Chapter IV: Part 4

They consist at present of two thousand five hundred, out of the seven or eight thousand who first settled here. Here, as everywhere else, the decrease of the Indian population settled on the reserved lands is uniform. The white population throughout America is supposed to double itself on an average in twenty-three years; in about the same proportion do the Indians perish before them.

The interests and property of these Indians are at present managed by the Government. The revenue arising from the sale of their lands is in the hands of commissioners, and much is done for their conversion and civilisation. It will, however, be the affair of two, or three, or more generations; and by that time not many, I am afraid, will be left. Consumption makes dreadful havoc among them. At present they have churches, schools, and an able missionary who has studied their language, besides several resident Methodist preachers. Of the two thousand five hundred already mentioned, the far greater part retain their old faith and customs, having borrowed from the whites only those habits which certainly "were more honoured in the breach than in the observance." I saw many of these people, and spoke to some, who replied with a quiet, self-possessed courtesy, and in very intelligible English. One group which I met outside the town, consisting of two young men in blanket coats and leggings, one haggard old woman, with a man's hat on her head, a blue blanket and deer-skin moccasins, and a very beautiful girl, apparently not more than fifteen, similarly dressed, with long black hair hanging loose over her face and shoulders, and a little baby, many shades fairer than herself, peeping from the folds of her blanket behind,--altogether reminded me of a group of gipsies, such as I have seen on the borders of Sherwood Forest many years ago.

BRANDTFORD.

The Grand River is navigable for steam-boats from Lake Erie up to the landing-place, about two miles below Brandtford, and from thence a canal is to be cut, some time or other, to the town. The present site of Brandtford was chosen on account of those very rapids which do indeed obstruct the navigation, but turn a number of mills, here of the first importance. The usual progress of a Canadian village is this: first, on some running stream, the erection of a saw-mill and grist-mill for the convenience of the neighbouring scattered settlers; then a few shanties or log-houses for the work-people; then a grocery-store; then a tavern--a chapel--perchance a school-house.

Not having been properly forewarned, I unfortunately allowed the driver to take me to a wrong inn. I ought to have put up at the Mansion-house, well kept by a retired half-pay British officer; instead of which I was brought to the Commercial Hotel, newly undertaken by an American. I sent to the landlord to say I wished to speak to him about proceeding on my journey next day. The next moment the man walked into my bed-room without hesitation or apology. I was too much accustomed to foreign manners to be greatly discomfited; but when he proceeded to fling his hat down on my bed, and throw himself into the only arm-chair in the room, while I was standing, I must own I did look at him with some surprise. To those who have been accustomed to the almost servile courtesy of English innkeepers, the manners of the innkeepers in the United States are not pleasant. I cannot say they ever discomposed me: I always met with civility and attention; but the manners of the country innkeepers in Canada are worse than anything you can meet with in the United States, being generally kept by refugee Americans of the lowest class, or by Canadians who, in affecting American manners and phraseology, grossly exaggerate both.

In the present case I saw at once that no incivility was intended; my landlord was ready at a fair price to drive me over himself, in his own "wagon," to Woodstock; and after this was settled, finding, after a few questions, that the man was really a most stupid, ignorant fellow, I turned to the window, and took up a book, as a hint for him to be gone. He continued, however, to lounge in the chair, rocking himself in silence to and fro, till at last he _did_ condescend to take my hint, and to take his departure.

* * * * *

At ten o'clock next morning, a little vehicle, like that which brought me from Hamilton, was at the door; and I set off for Woodstock, driven by my American landlord, who showed himself as good-natured and civil as he was impenetrably stupid.

No one who has a single atom of imagination, can travel through these forest roads of Canada without being strongly impressed and excited. The seemingly interminable line of trees before you; the boundless wilderness around; the mysterious depths amid the multitudinous foliage, where foot of man hath never penetrated,--and which partial gleams of the noontide sun, now seen, now lost, lit up with a changeful magical beauty,--the wondrous splendour and novelty of the flowers,--the silence, unbroken but by the low cry of a bird, or hum of insect, or the splash and croak of some huge bull-frog,--the solitude in which we proceeded mile after mile, no human being, no human dwelling within sight,--are all either exciting to the fancy, or oppressive to the spirits, according to the mood one may be in.

