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Title: Life in Canada
Author: Conant, Thomas
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Life in Canada" ***
[Illustration: THOMAS CONANT.]
[Illustration:
LIFE
IN
CANADA
by
Thomas Conant,
Author of “Upper Canada Sketches.”
Toronto
William Briggs
1903]
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year
one thousand nine hundred and three, by THOMAS CONANT, at the
Department of Agriculture.
“_If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other
hearts; all art and author’s craft are of small account to that._”
Preface.
In the following pages will be found some contributions towards the
history of Canada and of the manners and customs of its inhabitants
during the hundred years beginning October 5th, 1792. On that date my
ancestor, Roger Conant, a graduate of Yale University, and a
Massachusetts landowner, set foot on Canadian soil as a United Empire
Loyalist. From him and from his descendants--handed down from father to
son--there have come to me certain historical particulars which I regard
as a trust and which I herewith give to the public. I am of the opinion
that it is in such plain and unvarnished statements that future
historians of our country will find their best materials, and I
therefore feel constrained to do my share towards the task of supplying
them.
The population of Canada is but five and one-third millions, but who can
tell what it will be in a few decades? We may be sure that when our
population rivals that of the United States to-day, and when our
numerous seats of learning have duly leavened the mass of our people,
any reliable particulars as to the early history of our country will be
most eagerly sought for.
As a native resident of the premier Province of Ontario, where my
ancestors from Roger Conant onwards also spent their lives, I have
naturally dealt chiefly with affairs and happenings in what has hitherto
been the most important province of the Dominion, and which possesses at
least half of the inhabitants of the entire country. But I have not the
slightest desire to detract from the merits and historical interest of
the other provinces.
THOMAS CONANT.
OSHAWA, January, 1903.
Contents.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Roger Conant--His position in Massachusetts--Remained in the United
States two years without being molested--Atrocities committed by
“Butler’s Rangers”--Comes to Upper Canada--Received by Governor
Simcoe--Takes up land at Darlington--Becomes a fur trader--His life as
a settler--Other members of the Conant family 13
CHAPTER II.
Colonel Talbot--His slanderous utterances with regard to Canadians--The
beaver--Salmon in Canadian streams--U. E. Loyalists have to take
the oath of allegiance--Titles of land in Canada--Clergy Reserve
lands--University of Toronto lands--Canada Company lands 27
CHAPTER III.
The War of 1812--Canadian feeling with regard to it--Intolerance
of the Family Compact--Roger Conant arrested and fined--March of
Defenders to York--Roger Conant hides his specie--A song about the
war--Indian robbers foiled--The siege of Detroit--American prisoners
sent to Quebec--Feeding them on the way--Attempt on the life of Colonel
Scott of the U. S. Army--Funeral of Brock--American forces appear off
York--Blowing up of the fort--Burning of the Don bridge--Peace at
last 37
CHAPTER IV.
Wolves in Upper Canada--Adventure of Thomas Conant--A grabbing
land-surveyor--Canadian graveyards beside the lake--Millerism in Upper
Canada--Mormonism 60
CHAPTER V.
Abolition of slavery in Canada--Log-houses, their fireplaces and
cooking apparatus--Difficulty experienced by settlers in obtaining
money--Grants to U. E. Loyalists--First grist mill--Indians--Use of
whiskey--Belief in witchcraft--Buffalo in Ontario 72
CHAPTER VI.
A manufactory of base coin in the Province of Quebec--A clever
penman--Incident at a trial--The gang of forgers broken up--“Stump-tail
money”--Calves or land? Ashbridge’s hotel, Toronto--Attempted robbery
by Indians--The shooting of an Indian dog and the consequences 87
CHAPTER VII.
The Canadian Revolution of 1837-38--Causes that led to it--Searching
of Daniel Conant’s house--Tyrannous misrule of the Family Compact--A
fugitive farmer--A visitor from the United States in danger--Daniel
Conant a large vessel owner--Assists seventy patriots to escape--Linus
Wilson Miller--His trial and sentence--State prisoners sent to Van
Diemen’s Land 97
CHAPTER VIII.
Building a dock at Whitby--Daniel Conant becomes security--Water
communication--Some of the old steamboats--Captain Kerr--His commanding
methods--Captain Schofield--Crossing the Atlantic--Trials of
emigrants--Death of a Scotch emigrant 114
CHAPTER IX.
Maple sugar making--The Indian method--“Sugaring-off”--The toothsome
“wax”--A yearly season of pleasure 122
CHAPTER X.
Winter in Ontario--Flax-working in the old time--Social gatherings--The
churches are centres of attraction--Winter marriages--Common
schools--Wintry aspect of Lake Ontario 129
CHAPTER XI.
The coming of spring--Fishing by torch-light--Sudden beauty of the
springtime--Seeding--Foul weeds--Hospitality of Ontario farmers 136
CHAPTER XII.
Ontario in June--Snake fences--Road-work--Alsike clover fields--A
natural grazing country--Barley and marrowfat peas--Ontario in
July--Barley in full head--Ontario is a garden--Lake Ontario surpasses
Lake Geneva or Lake Leman--Summer delights--Fair complexions of the
people--Approach of the autumnal season--Luxuriant orchards 145
CHAPTER XIII.
Some natural history notes--Our feathered pets--“The poor Canada
bird”--The Canadian mocking-bird--The black squirrel--The red
squirrel--The katydid and cricket--A rural graveyard--The
whip-poor-will--The golden plover--The large Canada owl--The crows’
congress--The heron--The water-hen 159
CHAPTER XIV.
Lake Ontario--Weather observations with regard to it--Area and
depth--No underground passage for its waters--Daily horizon of the
author--A sunrise described--Telegraph poles an eye-sore--The pleasing
exceeds the ugly 170
CHAPTER XV.
Getting hold of an Ontario farm--How a man without capital may
succeed--Superiority of farming to a mechanical trade--A man
with $10,000 can have more enjoyment in Ontario than anywhere
else--Comparison with other countries--Small amount of waste
land in Ontario--The help of the farmer’s wife--“Where are your
peasants?”--Independence of the Ontario farmer--Complaints of emigrants
unfounded--An example of success 180
CHAPTER XVI.
Unfinished character of many things on this continent--Old Country
roads--Differing aspects of farms--Moving from the old log-house to
the palatial residence--Landlord and tenant should make their own
bargains--Depletion of timber reserves 201
CHAPTER XVII.
Book farmers and their ways--Some Englishmen lack
adaptiveness--Doctoring sick sheep by the book--Failures in
farming--Young Englishmen sent out to try life in Canada--The sporting
farmer--The hunting farmer--The country school-teacher 208
CHAPTER XVIII.
Horse-dealing transactions--A typical horse-deal--“Splitting
the difference”--The horse-trading conscience--A gathering at a
funeral--Another type of farmer--The sordid life that drives the boys
away 219
CHAPTER XIX.
City and country life compared--No aristocracy in Canada--Long winter
evenings--Social evenings--The bashful swain--Popular literature of the
day--A comfortable winter day at home--Young farmers who have inherited
property--Difficulty of obtaining female help--Farmers trying town
life--Universality of the love of country life--Bismarck--Theocritus
--Cato--Hesiod--Homer--Changes in town values--A speculation in
lard 227
CHAPTER XX.
Instances of success in Ontario--A thrifty wood-chopper turns cattle
dealer--Possesses land and money--Two brothers from Ireland; their
mercantile success--The record of thirty years--Another instance--A
travelling dealer turns farmer--Instance of a thriving Scotsman--The
way to meet trouble--The fate of Shylocks and their descendants 244
CHAPTER XXI.
Manitoba and Ontario compared--Some instances from real life--Ontario
compared with Michigan--With Germany--“Canada as a winter
resort”--Inexpediency of ice-palaces and the like--Untruthful to
represent this as a land of winter--Grant Allen’s strictures on Canada
refuted--Lavish use of food by Ontario people--The delightful climate
of Ontario 255
CHAPTER XXII.
Criticisms by foreign authors--How Canada is regarded in other
countries--Passports--“Only a Colonist”--Virchow’s unwelcome
inference--Canadians are too modest--Imperfect guide-books--A
reciprocity treaty wanted 268
CHAPTER XXIII.
Few positions for young Canadians of ambition--American
consulships--Bayard Taylor--S. S. Cox--Canadian High
Commissioner--Desirability of men of elevated life--Necessity for
developing a Canadian national spirit 277
CHAPTER XXIV.
A retrospect--Canada’s heroes--The places of their deeds should
be marked--Canada a young sleeping giant--Abundance of our
resources--Pulpwood for the world--Nickel--History of our early days
will be valued 286
Illustrations.
PAGE
THOMAS CONANT _Frontispiece_
ROGER CONANT 14
GOVERNOR SIMCOE--FROM THE TOMB IN EXETER
CATHEDRAL, ENGLAND 18
COLONEL TALBOT 27
COLONEL TALBOT’S ARM-CHAIR 28
SHOAL OF SALMON, NEAR OSHAWA, 1792 30
FAC-SIMILE OF CERTIFICATE OF OATH OF ALLEGIANCE 33
FAC-SIMILE OF COURT SUMMONS, 1803 35
NEWARK (NIAGARA), 1813 39
BRITISH MILITARY UNIFORMS, 1812 41
AN OLD SPINNING-WHEEL 41
CIVILIAN COSTUMES, UPPER CANADA, 1812 41
ROGER CONANT HIDING HIS TREASURE 43
FAREWELL’S TAVERN, NEAR OSHAWA, AS IT APPEARS
TO-DAY 47
VIEW OF YORK--FROM THE OLDEST EXTANT ENGRAVING 51
BURNING THE DON BRIDGE--FROM A SKETCH BY
ISAAC BELLAMY 56
THOMAS CONANT (the Author’s grandfather) 60
OLD GRAVEYARD NEAR OSHAWA, THE PROPERTY OF
THE AUTHOR 66
FIREPLACE AND HOUSEHOLD EFFECTS IN USE IN
UPPER CANADA, 1813 76
KITCHEN UTENSILS, UPPER CANADA, 1813 76
THE OLD CONANT HOMESTEAD NEAR OSHAWA, BUILT
IN 1811 100
DANIEL CONANT 104
DESK USED IN THE LEGISLATIVE CHAMBER BY W.
LYON MACKENZIE, UPPER CANADA, 1837 113
CANADIAN APPLES AT THE GLASGOW EXHIBITION--“THE
BEST IN THE EMPIRE” 143
SCENE NEAR BOBCAYGEON 172
A CANADIAN VIEW--LOOKING SOUTH-EAST FROM
EAGLE MOUNTAIN, STONEY LAKE 172
A SAILING CANOE ON LAKE ONTARIO 214
LIFE IN CANADA.
CHAPTER I.
Roger Conant--His position in Massachusetts--Remained in the United
States two years without being molested--Atrocities committed by
“Butler’s Rangers”--Comes to Upper Canada--Received by Governor
Simcoe--Takes up land at Darlington--Becomes a fur trader--His life
as a settler--Other members of the Conant family.
The author’s great-grandfather, Roger Conant, was born at Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, on June 22nd, 1748. He was a direct descendant (sixth
generation) from Roger Conant the Pilgrim, and founder of the Conant
family in America, who came to Salem, Massachusetts, in the second ship,
the _Ann_--the _Mayflower_ being the first--in 1623, and became the
first Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony under the British Crown. He
was graduated in Arts and law at Yale University in 1765. At the time of
the outbreak of the Revolution in 1776 he was twenty-eight years old.
His capacity and business ability may be judged from the facts that he
owned no fewer than 13,000 acres of land in New England, and that when
he came to Canada he brought with him £5,000 in British gold. He
appears to have been a man of keen judgment, of quiet manners, not given
to random talking, of great personal strength, and highly acceptable to
his neighbors. In after days, when he had to do his share toward
subduing the Canadian forest, they tell of him sinking his axe up to the
eye at every stroke in the beech or maple. The record is that he could
chop, split and pile a full cord of wood in an hour.
Although he became a United Empire Loyalist and ultimately came to
Canada, leaving his 13,000 acres behind him in Massachusetts, for which
neither he nor his descendants ever received a cent, Roger Conant’s
decision to emigrate was not taken at once. The Revolution broke out in
1776, but he did not remove from his home until 1778. Even then he does
not appear to have been subjected to the annoyances and persecution
which some have attributed to the disaffected colonists. What the author
has to say on this point comes from Roger Conant’s own lips, and has
been handed down from father to son. He has, therefore, no choice in a
work of this kind but to give it as it came to him. It has been the rule
among many persons who claim New England origin to paint very dark
pictures of the treatment their forefathers received at the hands of
those who joined the colonists in revolt from the British Crown. For
instance, words like the following were used soon after the thirteen
colonies were accorded their independence and became the United States:
[Illustration: ROGER CONANT.
Born at Bridgewater, Mass., June 22, 1748.
Graduated at Yale University in Arts and law, 1765.
Came to Darlington, Upper Canada, a U. E. L., 1792.
Died in Darlington, June 21, 1821.
]
“Did it serve any good end to endeavor to hinder Tories from
getting tenants or to prevent persons who owed them from paying
honest debts? On whose cheek should have been the blush of shame
when the habitation of the aged and feeble Foster was sacked and he
had no shelter but the woods; when Williams, as infirm as he, was
seized at night and dragged away for miles and smoked in a room
with fastened doors and closed chimney-top? What father who doubted
whether to join or fly, determined to abide the issue in the land
of his birth because foul words were spoken to his daughters, or
because they were pelted when riding or when moving in the innocent
dance? Is there cause to wonder that some who still live should yet
say of their own or their fathers’ treatment that persecution made
half of the King’s friends?”
Roger Conant, however, during the two years he remained at Bridgewater
after the breaking out of the Revolution, was free from these
disagreeable experiences. He frequently reiterated that such instances
as those of Foster and Williams were very rare, and maintained that
those who were subject to harsh treatment were those who made themselves
particularly obnoxious to their neighbors who were in favor of the
Revolution. Persons who were blatant and offensive in their words,
continually boasting their British citizenship and that nobody dare
molest them--in a word, as we say, a century and a quarter after the
struggle, forever carrying a chip on the shoulder and daring anybody to
knock it off--naturally rendered themselves objects of dislike. It must
be borne in mind that, right or wrong, the entire community were almost
a unit in their contention for separation from Great Britain. Yet Roger
Conant, who did not take up arms with the patriots, was not molested.
His oft-repeated testimony was that no one in New England need have
been molested on account of his political opinions.
As a matter of fact, he frequently averred that he made a mistake when
he left New England and came to the wilds of Canada. To the latest day
of his life he regretted the change, and said that he should have
remained and joined the patriots; that the New Englanders who were
accused of such savage actions towards loyalists were not bad people,
but that on the contrary they were the very best America then had--kind,
cultivated and considerate. Nor was he alone in this conviction. He was
fond of comparing notes with other United Empire Loyalists with whom
from time to time he met. He was always glad to meet those who had come
to Canada from the revolted colonies. And he again and again averred
that their opinion tallied with his own, viz., that they were mistaken
and foolish in coming away. He entertained no feelings of animosity
against the new government who appropriated his 13,000 acres. Neither
does the author. Such feelings were and are reserved for Lord North,
whose short-sightedness and obstinacy were the immediate cause of the
war. A man who could say that “he would whip the colonists into
subjection” deserves the universal contempt of mankind, especially when
it is remembered that at the very moment of his outbreak of ungoverned
and arbitrary temper the colonists were only waiting for an opportunity
to consummate an _entente cordiale_ with the Mother Country, and to
return to former good feeling and peace.
On the other hand, Roger Conant had that to tell regarding some of the
British forces which does not form pleasant reading, but which the
author feels impelled to set down in order to present a faithful picture
of Great Britain’s stupendous folly, viz., her war with the American
colonies in 1776. The first body of irregular troops of any sort that he
saw who were fighting for the King were Butler’s Rangers, which body, to
his astonishment, he found in northern New York State when wending his
way to Upper Canada. For some time he tarried in the district where this
force was carrying on its operations. It would seem as if the very
spirit of the evil one had taken possession of these men. Acts of arson
by which the unfortunate settler lost his log cabin, the only shelter
for his wife and little ones from the inclemency of a northern winter,
were too common to remark. Murder and rapine were acts of everyday
occurrence. Manifestly these atrocious guerillas could not remain in the
neighborhood that witnessed their crimes. They found their way in
various directions to places where they hoped to evade the tale of their
villany. In after years one of these very men wandered to Upper Canada,
and, as it happened, hired himself to Roger Conant to work about the
latter’s homestead at Darlington. An occasion came when this man, who
was very reticent, had partaken too freely of liquor, so that his tongue
was loosed, and in an unbroken flow of words he unfolded a boastful
narrative of the horrid deeds of himself and his companions of Butler’s
Rangers. One day, he said, they entered a log-house in the forest in New
York State, and quickly murdered the mother and her two children. They
were about applying the torch to the dwelling, when he discovered an
infant asleep, covered with an old coverlet, in the corner of an
adjoining bedroom. He drew the baby forth, when one of the Rangers, not
quite lost to all sense of humanity, begged him to spare the child,
“because,” as he said, “it can do no harm.” With a drunken, leering
boast he declared he would not, “for,” said he, as he dashed its head
against the stone jamb of the open fireplace, “Nits make lice, and I
won’t save it.”
It is no wonder that Roger Conant said that many times his heart failed
him when these terrible acts of Butler’s Rangers were being perpetrated,
and that he felt sorry even then, when in New York State and on his way
to Upper Canada, that he had not remained in Massachusetts and joined
the patriots. It is to be remembered that these persons were burnt out,
murdered, and their women outraged, simply because they thought Britain
bore too heavily on them, and that reforms were needed in the colonies.
Nor could these acts in even the smallest degree assist the cause of
Britain from a military point of view.
On October 5th, 1792, Roger Conant crossed the Niagara River on a
flat-bottomed scow ferry, and landed at Newark, then the capital of
Upper Canada. Governor Simcoe, who had only been sworn in as Governor a
few days previously, came to the wharfside
[Illustration: GOVERNOR SIMCOE.
(_From the tomb in Exeter Cathedral, England._)
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
]
to meet the incoming emigrant, who, with his wife and children, his
waggons and his household stuff, had come to make his future home in
Upper Canada.
“Where do you wish to go?” said the Governor.
“I think of following the north shore of the lake eastward till I find a
suitable place to settle in, sir.”
“But the land up there is not surveyed yet. Should you not prefer to go
up to Lake Simcoe? That is where I would like to see you take up your
abode.”
But Roger Conant shook his head. He had made up his mind to go to the
north shore of the lake, eastward, and there he ultimately went. When
Governor Simcoe found that he was determined, he told him that when he
had fixed on a location he was to blaze the limits of the farm on the
lake shore he would like to have. When the survey was completed, he, the
Governor, would see that he got his patents for the area so blazed. And
in justice to the Governor, the author is pleased here to set down that
he faithfully kept his word. The patents for the land blazed by Roger
were duly and faithfully made out. But the author must express strong
disapproval of his ancestor’s ultra modesty in not blazing at least a
township in Durham County to compensate him and his heirs for the 13,000
acres which he had lost in Massachusetts.
Roger blazed but some 800 acres. For one thing, blazing involved a large
amount of very heavy work. The intervening trees of the unbroken forest
had to be cut away. A straight line must be made out from blaze to
blaze. Besides, the emigrant to those silent and pathless forests
appears to have had small thought of any future value of the land thus
acquired, and as he would have said, colloquially, he was not disposed
to bother with blazing over eight hundred acres.
Realizing the difficulty the incomer would have in getting across the
fords at the head of Lake Ontario, between Niagara and Hamilton,
Governor Simcoe sent his _aide-de-camp_ to pilot the cavalcade. No
waggon road had been constructed along the shore. But the sand was the
only obstruction, and after several days’ travel he arrived at
Darlington, where was the unbroken forest, diversified only by the many
streams and rivers of undulating central Canada. It was a fine landscape
that lay around the emigrant, with the divine impress still upon it. The
red man had not changed its original features. He had contented himself
with the results of the chase among the sombre shades of the forest, or,
floating upon the pure blue waters in his birch-bark canoe, he took of
the myriads upon myriads of the finny tribe from the cool depths below.
The whites had only just begun to obtain a livelihood in the broad land.
Not more than 12,000 persons of European descent then dwelt in all Upper
Canada, now forming the peerless Province of Ontario, with its 3,000,000
of inhabitants. Roger Conant had chosen a beautiful location, and here
with a valiant heart he started to hew out a home for himself and his
family. Although he had brought to this province from Massachusetts
£5,000 in British gold, he was unable at the first to make any use of
it, simply because there were no neighbors to do business with, and
manifestly no trade requirements.[A] But we find him, about the year
1798, becoming a fur trader with the Indians. He invested some of his
money in the Durham boats of that day, which were used to ascend the St.
Lawrence River from Montreal, being pulled up the rapids of that mighty
river by ropes in the hands of men on shore. Canals, as we have them now
around the rapids, were not then even thought of. Nor was the Rideau
Canal, making the long detour by Ottawa, which did so much afterwards to
develop the western part of the province. With capital, and possessing
the basis of all wealth robust health, Roger Conant pursued the fur
trade with the Indians to its utmost possibility. Disposing of the goods
he brought from Montreal in his Durham boats, he accumulated, by barter,
large quantities of furs. To Montreal in turn he took his bundles of
furs, and gold came to him in abundance, so that he rapidly accumulated
a considerable fortune. While doing so, and pursuing his trading with
the red men, his home life was not neglected. Rude though his log-house
beside the salmon stream at Darlington was, it was spacious and
comfortable, and in its day might even be termed a hall. It had the
charm of a fine situation, and it had Lake Ontario for its adjacent
prospect. Conant had brought a few books from his Massachusetts home at
Bridgewater, and while he conned these ever so faithfully over and over
again, the great book of nature was always spread before him in the
surpassingly beautiful landscape that included the shimmering waters of
the lake, the grass lands upon the beaver meadow at the mouth of the
salmon stream, and the golden grain in the small clearings which he had
so far been able to wrest from the dark, tall, prolific forest of beech,
maple and birch, with an occasional large pine, that extended right down
to the shingle of the beach. Of his sons it may be said that, although
capable men, they were handicapped in the race with the incoming tide of
settlers so soon to come to the neighborhood of that rude home at
Darlington, in the county of Durham, Upper Canada. They were at a
grievous disadvantage because of their lack of education. Education
could not be obtained in Ontario in the early days of the nineteenth
century. There were no schools, and had there been schools there would
have been no pupils. Consequently we find Roger’s sons possessing grand
physical health, and pursuing the vigorous life of that day, with but
little education. They felled the forest, and obtained from the soil the
crops that in its virginity it is always ready to give. Eliphalet, who
was only a very small boy when his father brought him from
Massachusetts, attended to the business affairs of the family as his
father got older, and we find him making, after Roger Conant’s death, a
declaration as to his father’s will, in which he states that he is
especially cognizant that the will should be so and so. That instrument
was admitted as a will by the court of that day, 1821, the date of
Roger’s death. To us such proceedings seem crude, particularly as the
document referred to conveyed an estate of great value.
With regard to this will a singular circumstance must be noted. Roger
died a very large real estate owner. This part of his possessions is
duly scheduled. But of his hoard of gold no mention is made. The
author’s paternal uncle, David Annis, who lived with the family till his
death in 1861, frequently said in the author’s hearing--it was a
statement made many times--that Roger Conant had gold and buried it. Why
he did so is a mystery. It is also certain that no one has yet unearthed
that gold. On the farm at Darlington on which he resided, a few days
before his death he took a large family iron bake-kettle, and after
placing therein his gold he buried it on the bank of the salmon stream
of which mention has already been made. The bake-kettle was missed from
its accustomed position by the open fireplace, but search failed to
reveal its whereabouts. Thereafter, and many times since, persons with
various amalgams and with divining rods and sticks have searched for
this buried treasure, but always in vain.
Of Eliphalet, the son, who did the business of the family, being the
elder son, all trace is lost, and there is no one known to-day who
claims descent from him.
Abel, another son, had an immense tract of land in Scarborough, on the
Danforth Road, near the Presbyterian Centennial Church of that township.
His son, Roger, left a most respectable and interesting family in
Michigan, of whom the best known and most intelligent is Mrs. Elizabeth
West, of Port Huron, in that State. It does not appear that Abel Conant
ever disposed of his Scarborough estate by deed or by will, but simply
lost it, so lightly in those days did the inhabitants value accumulated
properties.
Barnabas, another son of Roger, disappeared, and all trace of him is
lost. Jeremiah--still another son--died about 1854 in Michigan. Of him,
also, nothing is known. Lastly Thomas, the youngest son--grandfather of
the author--as will be seen later in this volume, was assassinated when
a young man during the Canadian Revolution of 1837-8.
Roger Conant’s daughter, Rhoda, became the wife of Levi Annis. From this
union sprang a numerous and most progressive family, who are to-day,
with their descendants, among the foremost of our land.
Polly, another daughter, married John Pickel and left a small family,
descendants of which still reside in Darlington in the vicinity of the
ancestral home.
It will be noted as a singular fact that even the most ordinary
emigrants from Great Britain, seeking a home here in those early days,
were in some respects better equipped than the sons of Roger Conant,
with their prospect of becoming heirs of large property. For, coming
from Great Britain, the land of schools, the poor emigrant generally
possessed a fair education, which the young Conants did not. Also, they
had, besides, the prime idea of gaining a home in the new land and
keeping it. Not so the Conant sons, who so easily secured an abundance
from the plethoric returns of the virgin soil of that day. Books were
denied them. Of the diversions of society, the theatre or the lecture
room, they knew nothing. Consequently they found their own crude
diversions as they could. “Little” or “Muddy” York, the nucleus of
Toronto, began to become a settlement, and to that hamlet they easily
wended their way to find relief from the humdrum life among the forests
at home. It is told that frequently, when they were short of cash, they
would drive a bunch of cattle from their father’s herd to York and sell
them, spending the proceeds in riding and driving about the town. That
in itself is not very much to remark, seeing that they were the sons of
a rich man, and their doings were no more than compatible with their
conceded station in life. And so far as is known in an age when
everybody consumed more or less spirituous liquors in Upper Canada, the
Conant sons were not particularly remarkable either for their partaking
or their abstemiousness. Their loss of properties cannot be attributed
to their convivial habits, but rather to a want of appreciation of their
possessions.
Daniel Conant, the author’s father, unmistakably inherited the vim and
push of his grandfather, Roger. Thus we find him as a young man owning
fleets of ships on the Great Lakes, as well as being a lumber producer
and dealer in that commodity second to none of his day.[B] It may be
observed, in passing, that Roger Conant during the whole of his life
never seemed to care for office. Offices were many times offered to him
by the British Government, but he steadily refused, and died without
ever having tasted their sweets. His own business was far sweeter to
him, and he was far more successful in it than he could have been in
office. His grandson, Daniel, had this family trait. He did not spend an
hour in seeking preferments, and office to him had no allurements. His
education was meagre. It was, however, sufficient to enable him to do an
enormous business. He not only amassed wealth, but by his efforts in
moving his ships and pursuing his business generally, he did much for
the good of his native province, and for his neighbors. While his lumber
commanded a ready sale in the United States markets, it was also used
very largely in building homes for the settlers in his locality. The
poor came to him as to a friend, and never came in vain. At his burial
in 1879 hundreds of poor men, as well as their more fortunate neighbors,
followed his bier to the grave. Perhaps no more striking token of the
regard in which he was held by the poor can be cited, and the author
glories in this tribute to his memory by the meek and lowly.
[Illustration: COLONEL TALBOT.
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)]
CHAPTER II.
Colonel Talbot--His slanderous utterances with regard to
Canadians--The beaver--Salmon in Canadian streams--U. E. Loyalists
have to take the oath of allegiance--Titles of land in
Canada--Clergy Reserve lands--University of Toronto lands--Canada
Company lands.
Thomas Talbot, to whom the Government gave--presumably for
settlement--518,000 acres near London, Ont., began to reside on the
tract soon after the emigrant whose fortunes we are following arrived in
Upper Canada, in 1792. Talbot had previously been Secretary to Governor
Simcoe, and was consequently stationed at Newark, the capital, where the
settlers were seen as they came into the country from the United States.
Why so great a grant was made to him is inexplicable. But it was
nevertheless made, and the author proposes to tell how he repaid it. He
appeared all the time he was alive, and living in Upper Canada, to
thoroughly despise us. Among the other utterances which he sent from
Canada to Great Britain was that concerning the origin of Canadians, and
although his words are calumniatory, we must have them, for he
incorporated them in his book about Canada. Thus he speaks of us: “Most
Canadians are descended from private soldiers or settlers, or the
illegitimate offspring of some gentlemen or their servants.” He penned
these words somewhere about the year 1800. They cannot refer to persons
of United States origin--the incomers from the thirteen revolted
colonies, which were now independent--because these were not born in
Canada. He must therefore have referred to those Canadians and their
descendants who were living in Canada in 1792, when he was the Secretary
of Governor Simcoe. It is not within the province of the author to
defend from Talbot’s calumnies that portion of our fellow-Canadian
subjects. His calumny is foul, mean, untrue, and very unjust. Of New
England origin himself, the author leaves this insult to be avenged by
the pen of some fellow-Canadian who claims descent from old Canadians
who were in the country when the war of the Revolution was about
closing. So foul an aspersion should never have been passed over in
silence.
[Illustration: COLONEL TALBOT’S ARMCHAIR.
From the J. Ross Robertson collection.]
The foregoing is, however, by the way. We are pursuing the fortunes of
Roger Conant, and we find him from 1792 to 1812 struggling among the
forest trees to gain a livelihood, or his labors on land occasionally
diversified by his work on the lake, the waters of which, perhaps,
yielded the most easily obtainable food. Mention has been made of the
beaver meadow, and at this date the settler would often come across the
traces of this industrious animal. The beaver is the typical unit or
emblem of the furs of Canada. All other values of furs were made by
comparison with the value of a beaver skin. In intelligence the beaver
surpasses any of the fur-bearing animals. In the quality of his
workmanship he is the mechanic of the animal tribe, and easily and
far-away outstrips all his fellow-brutes, domestic or wild. He can fell
a tree in any desired direction, and within half a foot of the spot on
which he requires it to fall. One beaver is always on guard and vigilant
while the others work. A single blow of the tail of the watching beaver
upon the water will cause every other of his fellows to plump into the
water and disappear. To carry earth to their dam they place it upon
their broad, flat tails and draw it to the spot. While his home is
always in close proximity of water he is sometimes caught on land, while
proceeding from one body of water to another. Should you meet him thus
at disadvantage upon the land, he does not even attempt to run away, nor
to defend himself, for he well knows that both attempts would be utterly
useless. Another defence is his; he appeals to one’s sympathy by
crying--crying indeed so very naturally, while big tears roll from his
eyes, with so close an imitation of the human, that it startles even the
hunter himself. Many a beaver has been magnanimously given his life out
of pure sympathy for the poor defenceless brute when caught at an unfair
advantage away from his habitable element of water.
Salt-water salmon, too, swarmed at that date in our Canadian streams in
countless myriads. In the month of November of each year they ascended
the streams for spawning, after which they were seen no more until the
summer of the following year. While we have no positive evidence that
they return to the salt water, we know they must do so, because they are
so very different from land-locked salmon or ouananiche. They were never
caught in Lake Ontario after spawning in the streams in November, until
June of the next year. Nor were they found above Niagara Falls, being
unable to ascend that mighty cataract. Roger Conant said that his first
food in Upper Canada came from the salmon taken in the creek beside his
hastily built log-house. To help to realize how plentiful these fish
were at the annual spawning time, we may adduce Roger Conant’s endeavor
to paddle his canoe across the stream in Port Oshawa in 1805, when the
salmon partly raised his boat out of the water, and were so close
together that it was difficult for him to get his paddle below the
surface. A farm of 150 acres on the Lake Ontario shore, that he acquired
just previous to the War of 1812, he paid for by sending salmon in
barrels to the United States ports, where they brought a fair cash
price. Increasing population, no close seasons by law, nor any
restrictions whatever, have been the causes which have resulted in
almost destroying
[Illustration: SHOAL OF SALMON, NEAR OSHAWA, 1792.]
these kings of fish that once came in uncountable swarms.
It will be gathered that up to the War of 1812, the settler, homely
clad, axe in hand, subdued the forest, and spent happy, even if
wearisome, days, with his dog generally as his only companion. It was
during these years that he exhibited that skill in wielding the axe of
which mention has been made. To-day, our few remaining woods being more
open, and the timber being smaller, such feats would be impossible.
The first beginnings of public utilities were being made. Roads were
being cut out of the forest. Some of these grew into forest again so
little were they used.
In the last chapter it was noted that Roger Conant lost all his lands in
New England by expropriation after the war of 1776. On arriving in Upper
Canada he felt the great necessity of bestirring himself to make a
fortune again here. Side by side with his clearing operations he carried
on his fur-trading, and soon his desires in regard to wealth were
gratified, but he never reconciled himself to being so far from his
_Alma Mater_, Yale University (New Haven, Conn.), from which he had been
graduated (in Arts and Law) in 1765.
Notwithstanding all the sacrifices made by the United Empire Loyalists
to maintain British connections, many of them were asked to take the
oath of allegiance on reaching their respective localities when they
sought to make their home in Canada. Annexed is a photographic document
of evidence, being a copy of the certificate of the oath of allegiance
taken by one of the author’s relatives before the famed Robert Baldwin.
One of the very earliest court summonses of Upper Canada is also
reproduced (page 35) and it will be found very interesting. The reader
will notice the absence of all printing on this document.
Obviously the title to all lands in Canada, after the conquest of 1759,
and not previously granted by the king of France, was vested in the
British Crown. There were a few lots of land so granted by the king of
France in Upper Canada, but only a few. In Quebec, or Lower Canada, much
of the land had already been so granted along the St. Lawrence River.
These grants had, as a matter of course, to be respected by Great
Britain. The French grants in Upper Canada were only a few along the
Detroit River and at the extreme western boundary of the province. The
easy accessibility of the lands by water will no doubt account for these
grants having been located so remote from all neighbors, the nearest
being those in Lower Canada from whence these grants came. Certain lands
were also set apart for the Protestant clergy, viz., one-seventh of all
lands granted. After a time, instead of taking the one-seventh of each
lot granted, they were all added together and formed a whole lot--the
“Clergy Reserve” lands, which became afterwards such a bone of
contention. In these deeds gold and silver is reserved for the Crown.
All white pine trees, too, are reserved, because naval officers had
passed along the shore of
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF CERTIFICATE OF OATH OF ALLEGIANCE.
I CERTIFY that [signature] has taken and subscrbed the Oath of
Allegiance as required by Law, before me, this 15 day of Jan___ in the
year of our Lord 1801 [signature]]
Lake Ontario, about the time of the war of the Revolution, and saw the
magnificent white pines. These officers were all searching for suitable
trees to make masts for the Royal navy, and here they found them; hence
the reservation of these trees in all Crown deeds. All deeds of realty
to-day in Upper Canada make the same reservations, viz., “Subject
nevertheless to the reservations, limitations and provisions expressed
in the original grant thereof from the Crown.”
In Australia and New Zealand the governments make reservations so very
binding that they can resume possession of lands at any time, as the
author found when travelling there in 1898. Our antipodes have not deeds
in fee simple as we have. No instance has ever been known in the
locality of middle Ontario, in which the author’s home is, and that of
his forefathers since 1792, of the Crown ever exercising its right to
make use of the reservations.
Time-honored big wax seals were attached to all Crown grants. These
seals were quite four inches in diameter, one-third of an inch thick,
and secured to the parchment by a ribbon, while the Royal coat-of-arms
was impressed on either side of the seal. To the honor and respect of
the Crown, be it said, its treatment of the struggling settler was
always generous and fair.
The Clergy Reserve lands, which, we have seen, were set apart, soon
began to command purchasers, being mainly along the waters of Lake
Ontario, as were the other patented lands. In the Act creating
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF COURT SUMMONS, 1803.]
the Clergy Reserve Trust, gold and silver were reserved, but not white
pine, because there simply was none there to reserve.
The University of Toronto received odd lots here and there in Upper
Canada for its support. This created another source from which tithes
came. There were no reservations in the University deeds of 1866. They
cited the Act which gave the University these lands.
Lastly came the Canada Company, the last remaining source of tithes.
While the Crown, the Clergy Reserves and the University of Toronto were
always fair and considerate to the settler, this company always demanded
its full “pound of flesh,” and got it, too. It may be observed that the
arrangements with regard to these deeds were made by the Imperial
Government at home wholly. We were not consulted. By virtue of the
Canada Company’s grant, thousands and thousands of acres of lands in
Upper Canada were withheld from settlement for many years. To-day the
grievance has passed, because they have next to no lands remaining.
Perhaps, as Upper Canada has nearly three millions of population now
(from 12,000 in 1792), we ought not to grieve. It did us harm, it is
true, but it was no doubt unthinkingly originated in London, in 1826,
and without sufficient consideration.
CHAPTER III.
The War of 1812--Canadian feeling with regard to it--Intolerance of
the Family Compact--Roger Conant arrested and fined--March of
defenders to York--Roger Conant hides his specie--A song about the
war--Indian robbers foiled--The siege of Detroit--American
prisoners sent to Quebec--Feeding them on the way--Attempt on the
life of Colonel Scott of the U. S. army--Funeral of Brock--American
forces appear off York--Blowing up of the fort--Burning of the Don
bridge--Peace at last.
In twenty years from the time Governor Simcoe established his capital at
Newark, on the Niagara River, after being sworn in as Governor of
western Canada (his incumbency being the real commencement of the
settlement of Upper Canada), began the War of 1812 between Great Britain
and the United States. Our peaceably disposed and struggling Canadians,
trying to subdue the forest and to procure a livelihood, were horrified
to have a war on their hands. They could ill afford to leave their small
clearings in the forest, where they garnered their small crops, to go
and fight. Not one of them, however, for a single moment thought of
aiding the United States or of remaining neutral. Canada was their home,
and Canada they would defend. From 12,000 in 1792 in Upper Canada,
40,000 were now within its boundaries, endeavoring to make homes for
themselves. We have the fact plainly told that, although at least
one-third of all the inhabitants in 1812 were born in the United States,
or were descendants of those who were born there, not one of them
swerved in his loyalty to Canada, his adopted country. This is saying a
very great deal, for it was in no sense Canada’s quarrel with the United
States. If Great Britain chose to overhaul United States merchantmen for
deserting from the Royal navy, it is certain that Canada could not be
held responsible for any such high-handed act. Canadians generally at
the breaking out of the war, whether of United States origin or from the
British Isles direct, felt that Great Britain had been very assertive
towards the United States, and had also been rather inclined to be
exacting. Such was the feeling generally. No one, however, for a moment
wavered. All were loyal and all obeyed the summons to join the militia
and begin active service. Britain’s quarrel with the United States, in
obedience to the mandate of some Cabinet Ministers safely ensconced in
their sumptuous offices in London, worked incalculable hardships to the
struggling settlers in the depths of our Canadian forests.
To vividly realize how very intolerant of any discussion of public
matters of that day the Family Compact was, a personal narrative will be
found interesting. Roger Conant, one day in the autumn, went from his
home in Darlington to York. He had been requisitioned by the British
officers just out from England (and whom he respected) to take an
ox-cart
[Illustration: NEWARK (NIAGARA), 1813.
(From the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
]
load of war material along the Lake Ontario shore to York. Now at home,
his neighbors being very sparse, he had but few opportunities to
converse and compare opinions about the war. Once at York the desired
opportunity came. When sitting at a hotel fire, with a number of
civilians about, opinions were quite freely expressed by those present.
Roger Conant remarked that he was sorry for the war, and that although
he would fight for Britain and Canada, he felt that Britain should
arrange the differences with the United States and not drag Canada into
a war in which she had not the least interest. He further remarked to
the assembled civilians about the fire, that he thought Britain, too,
very arbitrary in searching vessels of the United States
indiscriminately and taking seamen from them without knowing them to be
deserters from the British navy. Some one of the assembly quickly
reported that remark to the commandant of the fort at York. Roger was
arrested in an almost incredibly short time, brought before a
court-martial next morning and fined eighty pounds (Halifax), being
about $320 of our money. Hard as this was, he paid the fine, held his
peace, and went off home, until called to serve in the ranks, which he
did duly and faithfully. Family Compact rule was answerable for such
treatment, as it certainly was for the responsibility for the Revolution
which followed in 1837. To the honor of Roger Conant be it always said,
however, that he turned out, donning his best suit, and made for the
nearest commanding officer. No settler ever refused to turn out,
although when
[Illustration: BRITISH MILITARY UNIFORMS, 1812.]
[Illustration: AN OLD SPINNING-WHEEL.]
[Illustration: CIVILIAN COSTUMES, UPPER CANADA, 1812.]
once turned out, they seemed so ludicrously weak that they felt
themselves only a handful. There were a few British soldiers in red
coats, but the defenders that made their way to York along the shores of
Lake Ontario were a motley throng. There was no pretence at uniforms,
nor was there indeed during the war, or very little of it. Let us
realize if we can that these poor fellows had to walk along the lake
shore. Here and there only were roads to be found cut out of the dense
dark forest and back from the lake shore. Very few were fortunate enough
to possess boats or canoes in which to row or paddle to York. Some,
however, were able to adopt this mode of transit, and thereby hangs a
tale. On one occasion a party of militiamen, accompanied by one or two
soldiers--among them a drummer--were to be seen with their boats ashore,
one of their craft being turned bottom upwards, and having the carcase
of a fine porker “spread-eagled,” as sailors say, on either side of the
keel. It appears that on their way to York the party had “commandeered”
a pig they had come across, and being sharply pursued by its owner, they
had taken this means of concealing their booty. No one thought of
pulling the boat out of the water and turning it up to find the pig. At
the same time they had requisitioned a fine fat goose, wrung its neck,
and were carrying it away. In this case, with the pursuers at heel, the
task of hiding the loot had fallen to the drummer. He speedily arranged
matters by unheading his drum and placing the coveted bird inside, and
the story goes that on the favorable opportunity arriving, both pig and
goose formed the basis of an excellent feast on the lake shore, in
which, if tradition is to be believed, one officer, at least, joined
with considerable readiness.
Roger joined the rank and file of the militia, but afterwards, having
blooded and fleet saddle-horses in his stables on Lake Ontario shore in
Darlington, the commanding officers employed him as a despatch bearer.
