Part 9

The population consists principally of artisans--as blacksmiths, carpenters, builders, all flourishing. There is, I fear, a good deal of drunkenness and profligacy; for though the people have work and wealth, they have neither education nor amusements. Besides the seven taverns, there is a number of little grocery stores, which are, in fact, drinking houses. And though a law exists, which forbids the sale of spirituous liquors in small quantities by any but licensed publicans, they easily contrive to elude the law; as thus:--a customer enters the shop, and asks for two or three pennyworth of nuts, or cakes, and he receives a few nuts, and a large glass of whisky. The whisky, you observe, is given, not sold, and no one can swear to the contrary. In the same manner, the severe law against selling intoxicating liquors to the poor Indians is continually eluded or violated, and there is no redress for the injured, no punishment to reach the guilty. It appears to me that the Government should be more careful in the choice of the district-magistrates. While I was in London, a person who acted in this capacity was carried from the pavement dead drunk.

WOMEN IN CANADA.

Here, as everywhere else, I find the women of the better class lamenting over the want of all society, except of the lowest grade in manners and morals. For those who have recently emigrated, and are settled more in the interior, there is absolutely no social intercourse whatever; it is quite out of the question. They seem to me perishing of _ennui_, or from the want of sympathy which they cannot obtain, and, what is worse, which they cannot feel: for being in general unfitted for out-door occupations, unable to comprehend or enter into the interests around them, and all their earliest prejudices and ideas of the fitness of things continually outraged in a manner exceedingly unpleasant, they may be said to live in a perpetual state of inward passive discord and fretful endurance--

"All too timid and reserved For onset, for resistance too inert-- Too weak for suffering, and for hope too tame."

In women, as now educated, there is a strength of local habits and attachments, a want of cheerful self-dependence, a cherished physical delicacy, a weakness of temperament,--deemed, and falsely deemed, in deference to the pride of man, essential to feminine grace and refinement,--altogether unfitting them for a life which were otherwise delightful:--the active out-of-door life in which she must share and sympathise, and the inn-door occupations which in England are considered servile; for a woman who cannot perform for herself and others all household offices, has no business here. But when I hear some men declare that they cannot endure to see women eat, and others speak of brilliant health and strength in young girls as being rude and vulgar, with various notions of the same kind too grossly absurd and perverted even for ridicule, I cannot wonder at any nonsensical affectations I meet with in my own sex; nor can I do otherwise than pity the mistakes and deficiencies of those who are sagely brought up with the one end and aim--to get married.

A woman, blessed with good health, a cheerful spirit, larger sympathies, larger capabilities of reflection and action, some knowledge of herself, her own nature, and the common lot of humanity, with a plain understanding, which has been allowed to throw itself out unwarped by sickly fancies and prejudices,--such a woman would be as happy in Canada as anywhere in the world. A weak, frivolous, half-educated, or ill-educated woman may be as miserable in the heart of London as in the heart of the forest. But there her deficiencies are not so injurious, and are supplied to herself and others by the circumstances and advantages around her.

I have heard it laid down as a principle, that the purpose of education is to fit us for the circumstances in which we are likely to be placed. I deny it absolutely. Even if it could be exactly known (which it cannot) what those circumstances may be, I should still deny it. Education has a far higher object. I remember to have read of some Russian prince (was it not Potemkin?), who, when he travelled, was preceded by a gardener, who around his marquee scattered an artificial soil, and stuck into it shrubs and bouquets of flowers, which, while assiduously watered, looked pretty for twenty-four hours perhaps, then withered or were plucked up. What shallow barbarism to take pleasure in such a mockery of a garden! better the wilderness--better the waste! that forest, that rock yonder, with creeping weeds around it! An education that is to fit us for circumstances, seems to me like that Russian garden. No; the true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develope, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which God who made us has endowed us. Then we shall be fitted for all circumstances, or know how to fit circumstances to ourselves. Fit us for circumstances! Base and mechanical! Why not set up at once a "_fabrique d'education_," and educate us by steam? The human soul, be it man's or woman's, is not, I suppose, an empty bottle, into which you shall pour and cram just what you like, and as you like; nor a plot of waste soil, in which you shall sow what you like; but a divine, a living germ planted by an almighty hand, which you may indeed render more or less productive, or train to this or that form--no more. And when you have taken the oak sapling, and dwarfed it, and pruned it, and twisted it, into an ornament for the jardiniere in your drawing-room, much have you gained truly; and a pretty figure your specimen is like to make in the broad plain and under the free air of heaven!

