"A Logging Bee."--Burning of the Log-heaps.--Crops for the Season.--
Farming Stock.--Comparative Value of Wheat and Labour.--Choice of Land,
and relative Advantages.--Clearing Land.--Hurricane in the Woods.--
Variable Weather.--Insects.
November the 2d, 1833.
MANY thanks, dearest mother, for the contents of the box which arrived
in August. I was charmed with the pretty caps and worked frocks sent for
my baby; the little fellow looks delightfully in his new robes, and I
can almost fancy is conscious of the accession to his wardrobe, so proud
he seems of his dress. He grows fat and lively, and, as you may easily
suppose, is at once the pride and delight of his foolish mother's heart.
His father, who loves him as much as I do myself; often laughs at my
fondness, and asks me if I do not think him the ninth wonder of the
world. He has fitted up a sort of rude carriage on the hand-sleigh for
the little fellow--nothing better than a tea-chest, lined with a black
bear-skin, and in this humble equipage he enjoys many a pleasant ride
over the frozen ground.
Nothing could have happened more opportunely for us than the acquisition
of my uncle's legacy, as it has enabled us to make some useful additions
to our farm, for which we must have waited a few years. We have laid out
a part of the property in purchasing a fine lot of land adjoining our
home lot. The quality of our new purchase is excellent, and, from its
situation, greatly enhances the value of the whole property.
We had a glorious burning this summer after the ground was all logged
up; that is, all the large timbers chopped into lengths, and drawn
together in heaps with oxen. To effect this the more readily we called a
logging-bee. We had a number of settlers attend, with yokes of oxen and
men to assist us. After that was over, my husband, with the men
servants, set the heaps on fire; and a magnificent sight it was to see
such a conflagration all round us. I was a little nervous at first on
account of the nearness of some of the log-heaps to the house, but care
is always taken to fire them with the wind blowing in a direction away
from the building. Accidents have sometimes happened, but they are of
rarer occurrence than might be expected, when we consider the subtlety
and destructiveness of the element employed on the occasion.
If the weather be very dry, and a brisk wind blowing, the work of
destruction proceeds with astonishing rapidity; sometimes the fire will
communicate with the forest and run over many hundreds of acres. This is
not considered favourable for clearing, as it destroys the underbush and
light timbers, which are almost indispensable for ensuring a good
burning. It is, however, a magnificent sight to see the blazing trees
and watch the awful progress of the conflagration, as it hurries onward,
consuming all before it, or leaving such scorching mementoes as have
blasted the forest growth for years.
When the ground is very dry the fire will run all over the fallow,
consuming the dried leaves, sticks, and roots. Of a night the effect is
more evident; sometimes the wind blows particles of the burning fuel
into the hollow pines and tall decaying stumps; these readily ignite,
and after a time present an appearance that is exceedingly fine and
fanciful. Fiery columns, the bases of which are hidden by the dense
smoke wreaths, are to be seen in every direction, sending up showers of
sparks that are whirled about like rockets and fire-wheels in the wind.
Some of these tall stumps, when the fire has reached the summit, look
like gas lamp-posts newly lit. The fire will sometimes continue
unextinguished for days.
After the burning is over the brands are collected and drawn together
again to be reburnt; and, strange as it may appear to you, there is no
work that is more interesting and exciting than that of tending the log-
heaps, rousing up the dying flames and closing them in, and supplying
the fires with fresh fuel.
There are always two burnings: first, the brush heaps, which have lain
during the winter till the drying winds and hot suns of April and May
have rendered them sear, are set fire to; this is previous to forming
the log-heaps.
If the season be dry, and a brisk wind abroad, much of the lighter
timber is consumed, and the larger trees reduced during this first
burning. After this is over, the rest is chopped and logged up for the
second burning: and lastly, the remnants are collected and consumed till
the ground be perfectly free from all encumbrances, excepting the
standing stumps, which rarely burn out, and remain eye-sores for several
years. The ashes are then scattered abroad, and the field fenced in with
split timber; the great work of clearing is over.
Our crops this year are oats, corn, and pumpkins, and potatoes, with
some turnips. We shall have wheat, rye, oats, potatoes, and corn next
harvest, which will enable us to increase our stock. At present we have
only a yoke of oxen (Buck and Bright, the names of three-fourths of all
the working oxen in Canada), two cows, two calves, three small pigs, ten
hens, and three ducks, and a pretty brown pony: but she is such a
skilful clearer of seven-railed fences that we shall be obliged to part
with her. _Breachy_ cattle of any kind are great disturbers of public
tranquillity and private friendship; for which reason any settler who
values the good-will of his neighbours would rather part with the best
working yoke of oxen in the township, than keep them if they prove
_breachy_.
