ANDY TREES A 'BASTE.'
Door and window were fitted into the holes cut in the front wall of the
shanty, and no carpenter's 'prentice would have owned to such clumsy
joinery; but Arthur was flushed with success, because the door could
positively shut and the window could open. He even projected tables
and chairs in his ambitious imagination, _en suite_ with the bedstead
of ironwood poles and platted bass-work bark, which he had already
improvised; and which couch of honour would have been awarded by common
consent to Mr. Holt, had he not adhered to the hemlock brush with all
the affection of an amateur.
The great matter on the minds of our settlers now, was the underbrushing.
They might calculate on the whole month of November for their work--the
beautiful dreamy November of Canada, as different from its foggy and
muddy namesake in Britain as well may be. Measuring off thirty acres as
next summer's fallow, by blazing the trees in a line around, took up the
best part of a day; and it necessitated also a more thorough examination
of Robert's domains. Such giant trees! One monarch pine must be nigh a
hundred feet from root to crest. The great preponderance of maple showed
that the national leaf symbol of Canada had been suitably selected.
'And is there no means,' quoth Robert, who had been mentally gauging his
small axe with the infinitude of forest--'is there no means of getting
rid of wood without chopping it down?'
'Well, yes, some slower means still; the trees may be "girdled;" that
is, a ring of bark cut from the trunk near the base, which causes death
in so far that no foliage appears next spring: consequently the tall
melancholy skeleton will preside over your crops without injury.'
'Can't say I admire that plan.'
'You are fastidious. Perhaps you would like "niggers" better?'
'I thought they were contraband in any but slave states.'
'Oh, these are "niggers" inanimate--pieces of wood laid round the trunk,
and set on fire where they touch it; of course the tree is burned
through in process of time. These two expedients might be useful in
subsidiary aids; but you perceive your grand reliance must be on the
axe.'
'There is no royal road to felling, any more than to learning. And when
may I hope to get rid of the stumps?'
'I don't think the pine stumps ever decay; but the hardwood, or those of
deciduous trees, may be hitched up by oxen and a crowbar after six or
seven years; or you might burn them down.'
'Hulloa! what's that?'
The exclamation was from Robert, following a much louder exclamation
from Andy in advance. 'He has met with some wild animal,' concluded Mr.
Holt. He was certainly cutting the strangest capers, and flourishing his
hand as if the fingers were burned, howling the while between rage and
terror.
'You disgustin' little varmint! you dirty vagabone, to stick all thim
things in me hand, an' me only goin' to lay a hold on ye gentle-like, to
see what sort of an outlandish baste ye was! Look, Masther Robert, what
he did to me with a slap of his tail!'
Callaghan's fingers radiated handsomely with porcupine's quills, some
inches long, stuck in pretty strongly and deeply; and the animal himself,
quite ready for further offensive warfare, crouched in the fork of a
small maple, just out of reach.
'Ah, then, come down here, you unnatural baste, an' may be I won't strip
off your purty feathers,' exclaimed Andy with unction.
'Cut down the tree,' suggested Arthur. But the porcupine, being more _au
fait_ with the ways of the woods than these new-comers, got away among
the branches into a thicket too dense for pursuit.
'They're as sharp as soords,' soliloquized the sufferer, as he picked
out the quills from his hand and wrist in rather gingerly fashion, and
stanched the blood that followed. 'Masther Robert, avourneen, is he a
four-footed baste or a fowl? for he has some of the signs of both on
him. Wisha, good luck to the poor ould counthry, where all our animals
is dacent and respectable, since St. Patrick gev the huntin' to all the
varmint.'
'A thrashing from a porcupine's tail would be no joke,' observed Arthur.
'I've known dogs killed by it,' said Mr. Holt. 'The quills work into
all parts of their bodies, and the barbed points make extraction very
difficult.'
'I believe the Indians use these in some sort of embroidery.' Robert
held in his hand a bunch of the quills such as had wounded Andy's
fingers. 'I've seen penholders of them, when I little thought I should
handle the unsophisticated originals out here.'
Before this time he had learned how enervating were reminiscences of
home; he resolutely put away the remembrance from him now, and walked on
to chop the blaze on the next tree. Breast-high the mark was cut, and at
one blaze another could always be discerned ahead.
'I've a regard for the beeches and elms,' quoth he, as he hacked at a
hickory stem. 'They are home trees; but the shrubs have chiefly foreign
faces, so I can chop them down without compunction.'