* * * * *

DRIVE TO WOODSTOCK.

I observed some birds of a species new to me; there was the lovely blue-bird, with its brilliant violet plumage; and a most gorgeous species of woodpecker, with a black head, white breast, and back and wings of the brightest scarlet; hence it is called by some the field-officer, and more generally the cock of the woods. I should have called it the coxcomb of the woods, for it came flitting across our road, clinging to the trees before us, and remaining pertinaciously in sight, as if conscious of its own splendid array, and pleased to be admired.

There was also the Canadian robin, a bird as large as a thrush, but in plumage and shape resembling the sweet bird at home "that wears the scarlet stomacher." There were great numbers of small birds of a bright yellow, like canaries, and I believe of the same genus. Sometimes, when I looked up from the depth of foliage to the blue firmament above, I saw an eagle sailing through the air on apparently motionless wings. Nor let me forget the splendour of the flowers which carpeted the woods on either side. I might have exclaimed with Eichendorff,

"O Welt! Du schoene welt, Du!
Mann sieht Dich vor Bluemen kaum!"

for thus in some places did a rich embroidered pall of flowers literally _hide_ the earth. There those beautiful plants, which we cultivate with such care in our gardens, azalias, rhododendrons, all the gorgeous family of the lobelia, were flourishing in wild luxuriance. Festoons of creeping and parasitical plants hung from branch to branch. The purple and scarlet iris, blue larkspur, and the elegant Canadian columbine with its bright pink flowers; the scarlet lychnis, a species of orchis of the most dazzling geranium-colour, and the white, and yellow, and purple cyprepedium[8], bordered the path, and a thousand others of most resplendent hues, for which I knew no names. I could not pass them with forbearance, and my Yankee driver, alighting, gathered for me a superb bouquet from the swampy margin of the forest. I contrived to fasten my flowers in a wreath along the front of the wagon, that I might enjoy at leisure their novelty and beauty. How lavish, how carelessly profuse, is Nature in her handiwork! In the interior of the cyprepedium, which I tore open, there was variety of configuration and colour, and gem-like richness of ornament, enough to fashion twenty different flowers; and for the little fly, in jewelled cuirass, which I found couched within its recesses--what a palace! that of Aladdin could not have been more splendid!

From Brandtford we came to Paris, a new settlement, beautifully situated, and thence to Woodstock, a distance of eighteen miles. There is no village, only isolated inns, far removed from each other. In one of these, kept by a Frenchman, I dined on milk and eggs and excellent bread. Here I found every appearance of prosperity and plenty. The landlady, an American woman, told me they had come into this wilderness twenty years ago, when there was not another farmhouse within fifty miles. She had brought up and settled in comfort several sons and daughters. An Irish farmer came in, who had refreshments spread for him in the porch, and with whom I had some amusing conversation. He, too, was prospering with a large farm and a large family--here a blessing and a means of wealth, too often in the old country a curse and a burden. The good-natured fellow was extremely scandalised by my homely and temperate fare, which he besought me to mend by accepting a glass of whisky out of his own travelling-store, genuine potheen, which he swore deeply, and not unpoetically, "had never seen God's beautiful world, nor the blessed light of day, since it had been bottled in ould Ireland." He told me, boastingly, that at Hamilton he had made eight hundred dollars by the present extraordinary rise in the price of wheat. In the early part of the year wheat had been selling for three or four dollars a bushel, and rose this summer to twelve and fourteen dollars a bushel, owing to the immense quantities exported during the winter to the back settlements of Michigan and the Illinois.

[Footnote 8: From its resemblance in form to a shoe, this splendid flower bears every where the same name. The English call it lady's-slipper; the Indians know it as the moccasin flower.]

ROADS IN CANADA.