In turn in the militia and then as despatch bearer, when nothing seemed
doing, his time was fully occupied at the business of war. He was then
sixty-two years of age, but so pressed were the authorities for men,
that age did not debar from service, but physical inability only.
Having accumulated wealth both in lands and specie, Roger’s first
thought, on the breaking out of war, was for the safety of his specie.
Mounting his best saddle-horse he rode some thirty miles west from his
home in Darlington to Levi Annis’s, his brother-in-law, in Scarborough,
in order that this relative might become his banker, for in those days
there were no banks, and people had to hide their money. Entering his
brother-in-law’s log-house, he removed a large pine knot from one of the
logs forming the house wall. He placed his gold and silver within the
cavity, and the knot was again inserted and all made smooth. Levi Annis
gave no sign, and no one that came to the inn ever suspected the
presence of this hoard of wealth. But when the war was over, Roger
Conant again visited Levi Annis in Scarborough. Three years had passed
away since, in his presence,
[Illustration: ROGER CONANT HIDING HIS TREASURE.]
the treasure had been inserted in the wall. In his presence also the
pine knot was now removed, and the bullion--about $16,000 in value--was
drawn forth intact.
Among the records that have come down to the author from Roger Conant,
and along with fragmentary papers left by him, by Levi Annis, David
Annis, and Moode Farewell, various scraps of songs of the time 1812 to
1815 are garnered. Perhaps the song of the greatest merit and widest
celebrity was “The Noble Lads of Canada,” the beginning of which was:
“Oh, now the time has come, my boys, to cross the Yankee line,
We remember they were rebels once, and conquered old Burgoyne;
We’ll subdue those mighty democrats, and pull their dwellings down,
And we’ll have the States inhabited with subjects of the Crown.”
It is just as well for the present generation to know this jingle,
absurd as it may be. There were many verses in it, but all much to the
same tenor, and while they pleased Canadians who sang the song, they
were certainly harmless, and to-day we can afford to laugh at them. It
is so very ridiculous to think of our handful of men going over to the
United States and “pulling their dwellings down.” Our defence at home
was quite another matter, but we are proud of it nevertheless. Human
nature is much the same here as elsewhere, and was also in 1812-15.
Thus would the author illustrate how he applies the inference; there
were over a half of the inhabitants who came directly from the British
Isles, or were descended from those who came. The greater part of the
settlers were poor. Generally the U. E. Loyalists and their descendants
were fairly well-to-do. If not well-to-do they were far better off than
the others. Consequently some mean-spirited among the settlers from
Britain or their descendants, who were so poor, would depreciate the U.
E. Loyalists if possible. Roger Conant said that one envious neighbor
set the Indians upon him, during a lull in the war, while he was at
home, by telling them he was a Yankee, and that they might rob him if
they chose. For the object of plunder, they came upon him because he had
an abundance of stock, the best in the land, as well as goods of various
sorts for Indian fur trading, while his money, as we have seen, was
safely banked in a pine log in Scarborough. One night there came to his
home in Darlington, in the year 1812, a single Indian who asked to rest
before the open fire for the night. Permission was given, and he
squatted before the blazing wood fire of logs. On watching him closely,
a knife was seen to be up his sleeve of buckskin, but not a word was
spoken of the discovery. Shortly another Indian came in and squatted
beside the first on the floor, and in utter silence. Now came a third
Indian, who, in his turn, crouched with the two former ones.
No doubt now remained in Roger Conant’s mind as to their purpose, and he
roused himself to the occasion. They meant robbery, and murder, if
necessary, to accomplish it. An axe at hand being always ready, he
seized it, and drew back to the rifle hanging upon the wall, never
absent therefrom unless in actual use. His family he sent out to the
nearest neighbors, a mile away, along the lake shore.
“None of you stir. If you do, I’ll kill the first one who gets up. Stay
just where you are until daylight.”
And now a squaw came in and sat beside the three crouching bucks, and
cried softly. Very generally Indian squaws’ voices are soft, and
naturally their crying would be soft, as was this squaw’s. Entreating
with her crying, she began to beg for the release of the Indians,
assuring the vigilant custodian “that they no longer meditated injury,
nor theft, but would go away if they could be released.”
In this manner, with their nerves at high tension, the night passed, and
not until the light of the next day did the guard dare to release his
Indian prisoners. Then, one by one only, he allowed them to walk out of
doors. It is very probable that this was an extreme case, but it
occurred just as narrated. Not again during the war was Roger Conant
molested by the Indians.
Not yet had the first year of the war (1812) dragged its slow length
along. About the Niagara River the fighting had been most active at all
points. Rumors of the clash of arms came from the West to those in
central Upper Canada. General Hull thought himself secure at Detroit
with a broad and deep river rolling between him and his opponents in
Canada. Neither
[Illustration: FAREWELL’S TAVERN, NEAR OSHAWA, AS IT APPEARS TO-DAY.]
depth of river nor width, however, kept our men away from Detroit. No
Canadian can contemplate this exploit of our arms without a swelling of
pride. Detroit became ours on the 15th of August, 1812, when General
Hull surrendered the whole command of 2,500 men, without terms, and
Michigan was our lawful conquest. Immediately on the surrender of so
many men to us, it became a serious question what to do with so many
prisoners of war. We possessed no place in Upper Canada where they could
be securely kept, and at old Quebec only could we depend upon them being
safely retained. Consequently to Quebec they were sent. They were sent
thither in boats and canoes in which they assisted in rowing and
paddling. In this manner they went to Quebec, and were apparently well
content with their lot. So very meagre, however, were our resources that
we could not furnish boats for all of them, and many were compelled to
walk along the lake shore. They were fed at various places along the
route, among others at Farewell’s tavern, near Oshawa, an engraving of
which as it stands now is given on opposite page. From the author’s
tales of his forbears he gets the story of these prisoners coming to
their home to be fed. Guards, indeed, they had, but they outnumbered
them ten to one, and even more, simply because we had not the men to
guard them. From what can be learned, however, none ran away.
Coming to the Conant family homestead to be fed, without warning, a big
pot of potatoes was quickly boiled. A churning of butter fortunately had
been done that day, just previous to their coming, and a ham, it so
happened, had been boiled the day preceding. All was set before them,
and copious draughts of buttermilk were supplied. Guards and prisoners
fared alike. There were no evidences of ill-feeling or rancor, but good
nature and good humor prevailed, even if some shielded ministers in
far-away London at that day forced the combat upon them.
Perhaps the most curious and picturesque instance of the fighting in and
about this part of Canada was the taking of General Scott a prisoner at
Queenston, and the occurrences subsequent to his capture. It seems that
General Scott had been particularly active all day during the engagement
of October 13th, 1812. Being a large man, and dressed in a showy blue
uniform, although not then so high in rank as he afterwards became, he
gained the attention of the Indians in our army. Nothing came of that
immediately, but near evening his part of the United States forces were
surrounded, and Colonel Scott (as he then was) was compelled to
surrender. On the final conclusion of the day’s engagement, General
Brock having been killed early in the day, he was invited to dine with
General Sheaffe, then commanding our forces. Our prisoner, Colonel
Scott, had given his parole not to attempt to escape, until regularly
exchanged, so it was quite in order for him to accept the general’s
invitation to dine. Just as they were in the act of sitting down at the
table an orderly came to the diningroom, and said some Indian chiefs
were at the door and wished to see Colonel Scott. Excusing himself, the
Colonel went to the door, and in the narrow front hall met three
Indians, fully armed and in all proper Indian war-paint and feathers.
One Indian then asked Colonel Scott where he was wounded. When Scott
replied that he had not been wounded, the questioning Indian said he had
fired at him twelve times in succession, and with good aim, and that he
never missed. Presuming on Colonel Scott’s good-nature, he took hold of
his shoulder, as if to turn him around for the purpose of finding the
wounds. “Hands off,” Scott said, “you shoot like a squaw.” Without more
ado or warning the three Indians drew their tomahawks and knives, and
essayed to attack the Colonel, although then a prisoner of war. As they
were in the narrow hall, the plucky United States prisoner could not
effectually use his sword arm for his defence, and his life was
consequently in danger. But he backed them by quick thrusts of the sword
out of the door, where he had more room for the play of his weapon, and
then stood at bay. It was indeed a fight to the death, and even so good
a swordsman as Colonel Scott must have succumbed, had not the guard of
our army, seeing at a glance what was up, rushed to Scott’s rescue and
helped him to drive the Indians off.
Not many days after this unseemly encounter, Colonel Scott was brought
to York in one of the small gunboats which we had then on Lake Ontario
for the defence of the lake ports. These boats, it is true, were not
very elegant in their lines, nor were they formidably armed. All haste
had been made to construct them; only a few weeks before the timber of
which they were constructed was growing in the parent trees. Green
timber and lumber, as any one will know, must make a very indifferent
boat, and not a lasting one. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the single
swivel gun which each boat carried did good service when called upon and
was no mean antagonist. Be that as it may, we should not look in
contempt on these mean gunboats, or compare them with the monster
fighting ships of this day. These were the ships our fathers used, and
the people of the United States also, and well they served their day. An
engraving of York at this early day will be found on the opposite page,
the little town which has become imperial and palatial Toronto, with
more than a fifth of a million of people, and the change has been
wrought in eighty-nine years.
Following, however, the fortunes of Colonel Scott until he came to
Quebec, we shall find him a prisoner in the cabin of a large ship lying
at anchor at the foot of the cliff on which that ancient city stands.
Not among a lot of other prisoners from the United States do we find the
Colonel on this ship--for there were many of them on board--but aft in
the cabin with the officers. One day his quick ear heard the prisoners
being interrogated on deck. With a few eager strides he ascends the
cabin steps and is on deck. He finds many of the United States prisoners
drawn up in line and an officer questioning them. Those who showed by
the burr on their tongues to be unmistakably of Irish or Scotch origin
were
[Illustration: VIEW OF YORK. FROM THE OLDEST EXTANT ENGRAVING.
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
]
called out and sent away to an adjoining man-of-war, there to serve in
the Royal Navy, although protesting they were American citizens.
Five of those in the line Colonel Scott heard called, and saw them sent
away.
“Silence!” he cried. “Men, not another word out of you. Don’t let them
catch you by the tongue”; and every man’s mouth closed like a trap.
It was Britain’s old contention, “Once a British subject, always a
British subject,” and no latitude was allowed for transference of
citizenship to the United States with residence in that country. To-day
we never cease to wonder that Great Britain could be so impolitic as to
take such a high-handed course. Time, however, has changed all that, and
a war such as that of 1812 will never again stain the escutcheons of
Great Britain, Canada or the United States.
Very soon after this Colonel Scott was exchanged, and quickly shook the
dust of Canada from his feet and found his way back to the United
States.
Let us turn to a little pleasanter phase of this early stage of the war.
General Brock, as before mentioned, was killed early in the day at the
battle of Queenston, on October 13th, 1812. That his high character and
bravery were not overestimated the sequel will show. Thompson, who
fought on our side, and who wrote of the war in 1832, being an
eye-witness, says he was held in such high esteem, even by the enemy,
that “during the movement of the funeral procession of that brave man,
from Queenston to Fort Niagara, a distance of seven miles, minute guns
were fired at every American post on that part of the line, and even the
appearance of hostilities was suspended.” From some relative of the
author who fought on our side the word has come down to him, that the
Americans fired on their side of the Niagara River an answering shot for
every one our men fired, all the time they were marching the seven miles
down the river in the funeral procession. And the relative in the ranks
added that every voice was hushed, not a word was spoken, grief was
apparent in every man’s face, and every one seemed sorry because we had
such a war on hand, and because we were engaged in the business of war
with our kinsmen.
And now the second year of the war had come with its attendant
vicissitudes and dangers.
Very few of the militia had been allowed to leave the ranks during the
past winter, for an attack was expected just as soon as the ice should
break up in the bays on Lake Ontario. In the early spring of 1813 the
ice seems to have left the bays very early, for on April 26th the
American forces were enabled to appear off York, in gun-boats and
transports, and eager for the fray. Now, it has always been asserted
that Great Britain availed herself of all the savages she could get,
both in the War of 1812, as well as in the War of the Revolution in
1776. In a measure only is this true. We see them, however, at this time
helping to oppose the landing of the Americans at York on April 26th,
1813. If the author speaks in positive terms he hopes to be forgiven,
for his forbear, Roger Conant, was there, musket in hand, and by his own
lips has given the record which by natural descent has come down to the
author. He said Indians were placed along the lake bank, one Indian
between two white men, to repel the advance of the Americans from their
boats on landing. That is to say, two white men were supposed to be able
to keep one Indian up to his duty. But they couldn’t do it, for when the
Americans really did land, and began the attack, many of the Indians got
up and fled back from the shore of the lake to the forest beyond. And it
is further told to the author by the same descent of lip service, that
some of our militiamen were so incensed at the Indians for running away
that they turned their muskets around from the Americans and fired at
the fleeing Indians. Very probably their aim was faulty, for so far as
is known no Indians fell, and more than likely our men did not aim to
kill.
The result of the landing of the American forces we all know only too
well, for our few men could not stay the hands of the assailants, who
landed at will, and took possession of the country about. Near where the
monument of the old French fort is, in the Industrial Fair grounds, near
also to the York Pioneers’ log cabin, was the scene of this Indian
running and the American landing. On the next day we find the Americans
advancing upon the old fort to the east of the scene of the landing
place. For a time, we know, our men made a stand for defence around and
about that old fort. It is not at all probable we could have held it
permanently, for the Americans outnumbered us, and were just as brave as
our men were when at their best. Just how it was done my ancestor did
not seem to know, but the word somehow, by very low whispers or signs,
was passed around that the fort would be blown up, and that it was
better to get out. Such a word came to Roger Conant, as he always
stoutly maintained, and, acting upon it, in the very nick of time, he
dropped out of the fort, when it blew up and killed so many Americans.
He said that to his startled vision the air appeared full of burnt and
scorched fragments of human bodies, and that they fell about him in a
horrifying manner.[C] It is not in the province of the author to express
an opinion as to the expediency of this act, but it was done no doubt
for the best, and we to-day find no fault with our general in command
who gave that terrible order.
Yet York and its neighborhood were still at the mercy of the American
conquering army, and General Sheaffe began to think intently of his own
safety. Mounting his horse he rides eastward, down King Street towards
Kingston, and leaves his troops to follow more leisurely on foot. It is
twelve miles from Toronto to Scarborough, where Levi Annis lived at his
hotel. His testimony was that General Sheaffe appeared before his hotel
door with his horse quite done up, and covered with foam. On going to
the door and asking as to the trouble, General Sheaffe explained to Levi
Annis that he had ridden from York, without drawing rein, and that it
was most important that the Americans should not catch him. There
certainly is room for excuse for General Sheaffe at this juncture,
although Levi Annis was naturally much astonished at the state of
nervousness in which he saw him. We must not forget that the General had
only 1,500 men, all told, with which he had to defend all Upper Canada,
and with this very small support no doubt he felt as he said, “that it
was most important that he should not be captured.” Just as quickly as
possible after the blowing up of the fort, some 150 men of the British
regulars and Canadian militia got together and made their way to
Kingston. At this time the first Don bridge had been built. It was of
logs, mainly pine, which were cut near to the last approach to the
bridge. A considerable causeway extended over the mud flats, on the east
side, to the span of the bridge proper. It was very crude, and had been
built in 1800 without the aid of experienced men or mechanics. It stood
well enough, nevertheless, and did its work well, until that memorable
day when our men retreated over it and burnt it as they went--April
27th, 1813. It was done as a
[Illustration: BURNING THE DON BRIDGE.
(_From a sketch by Isaac Bellamy._)
]
precautionary measure in order to impede the progress of the victorious
Americans, should they choose to follow in pursuit.
To those who did military service in this war 200 acres of the public
lands were due. Roger Conant did not receive his 200 acres, although
most justly entitled to them. To know the cause why he did not receive
his land grant it will be necessary to go back a little. After the
conquest of Canada and the Treaty of Paris (in 1763) which followed,
some British officers were given appointments and places in Canada--no
doubt to provide for them. When Upper Canada was made a separate
province in 1791, more of these officials were given places. These
persons seemed to have nothing in common with the people. On the
contrary they seemed to seek to rule and get good livings out of them,
and essayed to keep their places, becoming in time the Family Compact.
It was their acts and those of their successors that caused the outbreak
in 1837 which led to the Canadian Revolution. To these pampered
office-holders it did not appear that the U. E. Loyalists, who had made
most magnificent sacrifices for our country, were worthy of even civil
treatment. So to Roger Conant they never gave the military land grant,
and this treatment was meted out to most of the U. E. Loyalists who so
faithfully served through that most unfortunate and deplorable war.
Peace! peace! Peace tardily came at last in 1814, the Treaty of Ghent
having been signed on the 24th day of that year. The author realizes
that, to-day, Canadians in their well-appointed and refined homes fail
to enter into the feelings of our forefathers whose hearts leaped for
joy as they thanked the great God for that inestimable blessing of
peace. Fond mothers told it to the infants at the breast as they bounced
them aloft and reiterated again and again, “Peace, darling, peace!” The
gray-haired sire, whose days were numbered, dropped unchecked, unbidden
tears of joy, silently and without a voice, as he too thanked his Maker
again and again for that peace between neighbors and kindred that never
should have been broken. No more would the neighborless settler fear
peril as the darkening shadows of evening came about his log cabin in
the great forest, or dread that before the light of another dawn armed
foemen might come and take him prisoner, and drive his wife and little
ones into an inclement winter night by the application of the torch.
Strong men grasped each others’ hands, and shook, and bawled themselves
hoarse in simple exuberance of spirits, and in the intensest feeling of
thankfulness that peace had come to them once again. Nor was this
outburst of feeling mere exultation over the Americans. All felt that we
had honorably acquitted ourselves in a military point of view, but the
Americans at the same time had fought with valor, and we really had not
much to taunt them with.
It would perhaps be superfluous to record many of the particular charges
which our people laid at the door of the Americans during the war. It is
in evidence equally that the Americans laid quite as many sins to our
people for their acts, while making forays on United States soil. So far
as one may judge there is not any preponderating weight of evidence for
either side. It is true we do accuse the Americans of burning the public
buildings in York after the taking of the place, when the fort blew up
on April 27th, 1813. The author is inclined to think that the Americans
should not have applied the torch. On the other hand, we blew up the
fort and utterly destroyed many hundreds of Americans in an instant,
including their general.
The testimony of the great General Sherman, who, in 1865, marched with
an army of 70,000 men through Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas and
Virginia, destroying everything in a belt fifty miles wide, and than
whom no one was better qualified to judge, was this: “War is hell.” It
would have been futile for our people to expect humane war. There are no
recriminations to make. In closing the records of the War of 1812 let us
realize with our forefathers that peace, blessed peace, came to them and
has ever since been with us. God be thanked.
CHAPTER IV.
Wolves in Upper Canada--Adventure of Thomas Conant--A grabbing
land-surveyor--Canadian graveyards beside the lake--Millerism in
Upper Canada--Mormonism.
Turning to ordinary affairs, we find that at this date our Government
helped the settler to exterminate wolves by paying a bounty of about $6
for each wolf head produced before a magistrate. In reference to these
ferocious animals, once so plentiful in Canada, an anecdote of the
author’s grandfather will be found both interesting and instructive,
giving us a true glimpse of the county in 1806. Thomas Conant, whose
portrait is found on opposite page, and who was assassinated during the
Canadian Revolution on February 15th, 1838 (_vide_ “Upper Canada
Sketches,” by the author), lived in Darlington, Durham County, Upper
Canada. In the fall of 1806 he was “keeping company” with a young woman,
who lived some three miles back from Lake Ontario, his home being on the
shore of that great lake. Clearings or openings in the forest were at
this time mostly along the lake shore. Consequently, to pay his respects
to the young woman, he had to pass through some forest and clearings in
succession. It was in November of that year. Snow had not yet fallen,
but the ground
[Illustration: THOMAS CONANT.
Was born at Bridgewater, Mass., in 1782; came to Darlington, Canada,
with his father, Roger Conant, in 1792. On February 15th, 1838, during
the Canadian Revolution, he was foully massacred by one Cummings (in
Darlington), a despatch bearer, of Port Hope, Ont. The assassin was
applauded for the act by the Family Compact.]
was frozen. Tarrying until midnight at the home of the object of his
affections, he left, alone and unarmed, to walk the three intervening
miles to his home. Getting over about one-half the distance, he heard
the distant baying of wolves. Fear would, it may be supposed, lend speed
to his feet, but thinking rightly that he could not outstrip the wolf on
foot, he walked quietly along, watching for a convenient tree for
climbing. In a very few minutes the wolves were upon him, in full cry,
eyes protruding, tongues lolling, and ready to devour him. A near-by
beech tree, which his arms could encircle, furnished him with the means
of escape. He climbed, and climbed, while the wolves surrounded him and
watched his every motion, never ceasing their dismal howls the live-long
night. Thus he kept his lonely vigil. To lose his hold for a single
second meant instant death. Great, however, as was the tension upon his
strained muscles, they held on. Morn tardily came at last, and with its
first peep the wolves left him and were seen no more. When they were
really gone, he said he for the first time began looking about him, and
found, with all his climbing, he had ascended a very few feet from the
ground, and but just out of reach of the wolves’ jaws as they made
frantic jumps to reach him. We may, however, be safe in assuming that
the scare and involuntary vigil did not do him much harm, for in the
March following (1807) he married the girl he went to visit that night,
and made no complaints of having been maltreated by wolves.
In dismissing Thomas Conant at this time, the author digresses to say
that he was born in the United States, and was only a small lad when
Roger Conant, his father, brought him here. He was a generous,
industrious citizen, and was always noted for being one of the best
natured men in Canada, and possessed ability of a very high order. He
was liked universally by all who knew him, and he pursued the ordinary
avocations of life, such as Canadians then pursued, up to the time of
his assassination (as before mentioned) during the Canadian Revolution,
on February 15th, 1838. He went down to the grave from the stroke of a
sword, wielded by a dragoon, and without any provocation other than
accusing the dragoon of being drunk, as he was and had been many times
previously when on duty as despatch bearer. But such was the state of
affairs in Canada in 1837-8 that no investigation was held, nor was the
murderer ever punished even in the mildest degree. The author asks the
reader’s indulgence when he says he is very certain that only his
grandfather’s (Thomas Conant) untimely death prevented him from leaving
a name after him high up in Canadian annals, for he was a man of grand
physique (6 feet 2 inches in height) and of commanding talents. He had a
well-balanced mind and had wealth at his command.
Surveyors were now at work plotting out the townships, and settlers were
coming very rapidly to occupy the lands which were surveyed. Readers
will bear in mind that the Family Compact was still in full power. All
grants for lands had to come through them. A story of a famous old land
surveyor is in order in this place. He had been surveying for many
seasons, and, about quarterly, came to York to make his reports and show
the plots of the new townships laid out. It so happened that an uncle of
the author’s was chain-bearer (whose office Fenimore Cooper, the
novelist, has immortalized) to this long-winded surveyor. At the time of
his service as chain-bearer this uncle was only a lusty young man, and
was not supposed to know the very first elements of surveying. Among
other things it was his duty to erect the tent for the nightly bivouac,
and make a fire at the tent mouth. Before the dancing, fitful flames,
lights and shadows in the forest primeval, he nightly sat with the
lordly surveyor, and saw him prepare rude maps of the past day’s work.
And, without any sort of knowledge of surveying, he saw him just touch a
parallelogram here and there (which would represent 100 acres) with the
point of his red pencil; but ever so light was the touch. Night after
night he saw dots go down on the parallelograms, and when the quiver was
full of sheets of survey, to York he went with the surveyor, to report
at the Crown Lands office. He said that in the office he noticed the
officials in charge scanning very intently for the red but faint dots.
We all now know the result: friends of the government officials had
secured hundreds and hundreds of acres of the best lands in the region
surveyed, while the surveyor became a mighty land-owner of most choice
lands, and died a very, very wealthy man. As may be surmised, he had
marked the choicest 100-acre lots with faint red dots, and he and the
officials grabbed the very choicest lands in that surveyor’s district.
Should a would-be purchaser ask for any certain lot, he was put off for
a day in order that they might see in the surveyor’s map if it really
was a choice one, as they surmised, since he asked to buy it, in which
case some friend immediately entered for it, and consequently that
choice lot the settler could not purchase. Using a fictitious name to
illustrate, it is said, and truly, too, that Peter Russell, Governor,
deeded to Peter Russell, Esquire, many choice lots of 100 acres each of
the public domain in Canada, in the days of the Family Compact. But here
one can justly remark that the eternal fitness of things comes pretty
nearly correct after all, for, although that surveyor was fabulously
wealthy, none of the property to-day is in any of his descendants’
possession, nor are there offspring of any of the Family Compact with
enough pelf to-day, severally or collectively, to cause any comment.
“The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small,” in
Canada just as they did in Greece and Rome in days of yore.
This travesty of the conveying of public lands was one very just cause
of complaint on behalf of the people, and the refusal of the authorities
to correct it helped materially to cause the Canadian Revolution of
1837-38.
The settlements in central Canada were at this time for the most part
close to the edge of the lake. Many very worthy, hard-working,
law-abiding men and women of Canada found their last resting places in
places of sepulture, as they had found their homes, beside the waters of
Lake Ontario. Most pathetically all such graveyards appeal to the tender
side of any Canadian who loves his country and his fellows. When we stop
to consider all the hardships they had gone through, with unremitting
days, weeks, months and years of the hardest and most strenuous
muscle-aching toil, and remember, too, that they fought and conquered
the forests of Canada, it would not be human to pass by the memory of
such a noble race. Their fight had not the spur of excitement to keep up
their courage, as in war, but it was a fight, nevertheless--silent,
monotonous, trackless, soundless and alone, in forests greater than
which earth presents few examples if any.
Noble men and women, pioneers of Canada, who gave us our birthright, you
merit our regard and ungrudgingly you shall have it! On earth is no
greater or more glittering example of a better, more prudent, loyal,
law-abiding, religious and industrious people than were those now asleep
in the soil of Canada, and from whom we sprang.
Old Ontario generally is placid and beautiful, ultra-marine blue, and
shimmering. But he is not always so. When rude Boreas awakes the
slumbering giant, he frets, and froths, and spumes, and roars. As he is
in his might he becomes awful to look upon, and doubly so if one
ventures upon his bosom. And while he is spurring and warring, his waves
continually come upon the shore, each time a little higher and higher,
searching each nook, cranny and fissure along the bank of the water’s
edge. Many such storms, you can easily understand, you who live distant
from navigable and great waters, tend to undermine the foundations of
the banks, which after a few more beatings fall with a plunge, a roar,
and a cloud of densest dust, into the waters below. In this manner does
old Ontario encroach at points upon the land. The sequel may be readily
seen. Those in their graves must give them up, while their bones whiten
the shingle for many a sunshiny day. This is no fanciful picture. With a
fowling-piece upon his shoulder the author has passed along the foot of
the bank, where a graveyard is, and seen skulls, long hair, ribs, femurs
and other larger bones of the human body bestrewing the beach. And he
has seen also where the bank has fallen away, only one-half the length
of the grave, and where only one-half of the skeleton went down with the
submerged bank, while the other half remained in the grave, and the
point of severance of the bones was plainly observable on the bank above
the beholder’s head. Flesh, of course, there is none. Time has long
since decayed and changed that.
Noble men and women, the pioneers of Canada, you deserve better graves,
and cushions to lie on of the softest and most enduring velvet!
Pursuing this subject a little further, the author may observe that he
personally owns a graveyard on a large farm which has been used by
whites since 1798 and by red men before that on Lake Ontario
[Illustration: OLD GRAVEYARD NEAR OSHAWA, THE PROPERTY OF THE AUTHOR.
Graveyard on a bluff beside Lake Ontario, at Port Oshawa, overlooking
the surrounding country for a radius of ten miles. The red man, with an
eye to beauty, first used this for his place of sepulture, and now my
tenants plough out skulls, stone pipes, thigh bones, and iron tomahawks
with a star on them, which were given to the Indians by the French
before the English Conquest of Canada. The waves of Lake Ontario perform
a perpetual requiem to the memory of Indians and whites here
interred.]
shore, where the waves produce a perpetual lullaby and a requiem to the
sainted memories of the dead.
In this case there is no particular danger of the graves being washed
into the lake, but it seems hardly meet that any private owner should
have absolute control of the remains of the forefathers of so many now
dwelling in Canada. During his life no one shall be allowed by him to
meddle with the spot, but to save it for all time he has made a standing
proposition to deed it to any properly organized church that would
receive it and look after it. No such body has yet been found to receive
the gift in trust, but the author hopes that his only son, Gordon, may
keep it and hand it down to his son, and his son, in order that it may
never be disturbed.
About the year 1833 Millerism found a lodgment in Canada from the New
England States, where one Miller, by his preaching, proved very clearly,
to some minds, that on a night in February of that year the earth would
pass away. Now, quite as great a proportion of the people in Canada
embraced this doctrine as did those of the United States, when
populations are compared. These persons had not the slightest doubt that
the world would really burn up on the date announced. Hence there were
many who during that winter, up to the time, failed to provide
themselves with wood for heating their houses. The old Virginia snake
fences being all about, they proceeded to take rails from off the fences
and burn them in their own houses, for they surely would have enough
from this source to last until the 15th February of that winter. But
even though they were to die so soon they could not well do without
food, and they had failed to provide any. John B. Warren at that time
kept a large general store in Oshawa, and was noted for his wide
dealings. And we accordingly find that good Millerite farmers came to
him with their sleighs and offered him their own notes, endorsed by good
neighbors, for as much as $300 per barrel for flour, which they would
take home in their sleighs. It was then worth generally $5 per barrel.
John B. Warren, to his honor be it said, always refused to trade with
them on such terribly unequal terms, but explained to them that they
could have the flour and could pay for it if they found themselves alive
after 15th February. Warren, it will be understood, did not become a
Millerite. Again, it is related that a husband who had for his second
wife, Jane, lived near the graveyard in which slumbered his first wife,
Elizabeth. As the hands of the long “grandfather’s clock” of those days
got around to midnight, this husband said to his wife, “Jane, put on
your things and let’s go over to the burying-ground, for I want to die
beside my first wife, Elizabeth, so as to meet her the very first one
after the great fire.” Jane’s faith, it seems, was not so strong, and
she flashed fire at his manifest preference for her predecessor in her
husband’s affections, and replied, “If that’s your game, you may go, and
I won’t live with you any longer.” And it is added that she did not live
under his roof again for several months after the great fire that was to
be. Several different dates have been assigned since that first dread
day, and no doubt some earnestly looked-for date is regarded as now
approaching by this small but earnest body of people.
One Hoover believed the Millerite doctrine so very strongly that he
gradually fancied himself more than human, and not amenable to nature’s
laws. He announced that one day in the fall of 1832 he would walk on the
water from Port Hoover, across Scugog Lake, seven miles to the mainland.
The faithful gathered, and hundreds besides from curiosity. Hoover
entered the water, slowly waded from the shore, and sought refuge behind
an old pile of the dock, where he remained a few minutes. There were
boxes like big boots upon his feet. Soon the crowd called vociferously
for him to come out. When he did emerge from behind the pile he turned
his face shoreward and gained solid land. The boys began to hoot and
laugh at the would-be miracle-worker. Then Hoover made an explanation
nearly in these words:
“My friends, a cloud rose before my eyes and I cannot see. I cannot walk
upon the water to-day while this cloud is before my eyes. Soon it will
be announced when the cloud has been removed, and I will do it.”
The crowd went away, never again to assemble at Hoover’s bidding.
Millerite farmers who were usually good husbandmen, as the day
approached, failed to turn their stock out of their pens, or to feed
their animals, and actually nearly starved them. To-day all that is
past, and in almost every instance those who embraced Millerism, and
those who then opposed it, have gone to the great silent majority.
Millerism is not now known in Canada.
One other sect now, so far as I know, is extinct in central Ontario; it
may be worth mention. I say extinct, but I am not quite so certain of
that, as there yet may be some isolated persons of that faith here and
there in Ontario. I refer to the Mormons. During the summer of 1842
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter-Day Saints, came to central
Ontario and spoke at open-air meetings, camp-meeting-like, as well as in
houses. He even attempted to perform miracles by curing sick persons. I
get it from persons on the stage of action this day, who heard Joseph
Smith in Upper Canada in 1842, and they say he was a good talker and had
a very insinuating manner, and they naively add that it is almost beyond
belief that any one could fall in with him. It is only fair, however, to
say in favor of the sincerity of those who joined him, that polygamy was
not then announced. We ought, I think, to make this admission to let off
those who did join as easily as possible; and from central Ontario there
were Seeleys, McGahans, Lamoreaux and others, with their families, who
sold their farms and gave the money to Joseph Smith, and went off to
Nauvoo, Ill. It is a little singular, too, that these people were never
again heard of directly from their new Mormon homes at Salt Lake, where
they no doubt removed after the break up at Nauvoo. All these Mormon
converts vanished from their neighbors with Joseph Smith, and never
again sent any word to their friends and relatives left behind. I was at
Salt Lake City for a short sojourn in 1879, and upon passing a
stonecutter who was at work upon a square building stone for the new
great Mormon tabernacle, asked the workman, “Do you know any one called
McGahan about these parts?” Instantly the stonecutter dropped his tools
and looked me very intently in the eye and replied, “Yes, I do. What do
you know about them?” I explained that they came from Ontario, their
former home, when the stonecutter urged me to go and see them; said they
lived only fifteen miles down the valley south from Salt Lake, were
wealthy, and would be pleased to see me, and most earnestly urged me to
go. But my faith in Mormon integrity in those days was too low, and I
dared not leave Camp Douglas and the protection of United States
soldiers as far as fifteen miles away. Never since has any kind of trace
been heard of our Mormon converts or their descendants.
CHAPTER V.
Abolition of slavery in Canada--Log-houses, their fireplaces and
cooking apparatus--Difficulty experienced by settlers in obtaining
money--Grants to U. E. Loyalists--First grist mill--Indians--Use of
whiskey--Belief in witchcraft--Buffalo in Ontario.
Among the doings of the first parliament of Upper Canada there is none
on which we can look back with greater satisfaction than the abolition
of slavery in this country. Persons who have not looked closely into our
early history may be almost disposed to express surprise that such a
piece of legislation was passed. The subject is so interesting that I
will speak more fully on the point. Great Britain abolished slavery in
the British West Indies as late as 1833, and paid twenty millions of
pounds for the slaves to their owners. It is difficult at this time to
tell why our forefathers in Ontario were so much in advance of the
Mother Country as well as the United States, for we find that they
abolished slavery from Upper Canada in July, 1793. Of course, there were
not many slaves in Upper Canada at the time, still there were some, but
it seems that no compensation was ever paid to the owners for such
slaves. Just think at what a fearful cost of treasure and precious lives
the United States was called upon in the War of Secession to stand in
order to rid their country of slavery. Had they abolished slavery at the
time our forefathers did, no doubt the great war of the rebellion would
have been averted, and besides, in 1793, when we abolished slavery, they
could not have had very many slaves at the most, and even if they were
paid for, they would not have cost anything like so great a sum as Great
Britain paid for her West India slaves in 1833.
Then I maintain that our forefathers in Upper Canada in 1793 were far in
advance in public spirit and true philanthropy of our American cousins,
for we do not find that the Americans at this time made any great
agitation to rid their country of the curse of slavery. If there were no
other fact to be proud of in our early history, this act of our
forefathers is one on which we may justly feel gratification. I will
insert the Act abolishing slavery in full. In July, 1793, the first
parliament of Upper Canada at its first session, called together at
Niagara by the Lieut.-Governor, John Graves Simcoe, passed an Act as
follows:
“CHAPTER VII.
“Section 1--Hereafter no person shall obtain a license for the
importation of any negro or other person who shall come or be
brought into this province after the passing of this Act, to be
subject to the conditions of a slave; nor shall any voluntary
contract of service be binding for a longer term than nine years.
“Section 2--This clause enables the present owners of slaves in
their possession to retain them or bind out their children until
they obtain the age of twenty-one years.
“Section 3--And in order to prevent the continuance of slavery in
this province the children that shall be born of female slaves
after the passing of this Act are to remain in the service of the
owner of their mother until the age of twenty-five years, when they
shall be discharged.
“Provided that in case any issue shall be born of such children
during their servitude or after, such issue shall be entitled to
all the rights and privileges of free-born subjects.”
By this simple Act of our first parliament our country was effectually
rid of this pest without the shedding of a drop of blood or the
expenditure of a single dollar in money. All honor to our forefathers
for their wise act, and a cheer for our banner free province.
Our forefathers at this time, and long after, had no stoves in their
log-houses. All cooking, as well as heating, was done by the fireplace.
A crane swung on hinges into this great fireplace and could be swung out
from the fire at pleasure. Attached to this crane was an iron, having
notches therein, and fitting over this pendant iron rod was another
shorter iron, with a link as of a chain on the end thereof. This link
fitted into the notches on the first-mentioned iron. By this means the
lower iron could be raised or lowered into or above the fire at
pleasure. Thus our forefathers did their first cooking in Upper Canada.
The corn cake, or wheaten cake, when they had it, was baked in the
ashes, and wonderfully sweet old persons thought it. The fact that it
was covered with some loose ashes did not detract from its sweetness, as
they were soon brushed away, leaving the toothsome cake within.
The first improvement in the culinary art of our forefathers came with
tin bake-ovens. These were tin trays, as it were, open on one side. They
would be set before the fire-place, with the open side fronting the
fire. Thus the rays of heat would be collected, and in a measure
confined within the oven, and the bread or cakes within were soon nicely
browned and baked. It was considered an immense stride by our
forefathers when they got these bake-ovens, and for years they did not
aspire to anything better.
Ovens out of doors were built by some of stones. They were generally
conical in shape and open in the centre. An immense fire would be built
in this out-door oven, and when burnt down to real live coals, would be
all drawn out. Its stones would thus be thoroughly heated. Into the
cavity in which the fire had been, the bread would be inserted and the
door stopped up. Enough heat would remain in the stones to thoroughly
bake at least two batches of bread. But this was done at a fearful waste
of wood, which, of course, was of no account at that time. The advent of
stoves changed all that, and now a fireplace of wood in an Ontario home
is more a luxury than a necessity, and but few are to be found. But many
of my more elderly readers will remember the huge gaping fireplaces of
the past when a great “back-log,” two feet or more in diameter, would be
drawn in with a horse into the house, and the horse unhitched, leaving
the log before the fireplace. Once at the fireplace it was an easy
matter, with handspikes, to
[Illustration: FIREPLACE AND HOUSEHOLD EFFECTS IN USE IN UPPER CANADA IN
1813.
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
]
[Illustration: KITCHEN UTENSILS. UPPER CANADA, 1813.
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
]
roll it to the back side of the fire. Since matches were not then
invented, the fire was something to be closely guarded, lest it might go
out. But this big back-log would usually keep a fire on for some three
or four days, being covered up at night with the ashes and embers that
it might smoulder all the night.
Wild leeks were then used as an article of food. As soon as the snow
disappeared in the spring they would be found in abundance in the
forests, and were gathered as the first spring vegetable. Their unsavory
smell, or that imparted to the breath of the eater thereof, seemed to be
no bar to their use. When all partook of the leek not one could detect
the odor from the other. Likewise the cowslip, a little later in the
season, which grew in shallow ponds, furnished a dish of greens to our
forefathers.
To show how difficult it was at this early day for the poor settler to
obtain money, I will relate an anecdote of about 1807. Levi Annis was
living at this time with his father, in the county of Durham. During the
summer and fall of 1806 they had chopped and burnt a fallow of
thirty-one acres, which they sowed with fall wheat. As a preparation for
sowing, the land was not ploughed at all, but it was loose and leafy and
ashy from the burning. The wheat was sown broadcast by hand among the
stumps. It was covered by hitching a yoke of oxen to the butt end of a
small tree, with the branches left hanging thereto. The oxen drew this
to and fro over the fallow among the stumps, and thus covered the wheat.
This was called “bushing in,” and was the first harrow used by our
forefathers among the stumps. However, the fallow upon which the wheat
was so brushed in produced as fine a crop of fall wheat as ever grew,
falling not much below thirty bushels per acre. Now this wheat could be
exchanged for store goods at will, but not for money. Levi Annis,
however, took the first load of it to Bowmanville, and was told by his
father that he must get $5.50 on account of the whole crop to pay his
taxes, for he must have the money to pay his taxes, but the rest he
would take store pay for. The merchant with whom he dealt actually
refused to advance the $5.50, saying he could get all the wheat he
wanted for goods. The young man had to drive to another merchant and
state his deplorable case to him and his urgent need of $5.50, and that
if he would advance him the money he should have the whole crop of
thirty-one acres. Finally the second merchant took pity upon the young
man in his dilemma and advanced the money. Thus it was with the utmost
difficulty that he could get $5.50 in cash out of thirty-one acres of
wheat. This shows us to-day how difficult it was for our forefathers to
get money.
Most of the refugees from the United States at the time of the American
Revolution of the last century, who sided with Britain, and came to
Canada and this section, came by way of Niagara. This north shore of
Lake Ontario was then a wilderness, with no clearing or settlements at
all. Where Toronto now is was an Indian camp when some of those refugees
came through and over its present site. Of course, such refugees are
termed “United Empire Loyalists,” and right well they deserve the name,
for many of them left lands and houses and goodly heritage in
Massachusetts to come over here and live under the old flag. The Royal
grants which they received were given to them ostensibly for their
loyalty to the Crown, but I sometimes think that our Royal governors at
those times used them as a means of peopling the country, and it would
almost appear that this consideration had as much to do with the grants
for loyalty as for real _bona fide_ settlers. The United Empire
Loyalists came around the head of Lake Ontario, and stopped first beside
the various creeks which flow into Lake Ontario, for two reasons: one,
to enable them to catch the plentiful salmon in those creeks; and the
other, that they might cut marsh grass for their cattle at the marshes
formed at the streams’ mouths. There was no grist-mill nearer than
Kingston, and these refugees had to go in bateaux with their grists
(when they had any) all this way. They skirted close along the shore,
and pulled their boats up at night and slept in them. Twice per year
was, for many years, the greatest number of times they would go with the
grist. Rather hard lines for those who had left the comforts and
civilization of the Eastern States for the wilds of Canada.
