Intense Heat--Pigs, the Scavengers of Canada--Dutch Country--Moravian
Indians--Young Father Thames--Ague, a cure for Consumption--Wild
Horses--Immense Marsh.
I never remember so hot a day as the 13th of July; people in England
can have no idea of the heat in Canada, which they always figure to
themselves as an hyperborean region. On our journey from Thamesville,
when near Louisville, a neat hamlet by the wayside, in a beautiful
country, settled by old Dutch families, on a fine bend of the Thames,
we passed in the woods a dead horse, and found some friends at
Chatham, who told us that it had dropped down from the intense heat.
Those scavengers of Canada, the pigs, were like certain politic worms
already busily at work on the carcase, in which indeed one had buried
itself.
In this Dutch country, you find the new road to Lake Erie, to the
Rondeau from Chatham _graded_, or ready for planking, for twenty-six
miles, and the new road to Windsor is also nearly finished; so that
Chatham will now have an excellent land route to the Detroit river, as
well as to Lake Erie; and as the Rondeau, a remarkable round littoral
lake, is also converting into an excellent harbour, all this portion
of Canada, the fairest as well as the most fertile, will progress
amazingly.
I saw the chief of the Moravian Indians near Thamesville, and had some
conversation with him. He is a modest, middle-aged man, and rules over
about two hundred and fifty well-behaved people. The government have
given him two hundred acres of land in sight of the Moravian village,
and there he dwells in patriarchal simplicity.
Their spiritual and temporal concerns are under the supervision of the
brethren at Bethlehem, the principal settlement of the Moravian
fraternity in the United States; and they have a neat chapel and
school, conducted with the decorum and good results for which that
sect are noted.
Petrolean springs and mineral oil fountains are frequent near this
village, and the whole country here appears bituminous, the bed of the
Thames being composed of shales highly impregnated with it. Salt is
manufactured in small quantities by the Indians from brine-springs
here.
We saw the remarkable harvest of 1845 in all its glory on this route,
as the Dutch farmers were every where at this early period cutting the
wheat, and heard that on Willett's farm on the Thames it had been cut
as early as the 10th of July.
My _compagnon de voyage_ I had taken up in the morning, on account of
the intelligence which he displayed, and in return for the ride he
gave me much information.
The banks of Young Father Thames, after leaving Chatham, and about it,
are very low and flat, consequently, fever and ague are by no means
rare visitors. He described the ague as being beyond a common Canada
one; and, as he was of Yankee origin, the reader will readily
understand his description of it. I asked him if he had ever had it.
"Had it, I guess I have; I had it last fall, and it would have taken
three fellows with such a fit as mine was to have made a shadow; why,
my nose and ears were isinglass, and I shook the bedposts out of the
perpendicular."
I queried whether the country was subject to any other diseases, such
as consumption.
"If you have any friend with a consumption," said he, "send him to
Thamesville; consumption would walk off slick as soon as he got the
ague. No disorder is guilty of coming on before it, and it leaves none
behind."
We left Chatham in the steamboat Brothers for Windsor at three o'clock
p.m., after having had a very good dinner at Captain Ebbert's inn, the
Royal Exchange, which would do credit to any town.
The Thames rolls for some miles, broad and deep, through a succession
of corn-fields and meadows, with fine settlements, and, after passing
through the great western marshes, enters Lake St. Clair, at twenty
miles from Chatham. The rest of the route is across the lake by its
southern shore, twenty miles more, and into the Detroit river for
eleven miles to Windsor, on the Canada shore, and the city of Detroit,
on the American side.
The Thames keeps up its English character well, for it passes through
the townships of Chatham, Dover, Harwich, Raleigh, and Tilbury, before
it reaches Lake St. Clair, and then we coast Rochester, Maidstone, and
Sandwich.
The most curious thing on this route is the sinuosity of the river and
the immense marsh, where the grasses are so luxuriant, that its
appearance is that of the Pampas of South America, or of one unbroken
sea of verdure. Nor is the grass, in its luxuriance, the only
reminiscence of those vast meadows. Three hundred thousand acres,
wholly unreclaimed on both sides of the river, are filled,
particularly on the south side, with droves of wild horses and
cattle--the former so numerous, that strings of them may be seen as
far as the eye can reach; nor can you see the whole even near you from
the deck of the vessel, as the grass is so high that sometimes they
are hidden, and frequently you observe only their backs. They live
here both in summer and in winter, but in very severe weather are said
to go ashore, or into the higher lands, in search of the bark of the
red elm. The owners brand them on the shoulder, and they are caught,
when any are wanted, by snaring them with a noose.
These horses are small, and usually dark-coloured; and a good one is
valued at fifty dollars, or twelve pounds ten shillings currency,
about ten pounds English money. Hardy, patient, and excellent little
animals they are.
I thought of the worthy lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, Sir
Francis Bond Head, when these wild horses of Canada first met my
sight, as I saw, on a small scale, that which he has so vividly
represented on so splendid a one in South America.
It is said that this immense prairie may be drained by lowering the
St. Clair Lake, and some attempts have been ineffectually made to
cultivate small portions of it near the mouth of the river, where
there is a lighthouse. There were two huts, and people residing in
them, with small garden patches of potatoes and peas. Forty acres had
been ploughed by a settler, Mr. Thompson, of Chatham; but, although
the soil is excellent, such is the vigorous growth of the grass, and
the difficulty of getting rid of its roots, that it soon recovered its
ancient domain. In fact, the wind spreads the seed rapidly; and as the
kind is chiefly the blue-joint, it is almost impossible ever to get
rid of it, unless the water-level is lowered, which is not very
probable at present.