* * * * *

THE TALBOT COUNTRY.

The plan of travel I had laid down for myself did not permit of my making any long stay in this new London. I was anxious to push on to the Talbot Settlement, or, as it is called here, the Talbot _Country_, a name not ill-applied to a vast tract of land stretching from east to west along the shore of Lake Erie, and of which Colonel Talbot is the sovereign _de facto_, if not _de jure_--be it spoken without any derogation to the rights of our lord the king. This immense settlement, the circumstances to which it owed its existence, and the character of the eccentric man who founded it on such principles as have insured its success and prosperity, altogether inspired me with the strongest interest and curiosity.

To the residence of this "big chief," as an Indian styled him--a solitary mansion on a cliff above Lake Erie, where he lived alone in his glory--was I now bound, without exactly knowing what reception I was to meet there, for that was a point which the despotic habits and eccentricities of this hermit-lord of the forest rendered a little doubtful. The reports I had heard of his singular manners, of his being a sort of woman-hater, who had not for thirty years allowed a female to appear in his sight, I had partly discredited, yet enough remained to make me feel a little nervous. However, my resolution was taken, and the colonel had been apprised of my intended visit, though of his gracious acquiescence I was yet to learn; so, putting my trust in Providence, as heretofore, I prepared to encounter the old buffalo in his lair.

From the master of the inn at London I hired a vehicle and a driver for eight dollars. The distance was about thirty miles; the road, as my Irish informant assured me, was quite "iligant!" but hilly, and so broken by the recent storms, that it was thought I could not reach my destination before nightfall, and I was advised to sleep at the little town of St. Thomas, about twelve or fifteen miles on this side of Port Talbot. However, I was resolute to try, and, with a pair of stout horses and a willing driver, did not despair. My conveyance from Blandford had been a baker's cart, on springs; but springs were a luxury I was in future to dispense with. My present vehicle, the best to be procured, was a common cart, with straw at the bottom; in the midst a seat was suspended on straps, and furnished with a cushion, not of the softest. A board nailed across the front served for the driver, a quiet, demure-looking boy of fifteen or sixteen, with a round straw hat and a fustian jacket. Such was the elegant and appropriate equipage in which the "chancellor's lady," as they call me here, paid her first visit of state to the "great Colonel Talbot."

On leaving the town, we crossed the Thames on a wooden bridge, and turned to the south through a very beautiful valley, with cultivated farms and extensive clearings on every side. I was now in the Talbot country, and had the advantage of travelling on part of the road constructed under the colonel's direction, which, compared with those I had recently travelled, was better than tolerable. While we were slowly ascending an eminence, I took the opportunity of entering into some discourse with my driver, whose very demure and thoughtful, though boyish face, and very brief, but pithy and intelligent replies to some of my questions on the road, had excited my attention. Though perfectly civil, and remarkably self-possessed, he was not communicative nor talkative; I had to pluck out the information blade by blade, as it were. And here you have my catechism, with question and response, word for word, as nearly as possible.

THE EMIGRANT BOY.

"Were you born in this country?"

"No; I'm from the old country."

"From what part of it?"

"From about Glasgow."

"What is your name?"

"Sholto ----."

"Sholto!--that is rather an uncommon name, is it not?"