John D. Smith, at Smith’s Creek, now Port Hope, erected a grist-mill
some time after 1800 came in, and his was the first grist-mill between
Toronto and Kingston. The boon which this conferred upon the sparse
settlers can hardly be realized at this day. Many of these settlers
became Indian traders, for the Indians at this time far outnumbered the
whites; and semi-annually all the Indian tribes came to Lake Ontario to
fish. Their trading was done by barter. A party of traders would set out
into the woods with their packs of goods and fire off three guns in
succession, which was the signal to the Indians that traders were there.
Next morning the Indians would invariably come to the rendezvous to
trade their furs for ammunition, blankets and trinkets. The furs were
sent by bateaux to Montreal, and were for many years the only commodity
which would command the cash in the market.
The next commodity which brought cash was black salts and potash. This
was before the square timber began to be exported from this locality.
Just about the time that the settlers began to subdue the forests, the
War of 1812 broke out and sadly disarranged all the plans of the
settlers. Some of the sparse settlers, known for probity and
reliability, got contracts under the Government as despatch bearers
between certain stations, and for this received weekly, during the
unfortunate time, Spanish milled dollars, in which they were then paid.
The military impressment law was, of course, in full force during the
war. The cannon and military stores were hauled along the shores from
Montreal to Toronto, as the war progressed, as it was not safe to trust
them on vessels on the water for fear of capture by the Americans. The
mouths of streams had to be forded. The writer can call to mind many
anecdotes of his forefathers of that interesting time in our history.
The straggling settler would be ploughing among the stumps with his yoke
of oxen, when a squad of British soldiers would come along and make him
unhitch from the plough, and hitch on to the cannon without any waiting
or time even to go in for his coat. Usually two yokes of oxen were
attached to each of the small cannon. On arrival at the garrison at
Toronto the owners of the oxen were invariably well paid in cash for
their services. Two persons with oxen from this locality were once
pressed into the service. One yoke happened to be tolerably fat, and the
owner sold them to the military authorities in Toronto for a good price
in money, for beef for the troops. The money obtained for that yoke of
oxen enabled the owner to buy and pay for 200 acres of as fine land as
to-day can be found under the sun.
Nor was it infrequent for the passing soldiers to be billeted upon the
inhabitants for a night.
Indians used to spear fish when the first settlers came here, along the
lake shore and off the headlands. No matter if the water was rough, the
Indian would stand in the prow of the dug-out log canoe, holding some
sturgeon oil in his mouth. Now and again he would spit this oil out upon
the water, which would so calm it for a moment or two that he could see
the fish and spear them. By such sleights the Indian invariably
succeeded in procuring food from the forest and flood, while the white
man could hardly do so until he learned from the Indian how to take game
and fish. It was always the policy of the first settlers to treat the
Indians kindly. They did this because the Indians gave them like
treatment in return, and also because they far outnumbered the whites
and could easily have destroyed them. An Indian was never to be refused
something to eat if he came along hungry. My forefathers have told me
that an Indian came along one day nearly famished and asked for food.
Through some mishap he had been a week without food. A lot of cold meat
was set before him and a quantity of corn bread. The old settler sat
beside his fireplace and saw with surprise the eagerness and dexterity
with which he managed to appropriate this cold meat. And still the
Indian ate on, without apparent flagging, until at last the four pounds
or so of cold meat was gone. Then he gave a grunt of satisfaction and
sat before the fire. Soon he appeared in great distress and began
rolling on the floor. To cure the surfeit the settler knew no better way
than to grease his abdomen and pull him about. Just what virtue the
grease had the settler did not know, but thinking that his body must
necessarily stretch to master all that meat, he knew no better way to
produce the stretching than by greasing him. And grease him he did, with
the Indian all the time roaring with agony. However, after sundry
greasings, rollings and groanings, he got relief, and sat once more
beside the fire. On going away he told the old man what a good meal he
had had, and that he ever would remember him. It is a fact that the
Indian in his forest home used many times to be for days without food,
when game was not secured. When he did get game he gorged himself, but
of the manner of relieving a surfeit in the woods the white man does not
seem to know whether it was by grease or otherwise.
At a logging bee in those old times whiskey was ever present. All the
settlers in the locality would invariably turn out and help at the
logging. Wonderful stories they tell of logging an acre of land in an
hour and a half by three men and a yoke of oxen. Old men to-day tell me
that they were mere lads then, and were the “whiskey boys” at these
loggings. Whiskey was partaken of by the bowlful, and no ill effect
seemed to follow from it. If a man were to drink one-half the quantity
of whiskey to-day he would be more than drunk, and sick on the morrow.
It must be that the whiskey of those days was better than the modern
stuff. It was not supposed to be at all wrong to drink whiskey in those
days, and they tell of an Irish immigrant who settled in Pickering, who
had no cows, and had to provide food for his family during the winter.
He procured two barrels of whiskey, which he and the family used with
the cornmeal porridge during that winter. There were young children in
the family at the time. It was not maintained that the whiskey was as
nutritious as milk would have been, but yet they all came out in the
spring in good condition, none the worse of the thrice daily consumption
of whiskey.
Barns were sometimes moved from the manure pile about them. Manure was
not considered of any value upon the land, for the land was rich enough
without it. In a series of years the manure would accumulate about the
barns, impeding access thereto, and they were actually moved away to get
away from the manure, and then the manure burnt. Of course, we would not
think of such a proceeding now, but there are farmers in Darlington, in
the county of Durham, who burn their straw even now. When threshing, the
straw is spread over a field, as delivered from a machine, by a boy with
a horse-rake. It is then burned, relying for manure upon the ashes which
the straw makes. This is not told as an example of good farming, but it
illustrates the exceeding richness of Ontario soil.
Since the early American colonists burnt witches at Salem, their
descendants, who came to Upper Canada as U. E. Loyalists, brought the
belief of witchcraft with them; and many of them who came here about
1800, and before, really did believe in witches. I have heard my
forefathers relate a witch story in all seriousness which I think worth
repeating, as showing to us that the New England people who burnt
witches were really sincere in the belief. About 1800 a settler in the
spring of the year did not enjoy very good health. Nothing serious
seemed to be the matter with him but a general inertia, or seediness.
There was no medical man to consult, so he did the next best thing by
consulting his nearest neighbor. The neighbor upon being told his
symptoms at once pronounced him bewitched. An old woman in the locality
was at once picked out as the bewitcher. Now for the remedy to break the
spell of the witchery. A ball must be made of silver, and they melted a
silver coin and made a rifle ball of it. An image of dough must be made
to as closely resemble the supposed witch as possible. And it was made.
Just as the sun rose the bewitched must fire at it with his rifle and
the silver ball, and the dough image was set up on a top rail of the
fence, and as the sun rose he fired and just grazed the shoulder of the
dough image. In about an hour the old witch came to the house in great
haste, and wanted to borrow some article. Were they to lend her the
article desired the spell would come on again, but refusing, the spell
was broken; of course, like sensible men, they did not lend the article.
Even they went on to say further that the witch was hit and wounded
slightly on the shoulder, where the dough image was struck by the silver
ball. However, be that as it may, they asserted that the sick man
speedily got well and was never again bewitched by the witch in question
nor any other. Of the efficacy of the unerring aim of the silver ball I
do not vouch, but I do vouch for the real _bona fide_ belief of the old
narrators of the whole tale.
There were buffalo in Ontario once, without a doubt, and I think I can
prove it. When my people first came here, their own and two other
families for some years were the only settlers between Toronto and Port
Hope. They had cows, but by some fatality their only bull died. Somehow,
three cows strayed away one summer and did not return until late in the
fall or approach of winter. Next spring these cows had a calf each, and
these calves partook partly of the mother, with the head and
foreshoulders of the buffalo. Having a shaggy mane and long hair on
their foreshoulders like the buffalo, they were without a doubt part
buffalo. The progeny of this half-buffalo stock increased, but they
never became thoroughly domesticated, and when a bull, some years after,
could be obtained, they had to be killed on account of their
viciousness.
CHAPTER VI.
A manufactory of base coin in the Province of Quebec--A clever
penman--Incident at a trial--The gang of forgers broken
up--“Stump-tail money”--Calves or land?--Ashbridge’s hotel,
Toronto--Attempted robbery by Indians--The shooting of an Indian
dog and the consequences.
I referred in the last chapter to the Spanish milled dollars in which
military services were paid for. Mexican dollars were also in vogue, and
a few years previous to the American War of 1812, some enterprising New
England counterfeiters, fancying the densely-wooded portion of Lower
Canada, near the state lines, would afford a secure base for their
operations, emigrated to our lower province. These Mexican silver
dollars were used as a currency for small moneys almost to the exclusion
of British coins. The reason for this was because these Mexican unmilled
dollars were of pure silver, almost without alloy, and were worth,
intrinsically, rather more than their face value. In these forests the
counterfeiters set up their presses and dies, and succeeded in making
Mexican dollars so very nearly like the genuine ones that they passed
unquestioned. Indeed, there was no limit to the amount these fellows
could produce, or as to the amount of wealth they could accumulate
thereby; that is to say, so far as wealth could be accumulated in those
early days among forest fastnesses. However, this band had good houses
constructed, and as well furnished as they could be at that early day.
One of the traditions about them is that they were in the habit of
throwing a dollar into the spittoon when they wanted it cleaned, which
perhaps shows they had all the hired help that money could in those days
give them. They appear to have lived a free-booting sort of life and to
have enjoyed such luxuries as money could command. So expert had they
become at the business that paymasters in the American army actually
crossed over the lines by stealth, through the woods, and bought these
Mexican dollars from the counterfeiters to pay the American troops with.
This is a fact, anomalous as it may seem, and no doubt these paymasters
reaped rich harvests by these transactions. As an illustration of the
cleverness of these counterfeiters I will note that at one time they
actually passed four thousand of their coins on one of the banks in
Montreal.
We may, therefore, assume that as counterfeiters they had arrived at
considerable perfection. The flooding of the Province of Quebec with
these Mexican dollars somewhat disarranged the even flow of trade
transactions.
On the close of the American war, however, these Mexican dollars were
gradually taken out of circulation. The genuine ones were mostly taken
to England to be recoined into British shillings and sixpences. This
altered state of affairs caused these counterfeiters to pause in their
career, and they ceased to produce the Mexican dollars for fear they
might be traced out. Counterfeiting bank-notes was what they next turned
their hands to. In those days the “greenback” had not been invented, the
engravings on the bills were not very elaborate, and they found some one
among them who could cut the die plate of a bill. Thus far they had got
on well, but the signatures to the bills presented an almost insuperable
obstacle. That oft-repeated remark, that “the old fellow always helps
his own,” was true in their case at least. One of their number was found
so clever with the pen that he could imitate the signatures to
perfection. It is asserted that this signer claimed as his share for
affixing the signatures a full share in all the band’s proceeds, and he
was to do nothing else at all. The other members were to do all the work
and he only did the writing, and lived like a gentleman in what had then
become a small village in Quebec, near the province line. He had a fine
house, carriages and servants; held several offices of trust, and had
even rare and costly bound books in his library. Indeed, he seemed to be
a person of culture in every way, and no one for a moment suspected him
of any complicity in such a nefarious business as counterfeiting.
To show how clever he was as a penman, I will tell this anecdote by way
of illustration. Some twenty thousand dollars’ worth of promissory notes
had been sued in some court in the State of Vermont. The signature on
these notes was disputed by the reputed maker, and a defence set up that
they were forgeries. This important case was thoroughly defended by the
ablest counsel of the day, and yet the case seemed likely to go against
the maker of the notes. Happening to get a hint, this attorney for the
defence quietly asked all the attorneys in the court to write their
names on a half-sheet of foolscap, which he produced, torn carelessly
from the other half-sheet.
Each one wrote his name. Then this attorney for the defence brought the
signatures to this person who did the bank-note signing in Quebec. On
the other half-sheet of foolscap this more than expert penman reproduced
in exact fac-simile the attorneys’ names. Back into court he came with
the two half-sheets of foolscap, one containing the genuine signatures
and the other the forged ones, but both sheets alike in every respect,
even as to jagged edges, where torn asunder, and every other particular.
Each signing attorney was then put in the witness box and asked to swear
to his signature. Not one of them could do it. This fact threw doubts in
the minds of the jury as to the genuineness of the signature of the
notes, and the defendant got a verdict of “not guilty.”
As the country continued to be flooded with these notes, the Government
finally began tracing their issue to the fountain head, and suddenly and
without warning made a descent upon this respectable citizen’s fine
house. Not a scrap could be found to incriminate him, and the searchers
were about to leave with apologies, when, happening to look in the
attic, they found a single unused die, which one of the gang had
thoughtlessly left there.
The finding of this die of course caused his arrest, and he and two
others were put on trial for their lives. Forgery in that day in Quebec
merited the death penalty of the law. They had moved to Canada, however,
for protection, and even in this instance Canada did not fail to protect
them still. They had forged only notes of the state banks of the United
States, and it seems that our law could not fairly get hold of them for
forging the notes of a foreign country, and they got off scot-free. But
the prosecution broke them up and they fled, having lost their
pseudo-respectability.
It is asserted that this expert penman and cultivated man afterwards
migrated to the United States, became an inmate of nearly all the
penitentiaries the United States then possessed, and finally died in one
of them. So, in this instance, as ever, the way of the transgressor was
hard, although seemingly so fair for so long a time.
“Can you tell me where I can buy shingles?” for many years after the
breaking up of the gang was one of the formulas which strangers used
when coming into the former counterfeiters’ locality to buy counterfeit
money. A man of sixty-five now tells that when a lad he once in the
spring packed his bundle in his handkerchief, swung it over his shoulder
on a stick, and sallied out looking for work. A stylish team passed him,
driven by two men, whom he asked for a ride. And they gave him a ride,
and asked him while on the way “where they could buy some shingles?” Not
knowing, he could not tell them, but his curiosity was aroused to know
what men, dressed as they were, and with so fine a team and so light a
rig, should want with shingles. Finally, after repeated inquiries, some
one on the way told them to turn off the road, and back in the woods
they would find “shingles.” It is asserted that for some years after the
close of the American War of 1812 this counterfeit money had, among
those who dealt in it, a certain market value. Sometimes the dollar was
worth as much as forty cents, and at other times it had a greater value.
Other catch words were used and known among those who dealt in this
commodity besides “shingles,” but this term seems to have been most used
and most generally known.
A long time it took to rid that part of Quebec of the remaining stamps
and dies, and to stamp out the counterfeiting entirely. But as the
country became more settled up and the roads improved it was gradually
stopped. So far as I can ascertain, this narrative contains an account
of the most systematized and successful series of forgeries our country
at that time had.
Some of these clever New England forgers knew when to stop. One of them,
it is said, moved away to New Jersey and bought a fine farm there from
the proceeds of his forgeries in Canada, and lived the life of a country
gentleman until his death.
The strangest part of this tale is yet to follow. I got it from the lips
of a resident in the West, a close observer and likely to know.
In the early settlements of the Western States bordering on the
Mississippi River, each state issued bills which were almost valueless
in any other state. All sorts of forgeries were committed on these state
bank bills. This money came to be known as “stump tail money,” and
amidst the general confusion of currencies and hasty settlements the
forgers were enabled to reap rich harvests. The forgers began to be
caught and driven still further west to the Missouri River, as the
States became better settled and things settled down generally. Nearly
all of those forgers who were caught acknowledged that they were
descendants of the gang of forgers whom I have been speaking of on the
province line in Quebec. And more, they said in their confessions, that
those who got away were likewise of the same descent. From this it would
appear that in the guild of forgers the faculties are transmitted to
succeeding generations, like those of caste in India.
I have said that in the early days of the century the settlers in
Ontario did not entertain very correct ideas as to the prospective value
of lands. The following anecdote of that time will illustrate this: Levi
Annis, descended from Charles Annis, already alluded to, when about
eighteen years of age had made a little money on his own account by
trapping. He had saved enough money to buy himself a couple of bull
calves six months old, and calculated to secure them. Just before he got
to buying them, it came to his knowledge that for the same sum which he
would pay for the calves he could buy outright 100 acres of land. For
some days he was in doubt whether to buy the calves or the hundred
acres. He asked his friends, and they reasoned that there was lots of
land, and land he could buy any time, but calves were scarce and he had
better buy them when he could. Consequently he bought the calves and let
the land alone. To show how lightly land was valued in those days I make
the comparison. But this is not at all in relation to the bargain. Had
he bought the 100 acres of land, which he thought of doing, even before
his death he would have seen a part of the town of Oshawa built upon it.
To-day there is upon this land a large manufactory and numerous
dwellings, and its value at this time is almost beyond estimating. Had
he bought the land and simply kept it, and literally done nothing else,
it would have made a rich man of him. But he chose the calves, and it is
evident in the light of the subsequent events that his choice was a poor
one.
An Indian tale of 1800 comes to my mind which my forefathers have told
to me. In the early days the settlers had to devise plans to keep their
sheep from the wolves. As their flocks increased their next great
difficulty was to keep their sheep from the Indians’ dogs. The first
settlements were, of course, along the shores of the great lakes,
Ontario and Erie. Twice a year, spring and fall, the Indians would come
out from the woods to fish in those lakes and marshes, and at the
outlets of the streams. So numerous were the Indians at that time that
they far outnumbered the whites, and when they came for the semi-annual
fish they would form a regular village, as they congregated in their
tents beside the shore of some marsh or bay upon the great lakes.
The settlers’ policy was one pre-eminently of conciliation to the
Indians. But they would at every visit be accompanied by a lot of
half-starved, ill-favored curs, which would worry the settlers’ sheep.
At one visit they had a particularly large gaunt brute of a dog, which
badly worried a sheep of my forefather. He remonstrated with the chief,
and desired him to keep the dog at the camp, which he promised to do.
Nightly he penned his sheep as usual, to keep off the wolves, but during
the day this dog continued to worry them when out of sight among the log
and brush on the partially cleared fields, and finally killed one. My
people resolved to suffer it no longer, and at great risk of their lives
and property shot the Indian dog--dead as they supposed. Then they took
the dog that the Indians might not find him, and know that they had shot
him, and put him in a hollow pine stub, the top of which stood some ten
feet from the ground, and which was hollow to the bottom. Bury the dog
they dared not, because the sharp-eyed Indian would discover the
newly-turned earth and fish it out, and they knew they could not
otherwise hide him successfully. That evening about forty Indians came
looking for the animal, and searched every place, probable and
improbable, indoors and out, and my people dared not refuse them
admittance. Without a doubt my forefather will be pardoned for “telling
a white one” when he averred that he had not got the dog. At this
juncture it became by far too serious to jest or prevaricate, for their
lives literally depended upon the Indians’ successful search for that
canine. Search as they would, however, they did not find it, and
darkness gratefully set in and put an end to their investigation for
that day. But little sleep the settlers were able to take that night
through dead fear that the Indians might possibly find the cur. Next
morning, just at the first peep of day, my forefather was up and out to
the stump, when to his intense astonishment and disgust the dog was
barking and scratching within the stub to get out. He had not been
effectually killed, and had come back again to life. Now here was a
dilemma, and what was to be done? To get up on the stub and fire at the
dog again was more than he dared, for it would arouse the Indians only
half a mile away.
An expedient he soon hit upon, however, and he resolved that day to go
to logging that he might burn the stub without arousing the keen
suspicion of the Indians. Yoking his oxen, a pile of logs was soon
gathered about the stub and set on fire. The dog’s cries grew fainter
and to him beautifully less, and finally ceased. But he did not dare to
stop the logging for the day, and worked at it faithfully all day,
whether he wished to or not, that no suspicion might rest upon him for
the burning of the pine stub. It is needless to add that the Indians did
not get the dog, and that they never found out what became of him. At
this time this may seem a simple story to tell, but to the participants
it was a life-and-death matter, and I have heard my forefathers say that
the old man would have gladly given all his sheep, dearly as he prized
them, could he have recalled that shot, when he heard the dog howling
the next morning in the stub.
CHAPTER VII.
The Canadian Revolution of 1837-38--Causes that led to
it--Searching of Daniel Conant’s house--Tyrannous misrule of the
Family Compact--A fugitive farmer--A visitor from the United States
in danger--Daniel Conant a large vessel owner--Assists seventy
patriots to escape--Linus Wilson Miller--His trial and
sentence--State prisoners sent to Van Diemen’s Land.
That uprising of 1837-38 in Canada is now generally termed the Canadian
Revolution. Most worthily does it deserve to be called a _revolution_,
for the people who were its supporters afterwards got all they asked
for. It was not a _rebellion_ but a revolution, and it did great good
for this country in the end. The fact of the very narrow and selfish
rule of the Family Compact again comes to us, for having goaded the
people to resort to extraordinary measures, they also persecuted persons
who came, or whose fathers came, from the United States. All hail to
those who, in a prominent or lesser way, took part in this rising on the
side of the patriots. It is an honor to-day for any Canadian to be
descended from one who took part and bore the burden and danger of
service in the Canadian Revolution of 1837-38. It is not to be argued
but that the patriots went rather too far, but no less could be expected
when the people once were aroused for such just causes. Those who
fought on the other side were equally as brave, and did their duty
manfully and bravely as they then saw the light. It was, nevertheless,
the efforts of the few patriots (whose fortunes we shall follow in part)
that gave us our liberties in Canada, and likewise brought about
constitutional government. Likewise were the effects of this revolution
good for the Motherland, for every colony since that time has been free
to carry on its own domestic concerns at will, which Canadians could not
possibly do before the Canadian Revolution. The day is now here when
those alive are proud of the part their forefathers took in the
struggle, and the disposition of many writers to try to gloss the
disturbances over, and make them appear small and puny in the way of
concerted efforts, are not pleasant to us nor true in their spirit. In a
word, no one can be found in Canada to-day who would dare to champion
the cause of the Royalists and the Family Compact on that occasion, and
assert that the patriots had not sufficient causes for their uprising.
Only recently has this been the case, for it has been fashionable
heretofore for every one to make light of the Revolution and to disclaim
any connection with it.
The patriots were only trying to get wrongs redressed and a
constitutional government inaugurated. They had no wish to uprise
against Great Britain. Particularly is it true that the great bulk of
the patriots were not uprising against the Motherland, for the author’s
forbears, who knew well from actual contact with the patriots, have
frequently told him so. The rule of the Family Compact they would not
endure longer. They were goaded to exasperation by the infamous acts of
that clique, and they were careless of what consequences might follow.
It was “Junius” who said, “The subject who is truly loyal will neither
advise nor submit to arbitrary acts.” In accordance with that sentiment
the patriots sought only to have the wrongs redressed, and _not to take
up arms against Great Britain in any sense_. In the following pages some
of the terribly arbitrary acts of the Family Compact will be given, for
but very few Canadians to-day have the least inkling of the high-handed
manner which this tyrannous power made use of in venting its private
hatred on the patriots, both individually and collectively. It is,
however, a matter of strong congratulation that though the Family
Compact was victorious in the revolution, its rule was but short after
it. The patriots secured all the privileges they asked for, and the
Family Compact shrunk into nothingness.
The hanging of Lount and Matthews was really judicial murder, and the
exportation of 232 Canadians to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), where
nearly all of them lost their lives, was an infamous deed; also the
persistence with which the Compact pursued the patriots is enough to
bring tears to the eyes of every thinking Canadian to-day who really
loves his country. When the Southern States revolted and fought from
April, 1861, to April, 1865, and brought about the most terrible war on
record, wherein more men were killed than in any war the world has ever
known, no one was hanged at its close. Nor was any leader imprisoned or
exported, nor was the private property of the leaders confiscated, save
that only of Jefferson Davis, the leader, and only a part of his private
property withal. Whereas, here in Canada, because our patriots had the
manliness to be men and stand up for their rights, though committing no
overt acts, they were hanged, imprisoned, driven to the United States,
or transported for life. In the case of the author’s own grandfather and
parents he can bring out some features exactly. One Colonel Ferguson,
who lived a mile and a quarter north of Whitby, considering his measure
of loyalty to be so far in excess of that of all others about, took it
upon himself to pay domiciliary visits to the homes of many with the
troops under his command. He had the command of a few militiamen whose
homes were in the locality of his visits. There were no overt acts being
committed during the winter months of 1837-38, but it made no sort of
difference to Colonel Ferguson. As a tool of the Family Compact he never
ceased to annoy his neighbors. Very vivid impressions come to the author
from the tales of his own father of Colonel Ferguson coming at midnight
of a winter night with his men, surrounding the family residence and
turning all the inmates out in the snow while he ransacked and searched
at will. Many times during that memorable winter was the search
repeated, but the author could never learn what Colonel Ferguson
expected to find as a result of his
[Illustration: THE OLD CONANT HOMESTEAD AT PORT OSHAWA, BUILT IN 1811.
Here United States prisoners from General Hull’s army, which
surrendered at Detroit, were fed while proceeding on their way by
boats under guard to Quebec. Here also domiciliary visits were paid
on several occasions during the Canadian Revolution of 1837-38, the
house being surrounded by troops at midnight, and my people turned
out in the snow while the house was being searched.
]
diligent searches. Daniel Conant’s New England descent would very
probably go far to account for Colonel Ferguson’s insane suspiciousness.
In this part of Canada the inhabitants generally were in favor of the
movement. Not to be so was to be singular. That is to say, they were in
favor of having the wrongs committed by the Family Compact redressed,
but not one in 10,000 asked for a change of the political connection of
Canada. To effect such a sweeping change as that would be was not the
object of the agitation, and at this day of writing it seems very hard
that the inhabitants should have been persecuted simply because they
loved their country; but so it was. It would be well to instance another
case of the tyrannous misrule of the Family Compact and their
persecution of unoffending persons. A farmer living near Oshawa, being
the son of a United Empire Loyalist, seemed to have all the Compact’s
hate and suspicion centred upon him, simply because his father came from
Massachusetts. The suspected man had done absolutely no act to place him
in the eye of the law. Like nearly all others, he sympathized with the
patriots, not for a moment supposing it to be a crime to love his
country and its people. But Colonel Ferguson thought differently, and
made a sally to capture the farmer. Now, capture meant almost certain
death, for it would mean being incarcerated during the very cold weather
in unheated guardhouses and gaols here or in Toronto. Knowing this, he
avoided capture by changing his quarters every few days and never
sleeping in a house. Usually he slept in the granary of a barn,
burrowing into the bin of grain until almost or quite concealed, with
the grain effectually covering him. One may rightly conjecture the
terrible hardships of this poor farmer, exposed as he was to the
inclemency of a Canadian winter. Fires in a barn are, of course, out of
the question, and therefore he had no comfort of a house and a fireside
the whole winter long. Such ill-usage could possibly have only one
ending, viz., death, which followed in the fall of 1838. Nor is this an
isolated case, for there were many such, but purposely we follow its
details in order to present a faithful picture of life in Canada during
the Canadian Revolution of 1837-38.
One more instance we must narrate before the indictment of the Family
Compact is complete. David Trull, a resident of New York State, and a
relative of the author, happened to come to visit his relatives about
Bowmanville and Newcastle in the fall of 1837. While here on this visit
the uprising took place, for the fight at Montgomery’s was on the 3rd of
December, 1837. His visit having come to an end, he started for home the
same way he came. On to Toronto, then, went David Trull, to get on board
a small steamer running from the Queen’s wharf to Niagara. As he stepped
upon the gang-plank a uniformed sentry presented a bayonet and cried
“Halt!” threatening to run him through. He turned back from the wharf,
frightened and amazed, proceeding to his hotel, which he had only that
morning left. Telling the hotel-keeper of his trouble the worthy
Boniface befriended him. He was warned that he must not on any account
whatever, as he valued his life, let any one know that he hailed from
the United States, for, said the hotel-keeper, “If you do they’ll put
you in prison and hang you.” He was further advised to put on working
clothes and act as hostler about the hotel, with a view of slipping away
on the steamer later, when suspicion had been allayed. For many days he
put in the time at watering and grooming horses for young would-be
military satraps, who ordered him about, and whom in his own country he
would have treated with contempt. But he got away on the steamer at
last, and almost vowed when once on United States soil never again to
set foot in Canada. Realizing, however, in after years that only a very
small portion of the Canadian people were disposed to misuse a guest, as
they had done in his case, he overlooked it, and came back on visits in
after years. To his dying day, however, he never forgot the arbitrary
treatment of the Family Compact, and his hate for them went with him to
his grave.
Daniel Conant, the author’s father, was a very large vessel owner at the
time of the Canadian Revolution. At the earnest requests, entreaties and
tears of some seventy patriots, whose lives and liberties were unsafe in
Canada, he took them in midwinter across Lake Ontario in his ship
_Industry_ to Oswego, N.Y. During the inclement weather of that voyage
his ship was lost, while all got over safely (_vide_ “Upper Canada
Sketches,” by the author). But Daniel Conant and his officers and
sailors dared not come back home, even without their ship. To be caught
meant transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), or death by
hanging at home, according to the mood of the authorities. To gain home
and friends once more they walked back to Niagara in the spring of 1838,
and crossed the Niagara River at its mouth, landing boldly at the wharf
in the village of Niagara, where was a garrison and guards always on the
watch. To get past the guard was the point at issue. John Pickel, who
had been mate on the lost ship, has the credit of getting them out of
the difficulty. Making for the canteen he hilariously began treating
every one who came in sight. Being plentifully supplied with cash by the
author’s father, he persistently kept at the treating, giving many most
loyal toasts, “and was glad to get back again on Canadian soil.” These
words to-day, after an intervening sixty-three years, seem, no doubt,
tame and hardly worth preserving. Let us, however, remember the time and
the terrible risk then run. As the shades of evening came on they
quietly, one at a time, dropped out of the canteen, the garrison, the
village, the clearing, and into the darkness of the forest. Hamilton was
reached in due time, but a detour around to the north of Toronto was
made, and justly proud of having saved the lives and fortunes of seventy
patriots, whose only crime was that of loving their country, and wishing
for reform and good government, they got home at last. It would scarcely
be within the scope of this volume to follow
[Illustration: DANIEL CONANT.]
in detail the events of the Canadian Revolution. To do so would make too
bulky a volume. We may, however, notice the case of one who was
transported, along with several others, to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).
Linus Wilson Miller had come over from New York State, having relatives
in Canada, and through sympathy had endeavored to help the patriots. He
was apprehended, and in order to get a true inside view of the workings
of the Family Compact we will give the court scene when he was brought
up for trial at Niagara, July, 1838.
Having been brought under guard to the court room he was asked:
“Linus Wilson Miller, what say you--guilty or not guilty?
“I shall not plead to my indictment at present.
“SOLICITOR-GENERAL--But you must.
“I choose to be excused.
“SOLICITOR-GENERAL--But you cannot be excused.
“I tell you, I am not prepared to stand my trial now.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--Answer you, prisoner at the bar, the question put
to you by the Court--what say you, Linus Wilson Miller, guilty or
not guilty?
“My Lord, that is a question which, as I before said, I am not now
prepared to answer.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--You must say, guilty or not guilty.
“Your lordship must excuse me.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--“You shall answer either guilty or not guilty--it
is only a mere matter of form.
“Doubtless your lordship considers hanging by one’s neck until dead
only mere matter of form.”
“CHIEF JUSTICE (in a rage)--Do you mean, sir, to insult this
court?
“My Lord, I mean only what I say, that I must have time to prepare
for my trial.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--Will you or will you not plead to your
indictment--what say you, prisoner at the bar, guilty or not
guilty?
“My Lord, I cannot plead now.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--You shall by G----
“My Lord, I will not. (Great sensation.)
“THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL--How dare you insult his lordship? You must
answer at once; it will be better for you to do so. I advise you to
plead not guilty; after which the Court will take into
consideration your claims to have your trial postponed, and order
you counsel, if you wish it. The Court are disposed to be just and
merciful.
“I repeat what I said before, I will not.
“ATTORNEY-GENERAL--You are a desperate fellow.
“And not without reason, for if I am to judge of the intentions of
this Court, from external appearances, I am in desperate
circumstances. But the word ‘fellow’ which you just applied to me
is significant.
“ATTORNEY-GENERAL (with a sneer)--Pray, sir, what are you?
“A victim chosen for the slaughter; but you are mistaken if you
think to coax or drive me to plead at present; I understand your
wishes and my own interests too well.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--Prisoner at the bar, three weeks have passed since
your capture, and you have had sufficient time to prepare your
defence. This Court has been convened for the express purpose of
trying you, and the Government cannot be put to so much expense for
nothing. I have taken care myself that all witnesses which you can
possibly require in your defence should be present to-day, and they
are here. You can have, therefore, no excuse whatever for wishing
to postpone your trial, and your only object is to give the
Government and this Court unnecessary trouble; but your
stubbornness shall avail you nothing, for the Court will order the
usual course in case of stubborn and wilful prisoners, who refuse
to plead, to be pursued in this case. I now ask you for the last
time--what say you, Linus Wilson Miller, to the charges preferred
against you: are you guilty or not guilty?
“My Lord, I am informed by your lordship that I have had sufficient
time to prepare for my trial, having been in custody three weeks.
How was I to prepare my defence before I had been indicted--how
know what charges, if any, would be preferred against me? I have
but now heard them read, and am required, without one moment’s
warning, to plead to charges of the most serious nature, affecting
my life! I am likewise informed by your lordship that all the
witnesses requisite for my defence are present in Court, that in
the present enlightened age, a judge, in a British Court of
Justice, will tell a prisoner arraigned under such circumstances,
that the witnesses for his defence are all present by order of the
Court, and that too in the presence of a jury empanelled to try
him. Is a Chief Justice of a British Court thus to sit upon a bench
and pre-judge a case of life and death? Have I consulted any legal
gentleman in this Province upon my case whereby by any possibility
your lordship could have been apprised of the witnesses I may
require, or of the nature of the defence which in so serious a case
I may deem it necessary to make? How long have I known that charges
were preferred against me which require either a defence or the
surrender of my life without a struggle? And yet I am told by your
lordship that I _shall_ abide my trial upon the testimony of
witnesses of your lordship’s own choosing, in a defence
predetermined by your lordship long before a grand jury had found a
true bill against me. Is this your boasted British justice? Am I
indeed within the sacred walls of a court, a British Court, the
pride and boast of Englishmen? Shame, my l----
“CHIEF JUSTICE (in a great rage)--Silence, you d--d Yankee rebel!
Not another word or--
“My Lord, I will not keep silence when my life is at stake.... A
jury did I say? They are all strangers to me, but from the
proceedings I have witnessed to-day, I have no doubt they are mere
tools of the Government, pledged to render a verdict of guilty and
perjure their own hearts.
“A JURYMAN, from the box--My Lord, are we honest men to be insulted
and abused in this manner?
“No doubt the gentleman _is_ an honest man.... My Lord, I have
done--but I again _demand_ from your lordship the full time allowed
by law for my defence.... At present I have only to request to be
furnished with a copy of my indictment.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--The Court will not allow you a copy.”
There is no reason to infer that this is misquoted in a single letter.
In fact current testimony will bear out all that Miller says, and the
reading of this court scene will give us a very true insight into life
in Canada in 1838, and will be quite new to the present generation of
Canadians. The author gets this court scene from “Notes of an Exile, on
Canada, England and Van Diemen’s Land,” by Linus Wilson Miller, and it
is probable that the copy of Miller’s book that I possess is the only
one in Canada to-day.
“On August 5th, 1838, Linus Wilson Miller was again tried at
Niagara, and here follows the scene in court when the jury brought
in a verdict of ‘Guilty, with an earnest recommendation of the
prisoner to the extreme mercy of the court.’
“CHIEF JUSTICE (in a great rage)--Gentlemen of the jury, do you
know that your verdict is virtually an acquittal? How dare you
bring in such a verdict in this case?...
“THE FOREMAN--My Lord, the jury regard him as having been partially
deranged some months since, but of sane mind when he invaded this
province.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--Then retire, gentlemen, and reconsider your
verdict. You cannot recommend him to mercy.
“In a few minutes they returned with a verdict of ‘guilty, with a
recommendation of the prisoner to the mercy of the court.’
“CHIEF JUSTICE--Gentlemen of the jury, I’ll teach you your duty,
how dare you return such a verdict?...
“A JURYMAN--My Lord, we recommend him on account of his youth.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--That is no excuse for his crimes, ...
“ANOTHER JURYMAN--My Lord, we believe him to be an enthusiast in
the cause in which he was engaged; that his motives are good, and
his conduct honorable and humane.
“CHIEF JUSTICE--Your duty is to pronounce the prisoner guilty or
not guilty.
“After a short consultation the jury returned a verdict of guilty
only, and the infamous Chief Justice--a second Jeffreys--with a
countenance beaming with hellish smiles, bowed to the jury.”
Miller was in due course sentenced to be hanged, but this sentence was
commuted to transportation. We find him and twelve others, all
Canadians, chained and sent by steamer _Cobourg_ to Kingston. From
Kingston the party were sent by another steamer to Montreal. After being
changed again they reached Quebec. Here the thirteen Canadian prisoners
were put on board a timber ship and sent to England. From the fact that
so very few Canadians know that Canadians were transported to the other
side of the world, the author makes special mention of this matter.
To-day we would not think of doing such things, and very many Canadians
will be inclined to question the truthfulness of the statement. But, in
all, ninety-one Canadian state prisoners were sent to that distant penal
colony. A few lines of verse may be inserted as very apt and striking.
They are by T. R. Harvey:
Morn on the waters! And purple and bright
Bursts on the billows the flashing of light;
O’er the glad waves like a child of the sun,
See, the tall vessel goes gallantly on.
Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,
And her pennon streams onward like hope in the gale;
The winds come around her in murmur and song,
And the surges rejoice as they bear her along.
See, she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,
And the sailor sings gaily aloft in her shrouds.
Onward she glides amid ripple and spray,
Over the waters, away and away!
Bright as the visions of youth ere they part,
Passing away like a dream of the heart.
Who, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by,
Music around her and sunshine on high,
Pauses to think amid glitter and show
Oh, there be hearts that are breaking below!
Night on the waves! And the moon is on high,
Hung like a gem on the brow of the sky,
Treading its depths in the power of its might,
And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light.
Look to the waters! Asleep on their breast
Seems not the ship like an island of rest?
Bright and alone on the shadowy main,
Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain.
Who, as he watches her silently gliding,
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever,
Hearts that are parted and broken forever?
Or dreams that he watches afloat on the wave,
The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit’s grave.
So far as can be known only thirteen of the ninety-six ever got back
home to Canada, after years of waiting, hoping and praying. All the
others found untimely graves in that far-off land, where they died
broken-hearted and alone.
Linus Wilson Miller did not get home until August, 1846, he being one of
the very first to reach America. A sailing ship brought him to
Pernambuco. At that port the captain of the American barque _Globe_
accepted a bill drawn by him on his father for his passage, he being
totally without money. Englishmen and Americans resident at Pernambuco
however, on learning the facts, and being acquainted with the desperate
treatment of Miller, raised the funds to take up the bill and send him
on home. To-day we consider the execution of Lount and Matthews simply
judicial murder, and Sir George Arthur went to his reward in after years
with a heavy load on his conscience. It is hardly in the bounds of
possibility for him ever to forget the time when Mrs. Lount knelt before
him and prayed for the life of her husband, and he refused to as much as
listen to her.
Van Schultz too, poor fellow, a Pole, who escaped oppression in his own
country, came to the United States; then, fancying us oppressed, he
voluntarily tried to help us, and, as we all know, was captured at the
disturbance at Windmill Point, Prescott. Generous and impulsive, but
misguided, his execution was another judicial murder exulted in by the
Family Compact. Linus Wilson Miller’s crimes to-day would perhaps be met
by a half year’s sentence of incarceration. But he was broken down in
health by the hard usage and hard work he had to endure in Tasmania, as
well as were all the other state prisoners. Being a state prisoner he
would not now be compelled to labor, if treated as political prisoners
are treated the world over. He and all the others were worked to the
bone, flogged, and most of them sent to early graves in that far-off
land.
Thank God, we have changed all that.
Lord Durham came out as Governor-General right after the trouble.
Responsible constitutional government was granted, and all the reforms
the people asked for. Not in the most remote degree was the Home
Government responsible for our misusage, nor for the uprising, for it
knew nothing of it. In illustration of this, the following example is
pertinent: When Sir Francis Bond Head, who was the supreme Governor
General during the uprising, was on his way home he stopped at New York.
There he met Marshal S. Bidwell, then an exile, and a man universally
acknowledged as at the head of the bar in Canada. Sir Francis
deliberately told Bidwell he had received instructions from the Home
Government to appoint him judge. Bidwell turned and fled, and never bade
adieu to him. On gaining the street he first thought of returning and
apologizing for his rudeness, but the injury was too great, and he never
saw Head again? Can we wonder at the Canadian uprising when such things
could be?
At the top of a parchment Crown deed to one of the Conants the name of
Sir Francis Bond Head appears, and never can the author look upon that
parchment without unpleasant thoughts of the man’s poltroonery and
narrowness.
It is not out of place to record here the fact that Benedict Arnold, the
traitor, received a grant of 18,000 acres of our lands in Upper Canada
not far from the author’s home. No Canadian ever liked a traitor, nor do
we like the memory of Arnold, hence special mention is made of the
grant. The British Government gave him £10,000 besides. There is a
little verse which covers all the points nicely, thus:
“From Cain to Catiline the world hath known
Her traitors--vaunted votaries of crime--
Caligula and Nero sat alone
Upon the pinnacle of vice sublime;
But they were moved by hate, or wish to climb
The rugged steeps of Fame; in letters bold
To write their names upon the scroll of Time;
Therefore their crime some virtue did enfold--
But Arnold! thine had none--’twas all for sordid gold!”
[Illustration: DESK USED IN THE LEGISLATIVE CHAMBER BY W. LYON
MACKENZIE. UPPER CANADA, 1837.
(From the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
]
CHAPTER VIII.
Building a dock at Whitby--Daniel Conant becomes security--Water
communication--Some of the old steamboats--Captain Kerr--His
commanding methods--Captain Schofield--Crossing the
Atlantic--Trials of emigrants--Death of a Scotch emigrant.
Daniel Conant, as a vessel owner on Lake Ontario for many years, felt
keenly the great need for proper harbors and docks for loading and
unloading his vessels. Up to the close of the Revolution of 1837-38 he
had, when near home, made use of Whitby harbor, which was four miles
westerly from Port Oshawa. But the great drawback to Whitby harbor was
its shallow water, which caused much trouble in getting away from its
single warehouse when his ships were fully laden. At this juncture of
the long-felt want (about 1839) one Smith came along and contracted to
build new docks at Whitby harbor, and to place them beside deep water.
