FROM BARRIE TO NOTTAWASAGA.
For nearly three years we continued to work on contentedly at our bush
farm. In the summer of 1837, we received intelligence that two of our
sisters were on their way to join us in Canada, and soon afterwards that
they had reached Toronto, and expected to meet us at Barrie on a certain
day. At the same time we learnt that the bridge across the Nottawasaga
river, eleven miles from Barrie, had given way, and was barely passable
on foot, as it lay floating on the water. One of our span of horses had
been killed and his fellow sold, so that we had to hire a team to convey
our sisters' goods from Barrie to the bridge where it was necessary to
meet them with our own ox-team and waggon. I walked to Barrie
accordingly, and found my sisters at Bingham's tavern, very glad to see
me, but in a state of complete bewilderment and some alarm at the rough
ways of the place, then only containing a tavern or two, and some twenty
stores and dwellings. My fustian clothes, which I had made myself, and
considered first-rate, they "laughed at consumedly." My boots! they were
soaked and trod out of all fashionable proportions. Fortunately, other
people in Barrie were nearly as open to criticism as myself, and as we
had to get on our way without loss of time, I forgot my eccentricities
of dress in the rough experiences of the road.
From Barrie to Root's tavern was pleasant travelling, the day being fine
and the road fairly good. We took some rest and refreshment there, and
started again, but had not gone two miles before a serious misfortune
befel us. I have mentioned corduroy-bridges before; one of these had
been thrown across a beautifully clear white-paved streamlet known to
travellers on this road as "sweet-water." The waggon was heavily laden
with chests and other luggage, and the horses not being very strong,
found it beyond their power to drag the load across the bridge on
account of its steepness. Alarmed for my eldest sister, who was riding,
I persuaded her to descend and walk on. Again and again, the teamster
whipped his horses, and again and again, after they had almost scaled
the crest, the weight of the load dragged them backward. I wanted to
lighten the load, but the man said it was needless, and bade me block
the wheels with a piece of broken branch lying near, which I did; the
next moment I was petrified to see the waggon overbalance itself and
fall sideways into the stream seven or eight feet beneath, dragging the
horses over with it, their forefeet clinging to the bridge and their
hind feet entangled amongst the spokes of the wheels below.
My elder sister had gone on. The younger bravely caught the horses'
heads and held them by main force to quiet their struggles, while the
man and I got out an axe, cut the spokes of the wheels, and so in a few
minutes got the horses on to firm ground, where they stood panting and
terrified for some minutes. Meanwhile, to get the heavy sea-boxes out of
the water and carry them up the face of a nearly perpendicular bank,
then get up the waggon and reload it, was no easy task, but was
accomplished at last.
The teamster, being afraid of injury to his horses' legs, at first
refused to go further on the road. However, they had suffered no harm;
and we finished our journey to the bridge where my brother awaited us.
Here the unlucky boxes had to be carried across loose floating logs, and
loaded on to the ox-waggon, which ended our hard work for that day.
Two days longer were we slowly travelling through Sunnidale and into
Nottawasaga, spending each night at some friendly settler's shanty, and
so lightening the fatigues of the way.