The whole drive would have been productive of unmixed enjoyment, but for one almost intolerable drawback. The roads were throughout so execrably bad, that no words can give you an idea of them. We often sank into mud-holes above the axletree; then, over trunks of trees laid across swamps, called here corduroy roads, were my poor bones dislocated. A wheel here and there, or broken shaft lying by the way-side, told of former wrecks and disasters. In some places they had, in desperation, flung huge boughs of oak into the mud abyss, and covered them with clay and sod, the rich green foliage projecting on either side. This sort of illusive contrivance would sometimes give way, and we were nearly precipitated into the midst. By the time we arrived at Blandford, my hands were swelled and blistered by continually grasping with all my strength an iron bar in front of my vehicle, to prevent myself from being flung out, and my limbs ached wofully. I never beheld or imagined such roads. It is clear that the people do not apply any, even the commonest, principles of roadmaking; no drains are cut, no attempt is made at levelling or preparing a foundation. The settlers around are too much engrossed by the necessary toil for a daily subsistence to give a moment of their time to road-making, without compulsion or good payment. The statute labour does not appear to be duly enforced by the commissioners and magistrates, and there are no labourers, and no spare money: specie, never very plentiful in these parts, is not to be had at present, and the 500,000_l_. voted during the last session of the provincial parliament for the repair of the roads is not yet even raised, I believe.

Nor is this all: the vile state of the roads, the very little communication between places not far distant from each other, leave it in the power of ill-disposed persons to sow mischief among the ignorant, isolated people.

On emerging from a forest road seven miles in length, we stopped at a little inn to refresh the poor jaded horses. Several labourers were lounging about the door, and I spoke to them of the horrible state of the roads. They agreed, one and all, that it was entirely the fault of the Government; that their welfare was not cared for; that it was true that money had been voted for the roads, but that before anything could be done, or a shilling of it expended, it was always necessary to write to the old country to ask the king's permission--which might be sent or not--who could tell? And meantime they were ruined for want of roads, which it was nobody's business to reclaim.

It was in vain that I attempted to point out to the orator of the party the falsehood and absurdity of this notion. He only shook his head, and said he knew better.

One man observed, that as the team of Admiral Vansittart (one of the largest proprietors in the district) had lately broken down in a mud-hole, there was some hope that the roads about here might be looked to.

About sunset I arrived at Blandford, dreadfully weary, and fevered, and bruised, having been more than nine hours travelling twenty-five miles; and I must needs own that not all my _savoir faire_ could prevent me from feeling rather dejected and shy, as I drove up to the residence of a gentleman, to whom, indeed, I had not a letter, but whose family, as I had been assured, were prepared to receive me. It was rather formidable to arrive thus, at fall of night, a wayfaring lonely woman, spiritless, half-dead with fatigue, among entire strangers; but my reception set me at ease in a moment. The words "We have been long expecting you!" uttered in a kind, cordial voice, sounded "like sweetest music to attending ears." A handsome, elegant-looking woman, blending French ease and politeness with English cordiality, and a whole brood of lively children of all sizes and ages, stood beneath the porch to welcome me with smiles and outstretched hands. Can you imagine my bliss, my gratitude?--no!--impossible, unless you had travelled for three days through the wilds of Canada. In a few hours I felt quite at home, and my day of rest was insensibly prolonged to a week, spent with this amiable and interesting family--a week, ever while I live, to be remembered with pleasurable and grateful feelings.

WOODSTOCK.

The region of Canada in which I now find myself, is called the London District; you will see its situation at once by a glance on the map. It lies between the Gore District and the Western District, having to the south a large extent of the coast of Lake Erie; and on the north the Indian territories, and part of the southern shore of Lake Huron. It is watered by rivers flowing into both lakes, but chiefly by the river Thames, which is here (about one hundred miles from its mouth) a small but most beautiful stream, winding like the Isis at Oxford. Woodstock, the nearest _village_, as I suppose I must in modesty call it, is fast rising into an important town, and the whole district is, for its scenery, fertility, and advantages of every kind, perhaps the finest in Upper Canada.[9]

The society in this immediate neighbourhood is particularly good; several gentlemen of family, superior education, and large capital, (among whom is the brother of an English and the son of an Irish peer, a colonel and a major in the army,) have made very extensive purchases of land, and their estates are in flourishing progress.