Daniel Conant became Smith’s security on his bonds for £1,100, or
$4,400, for due fulfilment of the contract. It may be incidentally
mentioned that the author most distinctly remembers that his people
spoke of Smith as most eloquent in prayer, especially when in the
family circle. This gift, added to the want of the docks, captivated
David Annis, the author’s great-uncle, and his father as well. The bonds
for £1,100 were endorsed, and were held by the Bank of Upper Canada in
Whitby, of which Peter Perry was the agent and manager. For no
assignable reason Smith absconded in May, 1838. The loss was so great in
that day, at the close of hostilities, that money could scarcely be
obtained at all. To raise £1,100 at once almost broke Daniel Conant’s
heart.
To Peter Perry he went, and Perry saluted him by the query, “Do you
intend to pay it?”
The reply came quickly: “Yes, every copper. Give me until fall--1st
November--and you shall have it all.”
Perry almost doubted it, and asked how he would get the money.
“I have four ships on the water and 150 acres of winter wheat, and I
will sell enough land to raise the balance,” was the answer.
Perry, to his honor be it said, granted the extension, and Daniel Conant
sold 1,200 acres of land in Whitby at an average of $200 per 100 acres,
which are to-day worth $9,000 per hundred, to help to make up the
amount. True, it was not business to pay so quickly and sacrifice so
much, but, as he explained, he felt that he must get out from the
transaction, and he did. The author knew very well John Ham Perry, at
Whitby, one-time registrar and son of Peter Perry, and now realizes that
he was for many years in most straitened circumstances, and most deeply
to-day regrets that he never aided him for having helped his father, a
mistake which can never be repaired, much to the author’s regret.
Lying upon the Great Lakes and the mighty St. Lawrence, Canada was
specially favored. The water afforded a means of communication for
persons and goods before roads were hewn out of the forests. It must be
very evident to any one reflecting, that boats were much more important
factors in transportation before the days of the railways than they are
now since railways intersect our country in every direction. To Upper
Canada very many of the emigrants came from the British Isles by
steamboats upon Lake Ontario. To such a degree of importance did
captains of the steamboats attain, that we have no marine captains of
these days, even those of the great ocean greyhounds, who can compare
with them in dignity. Among these captains was old Captain Kerr, who for
so many years sailed the side-wheel steamer _Admiral_. Now the _Admiral_
had, as all those of that day had, before the sixties came in, a huge
walking-beam, and with its 800 tons of burden of freight which it was
licensed to carry, seemed literally to walk over the waters of Lake
Ontario. Especially true the walking-beam comparison is, because the
great part of the engine rose and fell, see-saw-like without ceasing,
away aloft above the decks and over every top hamper of the steamer.
Now, just suppose the old _Admiral_ has made the dock at some Lake
Ontario port. Old Captain Kerr stands upon the upper deck and directs
her speed and course as she makes the wharf. Landing at last and the
gang-plank thrown out, people are coming on and off, and freight of
barrels and boxes is being trundled both to and from the steamer’s deck.
Eagle-eyed, red-faced, corpulent Captain Kerr views all and notes all
from his coign of vantage, the deck above. And he bellows out his
commands to the boat hands below in words so sharp that they fairly hiss
as they leave his lips. No matter if they be keen and cutting, they are
implicitly obeyed, and the deck hands jump--literally and truly jump
(not a figure of speech)--to obey. Meek passengers of those days did not
even expect a greeting, pleasant or the reverse, from old Captain Kerr
and commanders of his stamp, for they were not noticed in the slightest
degree. Early steamboat captains were too great personages to cultivate
the social virtues, and they seemed to live within themselves and keep
bottled up all the accumulated venom and ire and push of the Canadian
summer and shipping season. Faithful old seadogs they were,
nevertheless, and the fewness of records of disaster upon the Great
Lakes of Canada truthfully testifies to their skill and watchfulness. It
is a fact that very few steamers were wrecked or lives lost upon these
lakes. Some were burned, because, built of timber as they were, and
burning wood for fuel, they were particularly susceptible to fires on
ship-board; but of real wrecks there were few. Built of timber and with
oak planking upon the sides and bottom, very generally of three inches
in thickness, these vessels were able to withstand a slight collision,
or a run upon the bottom, without serious injury. Such collisions or
groundings to our modern thin steel and iron steamers would to-day
simply mean a berth at the bottom of Lake Ontario, without further
notice. Rough and burly as Captain Kerr and men of his stamp were, they
did great good to our country in bringing safely and quickly, and with
very good accommodation, incoming emigrants to Upper Canada; and their
churlishness and rigidness we may in a measure excuse.
Previous to the great war in the United States, from April, 1861, to
April, 1865, the steamer _Maple Leaf_ ran for many summers upon Lake
Ontario. During its many trips it brought thousands and thousands of
persons to the different parts of Upper Canada, and served us well and
faithfully. Captain Schofield for many years ran the steamer, and
emulated Captain Kerr in importance and churlishness. He was unable,
however, to emulate him in corpulency. The deep redness of his face may
not have quite equalled that of Captain Kerr, but approached very
nearly. Captain Schofield many hundreds of times stood upon the upper
deck of the _Maple Leaf_, with his hands upon the brass bell pulls for
the engine, and roared out his orders so that passengers and deck hands
alike wriggled to get out from under his words by getting out of his
range of vision. For checking goods, however, coming upon or going from
the steamer, no faster or more correct man ever lived. And Captain
Schofield was a sailor in the true sense of the term. No mishap ever
befell his steamer. During the great American war she was sold to the
United States Government for a blockader for $45,000, and finally never
again made any port, but “laid her bones to bleach” on Currituck Sound,
in North Carolina. Captain Schofield then went to Rochester, N.Y., and
met a violent death when stepping on or off a railway car. To-day he
sleeps in the soil of New York State. It is related of him that once he
ran into Oswego, N.Y., on a Saturday night to lie there until the Monday
morning following. On Sunday his sailors sought recreation on shore; one
of them got into some low dive in that city, and on the Monday morning
was kicked out minus all clothing. Now, he dared not disobey Captain
Schofield and fail to be on duty on Monday morning, but the difficulty
was to get to the steamer entirely nude as he then was. Casting about he
finally compromised matters by jumping into a barrel, knocking out the
bottom and carrying it by his arms so that it enveloped his person,
rather loosely, it is true, but very effectually notwithstanding. That
sailor came on board, however, and did his duty manfully.
Canadians to-day, who are so very generally dependent upon railways,
fail to realize what a great service those important and vituperative
steamboat captains and their steamers did for us as a people. They
honestly deserve pleasant memories at our hands. Any instance of a
captain upon Lake Ontario abusing or insulting any female passenger on
his ship is yet to be chronicled. Although only two steamers are singled
out and mentioned, the list could be well extended to the _Passport_,
_Highland Chief_, _America_, and _Princess Royal_.
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in those days (previous to the sixties) was
a terrible trial for the poor emigrant seeking his fortune in this new
Canada of ours. Being confined to such close quarters, and crowded for
so many days, it is not at all singular that many diseases followed the
emigrants even after leaving the ocean a long way behind. Deadly typhus
fever luxuriated amid such surroundings, while cholera was no stranger
to the poor voyagers. One midsummer day Captain Kerr came into Port
Oshawa, about 1855, at 9 o’clock in the morning, with a boatload of
Highland Scotchmen as passengers. At this port 150 of them landed, and
their goods and baggage were placed in the general storehouse upon the
wharf. In the presence of Mr. Wood, the port wharfinger, and Mr.
Mothersill, a gentleman who was looking on, many of these packages, for
the first time since leaving the ocean ship, were opened out in the
storehouse. In a very few hours from the time when they saw these goods
unpacked, strange to relate, both these gentlemen died, while the landed
emigrants started to walk northward from Port Oshawa to get to the homes
of their relatives in Mariposa in the county of Victoria. To rest over
night they entered a large cooper shop then standing on the south side
of Oshawa, and remained for the night. Next morning early they left, and
the cooper on coming into the shop was horrified to find a dead man
lying upon his shavings. During the night the poor fellow, after
braving an Atlantic passage of those days, and now near his goal, died
and was deserted by his friends. It is only fair to add, however, that
his friends were afraid of the contagion. It is said that the peculiar
stuffy smell from these emigrants did not leave the storehouse or the
cooper shop that whole summer, and only ceased when frosts came in the
autumn. Of such sterling stock our Canadian people came. Perhaps no
sadder instance can be given than the poor Scotchman lying, without
nursing or medical attendance on a heap of cooper’s shavings, among
strangers in a strange land, where every one was afraid of him, and
shunned him to avoid the fever that raged in his veins.
CHAPTER IX.
Maple sugar making--The Indian method--“Sugaring-off”--The
toothsome “wax”--A yearly season of pleasure.
One of the familiar proceedings of the days of early spring in the long
ago time, when the pioneers were busy with clearing the primeval forests
of Ontario, was the maple sugar making. In our oldest settled parts of
Ontario this is, of course, among the things that have been, simply
because most of the maples have been ruthlessly slaughtered. On our good
lands in Ontario the cleared fields pay better than maple orchards, our
farmers have thought, and, much as we now regret the fact, still it is a
fact that over most of our province the groves have been destroyed. Most
of our youngsters have never experienced the delights of a sugaring-off,
and many of our Old World citizens never yet tasted the nectar in its
forest purity. Hence I infer that this chapter may give information and
pleasure to many readers.
The Jesuit Fathers, who were the first white men in this country among
the Indians, tell us that the Indians made sugar regularly every spring
by tapping the sugar maple. At this time the Indians did not have iron
kettles for boiling the maple sap in. It became a curious question how
they did manage to boil down the succulent juice without a kettle to
boil it in. They tapped the trees with their tomahawks, and inserted a
spile in the incision to conduct the sap from the tree to their vessel
beneath. Their spile was a piece of dry pine or cedar wood, grooved on
its upper side for the sap to flow down. No doubt this process was
extremely crude; still, with all its crudities, they succeeded in
producing a considerable quantity of sugar each spring. Their buckets
were made by taking a roll of birch bark and sewing up the ends with
deer sinews or roots. Thus they got a vessel capable of holding a
pailful, and no doubt the sap caught in such vessels was just as sweet
as that which we now gather in our bright tin pails, at far greater
expense and trouble. Gathering the sap from the birchen buckets, it was
carried by the original red man to the boiling place.
At this boiling place was a large caldron made of large sheets of birch
bark. Beside the caldron a fire was built, and in this fire was placed a
lot of stones. As soon as the stones became heated to a red heat, they
were dropped into the birchen caldron, previously filled with sap. By
taking out the cooled stones and putting in more hot ones, and repeating
the process, even slow as it was, they got the sap to boiling. Once got
to boiling, by heating the extracted stones they kept up the boiling,
and so continued the process until, after a time, they got the sap
boiled down, and sugar was the result.
That was making sugar without the aid of a kettle, and no doubt many
will almost doubt the accuracy of the statement. It is a positive fact,
however, for my forefathers, who came to this province in the last
century, have handed down in family tradition the story of the process
just as I have narrated it. Indeed they were eye-witnesses of the
process themselves. With the advent of settlers, of course, the Indian
soon learned better, and traded his furs with the fur dealer for iron
kettles, and then began making sugar much as the white man does to-day.
As to the cleanliness of the Indian method, it is hardly necessary to
speak. One can just fancy as to what amount of cinders would be conveyed
by the stones drawn from the fire repeatedly and placed into the boiling
syrup. Yet with cinders and all a sweetness was found at the bottom, and
no doubt the Indian enjoyed his sugar, with all its cinders and ashes,
quite as much as we do to-day with all our methods of cleanliness. It
used to be an old saying that every one must eat his peck of dirt before
he died. Granting the truth of the old saying, then, our Indian brother
certainly got his peck of that commodity before half his ordinary life
would be spent; and yet the Indian, with all his crudeness, taught the
first white settlers to love the toothsome sweet, and to him we owe our
knowledge of maple sugar.
The sugar maple is the emblematic maple of our country, whose leaves we
couple with the beaver to form our national escutcheon. Its timber is
the most valuable for firewood of any in our country, and equally as
valuable for many purposes when made into lumber. Waggon axles have been
formerly made from its wood. It is the cleanest, prettiest tree among
our forests, and the most sought for as a shade-tree, but, being a slow
grower, is many times crowded out by trees of swifter growth. It is the
tree of Canada in a word, and added to its qualities, as before spoken
of, it produces a succulent sap, whose flavor is peculiar to the maple
and to the maple alone. Scientists, who imitate nature with their
compounds, have utterly failed in producing, by all their mixtures and
compounds, a flavor of the genuine maple. Honey can be counterfeited,
but maple sugar never. Just what the peculiar charm is about the sweet
produced by this incomparable tree one cannot describe in words. It has
only to be indulged in to be appreciated. Among all the sweets its sweet
is the most delicate and pleasing, and we doubt if ambrosial nectar,
supposed to be prepared by the ancients for the immortal gods, began to
equal it. So the gods of the ancients would have had a better time of it
had they been among the North American settlers, than around and about
the Ægean.
Only in North America is the sugar maple found. To cause the sap to flow
freely it is necessary to have nights of frost, followed by days of
sunshine. March is generally the month giving these conditions, and at
that time in the remaining maple orchards in Canada our citizens will be
found boiling down this incomparable sweet. Great as has been the
decimation of our sugar orchards, yet there are many still found in our
province, and the writer advises all those who have not yet tasted the
nectar to make an effort to get to a genuine “sugaring-off” and indulge
for the nonce in this experience, the memory of which a lifetime cannot
obliterate. I will describe a sugaring-off as well as I can, that others
not conversant with it may in a measure realize its charms. The trees
are now tapped by boring a shallow auger hole just through the bark of
the maple. Below the auger hole a tin spile or spout is inserted by
driving the sharp end of the rounded tin into the bark. Below the spile
is placed a bucket made of cedar, by those possessing such buckets.
There are cedar buckets now in use, made sixty years ago, among some of
the older settlers, and owing to the peculiar lasting qualities of
cedar, are as sound to-day as when first made. Others, as before spoken
of, use tin pails or pans, but old sugar-makers aver that the sugar
tastes best when caught in the cedar buckets. A shallow sheet-iron pan
set over a stove range receives the sap, and in this the boiling is
done. The fire, by passing along the arch, thus heats the extended
surface of the pan, and the sap is thus boiled or evaporated far faster
than it is in the ordinary process by boiling in a kettle. After the sap
has been evaporated down to the consistency of syrup it is then taken
out of the evaporating pan and placed in the sugaring-off kettle. Up to
this time in the process the expectant and waiting sugar eaters have not
indulged in the boiling nectar. Reducing the syrup by boiling it down in
the kettle is the interesting process. Soon the surface of the sugar
presents a yeasty appearance, and it begins to rise and fall in
globules. Now is the time for careful watching to see that the mass does
not burn; and for fear that it may run over, a piece of fat pork has
been thrown into the boiling mass. This has the effect of keeping the
boiling syrup within the bounds of the kettle sides, and when this piece
of pork is extracted it is about the sweetest piece one ever tasted.
Wooden spoons, if no better ones are on hand, will have been whittled
out by some handy whittler. The liquid is taken out into small vessels
for individual use, and gradually stirred and cooled. And you taste. It
is positively irresistible. And you taste again, and another taste is in
order; charming is perhaps the only word which expresses the pleasure of
partaking of this more than toothsome tit-bit. Positively there is
nothing else in nature to compare with it, and just what the charm is no
one can exactly say, only it is the peculiar maple flavor which maple
alone, of all things in the world, gives, which causes one to keep on
tasting, even to running a serious risk of tasting and partaking too
frequently for the dimensions of an ordinary stomach.
When it will “blow” is the next interesting point in the process. The
sugar maker inserts a piece of a small bent twig into the mass, and
blows upon the syrup adhering to the twig. If it comes off in flakes or
bubbles, then it’s done, and the kettle is swung off from the fire that
it may not be burnt.
And now for the wax, which to many is the most toothsome part of the
whole. Many prefer the wax to the warm sugar. Then dip out some of the
hot sugar, still bubbling in the kettle, and pour it quickly upon the
nearest snow. In a moment it cools, as it melts a shallow furrow in the
snow. Now comes a sticky wax, which will effectually seal together the
upper and lower jaws of the participant if he chews lustily. But it’s so
sweet, so pure and pleasant, and it’s all so jolly, that such
experiences are always red-letter days in one’s life calendar. Pour more
syrup on the snow and more wax is the result, and the knowing ones break
off the wax in small fragments and allow it to gradually dissolve upon
the tongue. And the joke goes around about the green hand and the greedy
one, who has his jaws transfixed with the wax, and is unable to speak
for a few moments until the wax has partially dissolved.
If the warm sugar was good, yea, incomparably good, this wax is
glorious. And you eat, and chat, and eat again, and there’s no
rancidness about this maple product to cause your throat to become raw,
as it were, as all other sweets do. And so you eat on with impunity,
each one’s own individual stomach’s capacity being alone the measure as
the amount of nectar one should consume. And this is a sugaring-off.
Reader, if you have not already tried it, don’t fail to make an effort
to get to a sugaring-off, and my word for it you will never regret it.
We all deplore the loss of our previously magnificent maple orchards.
But let us guardedly preserve those now remaining to us. Without
speaking of the beauty they give to our country, they give us yearly at
this season of the year a pleasure which money cannot in any other way
purchase. Indeed, the wealth of our millionaires cannot purchase the
pleasures of a sugaring-off otherwise than by going to the maple orchard
itself.
CHAPTER X.
Winter in Ontario--Flax-working in the old time--Social
gatherings--The churches are centres of attraction--Winter
marriages--Common schools--Wintry aspect of Lake Ontario.
Our fathers spent their winter evenings and days of winter storms in
working at the flax. It was the universal custom for each householder in
our fathers’ time to raise a piece of flax, and, during the enforced
housing of the winter, it was broken, scutched and spun around the big
cavernous open fire. The distaff in those days was ever upon the floor
in the common dwelling room, and as much an article of furniture as the
family table. Quite a few of these old distaffs are yet bundled away in
garrets, dust and cobweb laden. My own people did not fail to bring the
distaff along with them when they came from Massachusetts in 1792, and
this one was in constant use until machinery got to be common and the
necessity for home manipulation to supply the family clothing no longer
existed. To-day all that is changed, and during these midwinter days our
people of this part of Ontario have no such occupation to fill in their
leisure hours.
The days of wood-getting, logging and timber-making, too, are past; and
at this day this people have to develop a new order of civilization to
meet the new condition of affairs. Our people read far more than
formerly, and very many of their hours of winter leisure are spent over
the printed page. In nearly every house one enters, too, in this part of
our province to-day, one finds quite a number of volumes of books, as
well as the general stock of newspapers. So the taste and knowledge of
our people is steadily on the gain; and we are, as a people, taking the
benefit of the respite from enforced hours of weary labor at the flax
from which machinery has relieved us. Very serious accidents used to
occur, too, in those days of hand labor at the flax, even simple as the
work may seem. Very frequently the flax would be hung in bunches around
the living room of the family, in which the great fireplace was. This
flax, having been broken and scutched with the swingle, and ready for
spinning, was perforce quite as ready to light as tinder. There were
numerous instances of most dreadful fires occurring by this suspended
flax igniting from some sparks dropping on it from the open fire. In one
instance, not far from where my own house now is, a woman stepped to the
road, only five or six rods away, leaving two small children in the
room, and before she could get back to them the whole room was ablaze,
and they perished, with the total destruction of the house.
Social gatherings largely make up to-day for the hours spent formerly in
work at home. Among themselves the people of Ontario are eminently a
social and hospitable lot. Almost nightly our folks gather among their
fellows and spend their evenings in harmless chat.
But the great pivot upon which our social system revolves in Ontario is
the church. At the church our amusements mostly cluster, too; for our
ministers are shrewd enough to keep some meetings to come off in the
future, which the people look forward to and talk about among
themselves. Maybe it’s a lecture, or a musical treat, or some dissolving
views, or what not; and these, added to the usual sermons from the
pulpit, keep the people continually centred, as it were, about the
church. Again, our churches are invariably well lighted and seated, and
the air is pure; and, on the whole, they are attractive and pleasant.
Hence our young folks even, as well as older ones, choose to be about
our churches instead of finding amusement elsewhere. I am not speaking
of the devotional part of the matter; our people continue to attend the
churches, for that follows as a matter of course. Again, our ministers
are shrewd enough to know that they could not hold the people at the
churches two or three nights per week as well as Sundays for the
devotional part alone; for, without detracting one jot from the purely
religious aspect of the matter, our ministers know quite well that the
devotional part alone would not hold our people without diversions.
Indeed, our ministers are to be most highly commended for so cleverly
managing our people as to keep them so at the church’s dangling
apron-strings, as it were, to use a homely simile. Many, many times
better at the church’s dangling apron-strings than spending the evening
at the bars, in throwing dice, or at any such questionable gatherings.
And I take it, too, as self-evident, that our people’s faithful
following of the church has a quality of the intellect as well as of the
heart. A remark of Castellar’s, the great Spanish statesman and orator,
illustrates the difference of standpoint that prevails in various
countries as to religious observances. He said, “The Protestant religion
would freeze me with its iciness.” Compared with the sensuous and
fascinating cathedral worship of Europe, our ceremonials, whether
Protestant or Catholic, are indeed plain and unadorned. But they attract
as intelligent, self-respecting, law-abiding and decent a lot of people
as can be found anywhere.
Most marriages are celebrated during our winter months. It is quite
manifest that social gatherings and meetings, brought about by the
enforced hours of idleness, are very conducive to match-making; and
this, perhaps, accounts for the matrimonial activity of the winter
season. Not infrequently the expectant bride and groom, having procured
a license of marriage, call upon the minister at his house for him to
tie the knot. Ludicrous stories are told of the bashfulness of many
persons who come on such errands. Some of our clergy yet require the
responsive service, and the groom, when asked the question so necessary,
“Wilt thou have this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?” sometimes
replies, “I came on purpose.” Well, that’s a good answer, and shows his
honesty of purpose, even if it be a little comic. The fellow’s not to be
laughed at, however, even if he does make this response, or even if he
does pull off his gloves, in order to save them, the moment the ceremony
is over and they are pronounced man and wife.
During these midwinter days in central Ontario, our school-boys are
trudging through snows and amidst frosts to the Common School. Many an
urchin these days declaims on the usual Friday afternoon:
“The bluebird and the swallow,
From the sweet south grove,
The robin leaves its quarters
In the deep pine grove;
I know from whence they started
On their happy homeward track;
To-night you’ll hear them answer
With their clack, clack, clack.”
Or those who are more advanced, the more ambitious, essay:
“On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow.”
Glorious Common Schools! and our own quite up to any in the world. And,
without a shadow of a doubt, too, these urchins who are to-day, during
this midwinter, so declaiming, will become our future orators, and their
voices will resound in great halls of legislation or fill pulpits in our
land. Let us hope that when they grow to manhood they may never become
food for powder, and, so far as their military education is concerned,
let it be conspicuous by its absence; and yet no loss will be felt, for
it will not be among the things needed. Happy Ontario! If we were
Germans or Frenchmen, we must serve three years in the army whether we
would or not. This is only one more instance named to prove to us all
that our own country is the happiest and the freest in the world, and
that our people are generally well-to-do and comfortable in their homes,
in food and clothing.
The mornings of late autumn, as the nights get longer, begin to have a
nipping air. Ponds of water are covered with a glare and safe coat of
ice, and our youngsters get out their skates, so carefully laid away
last season. The children trudge away to school, and their color is
heightened by the morning frost and wind; but gradually the human system
is getting accustomed to the change of the season, and the dry, pleasant
cold is enjoyable. Immense ice hummocks form upon the banks of our large
lakes. They are conical and steep, or blunt and rolling, with a flat
place here and there among the convolutions. Daily, as the cold
strengthens and the winds dash the billows upon the ice-banks as if they
would destroy them, they gather from each wave a little more frozen from
it, and so work out from the shore, solid and immovable, as if to
entirely close over our inland sea’s surface; but they do not, and they
never succeed in effecting any permanent lodgment more than eight or ten
rods from the shore. Somehow in freezing they invariably leave holes
here and there. Now, let a storm come on and the breakers be driven
against the ice-banks and under them--for they do not reach the bottom
in any deep water--the pent-up water under the banks, driven up with
terrific force by each incoming sea, tries to find an escape. These
holes, in a measure, serve for an escape. Sprays or jets of water will
be forced up through these holes twenty feet into the air, only to fall
upon the surrounding ice and be frozen as hard as its neighboring
globules in their icy immobility. The blow-holes of a whale furnish a
good analogy to the blow-holes in the ice. Indeed, the most powerful
whale can scarcely expel the water from his blow-holes higher than a
storm forces it up among the ice-dunes. And as they get too high or too
heavy near the outer edge, they break away in great lumps and go
floating upon the surface. A change in the direction of the wind sails
them away, and we see upon our inland seas ice islands sometimes many
miles in extent. Look again for the ice islands in a few hours, and not
a trace is seen. The waters are a deep blue, in strong contrast to the
white snow upon the shore or the ice upon the edge. Stand upon an
eminence and look along the shores and outer edge of the ice-bank, so
firmly rooted to the margin. It is jagged and furrowed, and honeycombed,
and awful, and withal so still. Not a bird is wheeling over the surface
of the water, not a sail is upon it. The voice of Nature is effectually
hushed to rest. While you are still observing, let the sun shine upon
the ice and water, and you can with difficulty take your eyes off the
picture--as fine a picture of the Arctic as we can get, even if it be in
miniature. What a contrast from our golden autumn! Those of us who are
not particularly subject to lung troubles and who are well fed and clad,
really enjoy our dry and beautiful cold and the glint of the Arctic
regions which these pictures afford us. Clearly defined and unmistakable
is this our winter.
CHAPTER XI.
The coming of spring--Fishing by torch-light--Sudden beauty of the
springtime--Seeding--Foul weeds--Hospitality of Ontario farmers.
The reign of winter on the lake shore, with its hummocks of broken ice,
seems longer than it really is. Those who observe it day by day are glad
when March comes, with its lengthening days and its presage of spring.
Soon we have a few days’ sunshine, and perhaps a warm pervasive rain.
The change thus made is scarcely credible to those who have not seen it.
In a few hours, with the sea beating upon this ice, before so
unassailable, the banks shrivel the ice away. Here and there along the
shores and among the sands obstinate pieces of ice still linger for a
few days, half covered by the sands, which have thus far protected them.
But spring, joyous spring, is near. The ubiquitous crow’s caw is once
more in the air. Troops of wild ducks convene in the open spaces of our
marshes and ponds. Sportsmen, before the light of day, creep up to the
open water, and the first morning rays are greeted with a steady bang,
bang. The sportsman has his reward. Should the lake surface be rough, so
that the ducks cannot rest there, they are forced to fly back and forth,
and the shooting goes on all through the day.
The fishing time arrives almost before we have expected it. You are made
aware of it, perhaps, by a neighbor coming to borrow a spear. Now,
nightly, pitch-pine torches will flare and blaze, casting a lurid light
along our creeks. Stand at a distance and watch the fishers. See how
their forms are increased in size until they look like veritable giants
in the haze of the blazing light-jack. Hear their shouts as they race up
and down the stream for suckers, pike, mullet and eels. “Here he goes”;
“there’s another”; “plague on your jack--you missed that big fellow”;
“hand me that spear, you are no good as a sportsman.” So the fun and
jollity goes on far into the evening.
In this land, where the four seasons are clearly and distinctly defined,
spring comes to us with a beauty unknown to those who dwell in lands
which do not possess such unmistakable divisions of the year. If the
winter was snowy, frosty and stormy, it had in its place sufficient
enjoyments to make us love it; but now that it has passed, budding
spring, with its ever-present deep green, comes to us with a bound, with
a new pleasure of anticipation, added to its reality after it is once
here.
How quickly our spring comes to us may, perhaps, be best shown by
instancing that the last flurry of snow of one season was on the 7th day
of April, and on the 20th of April the cattle were out feeding on the
grass. A more abrupt change in any given locality is not to be found in
any land, and stock generally is soon feeding upon the fields. Fruit
trees were in blow three weeks before. Some of the most beautiful sights
in nature are now afforded in our land by our fruit trees, laden with
their pink and white blossoms, among which darts the industrious honey
bee, and beside which are the deep green fields of grass or grain. Among
our pastures, at the same time, nature is most prodigal of her beauties.
The dandelions dot our fields with their yellow heads. These are the
dandelions we used in our childhood days to pluck and hold under the
chins of our companions. If the reflected light from the flower on the
chin was yellow, partaking of the flower, our companion “liked butter,”
but if not yellow our companion “did not love butter.”
Tiny blue violets are also among our fields, and many delicate blue
garlands are woven by young hands, hung about our dwellings, and many
times find their way into our schools and upon the teachers’ rostrums.
The famed primrose of old England is no prettier than our wee violets,
and for variety of color and deepness of the same we can safely invite
comparison with any land under the sun.
Our clover meadows already wave with the breezes. Walk among the clover
and see the ground-hog as he sits upon his haunches beside his hole of
retreat, and see how he eyes your every movement. If you do not get too
close, nor come upon him too suddenly, he quietly allows you to enjoy a
good look at him. Make the first demonstrative motion and he disappears
in an instant under the surface. This ground-hog is about the only
universal rodent we have with us, and his ravages are so light that as
a rule we do not seek his extermination. On the typical occasion
referred to, seeding began about the middle of April, and was vigorously
prosecuted, until by the end of May it was almost all accomplished.
Grains first sown at this time almost completely covered the ground.
This was about two weeks earlier than usual. It has generally been a
rule among farmers to have their seeding all done by the 24th May, so as
to have the leisure to celebrate that day at some neighboring town.
The old-fashioned way of seeding by hand, broadcast, is among the things
that were. After that came the broadcast seeding machine. Now seeding
machines are drills that put the seed down into the ground at any
required depth and effectually cover it. Seed drills are also used as
cultivators, and most excellent ones they make, too, so that our lands
are now much better prepared for seed than formerly. The farmer who does
not possess a seed drill is now considered only half equipped and not up
to the mark. This change in the method of farming has given rise to
enormous manufacturing businesses, for to supply three-fourths of the
farmers of Canada alone with seed drills, any one at a moment’s
reflection can see, must make a great business for manufacturers. And
when our grass and grain come to maturity, light mowers will cut the
first, and the ingenious complex binder will cut and bind the grain and
leave it all ready for drawing in. In no country under the sun has
agriculture made as great progress as in Canada during the last two
decades. Labor-saving machines are as near perfection among us and as
plentiful, and far more so than among any people of anything like the
same population. Whenever any of our people get an idea that we are
slow, just let such semi-discontented persons travel about the land of
our forefathers in Britain or on the continent and he will return home
fully convinced that they have not yet fully awakened up.
Foul weeds are annually becoming more prevalent among us. We are, in
fact, annually seeing weeds in our fields which we never saw before, and
whose name even we do not know. So from this fact alone, the old process
of farming would not do now at all, neither would fourteen successive
crops of wheat on one field, as has been done in Canada. The means of
communication are now so quick that somehow these foul weeds of distant
parts get generally disseminated over the land and are no longer locally
confined to certain areas, supposed to be their individual homes, as
they were formerly. Look along our railway tracks and you will
frequently notice at the sides of the line weeds which you never saw
before. It is only, then, a question of a season or two, when they will
get into the neighboring field. There is, however, no need to be
discouraged, for if we only look at the lands of the Old World which
have been cultivated for a thousand years, we find all the foul weeds we
know so far, and many dozens of kinds which we never saw before. Summer
fallow and root crops, of course, is the first remedy. Our people are
yearly putting in a greater area of roots and feeding more cattle. Our
prized privilege of sending our cattle to the British markets alive was
formerly one of our greatest boons, and we must try by all means to keep
all cattle diseases out of our land, so that Britain will regard us as
the favored people. Australia is too far away for live stock shipments.
As for the United States, the climatic conditions are such there that we
can grow healthy cattle when theirs are affected and beat them; that is
to say, we can send live cattle and make a good profit when they cannot,
but must send dead meat.
Seeding down and grass feeding upon our fields is another good method to
rid our lands of these foul weeds. When the foul plants are young, by
eating the fields pretty close our flocks nip off the foul stalks, and
keep them from seeding. But if the plant be an annual, during the latter
part of the season such pastures can with profit be turned into a late
summer fallow, and thus be cleared. Wire root is got rid of by turnips
and thorough cultivation. But perhaps the easiest and laziest way to get
rid of this pest, which gets down so deep in lighter soils, is to sow
buckwheat on such fields thick and heavy. Many farmers assert that a
stout crop of buckwheat will choke the wire root out, and leave not a
root alive. Ordinarily our farmers sow buckwheat only for this purpose,
and to plough down as a green crop for manure. Very few of our farmers,
in fact, will grow buckwheat for a crop, and consider it beneath the
dignity of the quality of their fat lands to raise buckwheat as a crop.
That man partakes of the nature of the soil, is, perhaps, to most
persons at first thought an anomaly, but yet it is so. Where the soil
grudgingly gives to the husbandman a very moderate living, his
hospitality in a certain sense partakes of the nature of his lands.
While he does his best for you as a guest, still the heartiness and
bountifulness of his larder, for man and beast, is in a measure subdued,
as it were, and somehow the guest feels that he ought not to deprive the
careful husbandman of too much of his essentials of living. The
husbandman is necessarily cramped and bound as his farm is. But go among
those whose lands are fat and fill the great barns, and where it’s a
task to take care of his bountiful crops, and we find another kind of a
man entirely. There’s no stint. Your horse may consume bushels of oats
per day if he will, and if ordinarily good milk is not of your liking,
cream is just as free as the milk is. Open-handed, big-hearted; a man
one involuntarily likes, as you grasp his broad, brown hand, and his
fingers give a tight squeeze. And such are the great majority of
Ontario’s husbandmen, a people of whom any nation may justly feel proud.
I am wandering from my springtime, and will get back by saying that bee
culture among us is becoming fairly developed. Food for bees is in such
abundance among our fields and fruits and woods, that in the future this
industry must necessarily be much larger. Fourteen years ago I saw a
field of about eight acres sown with sweet clover, to feed the farmer’s
bees. It was the sweetest smelling field any one
[Illustration: CANADIAN APPLES AT THE GLASGOW EXHIBITION--“THE BEST IN
THE EMPIRE.”]
ever passed by; a grove of orange trees was nothing in comparison to it.
Since it was such a novelty I am mentioning it, for it is the first
instance I ever knew of. The farmer, who had one hundred swarms of bees,
explained that his bees had been feeding upon the basswood trees, but
now that they had got too far developed he wanted this sweet clover for
later feed. And this bee-keeper averred that it fully paid him for
sowing the eight acres of sweet clover.
Fruit prospects were never more promising than they were last spring.
Our trees were one literal mass of blows. If they had all borne fruit
the consequence would have been most disastrous, for all the trees would
have been broken down. Of course, most of them fell off. It is not frost
we so much fear in Ontario for blight of our buds, for we seldom get a
frost severe enough for that after the blows come. Blight usually comes
from a dry east or south-east wind, blowing steadily for a couple of
days. This fact is so well known that on many trees the south-east side
will be perfectly void of fruit, while the north-west side, which was
sheltered by the rest of the tree, will be in bearing. We shall be able
to send to British markets hundreds of thousands of apples this fall,
which over there they so highly prize. But let the fruit-grower ever
remember that he can’t get the prized red cheeks on his fruit unless Old
Sol shines upon it. In order that he may do so the trees must be pruned
quite open to let him peep among the branches.
A goodly and beautiful land we possess. We can raise anything which will
grow in this temperate zone. Our lands are fat and not exhausted.
Artificial manures we do not need, and they are scarcely known among us.
In thickly populated Germany and Switzerland hillsides are spaded where
too steep for the plough, and the husbandman succeeds in that method
upon small holdings. The French peasant, to whom ten acres is a
good-sized farm, does not plough his land, but turns it over, away down
deep, fourteen inches or so, with a bent bill-hook, and he succeeds, and
he and his family are independent and save money. We have room in
Canada, not speaking of the North-West, for millions upon millions of
persons, who will cultivate many patches of land now unused or in
pasture. Health, independence and success await those who will get upon
our lands and make an honest, downright manly effort.
CHAPTER XII.
Ontario in June--Snake fences--Road-work--Alsike clover fields--A
natural grazing country--Barley and marrowfat peas--Ontario in
July--Barley in full head--Ontario is a garden--Lake Ontario
surpasses Lake Geneva or Lake Leman--Summer delights--Fair
complexions of the people--Approach of the autumnal
season--Luxuriant orchards.
Driving through Ontario in June, the eye continually dwells upon a sea
of green, with scarcely any interlude of rock, swamp or broken land. It
is simply a succession of well-cultivated farms, mostly trim and nicely
kept and well fenced. In many respects our province resembles old
England, for, with all our vandalism, we have left a few groves of
native forest trees, which here and there dot the landscape, and present
to the view a beautiful, impenetrable, clearly-defined wall of green,
raised, of course, above the level green of the crops below at the
surface and extending up to their very bases. Our fences have, indeed,
presented a decided improvement during the past few years. Very many of
the boundary fences beside the highways are straight board fences, or
straight rail and post fences. Hedges, of course, we cannot boast of.
But our fences up to date present a clearly defined boundary of farms,
and form a bounded highway straight and clear, sixty-six feet wide.
In many of our still timbered portions of the province the old zig-zag
rail fence is in use. But we have now in most places in the province
passed by that day, and can no longer build such fences, for it is too
great a waste of timber, though in some respects it’s the best and
strongest fence we can possibly build, and will last the longest. But
its days are numbered, and the fences of the future will be wire fences,
which are now legal in our province. They have their advantages,
principally in allowing the winds of winter to pass freely through and
preventing drifts on the roads. By an Act of our Ontario Legislature,
township councils can by law allow owners who will build wire fences
before their farms to enclose six feet of the road allowance. Many
persons are already taking advantage of that Act, but at all events the
roads must be left fifty-four feet wide, taking off six feet from each
side.
Road-work is in June quite general all over the province, and when
driving along the highways one has to pass now and again over a few rods
of awfully rough, unfinished patches of road. Sometimes the turnpiking
is only half completed, or again the gravel has been left in great
heaps, which give to your carriage the motion of a vessel at sea as it
passes over the lumps. A few days, however, will remedy all that, as the
road-work gets completed. Brawny, sunburnt farmers, wearing their straw
hats, and with shirt sleeves rolled up, gather in groups under a
“pathmaster,” and perform the requisite number of days “working for the
King,” as it is termed. No doubt our fellows are quite as honest as any
one would be under like circumstances, but we have yet to learn that any
one has ever injured himself by road-work while so “working for the
King” on the roads.
Crops cover the ground completely, and thoroughly hide the soil beneath.
Many of them are, indeed, so high that they wave with the breezes. The
fields present one unbroken sea of level, green verdure, generally free
from all obstructions. Here and there, indeed, may be seen a nicely
formed pile of stone boulders, gradually picked up from the fields as
the plough exposes them to the surface, and yearly growing a little
larger by being added thereto by subsequent ploughings. The farmer can’t
afford obstructions these days in his fields, for in a few weeks reapers
will quickly cut these crops, or, in many instances, binders will both
cut and bind them at one process, and the farmer wants nothing in the
way to hinder these great labor-savers. In June haying has already
commenced, more especially clover crops. Where a crop of clover seed is
sought as a second crop in this season, the clover hay of the first crop
has been cut and garnered for some days. Alsike clover is in full bloom,
and I defy any reader to say that he ever passed any field, grove, or
flowers, in any part of the globe, which sends out a more pleasing
fragrance than this alsike clover does. To pass a field of alsike clover
when it’s in full blow is beautiful to the eye while resting on the
pinkish-white blows, and grateful to the sense of smell for its
delicate and pungent perfume. Ordinary sentences are tame, indeed, in
trying to describe the beauties of the alsike clover field in full bloom
in Ontario. It must be seen and smelled to be appreciated. Now, speaking
of all this alsike clover, and red clover as well, naturally leads one
to think, what can all this clover seed be used for? It is an accepted
fact, now, that Ontario can compete with the world in the growing of
clover seed. Germany has been our great competitor, but it is now
conceded that we can beat Germany. Driving along through the province in
June one passes in almost endless succession field after field of both
red clover and alsike, and the question naturally comes up, What is to
be done with all this seed? It would appear that Ontario can produce
enough clover seed to sow all those parts of our planet adapted to the
growing of clover. Recollect, all parts cannot grow clover. If you go
west and pass central Iowa, you leave the clover belt entirely; and if
you go south and cross the Ohio River, you will not find much more
clover. It is true that in Kentucky they boast of blue grass, which is
only our June grass allowed to grow up strong and vigorous. But our
Ontario is a natural clover country. If we leave a field uncultivated,
it somehow, naturally of itself, gets back in clover, no matter if none
were sown on the field.
Ontario is a natural grazing country; it must be, when the clover is so
indigenous to the soil. It is just as well for our farmers to thoroughly
grasp this fact, for with our innumerable springs and rills and
abounding clover, we have one of the best cattle and horse-raising
countries in the world. If the West, which cannot grow clover and such
light-colored barley as the Americans want, is content to grow wheat, we
had better by far let the West do it and confine ourselves to the
specialties in which they cannot compete with us.
In barley and marrowfat peas we have a monopoly. On account of the money
we get for the clover-seed itself we are again ahead of them, and are
more than ahead of them in raising horses and cattle, which feed upon
our clover. There is something in our climate, soil and feed which
produces horses large and strong, which are ahead of the West by far.
Hence the westerners continually buy from us to get our stock.
To prove that wheat does not pay, I will instance that the rent of land
in Ontario County is usually $5.00 per acre. No matter if one owns his
own farm, it is worth that as well. Seed, again, is worth $2.00 per acre
for wheat, and the cultivation and harvesting is worth another $7.00 per
acre, making the acre of wheat cost $14 per acre. Now, at an average
yield of twenty-five bushels per acre, and this sold at 75 cents per
bushel, it yields $18.75 per acre, or only $4.75 more than the crop
cost. It’s no pay, and there’s no other way to look at it, and hereafter
we ought to raise wheat enough only for our own use, as long as it’s
such a drug on the market, especially so when we can do much better with
peas, barley, cattle and horses. Let those interested ponder over this
point.
It might be thought that we shall raise too much clover-seed for the
market. It is used as a dye in Great Britain for certain cloths, we are
told, and all of our seed is not sown. Hence it is hardly probable we
shall produce too much. In the matter of peas, we have never yet
produced more marrowfat peas than Europe will take from us. Recollect,
but few other countries can produce marrowfat peas. Some places have the
bug and mildew, and can’t grow the peas at all, and we have this crop
almost to ourselves. Barley, it seems, the Americans will buy from us as
long as we grow it, for it’s the best. And in fruit we all know we can
produce the best keepers in the world, so that our outlook in Ontario is
bright for the future.
