Part 13

Throughout all New Brunswick, the wood fellers, or “lumberers,” as they are there termed, bear a very indifferent reputation, being generally, and I fear with too much justice, regarded as men of dissolute and extravagant habits, and whose moral character, with few exceptions, is dishonest and worthless. The curious manner in which these people associate themselves for the purpose of cutting timber is so well described by a modern writer, that I cannot do better than transcribe his account of it. “Several men,” he says, “form what is called a lumbering party, composed of persons who are either hired by a master labourer, who pays them wages, and finds them in provisions; or of individuals, who enter into an understanding with each other to have a joint interest in the proceeds of their labour: the necessary supplies of provisions, clothing &c., are generally obtained from the merchants on credit, in consideration of receiving the timber which the lumberers are to bring down the rivers the following summer. The stock deemed requisite for a lumbering party consists of axes, a cross-cut saw, cooking utensils, a cask of rum, tobacco and pipes, a sufficient quantity of biscuit, pork, beef, and fish; pease and pearl barley for soup, with a cask of molasses to sweeten a decoction usually made of shrubs, as of the tops of the hemlock tree. Two or three yokes of oxen, with sufficient hay to feed them, are also required to haul the timber out of the woods. When thus prepared, these people proceed up the rivers with the provisions to the place fixed on for their winter establishment, which is selected as near a stream of water, and in the midst of as much pine timber, as possible. They commence by clearing away a few of the surrounding trees, and building a camp of round logs, the walls of which are seldom more than four or five feet high; the roof is covered with birch bark or boards. A pit is dug under the camp, to preserve any thing liable to injury from the frost. The fire is either in the middle or at one end; the smoke goes out through the roof; hay, straw, or fir branches are spread across, or along the whole length of the habitation, on which they all lie down together at night to sleep, with their feet next the fire. When the fire gets low, he who first awakes or feels cold springs up, and throws on five or six billets; and in this way they manage to have a large fire all night. One person is hired as cook, whose duty it is to have breakfast prepared before daylight; at which time all the party rise, when each takes his “_morning_,” the indispensable dram of raw rum, immediately before breakfast. This meal consists of bread, or occasionally potatoes, with boiled beef, pork, or fish, and _tea_ sweetened with molasses. Dinner is usually the same, with pease soup instead of tea; and the supper resembles the breakfast. These men are enormous eaters; and they also drink great quantities of rum, which they scarcely ever dilute. Immediately after breakfast they divide into three gangs, one of which cuts down the trees, another hews them, and the third is employed with the oxen in hauling the timber, either in one general road leading to the banks of the nearest stream, or at once to the stream itself. Fallen trees and other impediments in the way of the oxen are cut away with the axe.”

Such is the toilsome life of a lumberer from October until the month of April; amidst forests covered with snow, and exposed to all the severity of the winter, without experiencing any of its comforts. But it is when the snow begins to dissolve in April, and the “freshets” come down the rivers, that the lumberer’s most trying labours commence. The timber which has been cut during the winter is now thrown into the stream, and floated down to some convenient place for constructing a raft. The water at this period, owing to the snow water in the freshets, is more intensely cold than in the depth of winter; the lumberers are obliged to be immersed in it from morning till night, and it is seldom less than six weeks from the time the floating the timber commences, till the rafts are delivered into the merchant’s hands. This course of life, it is evident, must undermine the constitution; and the sudden transition from the extreme cold of winter in the backwoods to the scorching heat of the summer sun, must tend still farther to weaken and reduce the system. In order to sustain the cold, and stimulate the organs, these men are in the habit of swallowing immoderate quantities of ardent spirits; we cannot, then, wonder that premature old age and shortness of days should form the almost inevitable fate of a lumberer. Should one of them, more prudent than his fellows, save a little money, and be enabled for the last few years of his life to exist without labour, he only drags out a miserable existence—the victim of rheumatism, and all the miseries of a broken down constitution.