"I was called Sholto after a son of Lord Douglas. My father was Lord Douglas's gardener."

"How long have you been here?"

"I came over with my father about five years, ago." (In 1832.)

"How came your father to emigrate?"

"My father was one of the commuted pensioners, as they call them.[10] He was an old soldier in the veteran battalion, and he sold his pension of fivepence a day for four years and a grant of land, and came out here. Many did the like."

"But if he was gardener to Lord Douglas, he could not have suffered from want."

"Why, he was not a gardener _then_; he was a weaver; he worked hard enough for us. I remember often waking in the middle of the night, and seeing my father working still at his loom, as if he would never give over, while my mother and all of us were asleep."

"All of us!--how many of you?"

"There were six of us: but my eldest brother and myself could do something."

"And you all emigrated with your father?"

"Why, you see, at last he couldn't get no work, and trade was dull, and we were nigh starving. I remember I was always hungry then--always."

"And you all came out?"

"All but my eldest brother. When we were on the way to the ship, he got frightened and turned back, and wouldn't come. My poor mother cried very much, and begged him hard. Now the last we heard of him is, that he is very badly off, and can't get no work at all."

"Is your father yet alive?"

"Yes, he has land up in Adelaide."

"Is your mother alive?"

"No; she died of the cholera, coming over. You see the cholera broke out in the ship, and fifty-three people died, one after t'other, and were thrown into the sea. My mother died, and they threw her into the sea. And then my little sister, only nine months old, died, because there was nobody to take care of her, and they threw _her_ into the sea--poor little thing!"

"Was it not dreadful to see the people dying around you? Did you not feel frightened for yourself?"

"Well--I don't know--one got used to it--it was nothing but splash, splash, all day long--first one, then another. There was one Martin on board, I remember, with a wife and nine children--one of those as sold his pension: he had fought in Spain with the Duke of Wellington. Well, first his wife died, and they threw her into the sea; and then _he_ died, and they threw _him_ into the sea; and then the children, one after t'other, till only two were left alive; the eldest, a girl about thirteen, who had nursed them all, one after another, and seen them die--well, _she_ died, and then there was only the little fellow left."

"And what became of him?"

"He went back, as I heard, in the same ship with the captain."

"And did you not think sometimes it might be your turn next."

"No--I didn't; and then I was down with the fever."

"What do you mean by _the fever?_"

"Why, you see, I was looking at some fish that was going by the ship in shoals, as they call it. It was very pretty, and I never saw anything like it, and I stood watching over the ship's side all day long. It poured rain, and I was wet through and through, and felt very cold, and I went into my berth and pulled the blanket round me, and fell asleep. After that I had the fever very bad. I didn't know when we landed at Quebec, and after that I didn't know where we were for five weeks, nor nothing."

I assured him that this was only a natural and necessary consequence of his own conduct, and took the opportunity to explain to him some of those simple laws by which he held both health and existence, to all which he listened with an intelligent look, and thanked me cordially, adding,--

"Then I wonder I didn't die! and it was a great mercy I didn't."

"I hope you will live to think so, and be thankful to Heaven. And so you were detained at Quebec?"

"Yes; my father had some money to receive of his pension, but what with my illness and the expense of living, it soon went; and then he sold his silver watch, and that brought us on to York--that's Toronto now. And then there was a schooner provided by Government to take us on board, and we had rations provided, and that brought us on to Port Stanley, far below Port Talbot; and then they put us ashore, and we had to find our way, and pay our way, to Delaware, where our lot of land was: that cost eight dollars; and then we had nothing left--nothing at all. There were nine hundred emigrants encamped about Delaware, no better off then ourselves."

"What did you do then? Had you not to build a house?"

"No; the Government built each family a house, that is to say, a log-hut, eighteen feet long, with a hole for the chimney; no glass in the windows, and empty of course; not a bit of furniture, not even a table or a chair."

