Chapter 16

ANDY TREES A 'BASTE.'

Door and window were fitted into the holes cut in the front wall of the shanty, and no carpenter's 'prentice would have owned to such clumsy joinery; but Arthur was flushed with success, because the door could positively shut and the window could open. He even projected tables and chairs in his ambitious imagination, _en suite_ with the bedstead of ironwood poles and platted bass-work bark, which he had already improvised; and which couch of honour would have been awarded by common consent to Mr. Holt, had he not adhered to the hemlock brush with all the affection of an amateur.

The great matter on the minds of our settlers now, was the underbrushing. They might calculate on the whole month of November for their work--the beautiful dreamy November of Canada, as different from its foggy and muddy namesake in Britain as well may be. Measuring off thirty acres as next summer's fallow, by blazing the trees in a line around, took up the best part of a day; and it necessitated also a more thorough examination of Robert's domains. Such giant trees! One monarch pine must be nigh a hundred feet from root to crest. The great preponderance of maple showed that the national leaf symbol of Canada had been suitably selected.

'And is there no means,' quoth Robert, who had been mentally gauging his small axe with the infinitude of forest--'is there no means of getting rid of wood without chopping it down?'

'Well, yes, some slower means still; the trees may be "girdled;" that is, a ring of bark cut from the trunk near the base, which causes death in so far that no foliage appears next spring: consequently the tall melancholy skeleton will preside over your crops without injury.'

'Can't say I admire that plan.'

'You are fastidious. Perhaps you would like "niggers" better?'

'I thought they were contraband in any but slave states.'

'Oh, these are "niggers" inanimate--pieces of wood laid round the trunk, and set on fire where they touch it; of course the tree is burned through in process of time. These two expedients might be useful in subsidiary aids; but you perceive your grand reliance must be on the axe.'

'There is no royal road to felling, any more than to learning. And when may I hope to get rid of the stumps?'

'I don't think the pine stumps ever decay; but the hardwood, or those of deciduous trees, may be hitched up by oxen and a crowbar after six or seven years; or you might burn them down.'

'Hulloa! what's that?'

The exclamation was from Robert, following a much louder exclamation from Andy in advance. 'He has met with some wild animal,' concluded Mr. Holt. He was certainly cutting the strangest capers, and flourishing his hand as if the fingers were burned, howling the while between rage and terror.

'You disgustin' little varmint! you dirty vagabone, to stick all thim things in me hand, an' me only goin' to lay a hold on ye gentle-like, to see what sort of an outlandish baste ye was! Look, Masther Robert, what he did to me with a slap of his tail!'

Callaghan's fingers radiated handsomely with porcupine's quills, some inches long, stuck in pretty strongly and deeply; and the animal himself, quite ready for further offensive warfare, crouched in the fork of a small maple, just out of reach.

'Ah, then, come down here, you unnatural baste, an' may be I won't strip off your purty feathers,' exclaimed Andy with unction.

'Cut down the tree,' suggested Arthur. But the porcupine, being more _au fait_ with the ways of the woods than these new-comers, got away among the branches into a thicket too dense for pursuit.

'They're as sharp as soords,' soliloquized the sufferer, as he picked out the quills from his hand and wrist in rather gingerly fashion, and stanched the blood that followed. 'Masther Robert, avourneen, is he a four-footed baste or a fowl? for he has some of the signs of both on him. Wisha, good luck to the poor ould counthry, where all our animals is dacent and respectable, since St. Patrick gev the huntin' to all the varmint.'

'A thrashing from a porcupine's tail would be no joke,' observed Arthur.

'I've known dogs killed by it,' said Mr. Holt. 'The quills work into all parts of their bodies, and the barbed points make extraction very difficult.'

'I believe the Indians use these in some sort of embroidery.' Robert held in his hand a bunch of the quills such as had wounded Andy's fingers. 'I've seen penholders of them, when I little thought I should handle the unsophisticated originals out here.'

Before this time he had learned how enervating were reminiscences of home; he resolutely put away the remembrance from him now, and walked on to chop the blaze on the next tree. Breast-high the mark was cut, and at one blaze another could always be discerned ahead.

'I've a regard for the beeches and elms,' quoth he, as he hacked at a hickory stem. 'They are home trees; but the shrubs have chiefly foreign faces, so I can chop them down without compunction.'