One day we drove over to the settlement of one of these magnificos, Admiral Vansittart, who has already expended upwards of twenty thousand pounds in purchases and improvements. His house is really a curiosity, and at the first glance reminded me of an African village--a sort of Timbuctoo set down in the woods; it is two or three miles from the high road, in the midst of the forest, and looked as if a number of log-huts had jostled against each other by accident, and there stuck fast.

The admiral had begun, I imagine, by erecting, as is usual, a log-house, while the woods were clearing; then, being in want of space, he added another, then another and another, and so on, all of different shapes and sizes, and full of a seaman's contrivances--odd galleries, passages, porticos, corridors, saloons, cabins and cupboards; so that if the outside reminded me of an African village, the interior was no less like that of a man-of-war.

The drawing-room, which occupies an entire building, is really a noble room, with a chimney in which they pile twenty oak logs at once. Around this room runs a gallery, well lighted with windows from without, through which there is a constant circulation of air, keeping the room warm in winter and cool in summer. The admiral has, besides, so many ingenious and inexplicable contrivances for warming and airing his house, that no insurance office will insure him upon any terms. Altogether it was the most strangely picturesque sort of dwelling I ever beheld. The admiral's sister, an accomplished woman of independent fortune, has lately arrived from Europe, to take up her residence in the wilds. Having recently spent some years in Italy, she has brought out with her all those pretty objects of _virtu_, with which English travellers load themselves in that country. Here, ranged round the room, I found views of Rome and Naples; tazzi, and marbles, and sculpture in lava, or alabaster; miniature copies of the eternal Sibyl and Cenci, Raphael's Vatican, &c.--things not wonderful nor rare in themselves--the wonder was to see them here.

The woods are yet close up to the house; but there is a fine well-cultivated garden, and the process of clearing and log-burning proceeds all around with great animation.

On Sunday we attended the pretty little church at Woodstock, which was filled by the neighbouring settlers of all classes: the service was well read, and the hymns were sung by the ladies of the congregation. The sermon, which treated of some abstract and speculative point of theology, seemed to me not well adapted to the sort of congregation assembled. The situation of those who had here met together to seek a new existence in a new world, might have afforded topics of instruction, praise, and gratitude, far more practical, more congenial, more intelligible, than a mere controversial essay on a disputed text, which elicited no remark nor sympathy that I could perceive. After the service, the congregation remained some time assembled before the church-door, in various and interesting groups--the well-dressed families of settlers who had come from many miles' distance in vehicles well suited to the roads--that is to say, carts, or as they call them here teams or wagons; the belles and the beaux of "the Bush," in Sunday trim--and innumerable children. Many were the greetings and inquiries; the news and gossip of all the neighbourhood had to be exchanged. The conversation among the ladies was of marriages and births--lamentations on the want of servants, and the state of the roads--the last arrival of letters from England--and speculations upon the character of a new neighbour come to settle in the Bush: Among the gentlemen, it was of crops and clearings, lumber, price of wheat, road-mending, deer-shooting, log-burning, and so forth--subjects in which I felt a lively interest and curiosity; and if I could not take a very brilliant and prominent part in the discourse, I could at least listen, like the Irish corn-field, "with all my ears."

I think it was this day at dinner that a gentleman described to me a family of Mohawk Indians, consisting of seven individuals, who had encamped upon some of his uncleared land in two wigwams. They had made their first appearance in the early spring, and had since subsisted by hunting, selling their venison for whisky or tobacco; their appearance and situation were, he said, most wretched, and their indolence extreme. Within three months, five out of the seven were dead of consumption; two only were left--languid, squalid, helpless, hopeless, heartless.

[Footnote 9: The average produce of an acre of land is greater throughout Canada than in England. In these western districts greater than in the rest of Canada.]

* * * * *

BLANDFORD.

After several pleasant and interesting visits to the neighbouring settlers, I took leave of my hospitable friends at Blandford with deep and real regret; and, in the best and only vehicle which could be procured--videlicet, a baker's cart--set out for London, the chief town of the district; the distance being about thirty miles--a long day's journey; the cost seven dollars.