"And how did you live?"

"Why, the first year, my father and us, we cleared a couple of acres, and sowed wheat enough for next year."

"But meantime you must have existed--and without food or money--?"

"O, why we worked meantime on the roads, and got half a dollar a day and rations."

"It must have been rather a hard life?"

"_Hard!_ yes, I believe it was; why, many of them couldn't stand it, no ways. Some died; and then there were the poor children and the women--it was very bad for them. Some wouldn't sit down on their land at all; they lost all heart to see everywhere trees, and trees, and nothing besides. And then they didn't know nothing of farming--how should they? being soldiers by trade. There was one Jim Grey, of father's regiment--he didn't know how to handle his axe, but he could handle his gun well; so he went and shot deer, and sold them to the others; but one day we missed him, and he never came back; and we thought the bears had got him, or may be he cleared off to Michigan--there's no knowing."

"And your father?"

"O, _he_ stuck to his land, and he has now five acres cleared: and he's planted a bit of a garden, and he has two cows and a calf, and two pigs; and he's got his house comfortable--and stopped up the holes, and built himself a chimney."

"That's well; but why are you not with him?"

"O, he married again, and he's got two children, and I didn't like my stepmother, because she didn't use my sisters well, and so I came away."

"Where are your sisters now?"

"Both out at service, and they get good wages; one gets four, and the other gets five dollars a month. Then I've a brother younger than myself, and he's gone to work with a shoe-maker at London. But the man drinks hard--like a great many here--and I'm afeard my brother will learn to drink, and that frets me; and he won't come away, though I could get him a good place any day--no want of places here and good wages too."

"What wages do you receive?"

"Seven dollars a month and my board. Next month I shall have eight."

"I hope you put by some of your wages?"

"Why, I bought a yoke of steers for my father last fall, as cost me thirty dollars, but they wont be fit for ploughing these two years."

(I should inform you, perhaps, that a yoke of oxen fit for ploughing costs about eighty dollars.)

I pointed out to him the advantages of his present situation, compared with what might have been his fate in the old country, and urged him to avoid all temptations to drink, which he promised.

"You can read, I suppose?"

He hesitated and looked down. "I can read in the Testament a little. I never had no other book. But this winter," looking up brightly,--"I intend to give myself some schooling. A man who has reading and writing, and a pair of hands, and keeps sober, may make a fortune here--and so will I, with God's blessing!"

Here he gave his whip a very expressive flourish. We were now near the summit of a hill, which he called Bear Hill; the people, he said, gave it that name because of the number of bears which used to be found here. Nothing could exceed the beauty and variety of the timber trees, intermingled with most luxuriant underwood, and festooned with the wild grape and flowering creepers. It was some time, he said, since a bear had been shot in these woods; but only last spring one of his comrades had found a bear's cub, which he had fed and taken care of, and had sold within the last few weeks to a travelling menagerie of wild beasts for five dollars.

[Footnote 10: Of the commuted pensioners, and their fate in Canada, more will be said hereafter.]

THE FUTURE OF CANADA.

On reaching the summit of this hill, I found myself on the highest land I had yet stood upon in Canada, with the exception of Queenston heights. I stopped the horses and looked around, and on every side, far and near, east, west, north, and south, it was all forest--a boundless sea of forest, within whose leafy recesses lay hidden as infinite variety of life and movement as within the depths of the ocean; and it reposed in the noontide so still and so vast! _Here_ the bright sunshine rested on it in floods of golden light; _there_ cloud-shadows sped over its bosom, just like the effects I remember to have seen on the Atlantic; and here and there rose wreaths of white smoke from the new clearings which, collected into little silver clouds, and hung suspended in the quiet air.

