LIFE IN THE BACKWOODS.
We had selected, on the advice of our guide, a tolerably good hard-wood
lot in the centre of the Township of Sunnidale, part of which is now the
site of the village of New Lowell, on the Northern Railway. To engage a
young Scotch axeman from the County of Lanark, on the Ottawa river; to
try our virgin axes upon the splendid maples and beeches which it seemed
almost a profanation to destroy; to fell half an acre of trees; to build
a bark wigwam for our night's lodging; and in time to put up a
substantial log shanty, roofed with wooden troughs and "chinked" with
slats and moss--these things were to us more than mortal felicity. Our
mansion was twenty-five feet long and eighteen wide. At one end an open
fire-place, at the other sumptuous beds laid on flatted logs, cushioned
with soft hemlock twigs, redolent of turpentine and health. For our
provisions, cakes made of flour; salt pork of the best; tea and coffee
without milk; with the occasional luxury of a few partridges and
pigeons, and even a haunch of venison of our own shooting; also some
potatoes. We wanted no more. There were few other settlers within many
miles, and those as raw as ourselves; so we mended our own clothes, did
our own cooking, and washed our own linen.
Owing to the tedious length of our sea voyage, there was no time for
getting in crops that year; not even fall wheat; so we had plenty of
leisure to make ourselves comfortable for the winter. And we were by no
means without visitors. Sometimes a surveyor's party sought shelter for
the night on their way to the strangely-named townships of Alta and
Zero--now Collingwood and St. Vincent. Among these were Charles Rankin,
surveyor, now of London; his brother, Arthur Rankin, since M.P. for
Essex; a young gentleman from England, now Dr. Barrett, late of Upper
Canada College. By-and-by came some Chippawa Indians, _en route_ to or
from the Christian Islands of Lake Huron; we were great friends with
them. I had made a sort of harp or zittern, and they were charmed with
its simple music. Their mode of counting money on their fingers was
highly comical--"one cop, one cop, one cop, three cop!" and so on up to
twenty, which was the largest sum they could accomplish. At night, they
wrapped their blankets round them, lay down on the bare earthen floor
near the fire, and slept quietly till day-break, when they would start
on their way with many smiles and hand-shakings. In fact, our shanty,
being the only comfortable shelter between Barrie and the Georgian Bay,
became a sort of half-way house, at which travellers looked for a
night's lodging; and we were not sorry when the opening of a log-tavern,
a mile off, by an old Scotchwoman, ycleped Mother McNeil, enabled us to
select our visitors. This tavern was a curiosity in its way, built of
the roughest logs, with no artificial floor, but the soil being swaley
or wet--a mud-hole yawned just inside the door, where bullfrogs not
unfrequently saluted the wayfarer with their deepest diapason notes.
I must record my own experiences with their congeners, the toads. We
were annoyed by flies, and I noticed an old toad creep stealthily from
under the house logs, wait patiently near a patch of sunshine on the
floor, and as soon as two or three flies, attracted by the sun's warmth,
drew near its post, dart out its long slender tongue, and so catch them
all one after another. Improving upon the hint, we afterwards regularly
scattered a few grains of sugar, to attract more flies within the old
fellow's reach, and thus kept the shanty comparatively clear of those
winged nuisances, and secured quiet repose for ourselves in the early
mornings. Another toad soon joined the first one, and they became so
much at home as to allow us to scratch their backs gently with a stick,
when they would heave up their puffed sides to be scrubbed. These toads
swallow mice and young ducks, and in their turn fall victims to garter
and other snakes.
During the following year, 1834, the Government opened up a settlement
on the Sunnidale road, employing the new immigrants in road making,
chopping and clearing, and putting up log shanties; and gave them the
land so cleared to live on, but without power of sale. In this way, two
or three hundred settlers, English, Irish and Highland Scotch, chiefly
the latter, were located in Sunnidale. A Scottish gentleman, a Mr. H. C.
Young, was appointed local immigrant agent, and spent some time with us.
Eventually it was found that the laud was too aguish for settlement,
being close to a large cedar swamp extending several miles to the
Nottawasaga River; and on the representation of the agent, it was in
1835 determined to transfer operations to the adjoining township of
Nottawasaga, in which the town of Collingwood is now situated.
It was about this time that the prospect of a railway from Toronto to
the Georgian Bay was first mooted, the mouth of the Nottawasaga River
being the expected terminus. A talented Toronto engineer whose name I
think was Lynn, published a pamphlet containing an outline route for the
railroad, which was extended through to the North-West. To him,
doubtless, is due the first practical suggestion of a Canadian Pacific
Railway. We, in Sunnidale, were confidently assured that the line would
pass directly through our own land, and many a weary sigh at hope
deferred did the delusion cost us.