When July comes some portions of our province sometimes suffer slightly
from drouth. Seldom, however, has the drouth been severe enough to cause
anything like a failure in crops, although late sown crops here and
there have been occasionally light. This, however, is not so general as
to apply to the whole province, for in some sections you may see that
our fields never smile more sweetly upon us than they do at this season.
In July fall wheat is just turning and beginning to look like fields of
gold. In spots in the fields the wheat has been winter-killed, and many
pieces are ploughed up entirely. Looking over those fields which were
ploughed up and sowed with some spring crop, they present a rather odd
appearance, for the vitality of the fall wheat is so great that in many
places the ploughing did not kill it, and consequently we see tufts of
great tall heads of fall wheat now ripening among the still green and
much shorter crop of spring grain. Those who are not familiar with fall
wheat could scarcely get an idea how it occurs that fall wheat can be
ripening in and among a spring crop, quite green as yet.
Barley in July is in full head and just commencing to turn yellow.
Fields upon fields of this grain are passed as one drives on our
highways. Those who have not driven much upon our roads, and closely
observed, can scarcely believe how general the barley crop is in Ontario
at this season. Almost invariably it is looking well, and if it be not
as a whole an extremely heavy crop, yet it will be a paying one, and one
we must grow. Laying aside all matters of temperance and Scott Act, ours
is a barley country, and barley we must grow. Peas are now mostly in
full blow, and are rank and of the deepest green. A more luxuriant
growth than our pea crop in most seasons cannot be found in any country.
If you would judge of the unsurpassed fertility of our soils, just go
and see our pea crops. Ontario alone can furnish the soup basis for all
the navies of the world.
Our spring wheat is just now putting forth its ear. Oats are just
beginning to head. The drouth seems to have affected oats more than any
other crop so far. They may, however, if we get some rains, head up
heavy, but in any event the straw will be rather short.
We live in a garden here in Ontario. No one who drives about our roads
can come to any other conclusion. There are no blanks, and but little
broken land; but few swamps, and scarcely a break. Only a few days ago I
drove twelve miles without passing a hill higher than forty feet, or
seeing an acre of broken land; just one mass of green in the fields.
There was positively not one foot of broken land for the whole twelve
miles, and I feel that I have a right to say that we live in a garden.
Those who are at home most of the time do not realize that they are
living under the most favorable conditions in the world. During a lot of
travel in every State of the American Union, I have never yet seen
anything over there to approach our own country. Of course, out West one
can traverse miles upon miles of corn fields, but it’s all corn; but
here it’s a general variety, which is so pleasant to the eye, and which
also brings in our great returns. And our fruits are upon every hand,
from the grape to the strawberry, to the apple and pear, and all
succeeding. The only parallel that I ever saw to Ontario is in the
plains of Hungary, say, about Buda-Pesth. There is a country very much
resembling Ontario, but, of course, not anything like it in size. It was
from this locality that we got our present roller process of making
flour. I am only making this comparison with Hungary to let our
Ontarians know that we have, in truth, the finest country in this world,
that we may all be spurred on to cultivate our lands better, for we are
only yet in our infancy. Let us all realize that our lands never refuse,
when properly cultivated, to produce anything which will grow in the
north temperate zone. Famed Geneva or Leman cannot surpass our
beautiful Lake Ontario; and then as to size and extent, there’s no
comparison to be made. And yet it is beautiful around Lake Leman, and
locations along its shores are much sought by all Europe, and command
unheard-of prices. Our shore is just as beautiful, and our waters just
as limpid and just as cool. About Constantinople is the only other place
I can name as being at all worthy of comparison with our Lakes Ontario
and Erie shore for residences. Now, it is beautiful about the Bosphorus,
and charming beyond measure, and Constantinople must always be a great
city, no matter who possesses it. Yet, somehow, just a little
digressing, we would all like to see Britain owning it, but Russia
never. Then, I say, about Lake Leman and the Bosphorus are the only
parallels to our places and resorts along these north shores of our
Great Lakes. On the whole, the north shore of Lake Ontario has the
preference, for it’s never so hot here at any time as it is about Geneva
or Constantinople. We have in Ontario great inland, fresh-water seas,
having pure, limpid waters, and a soil which will discount any in the
world beside them, and an equable climate. If it does get warm for a day
or two, it never remains too uncomfortably so for long, and our evenings
are generally cool and pleasant from the lake breezes. Going down into a
cellar like the Dakotans to escape hot breezes, which there become
insufferable, we never think of. Already along the north shore of Lake
Ontario, from Niagara to Kingston, our people gather during the summer
months by thousands. Between Hamilton and Toronto, and down as far as
Belleville, there are hundreds of summering camps. As one passes along
the roads near the lake one sees thousands upon thousands of ladies
dressed in white, and gentlemen in shirt-sleeves sporting in the groves,
on the green along the shores, or boating about bays and inlets.
People dot the landscape for a couple of hundred miles, and flit to and
fro among the leafy bowers. It would, indeed, be hard to find a prettier
sight than that of our people summering along the lake banks these July
days. While other persons south of us, over in Uncle Sam’s dominions,
are sweltering with the thermometer at 104° in the shade, our people are
pleasantly cool along our northern lake shores. The consequence is that
summer heats do not deplete us. Saffron yellow faces, with high
protruding cheek bones, accompanied by dark circles under the eyes, such
as are found in hot districts where the thermometer will persist in
getting up to 104° and staying there, we know not of at all. Ontarians
are a plump, well-developed people, and have, as a rule, fair
complexions and good skins. Our ladies are just stout enough to be
attractive under these conditions, and developing their physique as they
do along our lakes, by picnicking and rowing and games, are the peers of
any in the world. Yea! to make a quick and perhaps unseemly comparison,
I wish to say that the same causes and the same equable cool temperature
which cause our ladies’ cheeks to burnish red and brown, produce for us
in our fields the finest barley in the world and the best peas. So
Nature has been prodigal to us in her gifts. About Toronto, of course,
the greater population centres, and within a radius of thirty miles or
so, along the lake on either side, the greater number of summer
saunterers are to be seen. As Toronto gets on up to a quarter of a
million of inhabitants, as it must, all available points upon the lake
shores will be seized upon for outing for its citizens. The day,
moreover, must be far distant when we shall be much crowded for space
along the lake banks. But it does not need a very far-seeing prophet to
see that a dense population must centre in Ontario along our lakes.
Think what it was, and you will conclude that rapid as our progress has
been, for the next twenty-five or thirty years our progress and increase
in population will be five-fold what it was in the past twenty-five or
thirty years. Ontarians need not go to Cacouna, or Murray Bay, or
anywhere else for a summering. We can do better at home along our own
waters. As time goes on we must get more and more of our American
cousins from the region of 104° in the shade to come and summer with us.
Ontario, in fact, must ultimately be the great summer resort of this
continent. Take the readings of the thermometer in Toronto alone, and
you will find that it possesses the most equable climate of any city in
America east of the Rocky Mountains; and beautiful, and clear, and
healthy as it is, it must be, as it now is, and far more so, the great
metropolitan city of our country. Ontarians, let us cherish our homes
and our birthrights.
As the fall season comes to us in Ontario the result of the last
summer’s bountifulness is visibly apparent. On every side the steady,
unremitting drone or hum of the threshing-machines daily falls upon the
ear, and well we know that for every hour the thresher runs, bushels
upon bushels of grain are being gathered into the farmers’ granaries.
Dust-begrimed, sweaty men, with forks in hand, are all the time
endeavoring to stop its spacious maw, but never succeeding, for its
capacity of digestion is inexorable, and after each forkful it is quite
as ready again for another, and so the work goes on by the hour (and the
hum comes to the listener two miles away, on the wind), giving the
husbandman an abundance for the season. There is scarcely a cessation
until the noon hour arrives, when the shrill, ambitious scream of the
piping engine which furnishes the motive power gives the welcome warning
that dinner is ready. The noon hour past, again a scream from the
ambitious engine, as if it would try to be entered among the fellowship
of its greater brother engines in our manufactories and upon our
railways. With their shirts half dry the farmers again tend to the
machine’s voracious maw, knowing full well that it’s only a question of
a few minutes, when the increased perspiration will wet them as fully as
before.
The golden apples of Hesperides were never more beautiful or pleasing to
the eye than those of our orchards, laden with their golden fruit. It is
presumed these golden apples were oranges, and even so, it is just a
question if they ever were prettier than many of our colored apples. The
“King” with its red cheeks, or the “Fameuse,” and many other kinds will
rival the famed oranges for beauty any day. Manifestly one of the
prettiest sights in nature is to see an orchard of considerable size in
Ontario, heavily laden with fruit, and its limbs bending to the ground
with their burdens. Let the breeze just gently stir the leaves, and sway
the branches, and the dancing sunbeams glinting upon the sheen of the
apples’ sides, and then as you walk through and among the trees, nature
smiles at you, and you realize that ours is indeed a beauteous and
kindly land.
And this is our autumn, clearly defined, and in a few days to be
rendered doubly beautiful as the first frosts touch the foliage upon the
maples, the birches, and the beeches, and transform their leaves into a
broad gallery of the brightest and most variegated colors. Tropical
dwellers, who have never seen the transformation, know not of the beauty
this world in our north temperate zone affords. It is supposed to be
ever green in the tropics, but the winter green down there is not
beautiful, but a dull, dusty, dark russet. This decided change, which
our fall season produces, they can have no conception of, and we would
not trade our season with them if we could. Man loves variety. Universal
green one tires of, but our recurring seasons always awaken in us a
zest, and we love them in their turn.
Indian summer is soon upon us, with its delicious dreamy haze, when life
out-of-doors is appreciated to its fullest extent. You can never quite
make up your mind, when this season is with us, whether it be too warm
or too cold. Physical existence becomes a perfect luxury, and a feeling
of sensuousness gradually steals over one. During all the travels I
have made to other lands, in different climates, I have yet to find the
equal of our Indian summer. Gradually the frost of the nights gets more
intense and the leaves fall, and are blown in windrows by the winds.
Trees overhanging streams completely cover the still pools with their
leaves; the bark of the birch, by way of contrast, is whiter if possible
than before, and the few remaining leaves upon the almost nude branches
have not yet lost their gay colors. Now let the mid-day sun shine upon
valley and grotto, and glimmer and dance upon the thin film of last
night’s ice, and you have a picture that even the most obtuse cannot
fail to love at sight.
Day by day nature becomes stiller. The earthworm has gone deeper into
the soil, the birds have left us for the south, and only the shrill pipe
of the blue jay remains of the birds’ summer campaign. Solitary crows,
indeed, are almost ever ubiquitous, and their parting caw! caw! will
soon announce the order of their going. The fox has prepared his hole by
the side of some upturned tree, and the chipmunk has laid away his store
of beechnuts for a winter supply. Nature is preparing for winter. This
is the interregnum, as it were, and it is neither autumn nor winter. The
farmer daily follows his plough, if the previous night’s frost has not
been too severe. If it has, he must need wait until nine or ten o’clock,
to let the previous night’s freeze soften in the sun’s rays. About the
middle of December he has to lay his plough aside, for at last, after
repeated warnings, gentle enough at first, the frost is really upon
him.
CHAPTER XIII.
Some natural history notes--Our feathered pets--“The poor Canada
bird”--The Canadian mocking-bird--The black squirrel--The red
squirrel--The katydid and cricket--A rural graveyard--The
whip-poor-will--The golden plover--The large Canada owl--The crows’
congress--The heron--The water-hen.
If one would see our feathered pets in all their abundant numbers and
luxuriant beauty nowadays in Ontario, he must get away from the towns
and villages and centres of dense population. At various times I have
explored portions of our province that lie far back from the Great Lakes
and the more densely populated areas, and have then enjoyed some good
opportunities of observing our summer visitants. The “poor Canada bird,”
as the song-sparrow is locally called, is one that we cannot but value,
seeing that his notes really lengthen and become more charming as the
season advances and the weather becomes more boisterous. Even when the
nights have become quite chilly, though the days are warm and sunshiny,
one gets his varied song-notes if he will only listen. Especially will
the song-sparrow pipe up of an evening, just as the sun is setting, and
all nature is about to be hushed to rest. He leaves us with the light,
after giving us a pleasant chant from his brown throat. The triplet of
notes that he gives us, and which we interpret as “Can-a-da, Can-a-da,”
is in some localities interpreted as “Van-i-ty, Van-i-ty,” and of course
any suitable word of three syllables may be associated with the
well-known song of this small bird.
As for the common sparrow, so prevalent in our towns and cities, there
is no doubt he has robbed us of a large part of the pleasures of our
summer life, for where he is the song-bird is not. The change has so
gradually stolen over us that we do not realize that we have lost our
most charming birds through the advent of the pugnacious sparrow. Go
once away from where he is and the change is so very apparent that one
cannot fail to notice it. In the forests away from sparrows there are at
least ten times as many birds, and it is plainly the duty of every one,
especially of lovers of nature, to aid in exterminating the sparrow in
every way possible.
The Canadian mocking-bird is, of course, a catbird, and although he
cannot, perhaps, copy as many notes or voices as his American brother
can, yet he’s our mocking-bird, and a charmer as well. He is about done
with us for this season (fall), and his imitations are not now heard as
frequently as they were, but yet he is with us and one can hear him
occasionally. Stand near a thicket, a copse, or a “spinney,” as,
perhaps, they would say in England, and let there be some water near,
and you’ll get the calls from him. Sometimes he is pleasant, and in turn
descends to the disagreeable, coming back again to the pleasant and
enchanting, and so one may listen by the hour, and every few minutes
get something entirely new from him.
The Canadian black squirrel, so exceedingly plentiful when most of us
were boys, just able to be the proud possessor of a poor gun, is now
nearly extinct in Ontario. Speaking of gunning in our boyhood days
reminds me of the off Saturdays from school, when every other Saturday
was a holiday, and of the day’s trudge with the old gun for the alert
black squirrel, safely ensconced among the tallest tree-tops during the
sunny hours of the short fall days. And one had to get up a little, too,
at marksmanship, for he was ever on the move, and you seldom got a good
shot at him while quietly at ease. The boy’s heart that would not thrill
at a day’s black squirrel shooting must indeed be more obdurate than
most Ontario boys’ hearts are, as one followed him, always looking up,
as he jumped from tree to tree, almost falling to the ground when he
made some exceedingly long jumps, but quite recovering himself and never
by any possibility falling. Most exceedingly do I regret the gradual
extinction of this squirrel--the real squirrel of Canada--and, besides,
he’s such an intelligent fellow and so easily tamed and becomes such a
pet. The days were when, in his tin revolving cage, he was one of the
means of diversion at many a household; and for a stew he had no
superior, feeding as he always did upon the choicest nuts to be found in
the forests, and he was so scrupulously clean in his habits.
The common red squirrel is still very common, as he chatters away, half
way up some forest tree, perched upon a limb. He’s a very valiant
fellow, indeed, as he saucily chit-chats, with a guttural noise; but
drive him up the tree once, and keep him there you can’t. His first care
will be to get down to the ground again and scamper away; and get down
he will, unless one be specially alert and active. He will rest upon the
tree trunk, head downwards, with his great eyes watching your every
motion, and should the least chance present itself for escape he’s down
along the opposite side of the trunk of the tree where one is standing,
if it be a considerable one, and is away in a twinkling.
Birds gather in flocks at about this time of the year, affording to us
who watch a sure admonition that summer is nearly past, and fall close
upon us. I saw the first flock of blackbirds on the 4th of September,
and my recollection is, from past seasons, that many others are quickly
seen after the first flock of any kind of birds is about.
Another sure sign that fall approaches is evidenced by the call of the
cricket and other kindred insect life in our midst as the sun sinks
behind the heavens. The noises of the evenings just now are particularly
observable, and almost rival--or perhaps, if not rival, measurably
approach--the choruses of Nature during a tropical night. Those of us
who recall our first impression of our stay in the tropics can, at this
season in Ontario, get quite a simile at home, and it’s charming too;
and our air is so delightful that mere physical existence becomes dreamy
and a positive luxury.
The katydid is now at his best, and delivers himself of his “crackling
sing” as he descends on the wing, bat-like, among the tree branches, to
the ground. Our katydid is never heard during the early part of the
summer, and just now, since he is our guest for a short time, it would
richly repay our boys to catch him and examine him at leisure. One
cannot help admiring him, for he’s a fine fellow; but the great trouble
with him is that he’s so plainly a member of the locust family that we
fear his congeners might come and devour our beautiful Ontario for us.
We are assured, however, by those naturalists supposed to be able to
know, that there can possibly be no danger of a locust pest in our
humid, cool, Ontario climate, and so we bless our stars that our lines
have fallen in such pleasant places. Ontario to-day, the golden
grain-burdened, with its hill and dale and copses interspersed, is
beautiful beyond compare.
Walk out any one of the fine evenings in July, grandest of all months,
just when the sun is leaving us, far away in the north-west, amidst an
amber sky, with not a vestige of cloud above, and just as he finally
dips, the strong probability is that you will be startled at first, and
then delighted, with the quick cry of the “whip-poor-will.”
Stand in your tracks and back again and again will come to you in quick
succession for eight or ten times the distinct words, “whip-poor-will,”
and then as quickly the cry will cease.
Right away from an exactly opposite side of the landscape, from about a
coppice of thick bushes, with some large trees growing in it and
protruding far above them, will come the answer to the challenge,
“whip-poor-will,” and so the words will be bandied back and forth until
the shades of night have fallen in real earnest, giving you, perhaps,
the most enjoyable and natural concert one can be treated to in our own
country.
As to the bird itself, it is very seldom seen, its color being so nearly
like that of brown leaves, or the ordinary color of the carpeted bases
of trees in the forest, that he is scarcely distinguishable. Once in a
while you will come on him, however, in your rambles, when he spreads
his brown wings, of a foot’s distension at least, and alights a few rods
on, as before, upon some fallen tree trunk, or as likely as not upon the
ground. He stays with us as long as our summer really lasts, and of all
the birds that sing, his call is the clearest and most distinctive. The
“whip-poor-will” has been celebrated by one of the best of our Canadian
poets, Charles Sangster. He says:
“Last night I heard the plaintive whip-poor-will,
And straightway sorrow shot his swiftest dart;
I know not why, but it has chilled my heart
Like some dread thing of evil. All night long
My nerves were shaken, and my pulse stood still
And waited for a terror yet to come,
To strike harsh discords through my life’s sweet song.
Sleep came--an incubus that filled the sum
Of wretchedness with dreams so wild and chill
The sweat oozed out from me like drops of gall;
An evil spirit kept my mind in thrall,
And rolled my body up like a poor scroll,
On which is written curses that the soul
Shrinks back from when it sees some hellish carnival.”
To us who are not so sensitive the mournful cry of the nightly
whip-poor-will is not so depressing, but I am sure we are all glad to
get this gleaning of a poet’s feelings when he hears the uncanny bird.
The golden plover in July is nesting and watching along by the margin of
our streams. By chance I happened at one time upon the nest of one
situated about half-way under the end of an old log. The nest had been
built without any preparation at all as to nest building. During the
previous season grass had grown rank and tall about this old log, and
the parent bird had simply trodden down the dry and sere grass, and
formed an almost level space for the nest. There was but little attempt
to hollow the nest even in a concave, as one would naturally suppose, to
hold the eggs. Four little ploverets rewarded my gaze, and such
ridiculous things they were, too. Scarcely any feathers yet, but just
down, as it were, and great long legs, which appeared to be so far out
of proportion to their wants that their appearance was absurd, indeed.
They essayed to walk away, but it would seem that a plover must learn to
balance himself, like a rope-walker. At this stage they grotesquely
tipped forward mostly every time. They arose upon their feet, sometimes,
but not so often, backwards.
The large Canada owl will be found hatching or sitting in July. This is
the owl which is so very white during the winter months, but, like the
rabbit, changes his coat during the summer, when he becomes somewhat
gray or brown. Of all our birds of prey, the owl is perhaps the most
predatory in his persistence in waylaying about a farmer’s poultry yard,
and it is no trouble at all for him nor any tax upon his powers to carry
off an ordinary hen. Recently I happened to walk along the bank of a
stream partly wooded, and in the top of a cedar stump, about ten feet
from the ground, I found this great bird’s nest. Three owlets were
there, with their great staring eyes nearly as large as those of the
parent bird’s, while their bodies were covered with down so thick and so
long that it seemed almost like a coat of wool. Perhaps the best way to
describe them would be to say they were just fuzzy. Around the sides of
their nest, which was made of small sticks, were some small bones,
apparently those of mice and rats, but not of fowls, so far as I could
see. Even if the owl does destroy some fowls, I could not find it in my
heart to hurt the fuzzy little owlets, and I let them remain, fully
believing that their parent entirely squares the account by the great
quantity of mice and rats which he is daily securing from our fields.
Before leaving the owl’s nest I want to say that one day, just as winter
set in, an immense number of crows--I should say 3,000 at least--were
congregated about the tops of some pine trees not far from my
residence--trees about forty feet high. Furiously and persistently did
those crows caw, and fly, and hop about, producing such a din as to
attract persons a mile away during a still day. The cawing kept up so
long that I seized my breech-loader and resolved to investigate the
cause of the crows’ congress, as such gatherings are usually called.
Cautiously I approached the feathered multitude, wondering what could
possibly be up, but no such caution was at all needed, for they heeded
me not. Backwards and forwards the more adventurous ones apparently
darted into the top of one particular pine, giving at the, same time a
tremendous yell. Following with my eye their line of flight, I
discovered an enormous white owl perched upon a limb, the object of
attack of the more desperate of the whole 3,000 or so crows thus
assembled. For many minutes I quietly witnessed this unequal contest, in
my curiosity actually forgetting to fire, and found that the old owl was
a match, as he sat upon the limb, for them all. Sometimes the crows will
gather just the same in congress about a black squirrel, in the top of
some high forest tree, but I have yet to learn that they ever succeed in
inflicting any punishment upon either owl or squirrel.
The blue heron nests and hatches with us, although many persons think
that he goes far away from the haunts of man for the purpose of nesting.
I do not know if he be really the blue heron of the naturalist, but he
is a heron to all intents and purposes, and his color is mainly
correctly described in his name. He is crested, too, and is withal a
most magnificent bird. Not infrequently he stands five feet high, and
the spread of his wings is six or seven feet. Any one who will quietly
watch beside any of our marshes can easily, this time of the year, find
his nest, as he alights unerringly in the same spot. His nest is only
the marsh grass pressed down beside some hillock in the bogs, where it
is dry. As yet I do not know for a certainty how many young the hen bird
produces at a sitting, but I have never seen any more than two in any
nest. Speaking of the plover with his long legs being awkward and absurd
reminds me to say that perhaps the young heron is the most ridiculous of
all birds which frequent our province. His legs are so very abnormally
long that they seem almost a malformation, but when one comes to
consider the use he makes of them afterwards, as he wades for food, one
can see that he is properly formed. But at the same time he is the most
absurd, awkward, homely and ill-looking, when young, of all the
feathered tribe incubating in Ontario. You must pardon me, reader, for
daring to presume to differ from great naturalists when they tell us
that he never alights upon trees, for I have seen him alight. Not very
far from my residence stands a very large towering water elm. So tall,
indeed, is this elm that at night it far overshadows all other trees of
the forests about, and among the branches of this elm, being an
obstruction, as it would appear, is the herons’ line of flight. I have
myself frequently seen them alight, and have tried to get a shot at them
when upon the perch. So far as my observation goes, however, they do not
long remain upon the perch.
Since the law now protects ducks from being food for the guns of boys,
they now, generally on Saturdays and holidays, walk in groups, guns in
hand, along our streams and marshes, always ready to take a pot shot at
anything. The water-hen--generally called hell-diver--gets most of the
shots which the boys can spare. This fowl can generally accommodate the
boys to all the fun they want, in the shooting line, and with but little
danger to itself. Its anatomical form is so peculiar and its sense of
sight and hearing so acute that it can, nine times out of ten, dodge the
shots from the boys’ guns from the time of explosion of the charge to
the driving of it home. Outwardly it is formed very much like the duck,
and is about the size of our ordinary wood duck. Its feet, however, are
placed far back in its body, like the great auk. From this fact it is a
most expert swimmer, and is also enabled to dive as quickly as powder
and shot explode. It is not at all uncommon for this fowl to dive to
avoid the shot from a gun and swim under water, wholly out of sight, ten
rods from the place where it went down.
In reality it is a species of duck, but since it feeds mostly upon small
fishes, its flesh is rank, oily, and not palatable for the table. When
August comes around it is no uncommon sight to see the mother water-hen
swimming around followed by her brood of six to ten young water-hens
about as big as cricket-balls. Wonderfully tame, too, they get when they
are not daily molested, and one can spend a very pleasant half hour or
so in watching the brood as they float along with the mother, every few
minutes diving for food.
CHAPTER XIV.
Lake Ontario--Weather observations with regard to it--Area and
depth--No underground passage for its waters--Daily horizon of the
author--A sunrise described--Telegraph poles an eye-sore--The
pleasing exceeds the ugly.
Realizing the fact that the greater part of beautiful Lake Ontario
belongs to us, and, likewise, that the most densely populated portion of
our province is about its borders, a few facts and observations will, I
think, be acceptable to most Canadians. My remarks are founded mainly
upon my own observations, from a lifetime residence upon its shores, and
also in a measure from Dr. Smith’s report to the United States
Government on the fisheries on the lake. First, the lake is a perfect
barometer, in this wise: It will foretell the weather to come to us for
twenty-four to forty-eight hours in advance, to all who will closely
observe it. For instance, suppose we have our coldest winter days, when
everything about is held in the tight embrace of Jack Frost, and there
is no sign of milder weather, or any relief from the intense cold. Look
abroad upon the lake just as the sun is setting, and a light yellow band
hangs above the surface of the water. Then in a few hours Jack Frost
leaves us, and a thaw is at hand. Or, perchance, during the winter days,
when we wish for sleighing, and yet the ground is bare, and it will not
come; no sign of snow, nor the feeling of it (as you well know, one can
feel it before it really comes). But before that time look abroad upon
the surface of the lake, and see a black band extending as far as the
eye can reach. Now it is only a few hours, ordinarily about eighteen,
before the feeling of snow comes, and then down comes the “fleecy
cloud.” It is summer now, and we would know if it will be windy
to-morrow. Are there red rays and yellow skies at sunrise? Yes. It will
be windy on the morrow. But when the cumulous clouds move easily, and as
if not driven above the waters, fine weather old Ontario now gives
us--and he always tells the truth. Not to use many words, in the
glorious midsummer days, when his surface is just like molten glass, and
objects in a depth of sixty feet are clear and distinct, its entrancing
beauty comes. Molten glass; but watch, and a mile away you see a streak
of ruffled water coming towards you, for just there a puff of wind has
caught it. But it dies away and leaves the polished mirror once more to
me. Then he rises in his might and tosses our ships about just like old
ocean, and sends his spray far upon the shore, and his huge-capped waves
advance and recede.
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.”
But it never freezes so hard close by the shores as away from its
breath. Curious, also, to relate, in the fall it does not “freeze up,”
as we say in Canada, as soon as away from it, by two weeks usually. In
the spring, again, the frost is gone from the soil quite two weeks
before it is gone back from its influence, so I feel safe in asserting
that winters upon its shores are one month shorter than they are away
from its meteorological influences. And yet leaves do not appear quite
close to its waters just as soon as they do a few miles away, anomalous
as it may seem, for it does not get warm so quickly as localities more
remote. It is never so warm in the summer about it, as it is never so
cold in the winter. Dwellers upon its shores rarely, if ever, suffer
from extreme heat during the periodical torrid waves which sometimes
visit this land. Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes--being about
185 miles long, and of an average width of 40 miles, being widest
opposite Irondequoit Bay, where it is 55 miles in width. It is some
6,500 square miles in area, of which Ontario owns 3,800. It is 232 feet
above the sea, and usually fluctuates but little in height, though in
1891 it was three feet lower than ever before observed. Persons living
at Niagara, it is said, remarked on the unusually small amount of water
that year passing over Niagara Falls. I am unable in any way to account
for that small flow. We are told it is because the tributary streams and
the waters of the Falls were less. Granted, but why they were less is
far to seek. In most parts the depth of Lake Ontario is about 350 feet,
but off
[Illustration: SCENE NEAR BOBCAYGEON.]
[Illustration: A CANADIAN VIEW--LOOKING SOUTH-EAST FROM EAGLE MOUNTAIN,
STONEY LAKE.]
Charlotte, N.Y., it is 600 feet deep, and in some places opposite
Jefferson County, N.Y., it is quite 700 feet deep. The eastern portion
is the shallowest, being only about 100 feet about South Bay. At the
bottom are, in many places, vegetable organisms, furnishing food for
those fishes which feed at the bottom. Our sturgeon is a bottom-feeder,
and some others. About Stony Point is a rough, rocky and sandy bottom,
and the other parts are muddy and clayey. An underground passage to the
ocean has been mooted many years by persons who have thought the St.
Lawrence could not take away all the flow; that is to say, the waters
passing over Niagara Falls and those falling into Lake Ontario by
contributory streams, which add much to the flow from the Falls. It is a
fallacy; there is no such underground passage, and the St. Lawrence
easily takes all the waters from the lake. No current is perceptible in
the lake. Pieces of wood upon its surface do not flow as with a current
down Kingston way, but invariably come ashore with the first wind. In
perfect preservation to-day are many ships which have gone down and now
rest upon its bottom. Very probably too, the bodies of passengers upon
those ships, confined within the hulls so as to prevent their rising to
the surface, and thus getting the air, are there yet, and in perfect
preservation, for the waters in the depths are always cool and
preservative. Were some expert diver yet to go ghost-like among these
cabins, his nerves must be upset with the evidences of human tragedies
there so vividly to be seen before him. Mainly, the waters are melted
snow, and are manifestly pure, and blessed are those whose homes are
about this life-giving lake, as well as about all our other great
fresh-water oceans. About the shores of the Mediterranean have been for
ages the choicest spots for man’s life; that is to say, the regions
where the human family could develop most perfectly, and life there
passed was rounded and full. Our old Roman bards, you know, were forever
singing about the beauties of Mediterranean shores, their “golden apples
of Hesperides,” and sumptuous residences built partly upon the land and
partly over the sea. Living on the shores of our Great Lakes is
generally conceded now to be most conducive to human development; we
have left the Mediterranean shores in the background, and now want only
the population, for we have a better condition for human
life-development and happiness right here, and far more enjoyable, for
the great heat of the ancients’ country is absent here in our new land.
The earth all light and loveliness, in summer’s golden hours,
Smiles, in her bridal vesture clad, and crown’d with festal flowers;
So radiantly beautiful, so like to heaven above,
We scarce can deem more fair that world of perfect bliss and love.
Turn the eye southward, from the town, with its noise, bustle and smoke,
and look with me over my daily horizon, which indeed bounds a landscape
which my eyes have feasted upon all my days, for the past half-century,
save and except the years at college and years of foreign travel.
Manifestly at the first, the very first, in fact, the eye catches the
more conspicuous objects. And it is, in this instance, a great dead but
standing hemlock tree, denuded, it is true, of its foliage, but yet
bearing its limbs quite in detail. Like great men, it has died at the
top, and its impression upon my retina is always associated with the
crows’ congress which I saw in its foliage-less branches last fall. The
crow, you know, only partially leaves us hereabout for the winter. Many
of them do migrate, it is true, but here along the Lake Ontario shore
dead fish are always thrown up by the waves, and he can feed at any
time; consequently, he does not leave us. So, upon this elevated, dead
tree-top, I saw thousands of them gather, and heard one after another
deliver his speech in regular order. Oratory they must have, for their
voices were plaintive, defiant and grave, in turn, and I dare not deny
them intelligent utterance. Close beside this site of the crows’
congress are a few great, large, sweeping elms, whose branches alone
would each make very respectable trees. Always their greenness is
visible to me, and the quiet contentment of pose of their branches and
leaves is always a pleasure. Great blue-crested herons find convenient
resting-places on their highest limbs. Stork-like, these great, gaunt
birds stand upon one foot, and turn their heads side-wise, and so
wise-like, that one feels so near nature when beholding them that it is
uncanny to disturb them. I let the eye wander beyond the high elm limbs,
and Ontario’s ultra-marine blue waters are before me, upon the far
horizon, beyond my extreme range of vision. And when Old Sol rose this
morning from out of Ontario’s waters, he heralded his appearance by
throwing up into the sky shafts of light of various colors. Some,
indeed, were pure violet for a few moments, and others red, and yellow,
and blue, but not the blue of Ontario, so that the contrast may be
marked for us. He is coming up swiftly, and in a few moments the colors
have all changed, and almost before I can turn my head yellow has
suffused the whole in the immediate locality of old submerged Sol.
Again, the top of a wheel of fire we see upon the water, and now it is
all red about. Old Sol has risen, and a globe of fire is sailing upon
the waters’ surface. Could any facile brush only put upon canvas for us
these phantasmagorial colors, no one would believe the artist, but
accuse him of outdoing nature. And now he shines between me and a high
hill upon the lake’s bank, surmounted by trees, green at the top and
golden yellow along its sides with ripening grain. Our-red men
discovered the very striking beauty of this eminence before Cartier ever
sailed up the St. Lawrence, and even before the Indian population moved
backward and northward upon those backwater chains, and away from Lake
Ontario. To establish this fact most indisputably, we have only to look
at the many skulls, and larger human bones, generally, which the
ploughshare turns out. Then the red man enjoyed his pagan rites without
the intermeddling of the expectant Jesuit missionary, who only came ages
and ages after; for, among the bones, we find his flints, skinning
stones, and stone tomahawks, but no articles of iron, because the
Frenchman, who first came here, had not then given him tomahawks of iron
and old flint guns. Imitative whites, whose eyes travelled about the
horizon, as did the Indians’, drank in the beauty of the scene
inceptively, and they in their turn made it their place of sepulture,
and to-day it is the white man’s burial ground, embosomed among the
evergreen trees, which Old Sol’s rays are penetrating for me. While I
stand and worship at Nature’s shrine in the early summer morn, with the
sun’s advent a gentle breeze has risen. God has been specially good to
us in giving this sublimely beautiful vision:
“The south wind was like a gentle friend,
Parting the hair so softly on my brow,
It had come o’er gardens, and the flowers
That kissed it were betrayed; for as it parted
With its invisible fingers my loose hair,
I knew it had been trifling with the rose,
And stooping to the violet. There is joy
For all God’s creatures in it.”
Down the long, meandering highway my eye rests, and my soul is pained by
most irregular, unsightly, great bare poles on either side of it. A
beneficent Government has given some grasping fellows the power to put
these up and stretch wires upon them, and wrench my soul daily by their
ugliness. Europe would not for a moment tolerate such hideous marring of
the landscape, but long-suffering Canadians, most law-abiding and
complaisant, suffer the nuisance to remain. Not content with the great
warty poles, there are huge braces or props leaning to them at every
bend in the highway, and I, as the individual, must suffer the sacrilege
in silence. A long-suffering people may yet arise in their might and
tear these gaunt, denuded forest trees from the face of the earth. There
is a forest-covered hill, mainly of second-growth timber, before my eye,
and it gloriously crowns what would otherwise be a most unsightly, bald,
round eminence. But it is beautiful, dense, green and grand, and a
wealthy man, viewing daily this hill upon his horizon, bought the land
and keeps the forest that it may please him, and others as well, for
their entire lives. Five per cents, or any given per cents, are not to
be mentioned in comparison with this good citizen duly honoring his
Maker and helping his fellows by his generous act. A forest primeval is
before my eye as I turn my glance to the opposite side of the horizon,
and it stands high and strong before me. Our native maple has never yet
been surpassed for beauty and cleanliness, and here it is our emblem and
our pride. Mainly this forest has always been in my mind as the spot
where countless myriads of pigeons used to alight in the days gone by.
Another forest farther away, and almost out from my horizon, but not
entirely gone from it, formed the next nearest roosting-place for this
extinct migratory bird, strings of which would fall to my boyhood gun,
but now, alas! gone to South America, where food is more abundant and
more easily obtained by them. Lesser objects on the horizon do not
strike me so forcibly, but as I look more remotely and away over the
busy town and its forges, looms and benches, the ridges are clearly
marked upon the sky. Geologists have told us these hills were once the
shores of a broader Lake Ontario. Evidences of the rocks and pebbles go
far to establish that fact, but to us moderns they are very palpable and
valuable by keeping off the cold of the north during the inclement
season, that we may grow the succulent peach beneath their shelter.
“Companies are bodies, indeed, without souls,” for here, with us, the
railway company, which exacts its three and a half cents per mile in
contravention to its charter, has erected great, unsightly sheds, and
stained them a dull red, that their ugliness may be unparalleled. No eye
for the beautiful and harmonious can ever be reconciled to the gaunt
poles along our highways, wire-bestridden, or to the red architectural
sheds of our railway. Summing up, however, the pleasing and unpleasing
which I have touched upon, we see that the pleasing and beautiful
exceeds the unsightly and ugly. I am indulging the hope that some day,
in the near future, a way will be found by which we may enjoy all the
best facilities of communication and transportation without having the
landscape marred by unsightly poles or ugly railroad sheds. The
sensibilities of many of our citizens have been wounded by the act of
some individual or company, who, vandal-like, has removed a time-honored
familiar forest, or erected a most surpassingly ugly house, barn or
warehouse. These marrings of our horizon make life for all more
circumscribed, as well as grieve the souls of the cultured. As we love
our glorious country, let us beautify and preserve it.
CHAPTER XV.
Getting hold of an Ontario farm--How a man without a capital may
succeed--Superiority of farming to a mechanical trade--A man with
$10,000 can have more enjoyment in Ontario than anywhere
else--Comparison with other countries--Small amount of waste land
in Ontario--The help of the farmer’s wife--“Where are your
peasants?”--Independence of the Ontario farmer--Complaints of
emigrants unfounded--An example of success.
It was far more difficult for our early settlers in Ontario to pay for
their lands by their own exertions, even at the low prices then
prevailing, than it is to-day at their greatly increased values. When
Ontario lands could be purchased for $4.00 or $5.00 per acre, there was
no market for their produce to any extent, and money was extremely
difficult to get. Not only the absence of markets was against our
settlers, but though they owned a farm it was wholly unproductive and
useless until cleared of timber. So it was harder to pay the $4.00 per
acre then than it is to pay $80 per acre to-day. A man without capital
to-day in Ontario can start on a 100-acre farm, and pay for it off the
farm in a series of years, by his own and his wife’s exertions. Of
course, he will need a little more to start with in the first instance
than his forefathers did, for he must needs make a small payment down
in order that he may mortgage the farm to get the balance of the
purchase money. Since money is now being loaned on farm security at five
and six per cent., he can yearly more than pay his interest and reduce
his principal, so that his burdens are daily becoming lighter. His wife
and himself pulling together and practising economy invariably succeed
on productive farms, and pay for them. We sometimes wonder at our
forefathers that they did not take up more land when it was so cheap,
but forget that even its cheapness, as it seems to us to-day, was no
guide to them as to its being cheap. Grain in early times did not bring
money, when these prices prevailed, nor would timber. Furs and potash
were the only commodities commanding cash. Hence it was almost an
impossibility for an ordinary man to pay for more than 100 acres from
his own exertions. To-day, even at $80 per acre on a mortgaged farm,
everything he can grow will sell for money, and with his family’s help,
and with the growth and increase of his stock, he is bound to succeed.
Even if he must needs practise economy it does not follow that he may
not enjoy himself, as the time goes on, while he is paying for his farm.
The press will, for a few dollars yearly, give him amusement and
pleasure at home. If his means are particularly straitened, even $5.00
per year for weeklies will furnish him the cheapest and best
contemporary readings possibly obtainable for the money. Then if he or
his wife be at all musically inclined, the evening of relaxation, after
the hard day’s work be done, can be pleasantly put in by a song or two,
accompanied on an organ, if he has got so far along as to afford one;
and he rises with the sun next morning, rested, invigorated, and ready
for the next day’s work. And as every harvest comes in its turn he feels
gladly thankful that the mortgage is being gradually lifted. Living as
he does, and putting forth these efforts to save, he must have good
habits. Good habits will invariably give him good health, and life is a
pleasure to him, even under the cloud of a mortgage. Slavery some people
will term this life, while under the mortgage. If one would get money
one must save, and if one be well cared for, housed, clad and fed while
saving, he can surely put up with the hard work, for always ahead is the
goal of having a 100-acre farm paid for, which will make him independent
for life. The mechanic emigrant who comes to us from Britain is not
sufficiently versatile to change his mode of life to go on a farm and
succeed until he has been here a few years. Having been in our midst a
few years he gets his eyes opened, and learns in a measure “to be a
jack-of all trades,” and then many of such former mechanics do succeed
on farms and pay for them. Our native-born Canadian, who follows some
mechanical trade when the mechanical labor market is over-supplied, is
making a serious mistake. Very naturally many of our young men drift
into this life, for their work is over at six o’clock, and they can
wash, dress and walk the streets when their farmer brother at home is
yet in the fields. While the mechanic goes through life with tolerable
ease upon his day’s wages, as a rule he is not saving much for his
declining days; but his farmer brother invariably is. His farmer brother
will have soiled hands, and wear his working clothes the whole day
through, and cannot go about the streets in the evenings, nor attend so
many places of amusement, but he enjoys himself just as well at home,
and he is saving for a rainy day. If trade be dull and shops shut down
in the middle of winter, he is quite indifferent, for his cellar is well
supplied, and his fields are ploughed ready for next spring’s sowing.
Prices for his grain may be low, but still he has his living, and no one
to call master, and is as free and independent as any king upon a
throne. Writers on political economy tell us that all true wealth must
be produced from the soil. Now, if this be true, then the nearer we get
to the soil at first hand the better off we must be. I have already
endeavored to show that those on the soil lead the most independent,
free and healthy lives, and since Ontario has lots more of lands yet for
the farmer, let those out of work and with no very bright or sure
prospects before them, go on those lands. Many workmen could remedy the
scarcity of employment in the winter, and their having not much to live
upon, following strikes of trades-unions, if they would cultivate the
soil. If the mechanical labor market be overstocked, the common-sense
remedy would be to lessen the supply. Here with us the proper way to
lessen the supply is for our smart mechanics, who know our country and
its conditions, to get away from the towns upon farms; and if in the
course of time such persons, succeeding in their new calling (which I
have tried to prove is not a life of slavery, but of hard toil and
self-denial, and wealth and independence), as succeed they must if they
put forth the necessary effort, and pay for their first 100 acres, there
is no law or moral obstacle to their buying 200 or 400 more if they can.