I gazed and meditated till, by a process like that of the Arabian sorcerer of old, the present fell like a film from my eyes: the future was before me, with its towns and cities, fields of waving grain, green lawns and villas, and churches, and temples--turret-crowned: and meadows tracked by the frequent foot-path; and railroads, with trains of rich merchandise steaming along:--for all this _will_ be! Will be? _It is_ already in the sight of Him who hath ordained it, and for whom there is no past nor future: though I cannot behold it with my bodily vision, even _now_ it is.

But is _that_ NOW better than _this_ present NOW? When these forests, with all their solemn depth of shade and multitudinous life have fallen beneath the axe--when the wolf, and bear, and deer are driven from their native coverts, and all this infinitude of animal and vegetable being has made way for restless, erring, suffering humanity, will it then be better? _Better_--I know not; but surely it will be _well_, and right in His eyes who has ordained that thus the course of things shall run. Those who see nothing in civilised life but its complicated cares, mistakes, vanities, and miseries, may doubt this--or despair. For myself, I am of those who believe and hope; who behold in progressive civilisation, progressive happiness, progressive approximation to nature and to nature's God; for are we not in His hands?--and all that He does is good.

Contemplations such as these were in my mind as we descended the Hill of Bears, and proceeded through a beautiful plain, sometimes richly wooded, sometimes opening into clearings and cultivated farms, on which were usually compact farm-houses, each flanked by a barn three times as large as the house, till we came on to a place called Five Stakes, where I found two or three tidy cottages, and procured some bread and milk. The road here was no longer so good, and we travelled slowly and with difficulty for some miles. About five o'clock we reached St. Thomas, one of the prettiest places I had yet seen. Here I found two or three inns, and at one of them, styled the "Mansion House Hotel," I ordered tea for myself and good entertainment for my young driver and his horses, and then walked out.

ST. THOMAS.

St. Thomas is situated on a high eminence, to which the ascent is rather abrupt. The view from it, over a fertile, well settled country, is very beautiful and cheering. The place bears the christian name of Colonel Talbot, who styles it his capital, and, from a combination of advantages, it is rising fast into importance. The climate, from its high position, is delicious and healthful; and the winters in this part of the province are milder by several degrees than elsewhere. At the foot of the cliff, or eminence, runs a deep rapid stream, called the Kettle Creek[11] (I wish they had given it a prettier name), which, after a course of eight miles, and turning a variety of saw-mills, grist-mills, &c., flows into Lake Erie, at Port Stanley, one of the best harbours on this side of the lake. Here steam-boats and schooners land their passengers and merchandise, or load with grain, flour, and lumber. The roads are good all round; and the Talbot road, carried directly through the town, is the finest in the province. This road runs nearly parallel with Lake Erie, from thirty miles below Port Stanley, westward as far as Delaware. The population of St. Thomas is at present rated at seven hundred, and it has doubled within two years. There are three churches, one of which is very neat; and three taverns. Two newspapers are published here, one violently tory, the other as violently radical. I found several houses building, and, in those I entered, a general air of cheerfulness and well-being very pleasing to contemplate. There is here an excellent manufacture of cabinet ware and furniture: some articles of the black walnut, a tree abounding here, appeared to me more beautiful in colour and grain than the finest mahogany; and the elegant veining of the maplewood cannot be surpassed. I wish they were sufficiently the fashion in England to make the transport worth while. Here I have seen whole piles, nay, whole forests of such trees, burning together.

I was very much struck with this beautiful and cheerful little town, more, I think, than with any place I have yet seen.

By the time my horses were refreshed, it was near seven o clock. The distance from Port Talbot is about twelve miles, but hearing the road was good, I resolved to venture. The sky looked turbulent and stormy, but luckily the storm was moving one way while I was moving another; and, except a little sprinkling from the tail of a cloud, we escaped very well.

The road presented on either side a succession of farm-houses and well-cultivated farms. Near the houses there was generally a patch of ground planted with Indian corn and pumpkins, and sometimes a few cabbages and potatoes. I do not recollect to have seen one garden, or the least attempt to cultivate flowers.