A few miles above the Acadian settlements, the St. John receives the waters of the Madawaska; and inclining to the westward, flows in a deep and sluggish stream through a wilderness of rich and fertile lands, until it reaches the Grand Falls of the St. John, which for romantic beauty are perhaps unequalled by the most celebrated falls in the world. Mr. McGregor, who visited them, asserts, that, though they cannot be compared with Niagara in point of magnitude, the _tout ensemble_ of the tremendous rocks, the gigantic woods, and the continuity of the cataracts and rapids below the St. John Falls, is finer than any thing that the otherwise unparalleled Niagara can boast of. _Bateaux_ and other craft navigating the river at this point, are carried across a narrow neck of land, from a small cove immediately above the falls, to another little creek at some distance below them. The river, which a short way above the falls is broad and placid, becomes suddenly contracted between high and rocky banks, overhung with trees of immense growth, and rushes along a descent of several feet with prodigious impetuosity, until the interruption of a ridge of rocks, close to the edge of the grand falls, changes the turbulent stream into one vast sheet of broken foam, thundering over a precipice, fifty feet in perpendicular height, into a deep vortex filled with huge rocks, amongst which the immense body of waters is for a moment partially lost. Re-appearing, it continues its course through a narrower channel, pent in by rugged overhanging cliffs, and dashing with extraordinary velocity over a succession of lesser falls, more than half a mile in length, forms a picture of terrific grandeur and sublimity. The scenery after passing the grand falls is of the wildest and boldest character imaginable; and the rocky bed of the river is exceedingly dangerous for rafts and _bateaux_, which, however, are dexterously navigated through the broken waters and foaming rapids.

From this point the settlements on the fertile tracts of intervale land which lie near the river become more numerous, and it is no unfrequent occurrence with travellers in the woods to fall in with a farmer and his family hard at work forming A FIRST SETTLEMENT. These settlers are mostly Americans,[5] or English and Scotch farmers, who have emigrated from the mother country to endeavour by honest labour to obtain a comfortable independence for themselves and their children. It is a singularly interesting sight—one of these new settlements buried in the depths of a pine forest, and proves how many seeming and real difficulties a man may overcome by patience and industry. Who without some strong motive for exertion would not feel discouraged at the sight of the wilderness land covered with heavy trees, which he must cut down and destroy before he can commit to the earth the seed which is to produce food for his family? But with the prospect of independence and comfort before him, the strong-hearted settler falls cheerfully to work, the lusty strokes of his axe ring through the lonely woods, and the monarchs of the forest fall one after the other beneath his vigorous arm. A small space is cleared, and he begins to raise the walls of his future dwelling. Round logs, from fifteen to twenty feet in length, are laid horizontally over each other, notched at the corners so as to let them down sufficiently close, till the walls have attained the requisite height:—the interstices between the logs are then filled with moss and clay; a few rafters are afterwards raised for the roof, covered with pine or birch bark, and thatched with spruce branches; the chimney is formed of wooden frame-work, and plastered with clay and straw kneaded together; a doorway and an aperture for a window are next cut in the walls of the house; the door and sashes are fixed in their places; a few rough boards, or logs hewn flat on one side, are laid down for a floor, and overhead a similar flooring, to form a sort of garret or lumber room. With the addition of a few articles of furniture of the rudest construction, the habitation is now considered ready to receive the family of the settler, who view with unbounded delight their new dwelling, and joyfully prepare, for the first time since their sojourn in the forest, to cook and eat their dinner of venison beneath the shelter of their humble roof. The house being completed, the settler next turns his attention to laying out his farm; and his first object is to cut down the trees, which is done by cutting with an axe a deep notch into each side of the tree, about two feet from the ground, in such a manner that the trees all fall in the same direction; the branches are then lopped off, and the timber is suffered to lie on the ground until the beginning of the following summer, when it is set on fire. By this means all the branches and small wood are consumed; the large logs are either piled in heaps and burnt, or rolled away for the purpose of making the zigzag log fences necessary to keep off the cattle and sheep, which are allowed to range at large. The timber being thus removed, the ground requires little further preparation for the seed which is to be sown in it, than merely breaking the surface with a hoe or harrow. Plentiful crops of corn or potatoes may be raised for two and often for three years successively after the wood has been burnt on it. The stumps of the trees are allowed to remain in the ground until they are sufficiently decayed to be easily removed. The roots of spruce, beech, birch, and maple, will decay in four or five years; the pine and hemlock tree require a much longer time. After the stumps are all removed the land is turned up with the plough, and the same system of agriculture is practised as in England.

