Chapter 11

CORDUROY.

'They wor very kind to us,' observed Andy, from his elevation in the waggon; 'an' this counthry bates all the world at 'ating and dhrinking.'

This to Arthur Wynn, who was seated rather despondingly in front of the collection of boxes, pots, and pails, which formed their stock-in-trade for bush life. Sam Holt and Robert were walking on before the horse, a furlong ahead; but Arthur had dropped behind for meditation's sake, and taken up his residence on the waggon for awhile, with his cap drawn over his eyes. I dare say Miss Bell had something to do with the foolish boy's regret for leaving Maple Grove.

'Every day was like a Christmas or an Aisther,' continued Andy, who had no idea that any one could prefer silence to conversation; 'an' the sarvints had parlour fare in the kitchen always, an' a supper that was like a dinner, just before goin' to bed. Throth, they had fine times of it--puddins an' pies, if you plaze: the bare lavins would feed a family at home. An' it's the same, they tell me, in all the farmers' houses round about. I never thought to see so much vittles.'

No reply could be elicited from Mr. Arthur Wynn but a grunt.

'Didn't you?' put in the driver, with a small sneer. Andy had deemed him too far distant to catch his words, as he walked beside his horse.

'Why, then, you've long ears, my man; but sure it's kind for ye,' retorted Mr. Callaghan, his eye twinkling wickedly. I fear that his subtle irony was lost upon its subject. 'Of coorse I'm not used to ye're foreign food. Our vittles at home are a dale dacenter, though not so common.'

And Arthur, through his half-drowsy ears, was amused by the colloquy that ensued, in the course of which Andy completely floored the Canadian by a glowing description of Dunore, delivered in the present tense, but referring, alas! to a period of sixteen or twenty years previously. But the smart black-eyed backwoodsman wound up with the utterly incredulous speech,--

'They left all them riches to come and settle in our bush! whew!' He jerked his whip resoundingly upon the frying-pan and tin-kettle in the rear, which produced a noise so curiously illustrative of his argument, that Arthur laughed heartily, and shook off his fit of blues.

The aspect of nature would have helped him to do that. The thousand dyes of the woods were brilliant, as if the richest sunset had gushed from the heavens, and painted the earth with a permanent glory of colour. A drapery of crimson and gold endued the maples; the wild bines and briars were covered with orange and scarlet berries; the black-plumed pine trees rose solemnly behind. A flat country, for the most part; and, as the travellers slowly receded westward, settlements became sparse and small; the grand forests closed more densely round them; solitary clearings broke the monotony of trees.

The first of anything that one sees or experiences remains stronger than all after impressions on the memory. With what interest did the embryo settlers regard the first veritable log-hut that presented itself, surrounded by half an acre of stumps, among which struggled potatoes and big yellow squashes. A dozen hens pecked about; a consumptive-looking cow suspended her chewing, as also did her master his hoeing, to gaze after the waggon, till it disappeared beyond the square frame of forest which shut in the little clearing.

Again the long lines of stately oaks and firs, with a straight and apparently endless road between them, like the examples of perspective in beginners' drawing-books, but with the vanishing point always receding.

'I see they've turnpiked this road since I was on it before,' observed the driver.

'Where?' asked Andy, looking about. 'I don't see a turnpike--an' sure I ought to know a tollman's dirty face in any place. Sorra house here at all at all, or a gate; or a ha'porth except trees,' he added in a disgusted manner.

'There,' said the Canadian, pointing to a ploughed line along each side of the road, whence the earth had been thrown up in the centre by a scraper; 'that's turnpiking.'

'Ye might have invented a new name,' rejoined the Irishman, with an offended air, 'an' not be mislading people. I thought it was one of the ould pike-gates where I used to have to pay fourpince for me, ass and car; an' throth, much as I hated it, I'd be a'most glad to see one of the sort here, just for company's sake. A mighty lonesome counthry ye have, to be sure!'

'Well, we can't be far from Greenock now; and I see a bit of a snake fence yonder.'

It was another clearing, on a more enterprising scale than the last described; the forest had been pushed back farther, and a good wooden house erected in the open space; zigzag rail fences enclosed a few fields almost clear of stumps, and an orchard was growing up behind. A man in a red shirt, who was engaged in underbrushing at a little distance, said that 'the town' was only a mile away--Greenock, on the Clyde.

Alas for nomenclature! The waggon scrambled down a rather steep declivity, towards a dozen houses scattered beside a stream: stumps stood erect in the single short street, and a ferry-boat was the only craft enlivening the shore. A Greenock without commerce or warehouses, a Clyde without wharves or ships, or the possibility of either--what mere travestie effected by a name!

'A nest of Scottish emigrants, I suppose,' said Robert Wynn, as he contemplated 'the town.'

'Yes, and they'll push their place up to something,' replied Sam Holt: 'if pluck and perseverance can do it, they will. Only one enemy can ruin a Scotchman here, and that's the "drap drink." Ten to one that in twenty years you find this ground covered with factories and thousands of houses; that solitary store is the germ of streets of shops, and the tavern will expand into half a score hotels. Sandy will do it all.'

'I'm afraid you could not speak so well of Irish progress.'

'Because the canker of their religion continues to produce its legitimate effects in most cases; and the influence of whisky--the great bane of social life in our colony--is even more predominant than over the lower class Scotch settlers. Still, they do infinitely better here than at home; and you'll meet with many a flourishing Hibernian in the backwoods and pioneer cities.'

