Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life

A night train drew up slowly alongside the platform at the Euston Square terminus. Immediately the long inanimate line of rail-carriages burst into busy life: a few minutes of a...

Robert Wynn returned home to Dunore, having gained nothing by his London trip but a little of that bitter though salutary tonic called experience. His resolve did not waver--nay...

'I declar, if you hain't 'most skeered me!' was Peter's exclamation. 'For sartin I never seed a ghost, but it looked like enough this time. Now, do tell what brought you so far...

Mr. Wynn became his magisterial functions well, though exercised after a primitive fashion, without court-house or bench whence to issue his decisions, without clerk to record t...

During the momentary pause that followed the bringing up of the ice-boat broadside to the breeze, they could hear the fluctuating surge of deep waters, sucking, plunging--in tha...

Three men stood with their axes amid the primeval forest. Vast trunks rose around them to an altitude of thirty or even fifty feet without a bough; above, 'a boundless contiguit...

A roaring fire of logs upon the wide hearth, logs built up into walls and roof, logs wrought into rough furniture of tables and stools--here, within the emigrant's hut, the all-...

From the buffalo robes of the sleigh emerged a gentleman so wrapped in lynx-furs and bearskin, that, until his face stood revealed by the firelight, nothing but his voice was re...

The chill of foreignness and loneliness which had been creeping over Robert Wynn's sensations since he had entered the strange city, was dissipated as if a cloud had suddenly li...

What could be the matter? Ponto, at all events, seemed to think it of much importance, for he never ceased to pull their skirts and whine an entreaty, and go through the pantomi...

One day it happened that about noon, while Arthur was 'brushing' at a short distance from the shanty, he noticed a pack of grouse among the underwood within shot. Dropping his a...

Robert drew his paddle into the canoe, and sat perfectly still for some moments, gazing towards the fire and taking in its circumstances. They could hear the dull roar of the bl...

Little Jay could hardly be persuaded into the belief that they were now sailing on a river; that the swift broad tide bearing against them, more than one hundred and twenty mile...

A summer more glorious than our settlers could have imagined, followed on the steps of the tardy spring. What serene skies--what brilliant sunshine--what tropical wealth of verd...

There could hardly be a wider contrast than between Captain Argent's usual dinner at his regimental mess, and that of which he now partook in the lumbermen's shanty. Tables and...

Into Robert Wynn's mind, during that sleigh-drive under the northern lights, had entered one or two novel ideas. The first was a plan for frustrating the grasping storekeeper's...

'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 th...

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 Rober...

'We'd ha' best sugar off the whole lot _al_together,' Zack had said, and being the only one of the makers who knew anything about the manufacture, he was permitted to prescribe...

Next summer brought a scourge of frequent visitation to the 'Corner.' Lake fever and ague broke out among the low-lying log-houses, and Zack's highly adulterated and heavily pri...

Linda soon learned to hail it with delight. For the overwhelming labours of the other six days were suspended during this bright first: the woodman's axe lay quietly in its nich...

With this impressive ejaculation, Andy Callaghan backed on the wharf to take a completer view of the wondrous whole. His untravelled imagination had hitherto pictured steamers a...

Hiram Holt was proud of his ancestry. Not that he had sixteen quarterings whereof to boast, or even six; his pedigree could have blazoned an escutcheon only with spade, and shut...

Meanwhile the noonday dinner at Davidson's bee progressed merrily. The mighty maskelongé disappeared piecemeal, simultaneously with a profusion of veal and venison pies, legs an...

We must pass over a year; for so long did Sam Holt continue in Europe. Rambling over many countries, from the heather hills of Scotland and the deep fiords of Norway, to the Alh...

For some sufficient reason, the Yankee storekeeper did not at that time prosecute his avowed intention of foreclosing the mortgage on Daisy Burn. Perhaps there was something to...

And next day Mrs. and Miss Wynn had indeed visitors. Up from the 'Corner' trundled Mrs. Zack Bunting on the ox-sled, accompanied by her son Nimrod, and by her daughter Almeria;...

After seeing most of the thoroughfares of Montreal, and receiving the set of sensations experienced by all new-comers and recorded in all books of Canadian travel--principally w...

Piled on the summit of Cape Diamond, and duplicated in shadow upon the deep waters at its base, three hundred feet below, stands the fortress of Quebec. Edinburgh and Ehrenbreit...

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...

Andy carried his wrath at the captain's company so far as to shake his fist close to that gentleman's bland and courteous back, while he bent forward from his thwart in speaking...

Linda was stooping one morning in the corner of her garden. Some precious plant was there, protected from the full glare of the noon sun by a calico shade, carefully adjusted, a...

He looked again at the landmark--an elm tree at the junction of the lot line and the concession road, which bore the numbers of each, 'Nine, Fifteen,' in very legible figures on...

Now, in the year 1857, came a retributive justice upon Zack Bunting, in the shape of a complete collapse of all his gains and their produce. He had placed them in a New York ban...

Sam Holt had long fixed the first snow as the limit of his stay. He had built his colossal shoes in order to travel as far as Greenock on them, and there take the stage, which c...

Now, while Arthur devoted himself chiefly to the interior carpentering, Robert burned and cleared a patch of fallow to be a garden. Their good friend Hiram Holt, among his other...

This Indian family was only the precursor of half a dozen others, who also established 'camps,' preparatory to their great work of tapping the maple trees. The Wynns found them...

Almost at the same minute Ina appeared among the distant trees, and fired. He had gone off on snow-shoes long before daybreak, to run down the moose he knew to be in the neighbo...

The next great event in our settlers' history was their first logging-bee, preparatory to the planting of fall wheat. The ladies had been quite apprehensive of the scene, for Ro...

Indian summer was succeeded by the 'temps boucaneux,' when hoarfrost drooped noiselessly on the night its silver powder on all the dazzling colouring, presenting nature robed in...

The shanty was ere long lined in a comely manner with the planks which had journeyed up the pond in the ice-boat, affording many an evening's work for Arthur. About Christmas al...

Sleighing was good that year, till the middle of March. Before the season was past, Captain Argent paid a flying visit on his way to the hunting grounds, as usual, and on his re...

The calendar of the settler is apt to get rather confused, owing to the uniformity of his life and the absence of the landmarks of civilisation. Where 'the sound of the church-g...

When the affair of the mill was arranged, and Robert's mind's eye beheld it already built and noisily flourishing, they sauntered along the bend of the pond towards where the ch...

Several days were employed in plastering all the crevices of the shanty with clay, cutting out a doorway and a single window in the front wall, and building a hearth and chimney...

'What would you do if you were rocking and rolling in a transport five months round the Cape? All in good time, dear: I have one or two trifling matters to settle;' and he went...