Destructive fires often occur in the woods, sometimes from the effects of lightning, but more frequently arising from the carelessness of travellers and wood-fellers, who light fires at the roots of trees, and take no trouble about extinguishing them afterwards. If the season happens to be dry, the fire soon communicates to the surrounding trees, and from thence spreading through the forest, it rages with a fury and rapidity that we can scarcely form a conception of in European countries. Let the reader, if possible, fancy the devouring flames curling around the stems of the lofty pine trees, rushing up to their dark tops, and ascending to an immense height amongst the dense clouds of black smoke arising from a whole forest on fire. At each moment the falling trees come down with a thundering crash, while sparks and splinters of burning wood, driven on the wind, spread the destruction far and wide,

“Through the grey giants of the sylvan wild.”

Human means are unavailing to check the progress of the conflagration; onward it rushes, extending to every combustible substance, and spreading desolation in its path until it is quenched by rain, or until it has devoured every thing between it and the cleared lands, the sea, or some river. In the year 1825 the country to the north of Miramichi was visited by one of the most disastrous conflagrations that history has ever recorded;[6] upwards of a hundred miles of the shores of Miramichi were laid waste by the fire, which extended to Fredericton, where it destroyed the governor’s residence and about eighty other houses; and carried its ravages northward as far as the Bay de Chaleur.

From the Grand Falls the river takes a course nearly due south, bounded on either side by precipitous banks and dense forests, whose solemn gloom has not yet been cheered by the hand of man. About half way between the Falls and Fredericton the waters of the Meduxnikeag unite with those of the St. John. It is here the grand and sublime features of the scenery of the latter river soften into the beautiful and picturesque. The towering and abrupt precipices,—the overhanging crags,—the dark and unpenetrated forests,—open into smiling plains and cultivated farms; and the numerous beauties which Nature has lavished on the scene, heightened by art, adorn the landscape with the cheering prospect of human comfort and prosperity. The river from this place to St. John is navigable for rafts and boats; and the settlements, though numerous, are chiefly confined to the banks of the stream,—a situation always selected by early settlers, from the advantages it possesses in enabling them to dispose of the timber with which their land is encumbered.

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FREDERICTON, the seat of government of this province, is agreeably situated on a level neck of land, on the south side of the River St. John, about ninety miles above its mouth. The appearance of the town and the adjacent country, viewed from the rising ground behind Fredericton, is highly beautiful and luxuriant. Immediately beneath us stands the College, a plain but extensive building, conspicuously placed on the brow of a wooded eminence, overlooking the town; further down, on the flat shore, lies the neat cheerful looking town; and at some distance on the left, the handsome residence of the governor occupies a charming site near the water. Bending almost round the town, the majestic river, which is here not more than a mile in width, flows tranquilly between its banks; but it is no longer a silent and lonely stream, where the otter and the grey duck make their home, and—

“——with tawny limb, And belts and beads in sun-light glistening, The savage plies his skiff, like wild bird on the wing.”

Civilization and commerce are now busy upon its waters,—white sails are gliding to and fro,—and the heavy rafts of the lumberers are seen stealing slowly down the stream, or occasionally a steamer may be observed, stemming the current that runs against her in her passage up from St. John.

Following the course of the river downwards, the eye traces it for several miles winding around bold headlands crowned with noble trees,—or, lingering in those lovely bays where the sombre hue of the surrounding forest scenery is relieved by cheerful settlements, green fields, and comfortable farm houses, sprinkling the rich alluvial lands that fringe the shores. Looking upwards, the scene is still more picturesque and animated;—the face of the country exhibits more extensive cultivation,—the settlements are more numerous,—the woods seem to recede from the shores, yielding their ancient sovereignty of the soil to the untiring industry of man. The best view of FREDERICTON is had FROM THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE RIVER, from whence the town presents a very pleasing appearance. Gay spires and white-walled buildings are seen stretching along the shore for a considerable distance; above these the College occupies a commanding situation; and nearer to the spectator the tranquil river flows smoothly on, while the dark green woods that clothe the undulating hills behind the town, form a noble back ground to the picture:—if to this the reader adds a glorious summer sky, overhanging and brightening all beneath, the landscape will be complete.

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THE GOVERNOR’S HOUSE stands at a short distance from the town, in one of the most romantic and picturesque situations imaginable. It is a light and elegant structure, forming a very agreeable object from the river, surrounded as it is by ornamented plantations, and sheltered by fine upland slopes, clad with rich and beautiful foliage. The town of Fredericton is laid out with great regularity; the streets crossing at right angles, as in almost all American towns. The public buildings are not numerous; the principal are—the Government House, the College already mentioned, and the barracks, which are good and commodious. The Episcopal church is a very unpretending building; there are besides, four other places of religious worship in the town for the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Roman Catholic inhabitants. The environs are exceedingly pretty; neat houses, smiling gardens, and comfortable farms being scattered in every direction.

