Chapter 20

A MEDLEY.

'We may soon expect winter,' said Sam Holt, as he drew forth his gigantic snow-shoes, which had been standing up against the interior wall of the shanty, and now emerged into the brilliant sunshine.

'Soon expect it!' ejaculated Robert; 'why, I should say it had very decidedly arrived already. I am sure twelve inches of snow must have fallen last afternoon and night.'

'It is late this year; I've seen it deep enough for sleighing the second week in November; and from this till March the ground will be hidden, generally under a blanket four feet thick. You are only on the outskirts of winter as yet.'

'Four months! I wonder it doesn't kill all vegetation.'

'On the contrary, it is the best thing possible for vegetation. Only for the warm close covering of snow, the intense and long-continued frost would penetrate the soil too deeply to be altogether thawed by the summer sun.'

'I was very much struck,' said Robert, 'by seeing, in a cemetery near Quebec, a vault fitted with stone shelves, for the reception of the bodies of people who die during winter, as they cannot be properly interred till the next spring.'

'Yes; Lower Canada is much colder than our section of the Province. Learned men say something about the regular northward tendency of the isothermal lines from east to west; certain it is that, the farther west you go, the higher is the mean annual temperature, back to the Pacific, I believe. So the French Canadians have much the worst of the cold. You might have noticed flights of steps to the doors of the _habitans_? That was a provision against snowing time; and another proof of the severity of the frost is that any mason work not bedded at least three feet deep into the earth is dislodged by the April thaws.

'Now what would you say to freezing up your winter stores of meat and fowls? They're obliged to do it in Lower Canada. Fresh mutton, pork, turkeys, geese, fowls, and even fish, all stiff and hard as stone, are packed in boxes and stowed away in a shed till wanted. The only precaution needful is to bring out the meat into the kitchen a few days before use, that it may have time to thaw. Yet I can tell you that winter is our merriest time; for snow, the great leveller, has made all the roads, even the most rickety corduroy, smooth as a bowling-green; consequently sleighing and toboggin parties without end are carried on.'

'That's a terribly hard word,' remarked Arthur.

'It represents great fun, then, which isn't generally the case with hard words. A toboggin is an Indian traineau of birch-bark, turned up at one end, and perfectly level with the snow. A lady takes her seat on this, and about a foot and a half of a projection behind her is occupied by a gentleman, who is the propelling instrument for the vehicle. He tucks one leg under him, and leaves the other trailing on the snow behind, as a rudder. I should have told you that, first of all, the adventurous pair must be on the top of a slope; and when all is ready, the gentleman sets the affair in motion by a vigorous kick from his rudder leg. Of course the velocity increases as they rush down the slope; and unless he is a skilful steersman, they may have a grand upset or be embosomed in a drift; however, the toboggin and its freight generally glides like an arrow from the summit, and has received impetus enough to carry it a long distance over the smooth surface of the valley at foot.'

'How first-rate it must be!' exclaimed Arthur. 'But we shall never see a human being in these backwoods;' and over his handsome face came an expression of _ennui_ and weariness which Robert disliked and dreaded. 'Come, Holt, I'm longing to have a try at the snow-shoes:' and his white volatile nature brightened again immediately at the novelty.

'I'm afraid they're too long for this clearing, among all the stumps,' said the manufacturer; 'you may wear them eighteen inches shorter in the forest than on the roads or plains. At all events, I'll have to beat the path for you first;' and having fixed his mocassined feet in the walking thong and heel-cord, with his toes just over the 'eye,' he began to glide along, first slowly and then swiftly. Now was the advantage of the immense sole visible; for whereas Robert and Arthur sank far above their ankles at every step in the loose dry snow, Mr. Holt, though much the heaviest of the three, was borne on the top buoyantly.

'You see the great necessity is,' said he, returning by a circuit, 'that the shoe should never press into the snow; so you must learn to drag it lightly over the surface, which requires some little practice. To render that easier, I've beaten the track slightly.'

'Holt, are those genuine Indian mocassins?' asked Robert, as he ungirded his feet from the straps of the snow-shoes.

'Well, they're such as I've worn over many a mile of Indian country,' was the answer; 'and I can recommend them as the most agreeable _chaussure_ ever invented. Chiropodists might shut shop, were mocassins to supersede the ugly and ponderous European boot, in which your foot lies as dead as if it had neither muscles nor joints. Try to cross a swamp in boots, and see how they'll make holes and stick in them, and only come up with a slush, leaving a pool behind; but mocassined feet trip lightly over: the tanned deer-hide is elastic as a second skin, yet thick enough to ward off a cut from thorns or pebbles, while giving free play to all the muscles of the foot.'

'You haven't convinced me: it's but one remove from bare-footedness. Like a good fellow, show me how I'm to manage these monstrous snow-shoes: I feel as queer as in my first pair of skates.'

Mr. Holt did as required. But the best theoretical teaching about anything cannot secure a beginner from failures, and Arthur was presently brought up by several inches of snow gathered round the edges of his boards, and adding no small weight.

'It _will_ work up on them,' said he (as, when a smaller boy, he had been used to blame everything but himself), 'in spite of all I can do.'

'Practice makes perfect,' was Sam Holt's consolatory remark. 'Get the axes, Robert, and we'll go chop a bit.'

'I'll stay awhile by the snow-shoes,' said Arthur.

The others walked away to the edge of the clearing, Mr. Holt having first drawn on a pair of the despised European boots.