A small farmer at home would think very poorly of our Canadian
possessions, especially when I add that our whole stock of farming
implements consists of two reaping-hooks, several axes, a spade, and a
couple of hoes. Add to these a queer sort of harrow that is made in the
shape of a triangle for the better passing between the stumps: this is a
rude machine compared with the nicely painted instruments of the sort I
have been accustomed to see used in Britain. It is roughly hewn, and put
together without regard to neatness; strength for use is all that is
looked to here. The plough is seldom put into the land before the third
or fourth year, nor is it required; the general plan of cropping the
first fallow with wheat or oats, and sowing grass-seeds with the grain
to make pastures, renders the plough unnecessary till such time as the
grass-lands require to be broken up. This method is pursued by most
settlers while they are clearing bush-land; always chopping and burning
enough to keep a regular succession of wheat and spring crops, while the
former clearings are allowed to remain in grass.
The low price that is now given for grain of every kind, wheat having
fetched only from two shillings and nine-pence to four shillings the
bushel, makes the growing of it a matter of less importance than rearing
and fatting of stock. Wages bear no proportion to the price of produce;
a labourer receives ten and even eleven dollars and board a month, while
wheat is selling at only three shillings, three shillings and six pence
or four shillings, and sometimes even still less. The returns are little
compared with the outlay on the land; nor does the land produce that
great abundance that men are apt to look for on newly cleared ground.
The returns of produce, however, must vary with the situation and
fertility of the soil, which is generally less productive in the
immediate vicinity of the lakes and rivers than a little further back
from them, the land being either swampy or ridgy, covered with pines and
beset with blocks of limestone and granite, the sub-soil poor and sandy.
This is the case on the small lakes and on the banks of the Otanabee;
the back lots are generally much finer in quality, producing hard wood,
such as bass-wood, maple, hickory, butter-nut, oak, beech, and iron-
wood; which trees always indicate a more productive soil than the pine
tribe.
In spite of the indifference of the soil the advantage of a water
frontage is considered a matter of great importance in the purchasing of
land; and, lots with water privileges usually fetch a much higher price
than those further removed from it. These lands are in general in the
possession of the higher class of settlers, who can afford to pay
something extra for a pretty situation, and the prospect of future
improvements when the country shall be under a higher state of
cultivation and more thickly settled.
We cannot help regarding with infinite satisfaction the few acres that
are cleared round the house and covered with crops. A space of this kind
in the midst of the dense forest imparts a cheerfulness to the mind, of
which those that live in an open country, or even a partially wooded
one, can form no idea. The bright sunbeams and the blue and cloudless
sky breaking in upon you, rejoices the eye and cheers the heart as much
as the cool shade of a palm-grove would the weary traveller on the sandy
wastes of Africa.
If we feel this so sensibly who enjoy the opening of a lake of full
three-quarters of a mile in breadth directly in front of our windows,
what must those do whose clearing is first opened in the depths of the
forest, hemmed in on every side by a thick wall of trees, through the
interminable shades of which the eye vainly endeavours to penetrate in
search of other objects and other scenes; but so dense is the growth of
timber, that all beyond the immediate clearing is wrapped in profound
obscurity. A settler on first locating on his lot knows no more of its
boundaries and its natural features than he does of the northwest
passage.
Under such disadvantages it is ten chances to one if he chooses the best
situation on the land for the site of his house. This is a very
sufficient reason for not putting up an expensive building till the land
is sufficiently cleared to allow its advantages and disadvantages to
become evident. Many eligible spots often present themselves to the eye
of the settler, in clearing his land, that cause him to regret having
built before he could obtain a better choice of ground. But
circumstances will seldom admit of delay in building in the bush; a
dwelling must be raised speedily, and that generally on the first
cleared acre. The emigrant, however, looks forward to some no very
distant period when he shall be able to gratify both his taste and love
of comfort in the erection of a handsomer and better habitation than his
log-house or his shanty, which he regards only in the light of a
temporary accommodation.
On first coming to this country nothing surprised me more than the total
absence of trees about the dwelling-houses and cleared lands; the axe of
the chopper relentlessly levels all before him. Man appears to contend
with the trees of the forest as though they were his most obnoxious
enemies; for he spares neither the young sapling in its greenness nor
the ancient trunk in its lofty pride; he wages war against the forest
with fire and steel.
There are several sufficient reasons to be given for this seeming want
of taste. The forest-trees grow so thickly together that they have no
room for expanding and putting forth lateral branches; on the contrary,
they run up to an amazing height of stem, resembling seedlings on a hot-
bed that have not duly been thinned out. Trees of this growth when
unsupported by others are tall, weak, and entirely divested of those
graces and charms of outline and foliage that would make them desirable
as ornaments to our grounds; but this is not the most cogent reason for
not leaving them, supposing some more sightly than others were to be
found.