Should they not be able to work so much land, surely they are at perfect
liberty to rent it to others, and enjoy the rents and profits from it as
the result of their labors. Very few farmers fail in Ontario; so very
few, in fact, that our former bankruptcy law did not provide for the
farmers’ failure at all. They invariably succeed, and the instances of
old decrepit farmers, with nothing to support them in their declining
years, are so very few that any reader hereof cannot call to mind very
many examples. Reader, you will have to think twice before you can point
to an old, infirm farmer with nothing to support him in Ontario. I only
wish I could say as much for the mechanic. Even with the good wages they
get, it is almost a superhuman task to save a competency for that period
of life which must come to all of us surviving, when our limbs become
too stiff to obey our will, and too weak to maintain the strain of toil.
But I did not set out to write of the mechanical trades or kindred
subjects; I am only trying to induce more mechanics to go upon farms and
be independent of bosses, strikes or trades-unions.
My observation of travel in continental Europe, Britain and the United
States gives me the ground to fearlessly state that in Ontario a man
with a capital of $10,000 can enjoy more and be more independent than he
can in those countries.
Say his farm costs $8,000, or $80 per acre; but from my intimate
knowledge of lands in Ontario, I would not limit myself to that price.
Good land is always the cheapest, and I would not hesitate in paying
$100 per acre, and more, if the productiveness of the farm will warrant
it. But assuming $80 per acre to be the average for a good farm; now add
to this $2,000 upon the 100-acre farm for stock, implements, etc., so
that the entire $10,000 is fully invested. Upon this 100-acre farm, paid
for, the farmer can enjoy as good a living as can be got in any other
calling in life. It can’t be done in Britain, but it can be done here.
If I would settle on such a priced farm in Germany, in the first place
it would not begin to be as productive as the Ontario farm, and besides,
my growing sons would have to be soldiers for three years upon reaching
manhood, or leave the country. The best lands to be found in Austria are
in Hungary, which is a wheat country, and not one whit better than ours,
of a like fertility, and at least two and a half or three times the
price. In France I have noticed that by the most rigid and grinding
economy the small peasant will lay up a competency. But the economy
practised by the French peasant is something our people cannot and will
not use. The usual conveniences and amenities of life the French
peasant knows not of; a cloth is never laid upon the table, and the
bread for the mid-day meal is usually cut from the loaf in advance for
each person, and laid beside the plate. A full spread, with meat and
other dishes, literally filling the table, so that there is plenty left
after the meal is partaken of, they know not of; still they live, and
secure a competency in a small way.
Rural life in Ontario is far preferable to anything these countries can
produce. We are not forced to be soldiers, and we can buy and own
absolutely the land which we cultivate. But there is another point, not
usually thought of in regard to Ontario farming. That is its certainty.
We never get a failure of crops, for although our crops may be more
plentiful some years than others, we never fail really. We never get any
serious drouths nor floods, and our cattle are never diseased, as they
are in several States of the Union. Our taxes are so small a matter that
we do not generally give them a second thought. Nor are our winters so
severe that our stock will be injured by the cold; nor will our children
coming from or going to school be caught in blizzards. But the farmer
who prepares his land properly, and puts forth an effort in downright
earnest, is bound to succeed.
He is eligible to any office within the gift of the people, if he be
that way inclined, and he does not take off his hat to any lord or duke
in the land. Literally he is master of his own situation; an honest,
fearless, loyal, independent yeoman, with himself and his family
absolutely provided for, and above all want. Pulling up and moving away
he never thinks of. He has his home, and knows what a home is and should
be. The temptation to go upon some cheap lands out west, where
grasshoppers are possible to destroy his year’s crop, he does not even
think of. The western American’s ease and little regret in pulling up
and leaving for a little farther west he cannot understand.
He sticks to his home, and yearly improves it and adds to its value, and
is ready to fight for it if need be. Ontario runs away south into the
best States--agriculturally--of the Union. Even some American writers
honestly assert that it is better situated (north of the lakes) than
their own lands in the same latitude, south of the lakes. For a fact, we
know Ontario gets less snow than northern New York or Ohio does, and the
seasons are not nearly so trying in Toronto as they are in Buffalo.
Granted, first, that the reader knows of the richness of Ontario’s lands
and its little waste places, and also of the downright hard work of its
people and their love of home, if you will then take up the map and note
how Ontario is situated--surrounded by water and having a summer nearly
as long as that of the north half of France--you can come to no other
conclusion but that, with a capital of $10,000 in a farm and
appurtenances, in Ontario one can enjoy most and be the surest of
success.
One great fact which distinguishes Ontario is its little waste land.
Draw a line from Lake Simcoe to Belleville, and all that portion of old
Ontario west of that line possesses less waste land than any tract of
country of equal size known in the world. There are no mountain wastes
nor extensive marshes within this space, but nicely undulating lands
with frequent streams, and almost naturally drained. Farms in Ontario
are 100 acres each, ordinarily, and the 100-acre farmer is a man
generally to be respected. He brings his family up respectably, and
educates them at the common school so that they are capable of filling
almost any position in after life in which they may be placed. Such
farmers are intelligent and more or less travelled. Last summer I
recollect being the guest of a Yorkshire farmer who farmed 560 acres of
Yorkshire lands. He was a man of sixty-five, wealthy, and had been on
the farm all his lifetime. During this time he had been to London only
twice, at some horse shows. The River Tweed, dividing England from
Scotland, was only two hours distant from him by rail, and yet he had
never crossed it. As to going over to Ireland, he had never even thought
of it. Our Ontario farmer comes to our provincial shows, and jostles
among city people now and again in our different cities, and thus gets
his rough corners rubbed off. And he is far more than the equal in
intelligence of any yeoman in the Old World of anything like his means.
The 100-acre farmer will ordinarily have 60 acres in crop yearly, which
will average him $20 per acre. The balance of his farm is in hay,
pasture, and forest.
Now, from this 60 acres of crop he nicely supports his family, and
yearly puts by a nice little sum to buy lands for his growing boys when
they shall need them; of course, he cannot save the whole $1,200
obtained for his crops, as his family must be maintained out of this as
well as pay for repairs and improvements. However, most Canadian
farmers’ wives supplement this grain product by the butter and cheese
from the cows running upon the pastures.
Indeed, the wife’s help is a very great element to the farmer’s success,
as regards saving money; and she deserves her place of importance beside
her husband. Our Ontario farmer drives a good team upon the roads,
encased in first-class harness, and a smart light spring buggy behind
them. Rope traces and straw collars, which one sees in the South, would
be beneath his dignity, and one must search Ontario over and over to
find an example of such. And he is well clad in clothes, the product of
the factory loom. Only a few years back he wore clothes made from
home-grown wool spun by his good wife and woven upon some loom near at
home. But latterly the factories have produced tweeds and fullcloths at
so small a price that it has not paid him to work up his own wool. His
table is well supplied with not only an abundance of food, but in great
variety, fruit in various forms forming a feature at almost every meal.
The universal meat diet of England is not acceptable to his palate nor
suitable for our climate, for our systems require a laxative in this
climate, which fruit gives him. His wife is more than the equal in
cooking of her friends in Old England. She can compound more dishes out
of the same material, make more tasteful and toothsome pastry than one
can buy in a pastrycook’s shop in Europe. She does not consider it
beneath her dignity assisting in milking the cows, teaching calves which
are to be reared to drink milk, or possibly feeding the pigs if the men
be busy.
As a transformation she can, after a wash, quickly don garments fit for
the parlor, and entertain company at her board with an ease and
heartiness truly surprising to European travellers who visit us. Even if
not able to converse in half Frenchy English, many of them can dash off
a number of tunes upon an organ or piano in a manner acceptable to most
persons not musical critics. An organ is in most good farm-houses, and
sometimes a piano, and the daughters are daily becoming proficient on
them, practising after the evening milking is done.
Well might the European ask, “Where are your peasants?” These are our
peasants, and the reason you do not recognize them is because they are
on a higher plane in cultivation, taste and education than yours are;
and even if they do appear as ladies and gentlemen, they are not above
engaging in the arduous toil of the farm.
Ontario farms are worth so much in dollars, because, for the reason I
have already given, of the little waste land, and also because of the
industriousness of its people. Look across the border at our American
cousins and you do not find the genuine American doing the downright
hard work. The European emigrant performs that duty for him, while the
American fills the offices to be filled, and does the scheming.
But the Ontario farmer will do downright hard work after the manner of
his sires in the British Isles, and he has not yet learned to shirk it.
It is this industry which makes our province, makes our lands sell so
high, and gives his home an abundance, and puts yearly a nice sum at his
credit in some savings bank. One great difference between the Canadian
and the American is in this particular--the American does not lay up for
his children as the Canadian tries to do. My observation leads me to
think that the American does not put forth an especial effort to set his
sons up in the farming or other business, but lets them commence at the
foot of the ladder to work their own way up. On the contrary, the
Canadian farmer, almost without exception, is yearly trying to lay aside
a sum to buy, or help to buy, farms for his growing sons. Thus the
Ontario farmer never gets satisfied, as it were, or never gives up work
as long as he is able to perform it. Americans, on the other hand, will
rest upon their laurels, and live without any exertion, on small
incomes. Indeed, from my own knowledge, I know that many American
farmers in Michigan have rented their small farms and moved into the
villages to live on an income of $300 per year. Our farmers have the
true British greed, and would not think of giving out on a $300 income.
Now, I argue that our state of affairs is the best for the prosperity of
our country. Never becoming satisfied, they never cease to work, and
thus they have produced the most smiling and prosperous country in the
world. This picture of Ontario farm life is true to-day, and I ask the
reader if it is not as desirable a life as is obtainable anywhere. Our
Ontario farmer owns his own soil, is well fed, housed, and clad, ever
striving to do for his family, loyal to his government, and at peace
with his God and with man. I have yet to find his equal, as a class, for
the general well-being or common weal.
Until a few years past nearly all Ontario people did their year’s
business with their town merchant on the credit basis. Goods for family
use would be freely purchased on credit the whole year through, until
fall came and the annual grain selling time, when large bills would be
rendered by the merchant. Large enough they generally would be, for,
buying goods without restraint and paying no money for them, the farmers
would hardly realize that such seemingly small purchases from time to
time would amount to so much in the fall. But little credit is now
given, and goods and supplies are generally paid for as purchased. This
very beneficial change is no doubt owing to the fact that now the farmer
has a greater variety of products of the farm to sell than formerly,
which come in in their turn in different seasons, and thus give him a
steady supply of funds. Paying as he goes, he is not nearly so apt to
buy things he does not really need, and his sum total of the cash
purchases for the year will not amount to so much as his annual store
bills did formerly. The merchant likewise can sell his goods closer for
cash than he could if he had to wait a whole year. The fact that the
credit business is being largely superseded by the cash system is one of
the best arguments as to the progress of the country. All along these
townships lying upon Lake Ontario the farmer delivers his barley in the
early fall by waggon to the elevator at the lake. This barley money
usually gives the farmer his first fall money.
Tenant farmers generally pay their fall rent with their barley money.
Very many of the teams coming down with barley take coal home with them.
It is an undeniable fact that the lands bordering upon the lake do not
have any more wood upon them. Fifteen years ago a person who would have
made the assertion that the majority of the inhabitants would be burning
coal to-day would have been scouted. It shows us how much we are
dependent upon our neighbors south of us for our coal supply. There
undoubtedly is abundance of wood northerly from central Ontario, but for
fuel purposes it is almost useless to us. Our railways won’t carry the
wood to us if they can get anything else to carry, and even having
carried it, when the price is considered, wood becomes almost a luxury.
We may as well look the future squarely in the face and realize that in
a few years a great part of Ontario along the lakes must depend for fuel
wholly upon United States coal. Formerly a few farmers of push and great
physical strength would attend to their farms during the summer and
follow lumbering and the timber business during the winter. That class
of men possessed any amount of push, and performed more manual labor
than any man can be found willing to do now, even for money. Numbers of
such men became wealthy, for they had double profits coming to them all
the time. Rudely as they farmed, they got a profit out of the virgin
soil, and the winter’s limited business paid them as much more, hence
those who would endure the severe physical strain necessary to carry on
this mixed business made money rapidly. Such men got along faster than
the ordinary farmer. But that is all changed now. Farming is now a
matter of skill, and not brute force and strength as formerly. There is
no longer any lumbering or timbering to be followed in the winter, and
the Ontario farmer hereabout will get no more profit from that source.
Then he must rely to-day only upon his farm and what he can make it do
during the summer. When he used to swing his cradle among stumpy fields,
then it was a question of physical endurance and strength. But all that
is changed now, for his work is nearly all done by machinery, and he
must learn to manage the machinery. To make money and succeed well at
farming to-day requires as much skill as it does to succeed in any other
calling. When the soil was new he could draw upon it unfairly, and still
with all the abuse it smiled upon him. Seventeen successive crops of
wheat upon the same land has not been uncommon in the past. And yet with
all this abuse the last crop was nearly as good as the foregoing ones.
This will give one an idea of the extraordinary richness of our soil,
and without a doubt a good deal of our soil could be so abused now and
it would continue to produce and pay. But the husbandman has learned to
husband his resources, and refuses to draw so heavily upon his soil, and
hence to-day he practises a succession of crops, roots, manuring, and
ploughing in clover, roots, etc. This he has commenced to do lest he
might exhaust his lands, not particularly because he had to do so, but
simply through fear of the future. The day may come, when our lands have
been cultivated as long as they have been in England, that we shall have
to buy outside manures and pay ten dollars per acre for them, as the
British farmer has to do; but since we do not, the lot of our farmers is
ten dollars per acre better than that of the English farmer.
The most independent person in Canada to-day is the person who can do
most things within himself. If a man were to emigrate to Canada who knew
nothing but the art of cutting diamonds, his chances of success among us
would be slim indeed. For general versatility the Ontario farmer is the
equal of any people in any country. He can cultivate his lands, do an
odd job of carpentry, build a log-house with his axe, and some can even
shoe a horse or relay a plough coulter at their rude forges at their
homes. Not long since I had occasion to call on a farmer and found him
repairing the family clock, which obstinately refused to run in
obedience to its pendulum. It was an ordinary brass affair, and not
being a practical watchmaker, the farmer had taken the works out of
their case and was vigorously boiling them in a pot of water on the
stove. Rude as such clock repairing was, he succeeded in freeing it from
superfluous hardened oil and grease, and got it in running order once
more.
The Ontario farmer’s success is not anomalous when we come to consider
him physically, capable as he is of performing an almost unlimited
quantity of manual labor, and of so many kinds.
An American friend happened to be visiting me while a gathering was
taking place not long ago here, and on viewing the farmers and their
sons, made the significant remark, “What material for an army!”
Dean Stanley, who paid us a visit a few years before his death, said
that “the people who could conquer this climate could achieve anything
sought.” As to conquering the climate this we have done, and to-day
there is no more law-abiding, peaceful, intelligent, and industrious
class in any country than among the rural sections of Ontario.
The emigrant who comes to us complains that our farmers work him too
hard, or, in other words, that he becomes a slave. During the pressing
season of seeding and harvesting there are no people anywhere who work
harder than our Ontario farmers do, and with our short seasons it must
necessarily be so. As yet very few farmers ask their hired help to
perform more work than they do themselves. The farmer generally works
side by side with his hired man, and what the farmer can stand it would
appear his hired man can. No farmer asks his hired man to plough in the
drizzle and rain, which he had to do in England, and come in at night
wet to the skin. He does not get his beer as he did in England, it is
true, because in our climate of extremes of heat and cold we do not
need the beer, and were the hired man to partake of it as freely as he
used to in England he could not perform his necessary work for a long
time. He sits at the same table with his master generally, and gets just
the same fare, and has a bed and room to himself, same as if quartered
in an hotel. Meat three times a day he can usually have if he wants it,
which he certainly did not get in his Old Country home. And he is paid
for eight months’ work, with his board and washing included, $160, or
for a year with the same perquisites, $200. Now, the emigrant who comes
over here and expects us to feed and lodge him for nothing must
certainly think this country a second garden of Eden. As to farm hands
flocking into the cities during the winter, I have only to say that I do
not see what possible business they can have there. If a man refuses to
engage for a whole year he gets his $160 for eight months, and very many
remain with some farmer during the winter, doing chores at a low
pittance, or perhaps even for their board. Well, he has got his $160 for
the eight months of the year, and during the winter he need not spend
it, and by the winter’s rest he is recuperating his physical powers even
if the farmer did work him very hard during the summer. Those who
grumble at the life I have pictured of a farmer’s hired man had better
go back to England; but, for a fact, we do not see them ever going back.
But the thrifty emigrant, who works away and saves, soon gets enough
money together to become a tenant farmer, and becomes himself boss in
turn. Usually such men are far harder on their hired help than those
whom they themselves worked for. As a tenant farmer he pays about $5.00
per acre per year rent for his farm and the taxes, and if he has a
growing family and a saving helpmate, in a few years he has saved money
enough to quite or nearly pay for a farm of his own. Could he have
accomplished that in the Old World? And still they grumble at our
country, call it rural slavery, and write home to Old Country journals
letters calculated to do us harm. So many young men leaving their
fathers’ farms and flocking to the cities and towns might lead some to
infer that the farmers’ sons were sick of life upon the farm. I do not
so interpret it. Take, for instance, a farmer owning 150 acres of land
and having four sons. Now, to divide his land equally among his sons
would give each thirty-seven and a half acres, which is too small for a
farm to be profitable as a farm. Then the farmer educates a couple of
his sons, who leave the family farm and pursue other callings. With the
industrious habits they learned at home, and with good sound physical
bodies, they are quite able to succeed in their new callings. One
instance of signal success in Ontario farm lands comes to my mind, and I
will mention it. A Canadian, the oldest son, whose father died, leaving
the mother without means, went to work among the farmers at twelve years
of age. For the first three years he only got $40 per year.
Notwithstanding this low wage he saved a little out of it. As he grew
older he began to get a little more wages, and thus worked seven years
to save his first $400. At this time in his life he turned sharp around
and went to school, and soon became a school-teacher. With his first
year’s salary as teacher, and a few dollars he already possessed from
his former earnings, he bought his fifty acres of land and paid about
half down for it. Then he hired a man and started to cultivate the fifty
acres, by the help of a yoke of oxen. Night and morning he worked
faithfully upon his land, chopping and logging, and attending to his
school duties during the day. Soon he had his first fifty acres paid
for, and then bought another farm of the same size, adjoining it, which
he paid for in the same manner that he paid for the first fifty acres,
only sooner, for he had the proceeds of the first farm to help him. At
this turn in his life he studied for one of the learned professions, and
attained a degree, and also educated his other brothers and sisters as
well. To-day this gentleman owns 500 acres of land, very nearly all paid
for, and farms it himself. His land cannot be worth less than $50,000,
and yet he is not over fifty years of age at this time. Another very
important feature in this gentleman’s career is that his family have all
been taught to labor, and have been brought up to industrious habits,
and the individual members cannot fail to make their mark in our midst.
Ye city dwellers, do not for a moment suppose that this is only a
solitary instance of signal success of country life. Many more might be
mentioned, but this is sufficient to show what push, determination and
brains will accomplish in rural Ontario. What he has done others can
do, and are doing this day. Your examples of city dwellers’ success do
not very much surpass this for the years during which the fortune was
made. To “blow” about our own country is right and laudable, I maintain,
especially when our country in its merits fully bears one out in the
“blowing.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Unfinished character of many things on this continent--Old Country
roads--Differing aspects of farms--Moving from the old log-house to
the palatial residence--Landlord and tenant should make their own
bargains--Depletion of timber reserves.
In America everything is begun, and but few things finished. Persons
from the Old World tell us this, and there is a great deal of truth in
it. Driving on Ontario roads one sees a good farm-house, surrounded by
trees and fences, all nicely kept, when perhaps the very next field
adjoining this well-cultivated farm is considerably given up to stumps
and a few boulders, although of stones the best parts of Ontario are
happily almost free. There may be a little brook crossing the highway;
to get over this brook a bridge or culvert of cedar sticks has been put
down, which does well enough in itself, and is quite safe, but it
manifestly will not last any great length of time. Now, in Europe, such
little streams would be spanned by a stone arch bridge. The little
stream as it passes along the fields in many parts, notably in Germany,
would be straightened and walled in with stones to keep it from wearing
away its banks. Of course, we cannot afford to do all this in our new
country, but I think from this time forth what work we do at all should
be of a more permanent character than it has been, for the first outlay
would be the cheapest in the end. Again, beside a farm well kept, on the
next lot will be often found old fences barely sufficient to turn
cattle. If it is a board fence half the boards will be off, and one end
of them lying on the ground, while the other end still adheres by a
solitary nail to the proper post. Or a few posts will have got out of
the perpendicular, and point their several ways heavenward, but
unfortunately each post points a way and on an incline of its own.
Besides the country roads are, sometimes, even in our best settlements,
remains of old logs, nearly rotted away, an old stump or so, and on the
sides of the road, upon either side of the waggon track, stumps and
convolutions, just as it came from primeval forest, and never smoothed
down by the hand of man. The waggon track, passing between these stumps,
decaying logs and hillocks, will generally be a good one, but it is this
unfinished appearance which causes the European to tell us, with a shade
of truth, that things are begun in America but not yet finished. Driving
in Europe all seems finished. There is nothing left in the roads, and
even if they be narrow, the hedges or walls upon either side are
perfect, and there is nothing to mar the scene. It is literally
finished. Man has done all there is to do. We must, of course, recollect
that ours is a young country, and I am only presenting this disagreeable
side of our country that we may begin to right these features. For
utility and resource the people of Europe cannot begin to compare with
us. The very nature of things here, commencing as we did a few years ago
in the native woods, compelled us to seek the quickest and easiest ways
of getting on. But all that is past now, and we ought to commence to
finish our country.
Those who remain constantly at home do not feel the deficiency so
particularly, but to those who go abroad these defects are so glaring
that one notices them at every turn. The more we beautify our country
the better it will please ourselves, and likewise will be the means of
inducing capitalists from abroad to invest among us. We may often see,
in driving along our roads, first-class capacious barns and sheds, and
every fence on a farm neat and tidy, gates all right, nicely painted,
and the whole get-up of the farm neat and thrifty. At the same time this
farmer may be living in an ordinary farm-house, or perhaps the original
log-house which he built when he commenced to subdue the forest. The
farmer is among our best citizens, and presents a striking contrast to
our American cousin, who builds a showy house first, and perhaps a very
small barn afterwards. This farmer has carved his fortune from his
forest and farm, and appreciates that his stock makes money for him,
hence he prepares first-class stabling for them, while his own family
lives in meagre quarters within square log walls. No doubt his family
are quite comfortable in their log-house, but do not essay to cut so
great a figure in the world as many of his neighbors of much smaller
means and fewer acres. Many times this person will own his 200 or 300
acres, and all paid for. He drives great fat horses on the road, and
pulls his cap squarely down on his head, and goes on as if he meant
business, which he really does. It is a matter of indifference to him if
his wife and daughters be dressed in the latest fashions or not. If they
have good, strong, serviceable clothing, he considers it sufficient, and
the gimps and gew-gaws of modern times have not yet entered upon his
calculations; but he can show a whole row of stalls in his cow-barn
containing twenty head of good fat cattle and a lot of growing young
calves. Such citizens are desirable, and we are proud of their industry
and success. Now and again such farmers get around to the house
business, and when they do build, they build well--usually brick, or it
may be he has for years been gathering the stones in piles from his
fields; if so, his house will be of solid stone walls two feet thick.
Many such persons put $3,000 or $4,000 in their houses, and the abrupt
transfer from the old log-house to the palatial residence is almost
startling to the inmates. Some little time has to elapse before they sit
their new house well. But, gradually, furniture comes in furtively in
the great farm waggon, returning home from the market, and in a year or
so their new homestead is complete in its appointments and in detail,
and there is a house any man in America or in Europe might be proud of.
The old log-house, likely as not, is left standing behind the new one.
As an excuse for leaving the old log-house standing, he says it is handy
to put implements in and a good place--up-stairs--for seed corn. But in
many instances I suspect he leaves it that he may look upon it and upon
the new one likewise in the same glance, and call a justifiable pride to
his mind, that the new palace, comparatively speaking, grew from the old
log-house, now holding his seed corn and implements. You call on him,
and he passes by the old log-house without a remark, but you speak of
it, and with just a tinge of pride he tells you, as he pulls down his
cap and thrusts his hands in his trousers’ pockets, that on that site
where the old log-house now stands, forty-five years or so ago, he cut
down four maple trees to make room for it, for there was then no room
elsewhere for it on his lot.
In former days, as has already been remarked, the great fertility of the
soil caused people to farm rather carelessly and without any
consideration of the desirableness of a rotation of crops. Time has
changed that to a great extent. I have a number of farm tenants, and
would not allow them to crop continually without seeding, etc.--not
because my soils are exhausted, but because I do not want them
exhausted. While we sympathize with Ireland and would like to see her
condition bettered, still to-day I, as a landlord, would not accept her
land law and abide by it. If I had to send my leases in to a land
commissioner to tell me what I must charge for my lands, I would not any
longer own lands, but would sell them out at once and put the proceeds
in Government bonds. It is obvious that here in Ontario each landlord
and tenant ought to make his own bargain, just the same as regarding
interest for money. Until our country is as thickly populated as Ireland
is, we need not raise this question of adjudicating upon rents but if
that time were to come I would not any longer consider my position as a
landlord in Ontario desirable. By this means I would let Ireland have a
home parliament, and I was in favor of the Gladstonian programme, but I
should think it extremely hard for any government to dictate to me what
I must receive as income for my estate, Henry George to the contrary
notwithstanding. Should our fair Ontario ever get to entertaining
communistic notions, the tenure of property and estates would be not
worth the effort to retain, and, as far as I am concerned (and there are
many like me), I would rather go over to Old England and take up my
abode.
In some instances there is too much liberty in Ontario. In this wise the
general public think nothing of tramping over fields, either in crop or
not, as the case may be, for short cuts, rather than follow the
highways. Some of us are endeavoring to preserve a grove of trees, but
there are those who, whenever they are in want of any especial stick for
poles, or axe handles, or what not, think nothing of cutting and taking
away one or more of the trees of a prized grove. No doubt heretofore it
has been thoughtlessness on the part of the public, and the example
handed down from the time when timber could be got anywhere for the
cutting. But that has passed from us, never to return, and in the future
we shall necessarily have to be more strict, as our country is
increasing in population. To prevent persons walking over fields is not
the idea. I well recollect an anecdote told me in England when I was
over there a year or two ago. A man was walking along a stream through
a pasture, when he was met by the owner, who asked, “Do you know whose
land you are walking on?” “No, I do not.” “Well, it is mine, and you
have no business to walk on my land.” “But I have no land of my own to
walk on, and where shall I walk?” And the poor man was correct. In
Ontario we do not wish even to restrain the poor man to that extent, but
the thoughtless and lawless trespass upon crops and timber, and the
tearing down of fences cannot much longer be allowed. Those living in
the vicinity of large towns keenly feel the need of change in this
particular.
Aside from all reasons of utility, it is a very great pity that all our
trees are disappearing in the older portions of Ontario. It has been
felt that our trees would never be all cut away, and it was thought
fifteen years ago that we would not have to rely upon coal. The beauty
of England is largely made up by her small groves of trees interspersed
throughout the country, and if not great in extent, they relieve the eye
and serve as wind-breaks. We have been too prodigal of our forests, but
since we have had to go to coal we begin to realize the use, beauty, and
benefit of even a few acres of woods here and there upon our farms. I
heard an owner of a 200-acre farm near here last year say, that if it
were possible he would give $300 per acre to have the ten acres of woods
replaced upon the north end of his farm. And this farmer had to draw
what wood he did use ten miles, but he wanted the forest on his farm to
serve as a wind-break and a thing of beauty.
CHAPTER XVII.
Book farmers and their ways--Some Englishmen lack
adaptiveness--Doctoring sick sheep by the book--Failures in
farming--Young Englishmen sent out to try life in Canada--The
sporting farmer--The hunting farmer--The country school-teacher.
Book farmers come to us now and again. These are usually persons from
Britain, possessing some means, but not sufficient to make them
gentlemen at home. They have had no particular knowledge of farming at
home, but since farming is supposed to be so easy a matter in Canada,
they do not for a moment doubt their ability to get on with a farm. They
resort to the best works on agriculture; and after the perusal of a few
volumes really begin to flatter themselves that they have a very
superior knowledge of farming, and are able to teach the Canadian on his
native heath just how it ought to be done. Such a man purchases his farm
and usually pays the cash down for it, and for his stock as well.
Searching over the community he finds a pair of the heaviest horses he
can, for the light Canadian horses, he knows, will be of no use to him,
and he gets some long poles made at the nearest carpenter shop, and
hires the village painter to paint them in black and red sections that
he may set them up for his man to strike out his lands by in ploughing.
Light, strong, durable Canadian harness is not to his mind, for he
recollects seeing the plough horses in England return from the fields
with great broad back-bands on their harness, to which were attached
immense iron chains of traces, and he follows suit. And he sets John to
ploughing, properly equipped, not for a moment doubting the result of
all this preparation. And after a proper method of ploughing he does
raise fair crops as a rule, for our lands are ordinarily so rich that if
they have even a fair show at all they will produce. Harvest-time coming
on, many other hands are brought into requisition, and he follows up the
old time-honored custom in England of serving up the quart of beer per
day to each hand. In due time his harvest is all garnered properly, and
his work nicely done. His man comes in in the morning and tells him,
about the time the first few rains come on, that “one of the sheep is
sick.” “All right, John, I will attend to it,” for, of course, he can,
for he knows he has at his elbow, upon the shelf, somebody’s treatise on
the sheep, which is the best extant. The sheep volume is brought down
and closely scanned, and the right page describing the disease sheep
ought to have at this time of the year found. With the volume under arm
he sallies forth to view the sheep, while John follows with the
remedies. Arrived at the sheep he adjusts his spectacles at the proper
angle upon his nose, and intently examines his sick patient The more he
examines his patient and gets at its symptoms the more he is in doubt
if the symptoms really correspond with those mentioned on the particular
page of the treatise.
Shoving the spectacles up just a little closer on his nose he
re-examines his patient, and glances from the patient to the book, the
quandary all the time deepening in his mind. John is not allowed to
suggest that the sheep has caught cold by lying in some exposed place
through the last storm, and that he only wants warmth and food. It would
never do to give in to John, for “what has John read about sheep?” The
proper remedy is at last hit upon. There can possibly be no doubt about
it, but to make assurance doubly sure he re-reads the page and looks his
patient over again. No doubt this time, and John is sent to the house
for a bottle, from which he will administer the proper remedy
internally. John returns with the bottle, with a little water in it, and
our book farmer adds the proper remedy and shakes it up thoroughly. All
being ready, John makes the poor sheep swallow the mixture, much against
its will, for it’s the most noxious stuff it ever had in its life, and
the book farmer quietly awaits the result, his spectacles gradually
continuing to slip away from the bridge of his nose, and to run an
imminent risk of falling off the extreme end of that important organ.
Some twenty minutes now elapse and John says the sheep is worse.
Back upwards again the spectacles are pushed, and the patient critically
examined. While the examination is going on the sheep dies under his
gaze. “Dear me; how can that be? I must have got the wrong page. Oh,
yes, I see, I did get the wrong page. Never mind, John, I will fix the
next one up all right in case it becomes ill.” And he closes the book
with a snap, and goes back again to his library.
Such book farmers invariably have failed in Ontario. I defy any reader
to fix on any one such book farmer who has succeeded. When he comes to
strike his balances, after his crops have been marketed, and has taken
an inventory of stock, he finds that his crops have cost him more than
they brought back in cash. Another year will remedy that, however, and
he tries it again, only to find the balance on the wrong side once more.
Usually two years suffice to teach this book farmer that he is not a
farmer, but he may possibly hold on for three seasons. Then he calls a
sale, sells or rents his farm, and gets a neat, comfortable little
dwelling in some neighboring town, which is quite sufficient for him and
his household, even if it be not palatial in its appointments. From his
retirement he writes back to England that farming won’t pay in Canada,
for he has tried it, and it certainly will not pay.
This does a great deal of harm, and our country gets in bad odor among
many persons at home, when the book farmer alone is to blame, and not
the country.
As to failures at farming, I do not think you can call to mind the
failure of any farmer in Ontario, on any good farm, who farms his land
in right down earnest. Benjamin Franklin said:
“He who by the plough would thrive,
Must himself both hold and drive.”
And that was perfectly true then as now. Look at the farmer in Ontario
who rolls up his shirt sleeves and follows the plough, who does as much
work himself as he possibly can, and only hires for doing that which he
can’t do himself, and you will find that farmer succeeding.
We have been getting in Ontario of late another class of farmers whom I
wish to speak of. They are the sons of men of means in Britain. Usually
they are about twenty years of age, and have just left their schools and
homes. Every avenue at home being so full, they are sent to Canada to
learn farming, with the parent’s view of buying them a farm as soon as
they have learned the occupation. Sometimes these persons pay a small
sum to our good farmers, annually, to be taught farming, but they are to
work at the same time the same as a hired man. Such a one has worn good
clothes all his life, and the transition from a tight-fitting, neat suit
to garments suitable for shovelling manure into the waggon is very
sudden and hard to endure. A blister or two is on his hands at night,
and his back aches from bending so many times all day with his fork for
the billets of manure out of the heap. That night he tosses upon his
bed, for his bones even are tired and ache, but he is up betimes next
morning and at it again, only to find that he has more blisters on his
hands again in the evening. If he sticks to it he soon gets accustomed
to the work, his blistered hands get all calloused over, blisters are no
more dreaded, and he stands his work well. Those who stick to the work
succeed and learn to farm well, but in very many cases he gives up and
goes to town, and waits, all anxiety, for the next remittance from home.
For a couple of years the remittances come to him pretty regularly, and
our young would-be farmer is a gentleman about town. During those two
years, however, some very urgent letters have been written home for
money, and thus far they have not failed to draw. At this lapse of time,
and after the receipt of so many letters asking for money, it begins to
dawn upon the parental mind that the son is not sticking to the farm in
Canada.
Reluctantly and grieving, the parent makes up his mind to send no more
until his son will begin to do something himself. Our would-be farmer
then gets some light occupation, and does not fail to continue to write
for money. Mamma, with a mother’s love, may still send over a few
pounds, but if all the pounds cease to come, go to work he must at last.
It is hard to get at what these young men really will do in the end.
Some even get so low as to drive a circus waggon, while others work as
day laborers in some of our manufactories. When some months roll round,
and the parents at home find that their son is still alive and promising
amends, past offences are condoned and more remittances follow. And so
the years and months slip by, money-less at times and again flush.
It really appears to us here in Ontario that the families from whence
these young men come have no end of means, and we grieve to see them
fooling away their time and opportunities. Who ever heard of learning to
farm in that manner, or who ever heard of any one succeeding in Canada
by such methods of life?
I am glad to say, however, that many such young men who are sent out to
learn farming do succeed. They who have the grit in them, and who really
make up their minds to work, do, notwithstanding the blisters on their
hands, or callosities, or tired limbs, get over them all and become
self-sustaining and good citizens.
For those who will work we have plenty of room, and good places are
always open to them, but the man who comes to us, and who cannot throw
off his Oxford suit and don blue overalls and shovel manure when it is
required, will not succeed as a farmer in Ontario.
A class of farmer in Ontario I may say a word or two about is the
sporting farmer. Usually he is the owner of 150 acres or so of inherited
lands, upon which are good buildings, which his father erected, and also
cleared the forest from the land. He’s not going to take anybody’s dust
on the roads, and he procures a horse which can pass that of any of his
neighbors. For a time this satisfies him, but sporting men begin to find
him out, and tell him where he can get a colt which can go in less than
three minutes. Gradually he comes to think that he might as well get
[Illustration: A SAILING CANOE ON LAKE ONTARIO]
a colt, for it will make a fine driver, and now and again he can win
some races, which will go to reduce the price he must pay for him.
Entering him at the races, he must necessarily be prepared to back his
own horse, and he makes his first bet on a horse-race. Once more
sporting men are too sharp for him, for though his horse makes a good
dash and behaves well upon the track, it comes in just a head behind,
and far enough in the rear to lose the race. He is assured, however,
that with some training his colt will do better, and he pays a
professional trainer to train him.
At the next race he enters him again, and again backs his own horse, for
success is this time assured. By some mischance this time he again loses
the race, and his money at the same time. But by this time his courage
is up, and he’s bound to win, so he buys a better horse. Again the
process goes on, at the end of which he still finds himself out of
pocket. The 150-acre farm, which his father prided never yet bore a
mortgage, now gets “a plaster” put on it. While this racing has been
going on, his farm has been neglected, and does not produce as formerly,
so that he is in a poorer position to pay the interest on the mortgage
and make both ends meet at the same time. In most cases such young men
lose their farms, and at middle age have to begin at the bottom of the
ladder and work their way up by themselves and unaided. Fortunately for
them, however, they know how to work, and can get along even in their
reduced state.
The hunting farmer is another class which we have in Ontario. Like his
sporting brethren, he, too, has inherited a farm and can easily make a
living, and some money besides. He keeps some hounds and a
breech-loader. Do a flock of pigeons fly over, the plough is left in the
field to get a shot at them, and the balance of that half day is
consumed. Or it may be that some ducks are around in the swamp or creek
a mile or so from his house, and a day must be given to them.
A fox has been seen around some hills in the neighborhood, and he must
have a day with the hounds. While all this is going on, with the press
of work, while he really is at home, many things are neglected. Fences,
which his father used to pride himself in keeping always trim, begin to
lean. A gate has lost its lower hinge, and a few shingles have blown off
the corner of his barn. Gradually his farm loses its neat, trim
appearance, and the neighbors begin to call Johnny So-and-so a shiftless
fellow. Hunting farmers do not usually lose their farms, for their
losses are mainly through want of care for their farms. Unlike his
sporting brother, he does not bet, but has a keen zest for the chase,
and must indulge in it.
If you will look about you, you will find that such persons do not add
to their means, but just get a fair living from their farms, and do not
make any great improvements on the homestead. His neighbor beside him,
who may take even a day now and again for a hunt, but who daily plods
along and follows his plough and drives his own horses, has bought
another farm and has a credit at his bankers or at some loan and savings
company.
The country school-teacher under the old order of things, and before the
school law was amended, deserves a notice. Numbers of these old
school-teachers, who furbished up their faculties and got passably well
qualified to teach an ordinary district country school in the past, in
many instances married the daughters of neighboring farmers, who
attended their schools as pupils. In some instances, without a doubt,
this teacher had occasion to punish his future wife for some slight
infraction of school laws. Causing her to stand upon the floor or to
write an extra exercise was a frequent method of such punishments.
Becoming the teacher’s wife must, in after years, one would say, make
the position rather anomalous, and would, one would think, be a
delicate, debatable ground between husband and wife as the years rolled
on. Ontario wives are noted for their urbanity, but in such instances it
would be manifestly fair for the wife and former pupil to indulge in a
little punishment for some infractions by her husband of new rules as
the time went by. She could not fairly be blamed if she now and again
gave him an extra dose of salt in his porridge, or refused him a light
in the evening to do his reading by, or even indulged at a little pull
of his whiskers, to pay off old scores of ante-nuptial days. We,
however, charitably infer that, at the time the teacher insisted upon
his punishments of his future wife, Cupid had not got around. These
marriages have uniformly been happy ones, and these former teachers have
become successful men after turning farmers. In many instances they get
farms with their pupil wives, and having the work in them, usually
succeed, and become good men for our country. Such former teachers are
frequently found in our township councils, are school trustees, and
useful men generally. As their children grow up to the age of
understanding, it, however, must be just a little funny for their
children to know that “pa” formerly punished “ma” in school, and they
are always bound to aver that “ma” has not yet got even with “pa” in the
account of punishment.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Horse-dealing transactions--A typical horse-deal--“Splitting the
difference”--The horse-trading conscience--A gathering at a
funeral--Another type of farmer--The sordid life that drives the
boys away.
There are some few persons in every community who have always a
weather-eye open for a likely horse which they may see passing by. These
men are usually free-handed, and know how to match horses and train them
nicely, that they may drive quietly and travel evenly and slowly, so as
to be desirable carriage teams. When they can make a trade for such a
desirable beast they are in their happiest moods. Trade failing, if the
owner does not wish to trade, they will buy for the cash at the very
lowest possible figure. Disparaging others’ goods which one wants to buy
seems to be the general rule among traders in our province. Not that it
is thought that such tactics are disreputable, but it would seem almost
inherent in the nature of such traders. Perhaps the farmer has a likely
young horse harnessed beside a steady old one, which he is driving
along, and the horse-trader fastens his eye on him.
“Wouldn’t you like to trade my off black beast for that awkward colt of
yours?” and the conversation is opened and the “dickering” commences.
“How much boot would you give me?” and the farmer turns and looks
attentively to the trader’s old nag, checked up so high and so tight
that he champs continually at his bit. But it’s an old beast after all,
although nicely groomed and made to look its best. On its nigh hindfoot
is just a suspicion that a spavin has at one time been “doctored,” and
on the whole the trader’s horse much resembles the shabby genteel man
with his threadbare broadcloth and napless silk hat carefully brushed.
“As for boot, why I really ought to have $35, but seeing it’s you, I’ll
trade for $25,” says the trader.
And the farmer chirrups to his team, becoming impatient with the man’s
absurdity. “Hold on a minute, let’s see if we can’t split the
difference,” says the dealer.
Now, there’s this peculiarity in many an Ontarian’s dealings that it is
very generally proposed to “split the difference” where the buyer and
seller cannot come to terms. It may be a hap-hazard way of doing
business, and has no foundation in sound reasoning; yet it is a fact
that very much of the buying and selling in rural Ontario is done by
“splitting the difference.”
Our farmer, however, has not yet seen any difference to split, and
thinks still that he should get the best. And the horse-trader tells of
the merits of his horse, its weight, how gentle it is, how well and
handily it will work, and impresses his idea upon the farmer that his
colt is yet untried and scarcely broken. Up to this time in this
“dickering” the farmer has not made a positive offer, and once more
chirrups to his team and starts upon his way.