'All such sentimental distinctions will evaporate when you get into the spirit of your work,' said his friend Sam. 'Your underbrushing rule does not spare anything less than six inches in diameter; all must be cut close to the ground, and piled in heaps for the burning.'

'A tolerable job to clear such a thicket as this! What a network of roots must interlace every foot of soil!'

'Rather, I should say. But the first crop will amply repay your pains, even though your wheat and Indian corn struggle into existence through stumps and interlacing roots. Then there's the potash--thirty dollars a barrel for second quality: less than two and a half acres of hardwood timber will produce a barrel.'

'I don't quite understand.'

'Next summer, after your logging bee, you'll know what I mean. This creek is as if 'twas made on purpose for an ashery.'

'By the way, here's my site for a town plot;' as they came to a fine natural cascade over a granite barrier, after which plunge the stream hurried down the slope towards the beaver meadow. 'Water power for half a dozen mills going to waste there, Holt.'

'Let's give it a name!' sang out Arthur--'this our city of magnificent intentions.'

'I hope you won't call it Dublin on the Liffey,' said Mr. Holt. 'How I hate those imported names--sinking our nationality in a ludicrous parody on English topography--such as London on the Thames, Windsor, Whitby, Woodstock; while the language that furnished "Toronto," "Quebec," "Ottawa," lies still unexplored as a mine of musical nomenclature.'

'In default of an Indian name,' said Robert, 'let us call our future settlement after the existing fact--CEDAR CREEK.'

'And posterity can alter it, if it chooses,' rejoined Arthur. 'All right. Now I'll cut down this birch where the post-office is to stand hereafter;' and a few sturdy blows of his axe prostrated the young tree. 'When I'm writing to Linda, I shall date from Cedar Creek, which will give her an exalted idea of our location: at the same time she will be convinced it is situated on the seashore, if I forget to say that in Canada every stream is a "creek."'

'Our people have an absurd partiality for what they imagine "handsome names,"' said Mr. Holt. 'Not satisfied with giving their children the most far-fetched they can discover,--for instance, we have a maid Armenia, at Maple Grove, and I could not resist designating her brother as Ararat, by way of localizing their relationship,--but also the young settlements of the country have often the most bombastic names. In the backwoods, one time, I found a party of honest settlers in a tavern over an old romance, searching for some sufficiently high-sounding title to confer on their cluster of cabins.'

'I was amused to find that Zack Bunting's eldest son is called Nimrod, familiarized to "Nim,"' said Robert. 'I never saw a more remarkable likeness to a parent, in body and mind, than that youth exhibits; every tuft of ragged beard and every twinkle of the knowing little eyes are to match.'

Nearing the shanty they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee ditty at the top of his powerful voice.

No manner of apology for having opened their cellar, and made free with their barrel of pork, did he seem to think necessary; but when his meal was finished, he inquired abruptly why they hadn't built their chimney of 'cats'? 'For I reckon this stick chimney will blaze up some night,' added he.

Robert hearkened at that startling intimation.

'Mine is of cats,' said Mr. Logan. 'Cats is clay,' he continued sententiously, 'kinder like straw an' clay mixed up. I guess I'll stay an' help you to fix one to-morrow, if you've a mind to.'

With rugged but real kindness, he took a day from his hunting excursion for the purpose. The framework of the new chimney was of four upright poles, set in one corner of the shanty, and laced across by rungs of wood, round which the clay was well kneaded, and plastered inside. An opening three feet high was left for the fireplace in front. Peter promised that by and by the clay would burn hard and red, like tilework.

'I wonder you have not built yourself a handsome house, before now,' said Mr. Wynn, 'instead of that handsome barn. Why you live in a shanty, while your corn is in a frame building, puzzles me.'

'Ay,' assented the settler, 'but the frame barn is paving the way for the frame house, I calculate: Benny'll have both; and for the present I'd sooner have my crops comfortable than myself;' a persuasion which Robert afterwards found to be rooted in common sense, for the Canadian climate permits not of stacks or ricks wintering in the open air.

After his usual unmannerly fashion, Mr. Logan bade no farewell, but shouldered his gun at some hour prior to daybreak, and knapsack on back, left the sleeping camp by the light of a young moon.