Never had Robert seen such transparent calm of heaven and earth as on this glorious winter day. It was as if the common atmosphere had been purified of all grosser particles--as if its component gases had been mixed afresh, for Canadian use only. The cold was hardly felt, though Mr. Holt was sure the thermometer must be close upon zero; but a bracing exhilarating sensation strung every nerve with gladness and power.

'You'll soon comprehend how delightful our winter is,' said Sam Holt, noticing his companion's gradually glowing face. 'It has phases of the most bewitching beauty. Just look at this white spruce, at all times one of our loveliest trees, with branches feathering down to the ground, and every one of its innumerable sea-green leaves tipped with a spikelet which might be a diamond!'

They did stand before that splendid tree--magnificent sight!

'I wonder it escaped the lumberers when they were here; they have generally pretty well weeded the forests along this chain of lakes of such fine timber as this spruce. I suppose it's at least a hundred feet high: I've seen some a hundred and forty.'

'And you think lumberers have been chopping in these woods? I saw no signs of them,' said Robert.

'I met with planks here and there, hewed off in squaring the timber: but even without that, you know, they're always the pioneers of the settler along every stream through Canada. This lake of yours communicates with the Ottawa, through the river at the "Corner," which is called "Clyde" farther on, and is far too tempting a channel for the lumberers to leave unused.'

The speaker stopped at the foot of a Balm-of-Gilead fir, on the edge of the swamp, and partially cleared away the snow, revealing a tuft of cranberries, much larger and finer than they are ever seen in England.

'I noticed a bed of them here the other day. Now if you want a proof of the genial influence of the long-continued snow on vegetation, I can tell you that these cranberries--ottakas, the French Canadians call them--go on ripening through the winter under three or four feet of snow, and are much better and juicier than in October, when they are generally harvested. That cedar swamp ought to be full of them.'

'I wonder can they be preserved in any way,' said Robert, crushing in his lips the pleasant bitter-sweet berry. 'Linda is a wonderful hand at preserves, and when she comes'--

The thought seemed to energize him to the needful preparation for that coming: he immediately made a chop at a middle-aged Weymouth pine alongside, and began to cut it down.

'Well, as to preserving the cranberries,' said Mr. Holt, laughing in his slight silent way, 'there's none required; they stay as fresh as when plucked for a long time. But your sister may exercise her abilities on the pailfuls of strawberries, and raspberries, and sand cherries, and wild plums, that fill the woods in summer. As to the cranberry patches, it is a curious fact that various Indian families consider themselves to have a property therein, and migrate to gather them every autumn, squaws and children and all.'

'It appears that my swamp is unclaimed, then,' said Robert, pausing in his blows.

'Not so with your maples,' rejoined the other; 'there's been a sugar camp here last spring, or I'm much mistaken.'

He was looking at some old scars in the trunks of a group of maples, at the back of the Weymouth pine on which Robert was operating.

'Yes, they've been tapped, sure enough; but I don't see the _loupes_--the vats in which they leave the sap to crystallize: if it were a regular Indian "sucrerie," we'd find those. However, I suspect you may be on the look-out for a visit from them in spring--_au temps des sucres_, as the _habitans_ say.'

'And I'm not to assert my superior rights at all?'

'Well, there's certainly sugar enough for both parties during your natural lives, and the Indians will sheer off when they find the ground occupied; so I'd advise you to say nothing about it. Now, Wynn, let your pine fall on that heap of brushwood; 'twill save a lot of trouble afterwards; if not, you'll have to drag the head thither and chop and pile the branches, which is extra work you'd as soon avoid, I dare say.'

After some judicious blows from the more experienced axe, the pine was good enough to fall just as required.

'Now the trunk must be chopped into lengths of twelve or fourteen feet;' and Mr. Holt gashed a mark with his axe at such distances, as well as he could guess. When it was done--

'What's the rate of speed of this work?' asked Robert. 'It seems so slow as to be almost hopeless; the only consideration is, that one is doing it all for one's self, and--for those as dear as self,' he could have added, but refrained.

'About an acre in eight or nine days, according to your expertness,' was the reply. Robert did a little ciphering in his mind immediately. Three axes, plus twenty-seven days (minus Sundays), equal to about the chopping of ten acres and a fraction during the month of December. The calculation was somewhat reassuring.

'What curious curves there are in this Canadian axe!' he remarked, as he stood leaning on the handle and looking down. 'It differs essentially from the common woodman's axe at home.'

'And which the English manufacturers persisted in sending us, and could not be induced to make on precisely the model required, until we dispensed with their aid by establishing an edge-tool factory of our own in Galt, on the Grand River.'

'That was a declaration of independence which must have been very sensibly felt in Sheffield,' remarked Robert.

They worked hard till dinner, at which period they found Arthur limping about the shanty.

'I practised those villainous snow-shoes for several hours, till I walked beautifully; but see what I've got by it,' he said: 'a pain across the instep as if the bones would split.'

'Oh, just a touch of _mal de raquette_,' observed Sam Holt, rather unsympathizingly. 'I ought to have warned you not to walk too much in them at first.'

'And is there no cure?' asked Arthur, somewhat sharply.

'Peter Logan would scarify your foot with a gun-flint, that is, if the pain were bad enough. Do you feel as if the bones were broken, and grinding together across the instep?'

But Arthur could not confess to his experiences being so bad as this. Only a touch of the _mal de raquette_, that was all. Just a-paying for his footing in snow-shoes.