The condition of the settlers in the neighbourhood of Fredericton, St. John, and other large towns, is very different from that of the adventurous men who go forth to make a clearing in the woods;—their difficulties not being numerous, nor the labour so incessant, as that which the first settler has to encounter. The farms of the former are generally in a high state of cultivation: the rude log-hut has given place to a well-built and commodious dwelling-house, where the farmer, with his family and a numerous establishment of household servants, mechanics, and labourers, reside. Around the main building are scattered, with little regard to regularity or uniformity of appearance, barns, cattle-sheds, stables, workshops, and out-offices; and not unfrequently a grist mill and a saw mill;—all bearing evidence of the thriving condition of the proprietor, who, if he lives near the river, is also generally engaged in the timber trade, and employs large gangs of lumberers in the woods. The following picture of one of these industrious and active individuals, who had settled near Fredericton, may serve, with few exceptions, for the whole class:—This man was worth absolutely nothing when he settled on his farm, yet by industry and perseverance, he had acquired, in seven years, a handsome independence. “He could do little more than read and write; and his manners, though quite unpolished, were not rude. He had a wonderful readiness of address, and, as far as related to his own pursuits, quick powers of invention and application. He raised large crops, ground his own corn, manufactured the flax he cultivated and the wool of his sheep into coarse cloths; sold the provisions which his farm produced, and rum and British goods, to the lumberers, and received timber in payment. He made axes and other tools required by the lumberers, at his forge. He ate, gambled, and associated with his own labourers, and all others, who made his house a kind of rallying point; he appeared, however, to be a sober man, and a person who had in view an object of gain in every thing he engaged in.” The person thus described was an American; and it is an indisputable fact, that there are no people who can more readily adapt themselves to all the circumstances peculiar to a new colony than the descendants of the first settlers in the United States. They exhibit much more perseverance and ingenuity than the British colonists; and though the English farmer is decidedly superior to the Yankee in agricultural knowledge, the latter possesses, in a greater degree, a quickness of invention where any thing is required that can be supplied by the use of edge tools. An American settler is not only a carpenter and joiner, but he can, if necessary, turn his hand to various other handicrafts;—he tans leather, builds boats, makes baskets, soap, and sugar; and is his own smith, farrier, tailor, and shoemaker. Almost every farmer has a loom in his house, and his wife and daughters spin the yarn from the wool and flax produced on the farm, and afterwards weave it into cloth. The home-manufactured woollen cloth is rather coarse, but extremely durable; it is generally dyed a blue colour.

The habitations of the Americans who have settled in the British colonies are generally better constructed than those of any other settlers who have not had the advantage of many years’ residence in the country. But though the house of the English emigrant, from his imperfect knowledge of the use of edge tools, is usually a very clumsy affair, the peculiar neatness and comfort which prevails within doors more than compensates for the want of mechanical skill displayed without.

It has been well observed, that the virtue of cleanliness is one of those which Englishwomen never forget; I may add, that no women exhibit more industry and cheerfulness than the wives of the English settlers. It is no uncommon thing to see amongst them women, who have been tenderly and delicately brought up, milking their own cows, making their own butter, and performing tasks of household work from which they formerly would have shrunk. But a determination to conform to circumstances, soon reconciles a sensible woman to the duties of her new situation; and that which was at first irksome, becomes, in a short time, not only endurable, but a source of real gratification. The value of an industrious, active, and cheerful partner, can be estimated by no one so well as a settler in a new colony. It is to her that he owes all his domestic comforts and enjoyments. Like the prudent housewife described by King Solomon, “She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” Her accomplishments are numerous, but not exactly those that a fine lady in England might expect. Her skill is shown in the arts of manufacturing maple sugar; candle and soap-making; baking, cooking, salting meat and fish, knitting stockings and mittens, spinning woollen yarns, feeding poultry, managing a dairy, and, lastly, in mending and making clothes for herself, her husband, and children. These are the occupations of an emigrant’s wife; and if a female cannot resolve to enter upon them cheerfully, she should never think of settling in the woods of Canada or New Brunswick.