'All such sentimental distinctions will evaporate when you get into the
spirit of your work,' said his friend Sam. 'Your underbrushing rule does
not spare anything less than six inches in diameter; all must be cut
close to the ground, and piled in heaps for the burning.'
'A tolerable job to clear such a thicket as this! What a network of
roots must interlace every foot of soil!'
'Rather, I should say. But the first crop will amply repay your pains,
even though your wheat and Indian corn struggle into existence through
stumps and interlacing roots. Then there's the potash--thirty dollars a
barrel for second quality: less than two and a half acres of hardwood
timber will produce a barrel.'
'I don't quite understand.'
'Next summer, after your logging bee, you'll know what I mean. This
creek is as if 'twas made on purpose for an ashery.'
'By the way, here's my site for a town plot;' as they came to a fine
natural cascade over a granite barrier, after which plunge the stream
hurried down the slope towards the beaver meadow. 'Water power for half
a dozen mills going to waste there, Holt.'
'Let's give it a name!' sang out Arthur--'this our city of magnificent
intentions.'
'I hope you won't call it Dublin on the Liffey,' said Mr. Holt. 'How I
hate those imported names--sinking our nationality in a ludicrous parody
on English topography--such as London on the Thames, Windsor, Whitby,
Woodstock; while the language that furnished "Toronto," "Quebec,"
"Ottawa," lies still unexplored as a mine of musical nomenclature.'
'In default of an Indian name,' said Robert, 'let us call our future
settlement after the existing fact--CEDAR CREEK.'
'And posterity can alter it, if it chooses,' rejoined Arthur. 'All
right. Now I'll cut down this birch where the post-office is to stand
hereafter;' and a few sturdy blows of his axe prostrated the young tree.
'When I'm writing to Linda, I shall date from Cedar Creek, which will
give her an exalted idea of our location: at the same time she will be
convinced it is situated on the seashore, if I forget to say that in
Canada every stream is a "creek."'
'Our people have an absurd partiality for what they imagine "handsome
names,"' said Mr. Holt. 'Not satisfied with giving their children
the most far-fetched they can discover,--for instance, we have a maid
Armenia, at Maple Grove, and I could not resist designating her brother
as Ararat, by way of localizing their relationship,--but also the young
settlements of the country have often the most bombastic names. In the
backwoods, one time, I found a party of honest settlers in a tavern over
an old romance, searching for some sufficiently high-sounding title to
confer on their cluster of cabins.'
'I was amused to find that Zack Bunting's eldest son is called Nimrod,
familiarized to "Nim,"' said Robert. 'I never saw a more remarkable
likeness to a parent, in body and mind, than that youth exhibits; every
tuft of ragged beard and every twinkle of the knowing little eyes are to
match.'
Nearing the shanty they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied
in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was
making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee
ditty at the top of his powerful voice.
No manner of apology for having opened their cellar, and made free with
their barrel of pork, did he seem to think necessary; but when his meal
was finished, he inquired abruptly why they hadn't built their chimney
of 'cats'? 'For I reckon this stick chimney will blaze up some night,'
added he.
Robert hearkened at that startling intimation.
'Mine is of cats,' said Mr. Logan. 'Cats is clay,' he continued
sententiously, 'kinder like straw an' clay mixed up. I guess I'll stay
an' help you to fix one to-morrow, if you've a mind to.'
With rugged but real kindness, he took a day from his hunting excursion
for the purpose. The framework of the new chimney was of four upright
poles, set in one corner of the shanty, and laced across by rungs of
wood, round which the clay was well kneaded, and plastered inside. An
opening three feet high was left for the fireplace in front. Peter
promised that by and by the clay would burn hard and red, like tilework.
'I wonder you have not built yourself a handsome house, before now,'
said Mr. Wynn, 'instead of that handsome barn. Why you live in a shanty,
while your corn is in a frame building, puzzles me.'
'Ay,' assented the settler, 'but the frame barn is paving the way for
the frame house, I calculate: Benny'll have both; and for the present
I'd sooner have my crops comfortable than myself;' a persuasion which
Robert afterwards found to be rooted in common sense, for the Canadian
climate permits not of stacks or ricks wintering in the open air.
After his usual unmannerly fashion, Mr. Logan bade no farewell, but
shouldered his gun at some hour prior to daybreak, and knapsack on back,
left the sleeping camp by the light of a young moon.