“Stop a minute. If you think you could not split the difference, how
will you trade, any way?”
“Well, I might trade even, since your horse is heavier than mine and
better able to do my work, but how old did you say he was?”
And the farmer gets off his waggon and looks in the horse’s mouth.
Here, as all the way along in this “dicker,” the horse-trader has been
too sharp for the farmer, and the horse’s teeth have been nicely filed
and his horse is made to appear only seven years old.
A swap is made at length on even terms, and this horse-trading jockey
drives off with the farmer’s valuable colt, worth about $165, and
leaving for it an old used-up horse, worth perhaps $80 at most. And
these horse-traders are not gipsies either, for every one expects them
to trade horses, but men in the community, who, take them out of their
own specialty, pass as respectable men. Between services at the church
this trader slyly tells his neighbor how he got $125 the better of
So-and-so at the last trade, with a sly laugh and a cough. With his
forefinger he digs his companion gently in the ribs, and in great
confidence tells him that he knows where there is another whopping good
trade for him. A bank account this man has, too, and in every way is the
pink of perfection, save in his own peculiar business; pays his bills
promptly, dresses his family well, and is never backward in his
contributions to the church, and is really, as he pretends to be, a
decent man. But on a horse trade he would cheat his own father. Just how
he reconciles this peculiarity with his theology we have never been able
to discover, but somehow his theology is elastic enough to stretch over
the point, and he conveniently allows it to do so.
Maybe it’s a horse I want to sell, and I have advertised the fact in the
local papers. After tea, and on the eve of setting out for a drive, this
horse-buyer comes along and inquires for the “boss.”
“Understands I want to sell a horse,” and I tell him that the hired man
is in the stable and will show him the horse.
But he must talk with the “boss,” and I am forced to go to the stable
with this would-be buyer.
“Bring out that Clyde horse, John; this gentleman wants to buy him,” and
John leads by the halter the horse which six months ago I paid $180 for,
and now having no further use for him, I wish to convert into bankable
funds.
“Rather stocky, and just a little heavy in the legs,” and I prepare
myself to hear my good, sound, strong horse so run down as to be only
fit for slowest and easiest work on a farm.
“You’d be asking as much as $125 for that horse, I suppose, boss?”
Now, as far as I have ever known or can discover, I never yet heard of
any one selling a horse for as much as he gave for it, unless he
belonged to the horse-dealing fraternity. I reply, however, “A hundred
and forty dollars is my price for this horse, and I paid $40 more for
him only six months ago.”
“Whew! boss, you paid far too much; don’t know as you know it, but just
now the Americans are buying lighter horses, and horses of this stamp
don’t sell so well. Now, if you were to say $130, I might--”
“John, take him back to his stall, for I am afraid this gentleman and I
can’t agree.” And John turns the horse for the stable door.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, boss; perhaps we can split the difference.”
An appeal, as before, to “split the difference.” But at this stage of
the dicker I am thoroughly disgusted, and wonder if it be necessary to
practise so much deceit and cunning in the purchase and sale of a horse
simply.
I reply that $140 is my price, and not a cent less. “Well, boss, I guess
I’ll take him, but you’re a very impatient man anyway. There’s a blanket
on the fence; I suppose you’ll throw that in, and, of course, the halter
now on him.”
In sheer desperation to get rid of this pest of a buyer, I give up the
blanket, and the horse is put in the buyer’s charge. “Grand growing
weather now, boss; hope your turnips haven’t been eaten by the fly;” and
thus the conversation drifts to polite subjects, and he inquires as to
the health of the family, and I can do no less than reciprocate and ask
him if his care are likewise well.
There’s something mean about the whole transaction, and one feels that
his manhood is lowered by his “dickering.” This buyer knew that my
horse was richly worth all I asked for him at the first, but he formed a
deliberate plan to cheat me out of just as many dollars as he could by
lying, or by running my horse down contrary to his own deliberate
judgment.
There’s a gathering at neighbor Jones’s, and I see over the fields a lot
of carriages in the road. Looking still, I see the village hearse come
driving down the road towards the house, with its black plumes nodding
as the wheels feel the inequalities of the road. More of the neighbors
have collected, and now I see the pastor of one of the village churches
coming in his light covered carriage.
“So Mr. Jones’s eldest boy has gone, boss, and it will likely be rather
hard on the old man, for he did think a lot of the boy, even if he did
run away from him,” neighbor Dixon remarks to me as he is driving by to
the funeral. This neighbor Jones is one of the fore-handed farmers of
Ontario, and the only quality that can be praised about him in any way
is his industry. Up before day dawn, winter and summer, and drudging
daily till dark at night, and his wife’s just like him.
He’d only two boys, and this oldest one was so harried at home that two
years ago he ran away to Texas and became a cowboy. Only a few short
weeks ago he returned with seeds of that dreadful malarial fever in his
system, and only to die. The second boy is not yet old enough to run
away, but in the ordinary course of events, as soon as he does get old
enough, he’ll follow his poor dead brother’s example.
This Jones is a Yorkshire man, and his wife is a North of Ireland woman.
Last winter they boarded the school-master. At four o’clock of a winter
morning this dame would call him up for breakfast. For some days the
school-master stood it meekly, until he finally told Mrs. Jones that
this first meal would do for a lunch, and that he’d take some breakfast
before he went to school. It is a large farm-house Jones has, and it is
nicely painted and well finished, and for a marvel contains really good
and appropriate furniture. The matter of furniture can be explained, for
Jones sold a lot of hay to some cabinet-maker, and being afraid of his
pay was glad to get the furniture.
His hired help are worked beyond all reason, and have scarcely ever a
part of Sunday for themselves. Some poor ignorant fellow of an emigrant
has come over and has not yet learned our prices, and Jones has pounced
on him, and so he gets his work done for a song.
Get rich? Of course, he does. How could such a man help it?
The parlor is open to-day--the first time I have seen it for a
twelvemonth--and the shutters are thrown back. Neighborly decency says I
must go to the funeral, and I get my horse and carriage.
In the parlor the boy is laid, and the fine embellished coffin contains
all that is mortal of the poor lad, Jones’s eldest heir.
Well, it’s a nice parlor, even so, and those things which money could
buy in a lump are there. The little bric-a-brac, or knick-knacks, or
books, are of course absent, for Mrs. Jones only sees the parlor
monthly, when she dusts it out, and no one has any time about Jones’s to
make it homelike.
Books are conspicuous by their absence, save only one, a large gilt
family Bible, opened last when it was put in here, some months ago, for
no one has any time to read at Jones’s.
A hush, and the minister rises and announces the hymn. Neighbors’ wives
and daughters have mercifully gathered, and, standing in the hall, and
upon the stairs, raise their voices in one of Watts’s soul-stirring
hymns, and gradually the assembled neighbors join in. A prayer follows,
and then the solemn warning. All voices are hushed. Boys of the
neighborhood are the bearers--boys whom this Jones boy once loved and
made his confidants and associates. The coffin is placed within the
hearse. The procession moves, and soon the grave closes all, and Jones
has lost his oldest son, and is disconsolate for a day or two.
Again the parlor is closed. When its cobwebs will be again dusted from
it, as I have attempted to do, it is impossible to say. Possibly not
until the next boy comes home to die like his brother. I am picturing
Jones’s home to show one of a class of money grabbers and slaves in
Ontario. The bright sunshine of a home is not there. Books, papers,
recreation, society and neighborly chat are all absent.
CHAPTER XIX.
City and country life compared--No aristocracy in Canada--Long
winter evenings--Social evenings--The bashful swain--Popular
literature of the day--A comfortable winter day at home--Young
farmers who have inherited property--Difficulty of obtaining female
help--Farmers trying town life--Universality of the love of country
life--Bismarck--Theocritus--Cato--Hesiod--Homer--Changes in town
values--A speculation in lard.
Your city dweller turns away from a life in the country on account of
society. Granted that we in the country cannot make calls and pay
fashionable visits as easily as you can. But most good country families
have a few genuine friends and acquaintances whom they visit
periodically, and such visits are really appreciated by the persons
entertaining. There is not much duplicity about our friendships, for we
are not so much thrown together as city people; and when we do meet at
the different family boards, genial right good fellowship is the rule.
The cant and half-friendly reception of your city fashionables we know
not of.
There is no aristocracy in Canada, and all attempts to found any such
class in America have signally failed. It is contrary to the genius and
spirit of the democracy of America, for are we not quite as democratic
as our neighbors to the south of us? Of all the prominent families who
were on the boards at the time of the American Revolution, in the last
century, only five are in existence this day. What a comment on the
mutability of human affairs! Your titles and riches don’t stick in
America, and there is many a boy in rural Ontario who now follows the
plough who will yet rise to eminence as his years increase. To create
and maintain a titled class in Canada, in the face and eyes of the great
Republic adjoining us, would be an anomaly, and it never can be done.
There seems to be a growing disposition to exclusiveness among the city
families, and to discriminate to too great a nicety as to whom their
sons and daughters shall marry. Their alliances in the matrimonial way
are ever to be with those of the presumably rich, in contradistinction
to others possessing push and merit, but not quite as many dollars in
immediate view. So far as I can judge, I do not know of the son of a
business man to-day in any of the country towns hereabout who inherits
the wealth his father once possessed, and who pursues his father’s
calling. John Adams, when ambassador of the United States to Paris,
wrote home to his daughter who asked his views about her approaching
marriage: “Marry an honest man and keep him honest.” In Adams’s advice
there is no mention of the _dot_, as the continental Europeans use the
term, and it is earnestly to be hoped that this word will never find any
currency among us.
The long winter evenings, when our inhabitants must perforce remain by
the lamplight, are the most trying period for our young people. Some
sort of excitement seems to be the great _desideratum_. In most country
parts the local church will have evening anniversaries and teas, to
which the near inhabitants invariably flock. Ministers on other circuits
usually come to such gatherings, to assist the local minister, and much
genial talk usually flows. The half-grown farmer’s son at these meetings
usually essays his first attempt to wait upon the fair sex, and brings
some neighboring farmer’s young daughter to the entertainment. Paying
the required admission fee for both, he considers her usually his
partner for the evening, and pertinaciously sits by her side. His
half-bashful, scared look, and the twitch of his downy moustache, even
if they do show some awkwardness on his part, betoken a thoroughly
honest fellow, whose intentions are above suspicion.
The influence which the clergy exert upon the community cannot for a
moment be gainsaid. Ontario to-day listens to her ministers, and in a
great measure they form a standard for the opinions and actions of its
inhabitants. It must necessarily be so, for Ontario people are a
church-going people, and in many country parts the ministers are the
best read and most cultivated persons in their midst. All honor to our
clergy, for they have done and are daily doing a good work. Even
sceptics tell us that we must build gaols or churches. We prefer the
churches, hence we have them, and our people attend them and listen to
our ministers, and crime is rare, and our people are law-abiding, no
mobs, and industrious. Protoplasm, evolution, or modern agnosticism have
not reached our rural population to disturb their simple faith.
Comparisons of travel lead me to think that our country churches might
be made more attractive. Who has not seen in the Old World gems of
little country churches, moss-grown, ivy-wreathed, and surrounded by
trees, shrubs and hedges? Among the graves at the church’s side are
invariably rare shrubs and grasses, let alone flowers, but the whole
embowery of green giving an air of quiet repose. And with the steeple or
tower pointing to heaven, no place seems better calculated for
reverential feelings than do the rural churches of the British Isles.
In Ontario we build bare, glaring walls, and our churches are right,
from a modern architectural point of view. Even if we cannot grow ivy,
we can greatly beautify our churches and grounds by planting shrubs and
evergreens, and thus relieve the stiffness of our newly constructed
churches and grounds.
Henry Ward Beecher says that he never knew a bad family to come from a
home where there was an abundance of books and papers. Our Ontario
farmers do not provide enough and sufficiently varied reading matter for
their families. Most of them take a weekly paper, an agricultural paper,
and generally some religious paper, the organ of the denomination to
which they belong. These are all well enough so far as they go, but
pictures are perhaps the quickest, best, and most agreeable way of
imparting instruction. All our farmers could easily spare annually the
cost of enough journals to make home daily attractive, so that the new
papers to come each day forward would be looked for and something
sought. The London _Graphic_ or London _Illustrated News_ would keep us
posted pleasantly on matters at home, and, in fact, they would follow
England all over the world, and improve the family taste at the same
time. From New York a paper should certainly be taken, for we must, of
course, follow our cousins just south of us, with their seventy-five
millions of people. The New York semi-weekly _Tribune_ would keep us
thoroughly up with the times, and there will be nothing in it that one
need be ashamed to read before his daughters, which is a great
recommendation in this day of trashy literature. By all means add
_Harper’s Weekly Illustrated_, and _Frank Leslie’s_ as well, for they do
not require much time to read--the pictures show for themselves; and
then there is the _Century Magazine_, which is perhaps the most popular
to-day. As to merit, I only wish we in Canada could afford to produce
anything nearly as good. Its illustrations will shame any English
magazine, and I would certainly add _Harper’s Magazine_ as well. For the
little folks, by all means the _St. Nicholas Magazine_, beautifully
illustrated, and with stories down to the mental calibre of the little
ones. Of course, I would not forget our own productions, and would take
a few of them in addition to those now taken.
Now, I know a good many will look upon this as too much to read, will
say it costs too much, etc. They can all be taken for less than $50 per
year, and if once they begin to come to the family, the boys will soon
stay at home nights rather than go prowling around the country or
seeking society in the towns and villages.
Excitement people must have, and your city people get their excitement
by conversing with one another, the theatre, lectures, etc. But if our
country people would take the periodicals I have outlined, in
conjunction with their social gatherings at churches and in neighbors’
houses, they would have a constant fund of excitement and pleasure at
home. Each mail would be looked forward to with eagerness, and the quiet
evenings at home would be most pleasurably and profitably spent.
Even if they read upon subjects quite foreign to their own occupations,
some knowledge would be gained. Knowledge from whatever source is
valuable, and some day will, without a doubt, come into play. In this
fast century many people who are able financially eschew a country life,
and flock bag and baggage to the cities. There are some instances
wherein a city life is more desirable than life in the country. Admitted
that the city dweller can hear the best lectures of the day, and now and
again witness a play of genuine merit upon the stage, yet there are
pleasures in a country life which will outbalance those privileges, and
of which I cannot help speaking now and again when my pen flows freely
and I am in the humor. When writing of life in the country I do not mean
twelve miles from a lemon, as Gail Hamilton writes in her New England
bower, but rather within easy reach of the daily mail. Around me are no
signs of want. The examples of wretchedness the city dweller has brought
to his notice so very often we know not of. It is truly said, “that
one-half of the world does not know how the other half lives.” So far as
our pleasures and feelings are concerned we do not want to know, _i.e._,
while we are willing to relieve the distressed we are glad that such
examples do not come before us to harrow our feelings.
My hardwood fire burns brightly in the open fireplace as I sit behind
double windows defying the 7° below zero without to penetrate, and my
books and papers rest upon my writing-desk within easy reach of my hand.
The children come in from their slides upon the ice with cheeks aglow
and faces on fire, induced from the sudden change from the cold outside
to the genial warmth within. You city dweller would think half-grown
boys and girls too big to enjoy their hilarious, life-giving fun, and
would want them to be nicely dressed and walk your city streets in the
prim of propriety.
The examples of all great men and women prove distinctly that in order
to be such you must first have good constitutions to support big brains,
and our children by this are laying the foundations of such sound
constitutions. Soon enough they will be men and women, and let them have
their fun as long as they can.
In this locality most of our lands are held by inheritance. The sons of
the pioneers who cleared the forests are the owners of the soil as a
rule to-day. The rising generation, the immediate sons of the pioneers,
are not as a rule equal to the old stock. The reason is, so far as I can
judge, that they have seen the hard toil and steady, unchangeable life
of their future, and having received a little education, which their
fathers did not possess, they judge themselves too smart to follow their
fathers’ footsteps. A good many of these sons, as I have before
remarked, flock to the cities to live as half gentlemen, and very many
others lease their farms to tenants, and reside in the towns hereabout.
There come before my mind as I write dozens of instances of young men
who inherited a hundred or a hundred and fifty acres of land, worth
probably from $80 to $125 per acre, or, say, they are worth individually
$8,000 to $12,000, and these young men think to be gentlemen on these
means. There are so many of such instances that I must needs make a note
of it. Seemingly they get on for the present tolerably well. But the
fences and buildings which their fathers built are yearly rotting away,
and there is no timber here to replace them; and having yearly lived up
to their full rental it becomes a serious question to know what this
class of persons will do in the end. Englishmen with small means are
gradually buying up such farms. Given the entering payment, and your
sturdy English emigrant, who has spent a few years in this country, will
pay for the property from the money which he makes off it.
Many of the pioneers and their sons in this locality have been as
nomadic as the Indian. Having cleared or partly cleared up their lands,
which they obtained for a merely nominal sum, or by Government grant,
and spent many years in hard toil, in fact the very hardest kind of
toil, they pull up and sell out, and move to the promised West.
So far as I have yet been able to learn, I cannot now recall a single
instance in which an Ontario farmer, from this locality, who left a 100
or 150 acre farm, is to-day worth more money in the West than the same
lands he left are worth here to-day. It would appear that these persons
obtained their properties too easily to learn their real value, and
hence are supplanted by the emigrant, whose previous lot in his old home
has been a hard one.
Upon the other side of the picture, there are some of the sons of those
pioneers who early learned wisdom, and commenced just where their
forefathers left off. Such young men or middle-aged men are buying out
very many of the small properties around them, are keeping good blooded
and grade stock, and are a credit and a benefit to the country. They
ever dispense a generous hospitality when called upon, and ordinarily
will give the visitor as much of their time as he desires. Their sons
and daughters are invariably healthy and well on in a common school
education, and are the hope and interest for the future of our glorious
Province of Ontario.
And yet there is a dark side to their lives, or rather that of their
wives. Female help in the house is so difficult to obtain that the wife
of many and many a man, who is worth easily from $30,000 to $50,000,
has perforce to perform more hard manual labor than has the wife of the
ordinary mechanic, the owner, perhaps, of a very humble home, and who
earns his $1.25 or $1.50 per day. Pardon me, reader, for drawing this
unpleasant picture, but it is indeed too true, and there is something
very wrong in the “eternal fitness of things,” when men of such ample
means are able and willing to pay for servants to ease their wives’
lots, and they cannot be obtained. The only hope on this score seems to
be in emigration. When our country becomes more thickly populated, and a
living in the country is not quite so easily obtained, then the
daughters of households having therein a number of girls will go out to
work rather than be pinched at home. Formerly the daughters of the
farmers would go out to work among the neighboring farmers, and usually
married the sons of those farmers, and became in their turn mistresses
themselves. All this is now past, and our farmers’ families, with
increasing wealth, do not go out to work but feel perfectly able, as no
doubt they are, to live at home.
Not a few of our farmers, feeling that they were not big enough upon
their own farms, became storekeepers or manufacturers in the towns. No
doubt, in the abstract this may be well for the general progress of
those towns in building them up and laying the nucleus of new
industries. They do not, however, as a rule, succeed in the new fields
of business they have chosen, or if they do not become the principals of
businesses in the towns, they sometimes lend their names as endorsers
to assist those who are principals of such businesses. Endorsations were
sometimes very easily obtained by the glib-tongued business man, and for
a time all went on well, until some financial crisis overtaking the
business man, consequent ruin came to the farmer. These instances have
been so many that I speak of them as exemplifying another phase of life
in the country. Latterly, however, the landowners are becoming more
conservative of their means and credit, and are disposed to “paddle
their own canoe.”
Since the law of primogeniture was abolished in Canada, the hold upon
land has become very slight, and the examples of large landed estates
being retained in the same families for over two generations are so very
rare that they need scarcely be mentioned. In some cases our rich men
make a terrible mistake in bringing up their families. They are not
taught to labor, but live a life of ease, with the idea that the family
property will be sufficient to support each individual member. But with
the nomadic habits of our Canadians, and the light stress usually
heretofore laid upon the paternal acres, each individual share soon
vanishes, leaving them to learn to fight the battle of life at a
terrible disadvantage, because frequently they are then past their first
youth at least.
My wood fire still burns brightly as I turn to my morning mail with its
treasures of current literature. Talk about your city bustle compared
with this, in my cosy seat beside the fire and all these treasures at
my elbow! There are no gas bills to pay, nor water rates, and the mail
comes to me daily, just as regularly as your city mail does. Then what
do we want with your city?
Speaking of the post-office reminds me to say that the meanest hovel in
the land can to-day put itself in almost daily communication with the
best minds of the age. Such service the mail hourly and regularly
performs for us, and is such a great factor to the pleasure of our
lives, and yet we scarcely bestow a thought upon it. No, I do not
propose to try to assume that life in the country would be very pleasant
or desirable away from the mails. Given a daily mail and a comfortable
country-seat, and easy access to the train, so that I may come to the
city quickly and easily, if you have therein any real intellectual
treat, and I yet fail to see what are the inducements to make one prefer
life in the city to the free life in the country.
A rural life is a natural life, and a city life is an artificial life.
Man in his first estate was an arboreal being, and in such surroundings
throve as he does to-day. Our Ontario families, as a rule, who leave
good properties in the country to go into the cities, make a mistake in
almost every respect. Even if the parents do not feel the trouble
wrought upon their families during their lives, their children almost
invariably do not make the men and women they would have made had they
hung on and occupied the paternal acres. In most instances these are
sold, and in a few years the money scattered. Had they held on to the
paternal acres, and bought more, they would have been among our
staunchest and best citizens, as well as among the wealthiest.
In Europe all successful men look forward to the day when they can own
and live upon a farm. Bismarck had his country home, and we know he
prized it, for we often heard of him going there to get away from the
cares of office. Going back to earlier times, we find that the great men
of the world loved their country homes quite as much as the English
country squire does at this day. I take down old Xenophon from its place
on the bookshelf and see that he says he sees the ridges piling along
the ælian fields, and from the way that he makes the remark, he loves
the sight, and loves to be in the midst of such ridges, where some
husbandmen are ploughing. Theocritus hears the lark that hovers over the
straight laid furrows, and if Theocritus did not love such a scene and
dwell in its midst, he would never have given it to us at this remote
day. “Establish your farm near to market, or adjoining good roads,” old
Cato says. So old Cato loved the country, and we all know his head was
level. I am afraid some of us in Ontario have followed old Cato only too
literally, and have built our houses almost overhanging the road-side,
when they would have looked far better and presented a much prettier
sight set back from the road and surrounded by trees and lawns. Hesiod
tells us that we ought not to plough the land when it is too wet, and
also how to put in a new plough beam to replace the broken one. Homer
the Great says a farmer should keep two ploughs on hand for fear one
should get broken, and he does hot forget to praise the wine which the
country produces about his rural home, and adds some caution about its
too copious use.
When Hesiod and Homer loved country life in Greece so long ago, can we
be amiss in praising a country life in Ontario to-day? As my eyes run up
and down the pages, I can hear the swallows twitter and the lark sing,
in my fancy, as they heard them. They praise the crispness and freshness
of the vegetables which their gardens yield them, and they can go on and
describe feasts which they partake of at their country homes, the
materials of which come almost without exception from their farms.
Virgil, I infer, was not much of a farmer after all, but he tells us
that he loved his country home, and seems not to have the most remote
thought of removing to Imperial Rome. Mostly he praises the bees and the
wine, so it is evident every one sees a beauty in country life for
himself, as his peculiarities may be. Yet Virgil left us some very good
hints, though he evidently made some mistakes. He tells us, for
instance, that lands only need cultivating to obliterate the obnoxious
weeds. Tull, however, said about one hundred years ago, that the land
only needed mixing by deep ploughing to make it produce indefinitely.
Now, Tull was a man of means, and only lived a rural life from the love
of it, as did the old worthies whom I have instanced. Ontarians, we have
a grand country, and we who are in it, let us stay therein and enjoy it.
Let those persons remain in the cities who are now in them. For us
nature in all its beauties is daily unfolded before our eyes, and let us
daily enjoy those beauties. If we can by any means inculcate an
increased love of country homes, we will continue to beautify our homes
and improve our country.
Real properties in the cities and towns of Canada have been very
fluctuating, often being held at prices far beyond any intrinsic value
they could possibly possess, while again, the very same properties fall
away, and frequently become totally unsalable. Yet during commercial
depression good farm lands have held their value very well and have
even, after a temporary period of dulness, steadily risen in value year
by year.
To illustrate the peculiar change of town values to which I allude, I
may give an instance coming under my own knowledge. One of my forbears
bought, about the year 1815, a large building tract situated on King
Street, Toronto, very near the market. For many years after the purchase
this property was wholly unsalable. Taxes were put upon it, and yearly
it became a burden. Somehow, in Canada we are not very careful, as a
community, of the rights in property of the individual. Accordingly, in
this instance, taxes for street improvements, with gas, water, sewers
and other special levies, were put upon this land. A day finally came,
about the year 1845, when to own property in Toronto meant either
disaster or a very large income from without to retain it. A purchaser
coming along at about that year, his offer was taken with avidity. My
people were glad to get it off their hands, and thus was closed a
history, so far as they were concerned, which was a fair sample of city
property in Canada and its mutations for more than thirty years. Since
that time the property in question rose to enormous value, but has again
fallen on account of trade to some extent deserting the locality.
Another feature of city and town life we must notice, viz., the constant
interchange of views among the inhabitants as to business and politics
on account of their close proximity to each other. An instance occurring
in one of our Canadian towns will illustrate what I mean. In this town
some few moneyed men gathered nightly and exchanged views on stocks and
the like. Some of them had speculated in this way to the extent of a few
hundred dollars and had been moderately successful. At one of their
meetings some one introduced the subject of lard.
Lard became the topic. Others came, heard and pondered. Small lots of
lard were then bought in Chicago, and in a few weeks sold, and some
ready profits realized.
“If a little capital will win money in lard in Chicago, a large capital
will yield much more” was the reasoning, so they joined forces and got
nearly every man with ready cash in that town to put money into the
joint fund for lard. Again they bought in Chicago--this time
largely--and the commodity began to rise in price. Moreover it kept on
rising, and never seemed to recede a point. These operators began to
reason that if they held all the lard, they could dictate prices and
could control the article. They put more money into it and bought more
lard, for they considered it to be what is called “a dead certainty.”
Days and weeks passed and lard still held on. Fortunes truly seemed to
be within the grasp of our group of townsmen. There could be no mistake
about it, for they had, as they considered, all the lard in America
cornered, so that no one could beat them.
One day, however, some persons in Chicago offered an immense quantity of
lard from some unknown source. So great was the amount that our townsmen
could not tackle it.
Down came the price. Still down it came, and down every day, until in a
few days these lard cornerers in the Canadian town were entirely
“cleaned out” and a loss of $2,000,000 actually sustained. From that
loss for ten years afterwards that town was as quiet as a country place,
and its magnates felt and acted with the timorousness of poor men.
CHAPTER XX.
Instances of success in Ontario--A thrifty wood-chopper turns
cattle dealer--Possesses land and money--Two brothers from Ireland;
their mercantile success--The record of thirty years--Another
instance--A travelling dealer turns farmer--Instance of a thriving
Scotsman--The way to meet trouble--The fate of Shylocks and their
descendants.
To show the possibilities to be accomplished in Ontario, I purpose to
cite some instances coming under my own observation of Ontarians who
have succeeded. I take the ground, that the opportunities are as great,
if not greater, in this Ontario of ours, for persons to achieve success,
as in any part of the world. Certainly the Old World presents no such
field for successful operations, and the only possible parallel can be
found in some of the neighboring States.
Of the two I would certainly give Ontario the preference, for most of
those who have risen in the United States were in some way helped by
their parents and friends, whereas our successful men have invariably
risen from no beginnings at all, as our country emerged from the forest.
Now for some instances of success: About twenty-three years ago, one who
could not read came to this part of Ontario, possessing not one dollar,
nor had a friend in America, but had come over from Ireland a few years
previously quite alone, in order to better his condition. He began by
chopping wood by the cord. Saving enough thereby, he bought a team, and
then bought wood by the lump and hauled it to town to sell. Then he
bought a wood lot, and proceeded to haul the cord-wood from it, which he
sold to manufacturers in the towns. After a time he got his lot cleared
of the wood, and put fall wheat on it, seeding the land down to clover
and timothy at the same time. The next season he had unlimited
quantities of grass for stock, and hay for wintering them. Then he went
around the country and bought up cattle in droves, and put them on this
grass. As soon as they were in condition these cattle were sold off for
the Montreal market, for we had not at this time begun the business of
shipping cattle to England. It is needless to add that he always bought
his lean cattle at the very lowest possible figure. If some poor fellow,
no matter how distant, was obliged to part with his stock by a forced
sale, this man would be on hand, and invariably secure it. This cattle
business coined money for him. Where he got his knowledge of the cattle
business I am unable to say, but unlettered as he was, and unable even
to write his own name, he seemed to take in all knowledge intuitively,
as it were. In a word he seemed to drink in knowledge as a sponge takes
up moisture. He could often be seen standing listening to groups of men
who were talking, saying but little himself, but treasuring up every
word dropped by them. The original wood lot was added to by another,
which in its turn became a gold mine to him by the sale of its wood.
This in its turn was cleared and seeded down to grass, as the first one
was, and cattle placed on it as well.
Soon the first cleared lands became arable, and he then ploughed up the
virgin soil, and began raising barley and peas. Invariably his crops
turned out extremely well, which gave him funds to buy still another
wood lot. And so the process went on. Should a lot of lean cattle come
into the Toronto market in the fall, unfit for butchers’ use, our
successful man, always with one eye looking to the east, while the other
looked to the west, scented the bargain afar off, and came and secured
the lot.
Without making repetitions, I will dismiss this man by saying that, a
few years ago, before he divided his land among his sons, he was the
absolute owner of 700 acres of land, and possessed besides an enormous
stock of cattle, horses, and farming appliances generally, and was then
easily worth $80,000--in twenty years he had made $80,000 from nothing
in Ontario. This fact needs no comment. It shows the possibilities of
our Ontario, and for a solid gain, without gambling, but property made
to keep, I think I can safely defy the world to beat the record.
The next example I am going to relate is of success achieved in a
totally different field, but wholly the growth of Ontarians, and it can
be justly cited.
Two brothers came out from Ireland about thirty-five years ago. They
possessed a good education, which is all they did possess besides the
clothes upon their backs. Each got a situation as clerk in dry goods
stores in one of our cities. By dint of close saving and strict
attention to business, they were able after ten years to start a store
on their own account. In this store they did all their work, and if
there was any profit in storekeeping they got paid for it. After a few
years they opened out branch stores in smaller Ontario towns, and these
branches invariably succeeded and the profits were good. Their credit
now had become assured, and buying mostly for cash, with their high
credit they were able to buy at the lowest possible figure. The war
broke out in the States about this time in my story of these men. The
United States money went down a long way below par, but for some time
their goods did not rise to keep pace with their depreciated currency.
Our men bought largely in the United States and sent over their gold
drafts, which were sold at a great premium, and thus their goods were
placed upon their shelves at ridiculously low figures.
In boots and shoes, of which they bought enormous quantities, they
doubled their money on every invoice. Without pursuing this narrative
further, it is just as well to say that as the war went on and the
equilibrium came about in the price of goods in the United States, and
the depreciated currency got in sympathy, these men found themselves
with thousands of available funds on hand.
Into manufacturing they then entered. In this new branch the same
painstaking and foresight which gained them success in storekeeping made
the wheels of the manufactories revolve to their profit. Year by year
their manufacturing operations succeeded, and they found themselves the
possessors of more capital than their manufacturing operations required.
Next they became bankers, and again in this new line the old business
habits of constant care, watchfulness and keen oversight, wrested
success from the business. Their manufacturing operations they still
kept on in connection with their banking business.
Success so phenomenal pointed out the principals as sound, far-seeing
men, and we next find each brother the president of a bank and their
financial position fully assured. During this series of years they have
found time to take a relaxation now and again by trips to Europe,
besides holding municipal offices among the people where they reside. I
am not in a position to tell for a certainty of the wealth of these
brothers at this time, but it is conceded by all who know them to be in
the hundreds of thousands.
This has all been done in thirty years in Ontario, and done fairly and
honestly. They have never gambled, nor taken chances, but always done a
square, legitimate business, open to the closest scrutiny. If those
persons in our country who are railing at capitalists will stop and read
this narrative, they must see that these persons have a moral as well as
a legal right to their capital, and it is to the glory of our Ontario
that they have made it and possess it. Indeed these men worked and saved
and lived close until they made their start, and they surely have a
right to it.
All capital in Ontario was acquired by closeness and saving, for very
few persons in Ontario brought much money into the country. The capital,
in fact, has been created here by just such saving and downright hard
work as these men did. What is true in the case of these men is
invariably true in the case of others who have succeeded in becoming
capitalists in Ontario. I hope this narrative may be in somewise an
incentive to others to try and do likewise in their own particular
calling.
A young New England lad began about forty years ago selling goods
through Ontario from a waggon. His employer furnished the horses and
waggon. Every working day through rain and snow found this young man on
the road. No storms, nor floods, nor cold snaps deterred him, but every
day he did business for his employer, and weekly he made up his balance
sheets, and remitted to his employer his weekly sales.
His salary he saved, every cent of it, reserving for himself only enough
for the strong serviceable clothing he wore. He got an interest in the
business in a few years, or sold the goods on commission. The knowledge
he had gained while selling before for his employer at a salary enabled
him as he grew older to increase his sales, and likewise his profits.
Daily he plodded on, never for a moment swerving from the path of duty,
and as in the instances before narrated, such application has only one
result--and that is success. Success he certainly did have, and at the
age of twenty-five this young man found himself the absolute owner of
$10,000.
He then became a farmer. Here, as in the selling of goods, the same
perseverance which succeeded before caused success now. In his farming
he succeeded. His harvest was always got in first in the neighborhood,
and his plough was soonest after the harvest dancing through the fields
making the next crop a certainty. It is almost a pity that so good a
farmer as this young man was was debarred from farming. His wife’s
health failed, however, and he found it necessary to get nearer a town,
where she might have better medical care, and so he sold out his farm.
From a farmer he became a manufacturer. In this new calling he masters
every detail of his business. He is at his work early and late, and
daily does more downright hard work than any man in his employ.
Gradually his works are added to, and his shop becomes known throughout
the length and breadth of our land. Seasons of adversity are guarded
against, for he always keeps an eye to the future. In fact, a panic can
scarcely strike him. Cash he pays for his stock, and his position
becomes so strong that he feels he really knows his ground and is fully
master of his business. Capital gathers; it is the same story I have to
tell as in the former instances. Such work, plodding and oversight
cannot fail to bring accumulated capital. There is no other way to get
it so that it will stick. Of course, we have the examples of
stock-gambling, but who will pretend to assert that capital by
stock-jobbing ever does stick? And now this manufacturer, having made
capital, becomes a banker. His banking operations, in the hands of a man
who has literally carved his own fortune, cannot fail to be a success. A
millowner he next becomes besides a manufacturer and a banker, and about
as busy a man as Ontario can produce to-day. Daily he is on the move,
early and late he is at his post, and every wheel is well oiled and runs
smoothly. Such men are a positive benefit as well as an ornament to our
young country. $300,000 he has made in thirty-five years, that being his
present wealth, which is conceded by all who know him. Recollect, he
began as a lad, fresh from a New England common school, and has
literally made himself.
A Scotsman came to Canada about forty years ago, with nothing but his
hands to help himself. He had been used to farming at home, and here he
hired himself out to a farmer. Year after year he toiled on, worked and
saved. In about fifteen years he found that he had saved enough to buy
and pay cash for a farm. You, no doubt, reader, think it a long time to
work for the first start, but just wait and see what he did when he got
a start. He marries his employer’s daughter and sets up farming for
himself. If he was a good hired man, he was equally good as a boss, and
his farm began to bloom and season after season to look neater. Keeping
right on, even with the low prices which he then got for his grain, he
added to his farm until he owned absolutely and farmed 150 acres of
Ontario’s best lands. Now he is on the high road to success, but the big
Scotch heart within him went out to his father-in-law, and this came
near being his ruin. His father-in-law had been a wealthy man, but
became involved, and the son-in-law endorsed for the father-in-law for a
sum as great as his land was then worth. It is only the old history of
such endorsations to repeat: the endorser had to pay, of course. The
father-in-law failed, leaving the young man almost penniless. Neighbors,
not of the sterling stuff he was made of, advised him to sell his stock,
because that was not mortgaged, and take the money and run away.
“I will pay every cent,” said the honest Scot, “only give me time.” Away
he went to the holders of the notes, and plainly and squarely told them
that he could not pay them now, but if they would wait he would pay them
every cent.
“Then you are not going to run away?”
“Never! I will work it all out in a little while if you will only wait.”
And wait they did.
The merchants with whom he dealt, knowing the sterling qualities of the
man, came forward and told him that he should have anything he wanted.
And he bared his arms, went to work, and gradually paid off every dollar
of his indebtedness, and stuck to his home when those who counselled him
to run away had lost their homes and gone away west. He buys another
farm, and with its aid, and the old farm as well, pays for it in a few
seasons. A palatial home he erects, and his farm becomes one of the best
cultivated in the locality. Now, had this man not been known as a man
of sterling integrity, his property must have been all taken from him
when those notes became due. But being so favorably regarded, he got the
chance which put him on his feet again. His character stood him in good
stead, for his merchants having lands they had taken for debts, offered
them to our Scot on favorable terms, with easy terms of payment, and the
Scot finds himself the absolute owner of five hundred acres of
first-class land, besides money at his credit in the banks, and a large
farm stock at home. In thirty-five years this penniless Scot makes about
$70,000, after the reverses he had suffered from his large-heartedness.
Money honestly, fairly acquired, a respected member of the community all
the time, a man whose word no one dare impugn, manifestly his course was
far better than if he had run away, and it is probable had he run away
in his adversity that to-day he would have been in very moderate
circumstances. Again, I doubt if any country in this world shows better
possibilities than Ontario does for a man to rise. And these are not
particularly isolated instances. Many more I might cite of what may be
achieved in this glorious Ontario of ours.
Before drawing this chapter to a close, I wish to speak of one more
class of Ontario persons, whom I never recollect to have seen mentioned
in print before, and these are the Ontario Shylocks. Usually these
persons came from the British Isles, mainly from England, fifty years or
so ago. They would ordinarily be younger sons of a good family, and not
being able to inherit much under the British law of primogeniture, took
their one thousand sovereigns or so, and came to Canada. Arriving here
at that early day, and there being but little money in the country,
their cash commanded large rates of interest. At first they lent their
money at 15 per cent, or so, and were for a time satisfied. But as time
wore on, the greed of inordinate gain gained upon them, and they began
to demand a bonus of 10 per cent, beside their 15 per cent, interest.
Getting on in this way, it is almost superfluous to add that they soon
doubled and trebled their means. Was some unfortunate settler unable to
pay at the appointed time, an additional bonus of 10 per cent or so
would satisfy the lender. Lands he would not acquire, for they would
never be valuable, he thought, and nothing was worth anything but money.
The consequence was that these Shylocks became wealthy. But I almost
defy any reader to fix upon any such person to-day, or the family of
such a person, who are worth anything now. It appears according to the
eternal fitness of things that money so got by extortion does not stick.
A Temperance Society of England offers a prize of one hundred guineas to
any one who will trace money down to the third generation, got by the
sale of liquors. But here in Ontario we do not need to go down further
than the second generation to find that money got by extortion does not
stick. To-day those very settlers who paid the 15 per cent. interest and
a bonus besides, and kept their lands, are still at the fore, and their
descendants will inherit many broad acres.
CHAPTER XXI.
Manitoba and Ontario compared--Some instances from real
life--Ontario compared with Michigan--With Germany--“Canada as a
Winter Resort”--Inexpediency of ice-palaces and the
like--Untruthful to represent this as a land of winter--Grant
Allen’s strictures on Canada refuted--Lavish use of food by Ontario
people--The delightful climate of Ontario.
When the Manitoba fever broke out a good many persons in this locality,
and some of my own tenants among the number, became uneasy and thought
of emigrating. Some did so, but notably those who were not located on
farms here. For a time they sent back glowing reports, and all seemed
well, and even Ontario would not seemingly begin to compete with
Manitoba. It is not, however, to be supposed that there have been no
disappointments. One instance will suffice. A tenant farmer from near
Whitby, worth about $2,000, went to Manitoba a few years ago, and took
up 320 acres of land. When the boom was on he wrote home that he could
sell his land for $10,000. Next fall passed. His wife came down
visiting, and said that they had sold one-half their land for $6.00 per
acre in order to save the rest; also that they had threshed three days
and only had fifty bushels of grain, and lamented that they had ever
left their farm near Whitby as tenants, to become owners in Manitoba. It
may be that this is an exceptional instance, but those now even
tolerably well located in Ontario run a serious risk in pulling up for
the North-West. When Ontario has lands which will produce seventeen
crops of wheat in succession, and when we can raise cattle absolutely
free from diseases, owing to our climate, what need have we to look to
Manitoba? It is now an assured fact, that cattle coming to Canada from
England, diseased, and remaining ninety days in quarantine, as they
must, lose their diseases, and do not take them on again; hence we have
a goodly inheritance in Ontario, in raising blooded cattle to sell to
the Americans for breeding purposes, for the diseases which periodically
break out in the West and South-West, among the cattle, are positively
unknown in Ontario. I met a Southerner from Charleston, S.C., early this
winter in Toronto, and in the course of conversation asked him what he
thought of our climate. “Just like champagne,” said he. It is an
established fact that our six months’ winter, in our clear cold
atmosphere, precludes the possibility of cattle diseases among us, and
is equally conducive to producing a lusty strong race of Canadians, in
hardihood the equal of any race anywhere.
Already Michigan has much of its lands parcelled out in 40-acre farms,
and if Ontario land gets divided into smaller holdings, so that the
maximum of her farms is less than 100 acres, it will support double its
present population. This calls to my mind what I have seen in Germany.
The lands along the Rhine River were originally surveyed facing the
river with a narrow frontage, and running back a long distance, in some
instances as much as a mile. Upon the death of the farmer his narrow
strip is equally divided lengthwise among his several sons. These are
again divided among his sons in their turn. It is not uncommon, as the
result of such divisions, to see a strip of land on the Rhine only six
rods wide and a mile long. This shows the reader how it comes that
Germany is so densely populated. Again, the area of United Germany is
near 210,000 square miles, and it supports a population of at least
forty millions of people. Ontario has at least half as much more
surface, and is only supporting two millions to-day. As to the
comparative quantities of waste land and productiveness between us and
Germany, Germany is scarcely fit to be compared with us at all, and
Ontario has many millions of acres to be brought under cultivation yet,
and these added to the smaller farms will soon double our population.