The man who drove me proved a very intelligent and civilised person. He had come out to Canada in the capacity of a gentleman's servant; he now owned some land--I forget how many acres--and was besides baker-general for a large neighbourhood, rarely receiving money in pay, but wheat, and other farm produce. He had served as constable of the district for two years, and gave me some interesting accounts of his thief-taking expeditions through the wild forests in the deep winter nights. He considered himself, on the whole, a prosperous man. He said he should be quite happy here, were it not for his wife, who fretted and pined continually after her "home."

The case of this poor fellow with his discontented wife is of no unfrequent occurrence in Canada; and among the better class of settlers the matter is worse still, the suffering more acute, and of graver consequences.

I have not often in my life met with contented and cheerful-minded women, but I never met with so many repining and discontented women as in Canada. I never met with _one_ woman recently settled here, who considered herself happy in her new home and country: I _heard_ of one, and doubtless there are others, but they are exceptions to the general rule. Those born here, or brought here early by their parents and relations, seemed to me very happy, and many of them had adopted a sort of pride in their new country, which I liked much. There was always a great desire to visit England, and some little airs of self-complacency and superiority in those who had been there, though for a few months only; but all, without a single exception, returned with pleasure, unable to forego the early habitual influences of their native land.

I like patriotism and nationality in women. Among the German women both these feelings give a strong tincture to the character; and, seldom disunited, they blend with peculiar grace in our sex: but with a great statesman they should stand well distinguished. Nationality is not always patriotism, and patriotism is not, necessarily, nationality. The English are more patriotic than national; the Americans generally more national than patriotic; the Germans both national and patriotic.

I have observed that really accomplished women, accustomed to what is called the best society, have more resources here, and manage better, than some women who have no pretensions of any kind, and whose claims to social distinction could not have been great anywhere, but whom I found lamenting over themselves as if they had been so many exiled princesses.

Imagine the position of a fretful, frivolous woman, strong neither in mind nor frame, abandoned to her own resources in the wilds of Upper Canada! No--nothing can be imagined so pitiable, so ridiculous, and, to borrow the Canadian word, "so shiftless."

My new friend and kind hostess was a being of quite a different stamp; and though I believe she was far from thinking that she had found in Canada a terrestrial paradise, and the want of servants and the difficulty of educating her family as she wished, were subjects of great annoyance to her; yet these and other evils she had met with a cheerful spirit. Here, amid these forest wilds, she had recently given birth to a lovely baby, the tenth, or indeed I believe the twelfth, of a flock of manly boys and blooming girls. Her eldest daughter mean time, a fair and elegant girl, was acquiring, at the age of fifteen, qualities and habits which might well make ample amends for the possession of mere accomplishments. She acted as manager in chief, and glided about in her household avocations with a serene and quiet grace which was quite charming.

OXFORD.

The road, after leaving Woodstock, pursued the course of the winding Thames. We passed by the house of Colonel Light, in a situation of superlative natural beauty on a rising ground above the river. A lawn, tolerably cleared, sloped down to the margin, while the opposite shore rose clothed in varied woods, which had been managed with great taste, and a feeling for the picturesque not common here; but the Colonel being himself an accomplished artist accounts for this. We also passed Beechville, a small but beautiful village, round which the soil is reckoned very fine and fertile; a number of most respectable settlers have recently bought land and erected houses here. The next place we came to was Oxford, or rather Ingersol, where we stopped to dine and rest previous to plunging into an extensive forest called the Pine Woods.

Oxford is a little village, presenting the usual saw-mill, grocery-store and tavern, with a dozen shanties congregated on the bank of the stream, which is here rapid and confined by high banks. Two back-woodsmen were in deep consultation over a wagon which had broken down in the midst of that very forest road we were about to traverse, and which they described as most execrable--in some parts even dangerous. As it was necessary to gird up my strength for the undertaking, I laid in a good dinner, consisting of slices of dried venison, broiled, hot cakes of Indian corn, eggs, butter, and a bowl of milk. Of this good fare I partook in company with the two back-woodsmen, who appeared to me perfect specimens of their class--tall and strong, and bronzed and brawny, and shaggy and unshaven--very much like two bears set on their hind legs; rude, but not uncivil, and spare of speech, as men who had lived long at a distance from their kind. They were too busy, however, and so was I, to feel or express any mutual curiosity. Time was valuable, appetite urgent; so we discussed our venison steaks in silence, and after dinner I proceeded.