'I presume this is a pioneer city?' looking round at the handful of wooden shanties.

'Don't despise it; Rome had as small a beginning, and was manned by no more indomitable hands and hearts than our frontier emigrants.'

'We are producing quite a sensation,' said Robert. For the major part of the inhabitants came out of doors to view the strangers, with that curiosity which characterizes a new-born society; many of the men bethought themselves of some business at the wooden tavern by the water-side, where the waggon drew up and the new arrivals entered in.

A store where everything was sold, from a nail or a spool of 'slack' to a keg of spirits or an almanac: sold for money when it could be had, for flour or wool or potash when it couldn't; likewise a post-office, whither a stage came once a week with an odd passenger, or an odd dozen of newspapers and letters; likewise the abode of a magistrate, where justice was occasionally dispensed and marriages performed. The dwelling that united all these offices in its single person, was a long, low, framed house, roofed with shingles, and but one storey in height; proprietor, a certain canny Scot, named Angus Macgregor, who, having landed at Quebec with just forty shillings in the world, was making rapid strides to wealth here, as a landed proprietor and store-keeper without rivalry. Others of the clan Gregor had come out, allured by tidings of his prosperity; and so the broad Doric of lowland Scotch resounded about the tavern table almost as much as the Canadian twang.

All doing well. Labour was the sole commodity they possessed, and it sufficed to purchase the best things of life in Canada, especially that slow upward rising in circumstances and possessions which is one of the sweetest sensations of struggling humanity, and which only a favoured few among the working classes can enjoy at home. Robert Wynn was almost as curious about their affairs as they were about his; for he was energized afresh by every instance of progress, and little inducement was required to draw from the settlers their own histories, which had the single monotony running through each of gradual growth from poverty to prosperity.

'What sort of roads have you across the ferry to the Cedars?' inquired Sam Holt of mine host.

'The first part of the concession line is pretty good, but I canna say as much for the "corduroy" afterwards: the riding's not so easy there, I guess.'

'Corduroy!' ejaculated Arthur.

'Oh, wait till you feel it,' said Sam, with much amusement in his eyes. 'It's indescribable. I hope we won't meet in the dark, that's all.'

'Drivin' across ladders for ever, with the rungs very far apart,' explained a Canadian to Andy, in the background, as the latter rubbed his finger-tips over the ribs in the material of his pantaloons, and looked puzzled.

'An' what description of vahicle stands sich thratement?' asked Mr. Callaghan, 'an' what description of baste?'

'Oxen is the handiest, 'cos they've the strongest legs,' returned his informant, with a fresh puff of his pipe.

'Well, of all the counthries'--began Andy, for the twentieth time that day; and perhaps as many as ten additional utterances of the ejaculation were forced by the discovery that he and the gentlemen were to occupy the same sleeping apartment; but, above all, by the revelation that behind a ragged curtain in the corner reposed two wayfaring women, going to join their husbands in the woods, and having also a baby. The latter creature, not being at all overawed by its company, of course screamed in the night whenever the fancy seized it; and good-natured Andy found himself at one period actually walking up and down with the warm bundle of flannel in his arms, patting it on the back soothingly.

Next morning they left the little settlement, and, crossing the ferry again, plunged into the primeval forest. Robert felt as if that mock Clyde were the Rubicon of their fate.

'I leave the old degenerate life,' he murmured to himself, 'with all its traditions of ease. I go forth to face Fortune in these wilds, and to win her, if ever sturdy toil of limb and brain succeeded.'

This spirit of independence was manly, but Robert did not at the moment join to it the nobler spirit of dependence on the Divine Disposer of events: self-trust filled his heart; and this is the great snare of youth.

'You are looking unusually valorous,' said Sam Holt, who marched alongside. He had volunteered to stay with them for their first fortnight of bush life, like a kind fellow as he was. Something about these young Wynns had attracted his regard, and perhaps a touch of compassion. He would, at least, help them to put up the shanty, he said.

And truly the road grew very bad; at a short bit of swamp they made their first acquaintance with 'corduroy.' Sam explained the structure when the waggon had done bumping over it: trunks of trees had been laid along the road as 'sleepers' in three continuous lines; and across them round logs, close together by theory, but in practice perhaps a foot or two apart, with unknown abysses of mud between.

They wished even for the corduroy expedient a little farther on, when the line became encumbered with stumps left from the underbrushing, and which caught in the axletree every few score yards. Now came the handspikes into action, which provident Sam had cut, and laid into the waggon when the road was fair and smooth; for the wheels had to be lifted high enough to slip over the obstacles. In the pauses of manual labour came the chilling thought, 'All this difficulty between us and home.'

Sunlight faded from the tree-tops; and soon night was descending darkly among the pines.

'We must either camp in the woods, or get shelter at some settler's,' decided Sam. 'We'll try a quarter of a mile farther, and see what it brings.' So away they went again, shouting at the oxen, and endeavouring to steer the equipage free of mud-holes and stumps.

'I am afraid our cups and saucers are all in a smash,' said Arthur. Robert had a secret misgiving to the same effect; but, then, crockeryware is a luxury to which no shanty-man has a right. Andy rescued a washing basin and ewer, by wearing the former on his head and the latter on his left arm--helmet and shield-wise; except at intervals, when he took his turn at handspiking.

A light gleamed through the trees, and a dog barked simultaneously: they were on the verge of a clearing; and, hearing the voices outside, the owner of the house came forth to welcome the travellers, with a heartiness widely different from the commonplace hospitality of more crowded countries.