Horace Greeley said on 100 acres two men were enough; on 50, four men;
on 25, eight men. Without a doubt our fertile soil will quickly be
densely populated and every rood cultivated. Investments to-day are as
safe in Ontario as in any quarter of the globe, and its farm lands will
rise as the population increases.
Some years ago the _Century Magazine_ published a beautifully
illustrated article on “Canada as a Winter Resort.” This magazine is
widely circulated, and the publishers boasted that they had printed
180,000 copies of that particular number, which was, of course, widely
read in Europe. Now, this article was all about snowshoes, toboggans,
toques and ice-palaces, and would lead the stranger to infer that Canada
is a land of snow and ice. The premises are false, so far as Ontario is
concerned, and no one would think of building a snow-palace in Toronto,
because during the days required for its construction a thaw would
probably occur, which would demolish the ice-palace faster than it was
ever built. Out of two millions in Ontario, I think I am safe in
asserting that not more than 5,000 of its inhabitants ever stepped upon
a snowshoe. As to toques and toboggans, they are scarcely thought of.
Our youngsters do some coasting down the hill-sides when we have some
snow, and this is the extent of our tobogganing. It is undeniable that
we do have some cold weather in Ontario, but such periods are only for a
few days, and are invariably followed by mild weather. The four feet of
snow on the level, which they consider the proper thing for Quebec and
the Maritime Provinces, we know not of in Ontario. Our farmers were
ploughing on the 10th of December next before the appearance of the
article referred to, and this is not unusual; generally the farmers do
not take up their turnips before the middle of November. It is usual for
us to have some frost, and perhaps a little snow about the Christmas
holidays, and during January we look for our sleighing, if we are to get
any, for the season. But even during this midwinter month a thaw is
almost certain to take place, and generally clears off the snow, and
during this particular January the ponds of water were all open. A small
chance, then, for an ice-palace. During February the cold is not so
intense, for the days have become longer, and it will almost invariably
thaw during the middle of most February days. The month of March is, by
all means, the most disagreeable month in Ontario, not on account of its
cold, but because it is windy and blustery. Our snow, if we get any in
this month, usually drifts at the fences and impedes trade. In April we
get freezing nights and thawing days, so that the hubs frozen during the
preceding night turn to mud. Some farmers sow in April on land prepared
in the fall. It may be that the frost is not quite out of the soil down
below the surface, but if the Ontario farmer can get enough loose soil
to kindly cover his wheat, he can sow without fear. May is our general
seeding month for lands not prepared previously and sown in April. But
little chance, the reader will note, for an ice-palace in Ontario.
Without a doubt, the fact that Ontario is surrounded by the immense
lakes gives it its exceptionally mild climate. The isothermal line drawn
through central Ontario passes through the centre of France and the
southern part of Germany. No one thinks of speaking of France as a land
of snow and ice, and no more should Ontario be put in that class.
Montreal may, no doubt, get tourists sometimes in the winter by means of
an ice-palace, and it pays her; but for the impression to get abroad
that ice-palaces and snowshoes and the like are the rule in Canada is
calculated to do us harm. The emigrant who is perhaps debating in his
mind whether he will emigrate to Canada or Australia, is quite likely to
choose the latter country if he thinks he must needs learn snow-shoeing
as perhaps the first element to success in Canada. We are glad to have
our Governor-General and staff at Ottawa enjoy themselves tobogganing
down the artificially-made slide of boards and scantling near Rideau
Hall, and no doubt the ladies do look attractive by the glare of
torches, dressed in blanket cloaks, toques, fezzes, and the like. Such
peculiarities, however, do not add to the wealth of our country. The
Ontario farmer during these winter months is making manure by feeding
his cattle, and drawing it out in heaps upon his land. He is busy, and
is every day adding to the productiveness of his lands. He utilizes the
snow in getting some rails or posts for his fences, and does not
hibernate or fritter away his time. During the few exceptionally cold
days he may stay by the fireside, but generally he is thoroughly busy
preparing for the coming summer, and there is plenty of work for him to
do. While the Quebec farmer passes his time in indolence, the Ontario
farmer is daily adding to the cash value of his property and also to its
productiveness. When summer does come we find that Ontario far outstrips
Quebec in the quantity of grain grown per acre and also in the total
quantity produced. And yet Quebec was well settled when Ontario was a
howling wilderness.
Now, if the people of Ontario were spending their winters, when not
hibernating, in tramping on snowshoes or riding down declivities on
toboggans, then might such sport be considered peculiarly applicable to
us. To show unmistakably the great difference between the Quebec
peasant, who hibernates during the winter, and the Ontario farmer, who
works at the same time, look at the effort the Ontario farmer makes to
rot his straw, while in many parts of Quebec straw is carefully guarded
and husbanded. In Ontario it is the constant effort to get it all used
up and made into manure. If we get too much open winter in Ontario, the
farmer has as much as he can possibly do to get his straw worked down,
because the cattle do not use up enough of it. Hence we frequently see
large stacks of straw left over. In this part of Ontario it is more a
question how to get the straw rotted than it is how to save it. Then,
drawing the comparison between us and the land of toques, where straw is
sparingly produced on soils not well farmed, and what do we want with
any of that toque and snowshoe business!
Mr. Grant Allen, the eminent writer, who, although born here, was an
Englishman by residence and education, having revisited Canada and the
United States after an absence of eleven years, took occasion some years
since to give utterance to some remarks on our country in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_. His remarks should never have been allowed to pass
unchallenged. I cannot go into the matter very fully for fear of too
great length, but I must needs touch on the more salient points, and it
will be necessary for me to inscribe Mr. Allen’s words here and there
as a text for my remarks. He says: “Looking at America with a geological
eye, I was impressed as I had never been before with the enormous extent
to which the country has suffered from the ice-sheets of the glacial
period.” And after making this remark he goes on to say that England has
suffered less from this great cause. Now, this remark of his refers to
Canada and the United States indiscriminately, and without a doubt it is
true to the letter. While I accept the statement as true, I at the same
time want very distinctly to qualify it so far as Ontario is concerned.
Ontario has measurably suffered from the glacial action, but it has as a
whole suffered far less than any one of the other provinces or any of
the northern United States, taken as a whole. I am referring to old
Ontario alone, and not the new portion lately acquired to the west. Take
old Ontario: The moraines have been frequent enough to give us the most
alluvial soil of any country of like extent on the habitable globe. This
remark does not apply to the more northerly portion of our province,
which is as yet but little occupied, for we cannot controvert the fact
that this portion did suffer sadly.
Mr. Allen evidently did not know Ontario well enough, or he would have
excepted from his general remark the garden of the world. In a former
chapter I made the remark that if a line be drawn from Belleville to the
Georgian Bay, all that part of Ontario west of that line contains the
most alluvial land and the richest of any in the world, with the fewest
breaks and the least waste land. My own observation, begot by travel and
reading as well, gives me the courage to fearlessly make this remark
unqualified.
Mr. Allen goes on to say: “In the valleys there is soil enough, but even
there the ice has worked almost as much mischief as it has done on the
hill-sides, by heaping up and mixing in a most heart-breaking way
enormous masses of boulders, which are almost the despair of the
agriculturist.” Now, this remark is true, but sweeping as it is, still I
must again except our own portion of Ontario, where there are no
“heart-breaking, enormous masses of boulders.” New York and Pennsylvania
would come in for a place under this remark, for those who have given
the subject much thought and observation have seen that those two States
do possess a vast amount of waste land, and even their best alluvial
lands are in no sense equal to ours. To forcibly illustrate: A New
Englander came to this locality about 1820, and settled on an excellent
farm. During the troubles of the rebellion, he felt annoyed at the
troubles some ultra-Loyalists gave him on account of his American
origin, sold out, moved to Pennsylvania and bought a farm there. A
neighbor here went down to see the old man just before his death, when
he told his boys in the neighbor’s presence, that they must sell out and
get back to Ontario. And he was a pushing man and located on an average
Pennsylvania farm.
“America bears an immense harvest, yet the immensity of the harvest
only corresponds to the immensity of the area from which it is reaped.
Acre for acre, the Old World yields heavier crops than the New,” again
says Mr. Allen.
In regard to our immense annual crop in America it is true that it is
really garnered from a tract as big as all Europe. Then, since America
has not a population to consume its crop, even if the crop be a light
one and the yield per acre low, we in America must annually have an
immense surplus, and America is looked upon as the granary of the world.
This fact alone establishes my exception in Ontario’s favor from Mr.
Allen’s remark, and I feel that I need not say more on this point. But
let the Old World recollect that America is yet in its infancy, and when
we begin to approach the Old World in density of population, and work
our lands better, in spite of the “heart-breaking” boulders, America
will surprise the world and prove to it that it is only beginning to do
what it can. That it is capable of feeding the whole world there isn’t a
doubt, and we want no doctrine of Malthus among us at all. I do believe
it is true, acre for acre, the Old World is ahead of us. And yet we have
in places soils which would put anything the Old World can produce to
scorn, even if we cannot apply the remark generally. It must be
recollected that Europe has been drained and its waste places reclaimed,
and but few of ours have, so that we have America just as nature gave it
to us. Fortunately in Ontario we have but few wastes to reclaim, for, as
I have said before, it is the garden of the whole. The only parallel
that I ever saw in the Old World to compare with Ontario is in Hungary,
which very much resembles our country. Then, again, as to extent,
Hungary is nowhere when compared with us. As to remarks about the hard
life of farmers in America, it may be to some extent true. Especially is
it true for the women; want of domestic help is the trouble, and for the
present we cannot remedy this evil until our population becomes greater.
Would that Miss Rye and others would send us out more girls.
But in no country in the world do the people live better than they do in
Ontario. Nor is there any country where the necessities and
sumptuousness of life are more abundant. Go to one of our teas, or
soirees, and see the vast amount of rich varied food there spread before
the partakers. The richest cakes, the most varied, and the exceeding
abundance there seen, must quickly convince even the most casual
observer that our people are really well off, and are living in luxury.
One sees nothing of this sort in Europe, and we really use food the most
prodigally of any people in existence. An ordinary good Ontario family
wastes more than a French peasant family uses at all. This is a fact
which cannot be controverted. I might instance how carefully the German
family lives, and show likewise that the Ontario family wastes nearly as
much as these families consume; so even if we sometimes have exceedingly
low prices, we fare as sumptuously as any people in this world.
The abundance in Ontario is something marvellous to the people of the
Old World. Look into our orchards and see the bushels of fruit lying
under the trees and going to waste, and this will convince the most
persistent grumbler that we are all right after all, and have but little
to grumble about. In thickly populated Europe all this fruit would have
been picked up and put to some use as human food. Every apple would be
used, and dried and stored away for future use. It is only the
plentifulness of everything in Ontario which causes our people to be so
wasteful. See our children take single bites from apples or pears, and
throw them away, only to bite another. Wasteful again, because of
exceeding abundance. Really our farmers have but little to grumble
about, for our land literally flows with milk and honey, and is one of
the most bountiful countries in the world.
Some of our citizens now and again cast longing eyes towards Florida,
fancying that in that land of perpetual sunshine more pleasure can be
experienced than in our own land, possessing the four seasons clearly
and distinctly defined. It is quite a mistake. This beautiful Ontario of
ours presents, as the seasons flow along, a variety of contrasts in
scenes and foliage which the warm climates know not of. Our springs are
incomparably finer and pleasanter than anything down south, and our
foliage is greener and cleaner than hot countries can show. Our summers
are just hot enough to give us a taste of what hot weather really is,
and make us long for the russet fall season, with its golden grains, and
red-cheeked fruits, and delightful sombre days, when our atmosphere
becomes veritable champagne in itself, followed by the forest pictures
of bright colors as the frost touches the foliage. Our bright, crisp,
clear, cold and jolly sleighing is life-giving to the uttermost human
extremity, and we would not have a warm, muddy, rainy winter if we
could. Then comes our spring season, just the interlude, as it were,
between winter and summer, when the old drifted snowbanks are
disappearing, and this is the season which gives us the “sugaring-off,”
which cannot be duplicated anywhere out of our North American continent.
Ontarians have a glorious heritage in climate, soil, seasons,
government, and pleasures, and we do not need to be casting about for
anything better in this world, for it is not to be found. Any one of us
who does not love our beautiful country is recreant to his best
interests. Indeed, if he does not, I boldly assert it is only because of
his want of knowledge of other lands to enable him to make comparisons
with his own. Let us stick to our country and place it far to the fore,
as it is now quickly attaining to that position.
CHAPTER XXII.
Criticisms by foreign authors--How Canada is regarded in other
countries--Passports--“Only a Colonist”--Virchow’s unwelcome
inference--Canadians are too modest--Imperfect guide-books--A
reciprocity treaty wanted.
In my readings from time to time I come across many remarks by foreign
and other authors, that I feel are belittling to our country. If we only
took to the self-laudation practised by our Yankee neighbors, such
arguments, or, rather, want of arguments--but rather noises--would at
least make us better known. I feel that we as a people are far too
modest. Remaining at home, or at least within our own boundaries, one
does not so keenly feel how little our country amounts to or is known
abroad. On travelling on the continent of Europe, now and then in
company with some Americans, and once getting away from the seaport
towns, I could not make the people understand that I was anything but a
Yankee. Since I came from America _du nord_, I must, of course, be a
Yankee, and no amount of explanation in the best French I could command
would make them understand that I was a British subject. One day
particularly, in Florence, Italy, I recollect buying a postage stamp, to
send a letter home, on which was the plain address, Canada. Being
somewhat in doubt if I had placed sufficient postage on the letter, I
asked “if that was enough for Canada.” “‘Tis all the same. All America,
all United States.” “But this is not for the United States.” “Oh, yes,
it’s all United States, all America, _du nord_.” And so my country
counted for nothing. The great Republic completely swamps us away from
home, disguise the fact as we may, and we may as well acknowledge it.
Even in Liverpool, I recollect when walking down the landing-stage,
valise in hand, about to board the steamer to sail for home two summers
ago, a little newsboy ran up before me and said, “Sir, don’t you want to
buy the New York _Herald_?” Of course I bought the paper for the little
urchin’s shrewdness in picking me out as being from America. I only
mention this simple anecdote to show that across the Atlantic it’s all
America and all the United States, almost without a discrimination. In
the matter of passports, now happily not nearly so necessary in Europe
as formerly, I have found at different times it is always better to be
provided with one for emergencies which may at any time arise. Going
down into Italy by the Monte Cenis route, the officials dumped us all
out at Modaire, through which town and depot the line between France and
Italy passed. I had to enter a door and pass a drawn-up guard of
soldiers and through a passage for the examination of passports. Ahead
of us were a number of Americans, who simply showed the eagle on the
seal of their passports, and who were allowed to pass unchallenged. My
turn came, and I showed the lion on my Canadian passport, and then my
trouble came. It was not British, the examiner said, but from America,
and did not bear an eagle like the Americans’ passports. I felt
humiliated and disgusted, that my own country with its five millions,
and the third naval (commercial) power of the world, was literally
unknown. Fortunately for me the examination was not very strict, and I
passed by parting with a small coin or two.
I would surely obtain a British passport if I were again travelling in
regions where passports are needed in order to get along easily and
without detentions.
Americans when abroad on the Continent very frequently call upon their
consul, and would return to the hotel, telling us of the delightful hour
spent in genial talk with their consul, and the information obtained
from him, and letters of admission to galleries, museums, etc.
Consistently I cannot pass myself off as a Yankee and go with them, but
determine to visit the British consul, who ought perforce to be my own;
and I call on him, and he looks at my passport, which he deliberately
folds, and hands back to me. He is too well bred to treat me positively
rudely, but the general air of his demeanor instantly makes me feel that
he considers me “only a colonist” and a person of no account in
particular, and not really worth very much of his consideration. One
experience of this kind suffices usually, and hereafter I let the
consuls alone. To be “only a colonist” at home does not seem to weigh
one down very much, but abroad to be told that a few times makes it
beyond human nature to not feel a spirit of resentment. As to being a
colonist it is quite right, and I am proud of the fact and do not wish
to change my position. If they would leave off the small word “only”
before “a colonist” it would take away all the sting, and make the
Canadian traveller feel that he is just as good as our British brothers
at home, our forefathers and relatives. When this “only a colonist” was
said to me, I generally felt it like the greeting accorded a son of some
obscure man; the son being exceedingly worthy, and having risen by his
talents, but “he’s only old Jones’s son,” and of course he can’t be
anybody. Canada is usually spoken of by foreign writers as a part of the
“frozen north.” This is really too bad when Ontario, which contains very
nearly one-half of the entire population of the Dominion, possesses a
climate far milder than the New England States, and quite as mild as
that of the great State of New York, just south of us. In an article on
“Acclimatization,” in the _Popular Science Monthly_, by so eminent an
author as Professor Virchow, is this sentence, “No one has, for example,
seen a people of the white race become black under the tropics, or
negroes transplanted to the polar regions, or to Canada, metamorphosed
into whites.” This coupling of us by implication with the frozen north,
coming from so eminent a man as Virchow, cuts. It is true that Canada
runs far to the north, but at the same time it would be just as fair to
speak of the United States as in the polar regions, since it has
Alaska, which is veritably in the Arctic zone, but at the same time, and
just the same as with us, but a very small part of their population is
there. Writers never speak of the United States as in the polar regions.
When we are not spoken of as inhabitants of the polar regions we are
described as French. Now, the inhabitants of Quebec have always
contended that they are the Canadians, and what the rest of us, the
great majority, are I can scarcely make out.
Once I was in an office in Broadway, New York, and happened to state
that I was a Canadian. The Yankee manager of that office remarked “that
he as yet hardly knew how to classify Canadians--whether as Englishmen
or Americans--and, in fact, that the world had not yet made up its mind
what we were.” If we were all French (and I am not for a moment speaking
disparagingly of our _habitants_), we could then be easily classified.
But to be called “only a colonist” in Europe, and in New York neither an
Englishman nor an American, makes one’s position as a genuine Canadian a
little foggy. The effort to distinguish by the spelling “Canadians” for
the English-speaking, and “_Canadiens_” for the French-speaking, is all
very well, and will no doubt work well enough at home. But abroad the
average Englishman, if you spell Canadian with an “e,” will simply put
you down as an ignorant fellow and a poor speller. And now can you
wonder what the people of continental Europe will think of us, if they
think of us at all, as apart from the United States? The plain truth of
the case is that we are far too modest, as I said at the beginning of
this chapter, and do not “blow” enough about our own country to cause it
to be better known abroad. The great west of the United States was
surely made and settled by the Yankee “blowing.” Their papers are ever
full of “spread eagle,” and always telling about their boundless
country, always praising their own institutions, and pulling down those
of the “oppressed monarchy of Great Britain,” and always representing
their country as the earthly paradise.
Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the course of a visit to Ontario, frankly
admitted--privately, of course--that our free school system, and
likewise its management, were superior to those of the American States.
Then let us wake up, and since it seems to be absolutely necessary to
“blow” about ourselves, let us copy the apt example of the Yankees and
do it--and do it so strongly as to make up for past deficiencies.
Guide books of travel, published both in America and Europe, for travel
in Canada, send the tourist invariably from New York City up the Hudson
by steamer to Albany; then by the New York Central Railway to Niagara
Falls. They do admit that the Falls are worth seeing. Then they send the
tourist by steamer to Toronto, and tell him to take the Richelieu
steamers, down the St. Lawrence from there, and run the rapids to
Montreal. From Montreal he is to take the night boat for Quebec and come
back again to Montreal by the day boat, and then go south to Lake
George, and this is all the tourist is to see of Canada. Thousands of
American and British tourists form their opinions of us from what they
see on this water tour through Canada. Of course, going down Lake
Ontario they see next to nothing of us or our country, because the lake
is too big to see much on the shore. Entering the St. Lawrence, they
view shores studded with rocks, and have not the faintest idea of our
fertile lands and rich farms, which give to Ontario its wealth. The
wealth of Ontario is certainly in her comfortable homesteads and fertile
fields. Of this the tourist knows nothing, and he goes down to Quebec
city to see, as best he may in America to-day, the best example of a
city in the eighteenth century style; and he passes out of our borders,
having come almost wholly in contact with our French population, and
goes away considering our land a land of stones peopled by Frenchmen.
The tourist travels too quickly to get proper impressions of a country,
I think I hear many readers say. Granted, but still many impressions are
got of countries by tourists by such rapid travelling, and we cannot
help the fact. The only way we can help the matter appears to me to be
for our railways to join and offer a general tourist ticket, taking the
tourist all over our country at a reasonable rate, and allowing him to
stop off when and where he will. Such tickets ought to be advertised in
Great Britain and the United States, and be on sale there. If once
bought they would be used. While using such tickets the tourist could
scarcely fail to get considerable knowledge of us and of our country.
Tourists, as a rule, are persons of means and of influence at home. Many
of them might thus be induced to bring capital to our country and make
it their home, to our and their advantage.
Ontario would make a grand State, the Americans tell us, when they look
with coveting eyes over this way. Yes, indeed, she would, and any other
one of the States would not keep pace with us; but they are not going to
get us. Give our people a reciprocity treaty, so that we can trade with
our American cousins, and leave Ontario to manage Ontario’s affairs, and
she will remain content. If a vote of Ontario farm-owners were taken
to-day on the reciprocity question, nine out of every ten would vote for
it, and we should have it. Our people are loyal and attached to the
Mother Country, and have no thought of severing the tie, but Britain is
3,000 miles away, and the United States is beside us. It is obvious that
we can more easily trade with the United States than Britain; hence, to
us, a treaty is to-day the greatest element in our politics. Even with
all the restrictions now imposed by the United States and ourselves, our
trade with the United States is enormous.
Politicians may wrangle and fritter away our money at Ottawa, and cause
us to many times feel well-nigh disgusted at them; still, so long as
they do not resort to direct taxation at Ottawa our country people will
stand an almost untold amount of fraud without much complaint. If the
Mother Country desires us to be joined into the talked-of universal
confederation, we would first like to know how we are to be benefited
thereby. For, as we now feel, we think that Ontario bears nearly all the
burdens of our Dominion, and we do not want to have tacked on to us any
more burdens or some other poor relatives of colonies. If the Mother
Country would put on a tariff against all the world except her own
colonies, and allow us free trade with her, we could see some use to us
for such a gigantic union. Just now, as it is, we do not want to join
any such scheme for an idea, although we reverently love and honor our
common Mother Country.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Few positions for young Canadians of ambition--American
consulships--Bayard Taylor--S. S. Cox--Canadian High
Commissioner--Desirability of men of elevated life--Necessity for
developing a Canadian national spirit.
It has occurred to many of our young Canadians that there are very few
positions attainable to us as Canadians really worth striving for. We
are so peculiarly situated, that we seem to be in a large measure
debarred from obtaining positions which would ordinarily fall to the lot
of those attaining eminence among five millions of people. To become a
member of a Provincial Legislature is, perhaps, the first position
ambitious young men ordinarily aspire to; and while the position itself
is really honorable, and also one of usefulness, yet it is not wholly
satisfactory. As to becoming an M.P., and spending three dreary months
or so in Ottawa, it is not a desirable situation. In fact, most aspiring
young Canadians, who come from good homes, do not take kindly to the
idea of being forcibly banished for three months out of the twelve. In
Washington, on the other hand, since consuls and _charges d’affaires_ of
all civilized nations are resident there, it naturally follows that that
capital must be the place of social activity and the like, and a place
where one can meet persons worth knowing, and who are wholly different
from ourselves.
To become a judge, no doubt, is the aspiration of many young Canadians,
and not for a moment would any one attempt to decry the desirableness of
that honorable position. Yet the fact is, that we have altogether too
many young men aspiring for legal positions. “Too many lawyers in Canada
by three-fourths” is heard among us as common everyday talk. Since
Canada has no foreign consular service, all consularships are squarely
and flatly out of our reach. Bayard Taylor began as a boy tramping over
Europe on foot, and gave the world his boyish volume of “Views Afloat,”
which is quite as readable to-day as when first penned. And he kept on
travelling until he became quite familiar with most of the languages of
modern Europe. Then a consulship was given him, and he really obtained a
position worth working for. At different courts he became the
representative of the great American nation, and enjoyed social
advantages which can fall only to the lot of persons thrown in contact,
as he necessarily was, with people from every quarter of the globe.
Finally he became ambassador at Berlin, and enjoyed the highest honors
there. There he died, and his body was sent back to his American home,
having been accorded especial honors by the German court. Here was a
career, it appears to the writer, which was really worth striving for.
He was not a lawyer, nor in any wise specially educated in any
particular specialty, but yet with the career open to him, by dint of
his own push and good common-sense, he really rivalled in position any
of those among us who make political fights to get to Ottawa, or pore
over the midnight oil to become eminent in law. And what is true in Mr.
Taylor’s case is equally true in the case of many representatives who
to-day are the accredited representatives of the American Government at
the court of St. James. Take, for instance, the case of S. S. Cox, who
was American representative at Constantinople. Mr. Cox was, no doubt, a
tolerably clever man, but not a lawyer, though generously educated. Like
Taylor, he travelled and gave to the world the result of his
observations in his “Arctic Sunbeams” and “Orient Sunbeams.” True, he
had been a member of Congress, but even if one were to become an M.P. in
Canada that would not further him in any way for foreign preferments. No
one will for a moment doubt but that Cox’s position as _charge
d’affaires_ at Constantinople was far preferable to that of any M.C. at
Washington, or an M.P. at Ottawa.
We have a High Commissioner, some one reminds me. Yes, and we may
instance Sir Charles Tupper at London; but the social status of that
gentleman over there must have been so doubtful that one can hardly jump
to the conclusion that his position was desirable after all. Of course,
his salary would be desirable, but of that I am not speaking. Do not for
a moment suppose that Sir Charles would be very graciously received by
the representative of the Czar, for instance. Obviously not, for he was
not a real ambassador, or even a consul, and he had no particular
powers, anyhow. The representative of the little kingdom of Greece, as
the representative of three millions of people, would have far more
social status in London than our Sir Charles, who ought to represent
over five millions, and half a continent. So I think I might as well
give over this matter of consulship, for there’s really nothing to be
attained in that direction.
We educate a young man at home in one of our universities, and then to
give him a good finish send him off to Oxford, or perhaps to Heidelberg,
and our young man comes home the representative of one of our best
Canadian families. He has not been educated for a profession
particularly, for his parents as well as himself realize that the
professions are already quite full enough, and also that there’s no
_éclat_ to be gained from the hardest drudgery in any one of them. Now,
I ask, what position is open to him at all commensurate with his careful
education and his talents? Really among us, as Canadians, there is none.
No doubt, at Oxford or Heidelberg, he has studied the laws of nations
and many matters of civil polity, and ought to be as well qualified,
after a little apprenticeship, as any one anywhere to be the foreign
representative of his own country at St. James, St. Cloud, or St.
Petersburg. But he cannot, and must either lead the life of a gentleman
of leisure among his people or go in for sordid money-getting. If he
leads the life of a gentleman of leisure he does not fully fill the
sphere of usefulness his countrymen are by right of common citizenship
obviously justly entitled to. As to common money-getting, we hope never
to see the day when the most cultivated in our young country will give
themselves over wholly to that sordid life.
An aristocracy in Canada is not what I am aiming at. But we do certainly
need some peer among us to leaven the mass, and keep us refined and up
to the social standard. The United States is already possessing such
persons. The case of Charles Sumner, for instance. He could have made
money as a lawyer, no doubt. But with his great talents and careful
education, he spent his life among his New England kin, except when
travelling or at Washington, and no one will for a moment deny but that
he leavened his fellows during his whole life. Political preferments or
legal standing he never sought after, but he, with his culture and pure
life, did real good to his fellows.
It would be easy to elaborate and speak of many more such examples, both
in the United States and Britain. But having illustrated the point, I
have said sufficient to prove that such a cultured few among us are
desirable and to be commended. They do not call them aristocrats in the
United States, and I do not see why they should be so termed here. In
the future, as our country grows, and our old families become stable
with the steady growth of our country, their sons must be educated
broadly and generously, and will no doubt be a benefit to us by
leavening the lump; and we certainly do not want to cast our ringers at
them, even if they do not get down to sordid money-getting, but seek for
something higher. Yet, as I set out to prove, there are really few
positions among us worth their striving for. If they would rise among us
and make themselves known, I fail to know where or how they are to do
it. Is a clerk or head of a department needed at Ottawa? Canadians, we
are led to know, do not as a rule get the preference. In very many
instances some one must be imported from the British Isles and given
that position right over the heads of our own fellows. Now, we all love
honor, and respect our common Mother Country, but this is carrying the
matter too far, without a doubt. Do not for a moment suppose any
Canadian will be exported from Canada to London to fill any one of the
clerkships or offices over there. Such an instance is not within my
knowledge, and I am at a loss to know why we need do it for the young
English, Scotch or Irish man. The remedy for the want of a goal for
Canadians I am not going to speak of. Let those who can, and wish, take
the matter up and tell us. Yet we do not want independence just now that
we may have foreign consuls and the like, and thus open careers for our
young men of abilities, for we are too poor yet to do all that. Nor do
we want annexation to the United States, for our people are unmistakably
British, disguise the fact as one may. Our people are really British in
thought and feeling, and are not disposed to throw off the Mother
Country. If Imperial federation ever takes place, it is probable that
the different colonies will then have a resident _charge d’affaires_ at
each sister colony, and our chosen members would assemble at the central
parliament at London. In this there would be a help to our ambitious
young men, and perhaps some remedies will thus come about. But it is
absurd to think that our rising young men will always be content to go
on as we are, finding no goal in our midst worth striving for. These
young men see, perhaps, their college-mates in the United States away
ahead of them in positions of trust, while they cannot possibly get
higher as Canadians, and are apt to become in a measure disgusted with
home. The writer can recall instances of his fellow college-mates in the
United States whom he thinks were no cleverer than himself, nor had they
any special advantage over him in any wise. Yet to-day in his memory he
can fix upon a number of such American college-mates who are now foreign
consuls of the United States Government, M.C’s, senators, and others who
occupy high positions in the army and navy of that Government. In
drawing the comparison between them and himself it is quite natural for
him to ask himself why his college associates so signally succeeded. The
answer must be because success could be obtained in their own country,
and such success led to preferments worth striving for, to the
contra-distinction of our own lot as Canadians, where there is no career
open to us.
That we all love Canada, and are all satisfied with our form of
government, goes without saying, yet somehow we are not developing a
national spirit in any wise whatever. It appears to me that we can and
ought to develop a spirit of patriotic pride among us, and I see nothing
incompatible with our position as provinces to hinder fostering such a
spirit. One great difficulty is that our flag and that of Britain are
exactly alike. Go away from home, and meet a Canadian vessel up in the
Mediterranean, for instance, and I defy you to tell if she be not an
ordinary British ship. The same ensign is at the peak, and there is
really nothing outwardly visible to make a Canadian’s heart swell with
pride on beholding a Canadian ship away from home. It seems to me that
we might have a flag of our own, not incompatible with the Union Jack,
which would cause us to cling to it and feel that it was really our own.
In the way of a national ode there positively is nothing at all. Moore’s
boat song is the best thing we have by far, and is really a gem. But gem
as it is, recollect it was written by an Irishman, and is mainly about
boat life on our great river. Perhaps we are not old enough yet to
produce a genius capable of giving us a national ode, and yet we have
had some very good poems by Canadians, and I wish quickly to see the day
when some of our poets will give us a national ode which shall be a gem
for us to rally round. Let those who possess the proper poetic genius
ponder on this subject.
Ask a Canadian young lady who sits down to the piano in Britain before a
drawing-room full of Britons of both sexes to play something Canadian,
as I have heard asked there. Now just let our young lady musicians think
the matter over and make up their minds what they would play and sing
under such conditions. If our young ladies go over there, they must know
they will be asked for such songs, and I really hope, for the credit of
our country, they will not be compelled to fall back upon American songs
to represent Canada. Such songs may represent America, but the part
Canada plays on this continent will in such songs be sadly deficient.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A retrospect--Canada’s heroes--The places of their deeds should be
marked--Canada a young sleeping giant--Abundance of our
resources--Pulpwood for the world--Nickel--History of our early
days will be valued.
No one can look back over the years covered by this volume of
reminiscences and observations of Canadian history and life without
being struck by the changes that have already taken place, and also by
the great possibilities of the future. At the close of the American
Revolution of 1776 there were not more than 80,000 white persons in all
of what we now call Canada with its confederated provinces. When Roger
Conant came to Upper Canada, on the termination of that lamentable
struggle, he found only 12,000 inhabitants in that province. At the time
of the War of 1812 there were in all Canada about one-fifth of a million
inhabitants, and in Upper Canada (Ontario) 55,000. It is only ninety
years since that war, and the increase has been a marvellous one. We
have nearly 3,000,000 inhabitants in what was formerly Upper Canada, and
5,000,000 in the whole Dominion. Let another period of ninety years
revolve around our land, and the millions that will then inhabit our
provinces will make our present enumeration seem insignificant, as well
as those of our forefathers in 1792 and 1812.
We know, of course, that the War of 1812 was Britain’s war. Canada was
really not a party to its origin. But it would be a bold person to-day
who would dare to assert that our forefathers did not do their duty in
that struggle. The world at large, as well as ourselves, recognizes that
they did all that a few poor but brave men could do.
“Oh! few and weak their numbers were,
A handful of brave men,
But to their God they made their prayer,
And rushed to battle then.”
There dwells no Canadian on his native soil whose heart does not swell
with pride at the valor of our forefathers in that war. For although it
was Britain’s quarrel, and we honestly felt that Britain had been rather
overbearing in her conduct to the United States, and had claimed too
much in indiscriminately searching American ships and removing any men
from them she chose, our people showed their valor, hardihood, and that
Anglo-Saxon pluck which is the common attribute of the white man on this
continent north of the Rio Grande River.
If, then, we are proud of our sires, let us mark the places of their
deeds. Already the site of the famous battle between Wolfe and Montcalm
in Quebec, which sealed the fate of a continent, is in doubt. How much
more so, then, will be the sites of the deeds of our forefathers in the
War of 1812, and the more recent struggle of the Canadian Revolution of
1837-38. The author submits that it is the duty of those who know these
historic spots to mark them by monuments or tablets. Very soon those who
know them to-day will be off the scene, and information as to the
whereabouts of these spots will be difficult, if not impossible, to
obtain. We are making history so very fast that it behoves us to bestir
ourselves with regard to these matters. Future historians will glean
every word we say, and view with eager interest every spot we mark.
Truly we are laying the bricks and stones of the superstructure of this
great country of ours. Our 5,000,000 may seem insignificant to our
children’s 125,000,000 by and by, but our children will search most
diligently for all we did and said while in our adolescence.
Canada to-day is a young sleeping giant which has not yet felt its
power, nor yet risen to consciousness of its own importance, wealth,
power and grandeur. Our future no one can read. While we are proud to be
a part of the great British Empire, and glory in it, we are none the
less Canadians first, and we must never forget it. Some deep political
thinkers and far-seeing statesmen have said that the white man’s
governments and the flags of Anglo-Saxondom will some day be unified and
made to wave over all the continent of North America north of the Rio
Grande. How that may be accomplished no one will have the hardihood to
predict. Our United States cousins may join us and a united flag may be
evolved. That such an amalgamation would most materially add to our
advancement is self-evident. We would like to see that gigantic stride
made and still remain members of the great Empire, if that be possible.
A treaty of commerce between us and the United States, be it reciprocity
or what not, would so very materially tend to our benefit that we would
risk much and give much to obtain it. There is such an abundance of food
for man and beast in Canada, and always has been, without a single
general failure of crops, that we cannot realize what such a failure
really means. Nor can we make comparisons between times of abundance and
years of want. No general failures have ever come to Canada, and while
it has never been uniformly productive, the past two seasons have
surpassed all previous records. We have seen harvests of 60,000,000
bushels of grain in Manitoba, Alberta, Assiniboia and Saskatchewan,
seeking an outlet to Europe through the railways and canals of Ontario.
Verily, Canada is a young sleeping giant which has not yet awakened to
its power. Our resources of all kinds are enormous. Take, for instance,
our vast supplies of pulp-wood spruce, the raw material of paper.
Explorers have found hundreds of square miles of this timber as yet
untouched by the hand of man, between the northerly boundary of Ontario
and James’ Bay. These forests may be cut off, but in twelve years will
again have grown ready for another cutting. It is freely asserted that
Canada has more spruce wood for pulp than all the world besides. The
resources of commercial white pine are also within Canadian borders. The
United States have almost exhausted theirs, and are coming for ours, but
they most ungenerously mulct us in $4.00 per 1,000 feet for duty on this
pine. This example very forcibly again reminds us that we particularly
want a treaty of commerce with our nearest neighbors. Canada’s resources
in pulp-wood and pine alone are sufficient to make her rich, and all
nations must yet pay tribute to us on this account. To these we may add
nickel, of which only New Caledonia besides has any quantity. Nickel the
nations must and will have, regardless of price. In extent of fertile
lands no nation can make a comparison with us. All these considerations
point to a marvellous development in the future. With the increase of
population and the spread of education we may take it for granted that
the history of our early days will become more and more interesting to
future generations, and that every genuine contribution to it will be
highly valued.
THE END.
* * * * *
_Upper Canada
Sketches_
_By ...
THOMAS
CONANT._
With 21 full-page illustrations by E. S. Shrapnel, lithographed in
colors. Printed on superior paper, with gilt top, and bound in buckram,
with cover design in green and gold.
PRICE, $3.50 net, postpaid
..Press Comments..
The _Journal of the Royal Colonial Institute_, London, England,
reviewing the book, gives the following admirable summary of its
scope and contents:
“Stories regarding the early settlement of Canada always possess a
certain amount of fascination, and the book under notice is no exception
to the rule. It is of more than ordinary interest, as it is written by
one who is a descendant of the first Governor of Massachusetts, and the
grandson of one of the earliest settlers in Canadian territory. Mr.
Conant gives us many old settlers’ stories, as well as legends and
traditions of the past, and presents glimpses of the rude, free life
that obtained in the earlier years of settlement, whilst at the same
time he depicts many of the phases of present-day life in Canada, as
compared with the past. His personal experiences, which extend over many
years, are full of interesting details regarding life in Canada. Mr.
Conant not only describes the country and its advantages for settlement,
but supplies numerous anecdotes regarding its administration, both
politically and from a municipal point of view. He describes various
events in its history so graphically as to enable the reader to follow
him with interest through the many pages of the work, and to gain an
insight into the mode of life which existed in Canada long before the
railways opened up the country.”
_The Toronto Globe_:
The value of such unadorned records as those contained in Mr. Conant’s
book will be fully appreciated by the future historian. With many of his
contemporaries, the incidents he relates and the customs he describes
are a common memory, and will be vouched for as not only accurately set
forth in these pages, but with not a little incidental interest. Mr.
Conant is well known to a large constituency of Canadian readers as a
writer of some descriptive talent and with a pleasant colloquial style.
_Toronto Mail and Empire_:
“Mr. Conant has not only written a book that those interested in
Canadian history will want to read, but he has set a good example to
those who have the material for a family history.”
...Some Personal Commendations ...
=The Right Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, G.C.M.G.=, writes the author: “I have
received your book, ‘Upper Canada Sketches,’ and I can assure you with
perfect sincerity that I enjoyed it very much.”
“A friend called my attention to your ‘Upper Canada Sketches, and,
though I was only able to skim through it, yet I want to write and tell
you how much I enjoyed it.... It seems to be the most readable book in
that line that I have come across.”--=Miss Minnie Jean Nesbit=, Hamilton.
“I have read, ‘Sketches’ with great pleasure. It is very good and does
you credit.”--=Dr. H. Wheeler=, Windsor, Eng.
“I have read it [‘Upper Canada Sketches’] with great pleasure and
interest. It is, in paper, print, engravings, and margin, a pleasure to
look at, and you have brought together very valuable sketches of
life.”--=Miss Janet Carnochan=, Secretary Historical Society, Niagara.
“I got for my own library, as soon as it appeared, a copy of your book,
and read it through with a great deal of interest and enjoyment.”--=C. C.
James=, Deputy Minister of Agriculture for Ontario.
“I have greatly enjoyed Mr. Conant’s charming book, having read it from
cover to cover. While I don’t suppose it appeals to a down-east Yankee
like myself, as it must to a Canadian ‘to the manor born,’ I fully
appreciate its fine literary finish, stirring incident, and flavor of
‘ye olden time.’”--=Ada Chadwick Williams=, Chicago.
“Am glad you found something of interest in my book. I could say the
same thing, many times emphasized, regarding your own fine
volume.”--=Frank H. Severance, Esq.=, Author of “Old Trails on the Niagara
Frontier.”
“Your ‘Upper Canada Sketches’ are unique, and more references are made
to this book than to any other we have on Colonial history.”--=David
Boyle, Esq.=, Secretary Canadian Historical Society.
“I read your ‘Upper Canada Sketches,’ and I must pay you the compliment
of saying that I could not get away from the atmosphere of that book for
a long time after reading it. I have seldom had scenes cling to me as
they did. I shall be greatly interested in anything further that you may
do along that line.”--=C. N. Johnston, L.D.S., D.D.S.=, Chicago.
=Mr. Fred Odell Conant=, author of “The Conant Genealogy,” writes: “I have
waited for an opportunity to look it over carefully before replying. It
is first-rate, and, so far as I can judge, gives a very good
representation of life in the early days in the wilds of Upper Canada. I
have been much interested in its perusal, and shall send for two or
three more copies at once. You have the gift of making interesting
reading.”
_WILLIAM BRIGGS, Publisher_,
29-33 Richmond Street West, - - Toronto, Ont.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] _Vide_ “Upper Canada Sketches,” by the author.
[B] _Vide_ “Upper Canada Sketches,” by the author.
[C] The author’s forbears then lived on the shore of Lake Ontario, at
Port Oshawa. Word came to them of the taking of York during the night
of April 26-27, and that the fort would be blown up if the Americans
entered it. They were, therefore, on the _qui vive_ for the explosion.
For thirty-three miles to Port Oshawa on that still April afternoon
the sound of the explosion followed the water along the shore, and
the author’s people distinctly heard the heavy boom they were waiting
for. Hence it may be gathered that the blowing up of the fort was
premeditated.
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