The forest land through which I had lately passed was principally covered with _hard timber_, as oak, walnut, elm, basswood. We were now in a forest of pines, rising tall and dark, and monotonous on either side. The road, worse certainly "than fancy ever feigned or fear conceived," put my neck in perpetual jeopardy. The driver had often to dismount and partly fill up some tremendous hole with boughs before we could pass, or drag or lift the wagon over trunks of trees; or we sometimes sank into abysses from which it is a wonder to me that we _ever_ emerged. A natural question were--why did you not get out and walk?--Yes indeed! I only wish it had been possible. Immediately on the border of the road, so called, was the wild, tangled, untrodden thicket, as impervious to the foot as the road was impassable, rich with vegetation, variegated verdure, and flowers of loveliest dye, but the haunt of the rattlesnake, and all manner of living and creeping things not pleasant to encounter, or even to think of.

The mosquitos, too, began to be troublesome; but not being yet in full force, I contrived to defend myself pretty well, by waving a green branch before me whenever my two hands were not employed in forcible endeavours to keep my seat. These seven miles of pine forest we traversed in three hours and a half; and then succeeded some miles of open flat country called the Oak Plains, and so called because covered with thickets and groups of oak dispersed with a park-like and beautiful effect; and still flowers, flowers everywhere. The soil appeared sandy, and not so rich as in other parts. The road was comparatively good; and as we approached London, clearings and new settlements appeared on every side.

The sun had set amid a tumultuous mass of lurid threatening clouds, and a tempest was brooding in the air, when I reached the town, and found very tolerable accommodations in the principal inn. I was so terribly bruised and beaten with fatigue, that to move was impossible, and even to speak too great an effort. I cast my weary aching limbs upon the bed, and requested of the very civil and obliging young lady who attended to bring me some books and newspapers. She brought me thereupon an old compendium of geography, published at Philadelphia forty years ago, and three old newspapers.

* * * * *

LONDON.

July 5.

The next morning the weather continued very lowering and stormy. I received several visitors, who, hearing of my arrival, had come with kind offers of hospitality and attention, such as are most grateful to a solitary stranger. I had also much conversation relative to the place and people, and the settlements around; and then I took a long walk about the town, of which I here give you the results.

When Governor Simcoe was planning the foundation of a capital for the whole province, he fixed at first upon the present site of London, struck by its many and obvious advantages. Its central position in the midst of these great lakes, being at an equal distance from Huron, Erie, and Ontario, in the finest and most fertile district of the whole province, on the bank of a beautiful stream, and at a safe distance from the frontier, all pointed it out as the most eligible site for a metropolis; but there was the want of land and water communication--a want which still remains the only drawback to its rising prosperity. A canal or railroad, running from Toronto and Hamilton to London, then branching off on the right to the harbour of Goderich on Lake Huron, and on the left to Sandwich on Lake Erie, were a glorious thing!--the one thing needful to make this fine country the granary and storehouse of the west; for here all grain, all fruits which flourish in the south of Europe, might be cultivated with success--the finest wheat and rice, and hemp and flax, and tobacco. Yet, in spite of this want, soon, I trust, to be supplied, the town of London has sprung up and become within ten years a place of great importance. In size and population it exceeds every town I have yet visited, except Toronto and Hamilton. The first house was erected in 1827; now, that is in 1837, it contains more than two hundred frame or brick houses; and there are many more building. The population may be about thirteen hundred people. The jail and court-house, comprised in one large stately edifice, seemed the glory of the townspeople. As for the style of architecture, I may not attempt to name or describe it; but a gentleman informed me, in rather equivocal phrase, that it was "_somewhat Gothic_." There are five places of worship, for the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Roman Catholics, and Baptists. The church is handsome. There are also three or four schools, and seven taverns. The Thames is very beautiful here, and navigable for boats and barges. I saw to-day a large timber raft floating down the stream, containing many thousand feet of timber. On the whole, I have nowhere seen such evident signs of progress and prosperity.

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.