Instead of striking deep roots in the earth, the forest-trees, with the
exception of the pines, have very superficial hold in the earth; the
roots running along the surface have no power to resist the wind when it
bends the tops, which thus act as a powerful lever in tearing them from
their places.
The taller the tree the more liable it is to being uprooted by storms;
and if those that are hemmed in, as in the thickly-planted forests,
fall, you may suppose the certain fate of any isolated tree, deprived of
its former protectors, when left to brave and battle with the storm. It
is sure to fall, and may chance to injure any cattle that are within its
reach. This is the great reason why trees are not left in the clearing.
Indeed, it is a less easy matter to spare them when chopping than I at
first imagined, but the fall of one tree frequently brings down two,
three, or even more smaller ones that stand near it. A good chopper will
endeavour to promote this as much as possible by partly chopping through
smaller ones in the direction they purpose the larger one to fall.
I was so desirous of preserving a few pretty sapling beech-trees that
pleased me, that I desired the choppers to spare them; but the only one
that was saved from destruction in the chopping had to pass through a
fiery ordeal, which quickly scorched and withered up its gay green
leaves: it now stands a melancholy monument of the impossibility of
preserving trees thus left. The only thing to be done if you desire
trees, is to plant them while young in favourable situations, when they
take deep root and spread forth branches the same as the trees in our
parks and hedge-rows.
Another plan which we mean to adopt on our land is to leave several
acres of forest in a convenient situation, and chop and draw out the old
timbers for fire-wood, leaving the younger growth for ornament. This
method of preserving a grove of trees is not liable to the objections
formerly stated, and combines the useful with the ornamental.
There is a strange excitement created in the mind whilst watching the
felling of one of the gigantic pines or oaks of the forest. Proudly and
immoveably it seems at first to resist the storm of blows that assail
its massy trunk, from the united axes of three or even four choppers. As
the work of destruction continues, a slight motion is perceived--an
almost imperceptible quivering of the boughs. Slowly and slowly it
inclines, while the loud rending of the trunk at length warns you that
its last hold on earth is gone. The axe of the chopper has performed its
duty; the motion of the falling tree becomes accelerated every instant,
till it comes down in thunder on the plain, with a crash that makes the
earth tremble and the neighbouring trees reel and bow before it.
Though decidedly less windy than our British isles, Canada is subject at
times to sudden storms, nearly approaching to what might be termed
whirlwinds and hurricanes. A description of one of these tempests I gave
you in an early letter. During the present summer I witnessed another
hurricane, somewhat more violent and destructive in its effect.
The sky became suddenly overcast with clouds of a highly electric
nature. The storm came from the north-west, and its fury appeared to be
confined within the breadth of a few hundred yards. I was watching with
some degree of interest the rapid movements in the lurid, black, and
copper-coloured clouds that were careering above the lake, when I was
surprised by the report of trees falling on the opposite shore, and yet
more so by seeing the air filled with scattered remnants of the pines
within less than a hundred yards of the house, while the wind was
scarcely felt on the level ground on which I was standing.
In a few seconds the hurricane had swept over the water, and with
irresistible power laid low not less than thirty or forty trees, bending
others to the ground like reeds. It was an awful sight to see the tall
forest rocking and bowing before the fury of the storm, and with the
great trunks falling one after the other, as if they had been a pack of
cards thrown down by a breath. Fortunately for us the current of the
wind merely passed over our open clearing, doing us no further damage
than uprooting three big pine-trees on the ridge above the lake. But in
the direction of our neighbour ------ it did great mischief, destroying
many rods of fencing, and crushing his crops with the prostrate trunks
and scattered boughs, occasioning great loss and much labour to repair
the mischief.
The upturned roots of trees thrown down by the wind are great nuisances
and disfigurements in clearings, and cause much more trouble to remove
than those that have been felled by the axe. Some of the stumps of these
wind-fallen trees will right again if chopped from the trunk soon after
they have been blown down, the weight of the roots and upturned soil
being sufficient to bring them back into their former places; we have
pursued this plan very frequently.
We have experienced one of the most changeable seasons this summer that
was possible. The spring was warm and pleasant, but from the latter part
of May till the middle of harvest we had heavy rains, cloudy skies, with
moist hot days, and frequent tempests of thunder and lightning, most
awfully grand, but seemingly less destructive than such storms are at
home. Possibly the tall forest-trees divert the danger from the low
dwellings, which are sufficiently sheltered from the effect of the
lightning. The autumn has also proved wet and cold. I must say at
present I do not think very favourably of the climate; however, it is
not right to judge by so short an acquaintance with it, as every one
says this summer has been unlike any of its predecessors.
The insects have been a sad annoyance to us, and I hailed the approach
of the autumn as a respite from their attacks; for these pests are
numerous and various, and no respecters of persons, as I have learned
from sad experience.