosing the first crop of wheat, and perhaps a little
Indian corn; great heaps of timber-trees and brushwood laid together and
burning; a couple of oxen, dragging along another enormous trunk to add
to the pile. These were the general features of the picture, framed in,
as it were, by the dark mysterious woods. Here and there I saw a few
cows, but no sheep. I remember particularly one of these clearings,
which looked more desolate than the rest; there was an unfinished
log-house, only one half of it roofed in and habitable, and this
presented some attempt at taste, having a small rustic porch or portico,
and the windows on either side framed. No ground was fenced in, and the
newly-felled timber lay piled in heaps ready to burn; around lay the
forest, its shadows darkening, deepening as the day declined. But what
rivetted my attention was the light figure of a female, arrayed in a
silk gown and a handsome shawl, who was pacing up and down in front of
the house, with a slow and pensive air. She had an infant lying on her
arm, and in the other hand she waved a green bough, to keep off the
mosquitoes. I wished to stop--to speak, though at the hazard of
appearing impertinent; but my driver represented so strongly the danger
of being benighted within the verge of the forest, that I reluctantly
suffered him to proceed,
"And oft look'd back upon that vision fair,
And wondering ask'd, whence and how came it there?"
At length we emerged from the forest-path into a plain, through which
ran a beautiful river (my old acquaintance the Thames), "winding at its
own sweet will," and farmhouses with white walls and green shutters were
scattered along its banks, and cheerful voices were heard, shouts of
boys at play, sounds of labour and of life; and over all lay the last
glow of the sinking sun. How I blessed the whole scene in my heart! Yes,
I can well conceive what the exulting and joyous life of the hunter may
be, roaming at large and independent through these boundless forests;
but, believe me, that to be dragged along in a heavy cart through their
impervious shades, tormented by mosquitoes, shut in on every side from
the light and from the free air of heaven, is quite another thing; and
its effect upon me, at least, was to bring down the tone of the mind and
reflections to a gloomy, inert, vague resignation, or rather dejection,
which made it difficult at last to speak. The first view of the
beautiful little town of Chatham made my sinking spirits bound like the
sight of a friend. There was, besides, the hope of a good inn; for my
driver had cheered me on during the last few miles by a description of
"Freeman's Hotel," which he said was one of the best in the whole
district. Judge then of my disappointment to learn that Mr. Freeman, in
consequence of the "high price of wheat," could no longer afford to take
in hungry travellers, and had "no accommodation." I was driven to take
refuge in a miserable little place, where I fared as ill as possible. I
was shown to a bedroom without chair or table; but I was too utterly
beaten down by fatigue and dejection, too sore in body and spirit, to
remonstrate, or even to stir hand or foot. Wrapping my cloak round me, I
flung myself on the bed, and was soon in a state of forgetfulness of all
discomforts and miseries. Next morning I rose refreshed and able to
bestir myself; and by dint of bribing, and bawling, and scolding, and
cajoling, I at length procured plenty of hot and cold water, and then a
good breakfast of eggs, tea, and corn-cakes;--and then I set forth to
reconnoitre.
* * * * *