Chapter V: Part 5

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.

The goodness of the road is owing to the systematic regulations of Colonel Talbot. Throughout the whole "country" none can obtain land without first applying to him, and the price and conditions are uniform and absolute. The lands are divided into lots of two hundred acres, and to each settler fifty acres are given gratis, and one hundred and fifty at three dollars an acre. Each settler must clear and sow ten acres of land, build a house (a log-hut of eighteen feet in length), and construct one chain of road in front of his house, within three years; failing in this, he forfeits his deed.

Colonel Talbot does not like gentlemen settlers, nor will he have any settlements within a certain distance of his own domain. He never associates with the people except on one grand occasion, the anniversary of the foundation of his settlement. This is celebrated at St. Thomas by a festive meeting of the most respectable settlers, and the colonel himself opens the ball with one of the ladies, generally showing his taste by selecting the youngest and prettiest.

The evening now began to close in, night came on, with the stars and the fair young moon in her train. I felt much fatigued, and my driver appeared to be out in his reckoning--that is, with regard to distance--for luckily he could not miss the _way_, there being but one. I stopped a man who was trudging along with an axe on his shoulder, "How far to Colonel Talbot's?" "About three miles and a half." This was encouraging; but a quarter of an hour afterwards, on asking the same question of another, he replied, "About seven miles." A third informed me that it was about three miles beyond Major Burwell's. The next person I met advised me to put up at "Waters's," and not think of going any farther to-night; however, on arriving at Mr. Waters's hotel, I was not particularly charmed with the prospect of a night's rest within its precincts. It was a long-shaped wooden house, comfortless in appearance; a number of men were drinking at the bar, and sounds of revelry issued from the open door. I requested my driver to proceed, which he did with all willingness.

We had travelled nearly the whole day through open, well-cleared land, more densely peopled than any part of the province I had seen since I left the Niagara district. Suddenly we came upon a thick wood, through which the road ran due west, in a straight line. The shadows fell deeper and deeper from the depth of foliage on either side, and I could not see a yard around, but exactly before me the last gleam of twilight lingered where the moon was setting. Once or twice I was startled by seeing a deer bound across the path, his large antlers being for one instant defined, _pencilled_, as it were, against the sky, then lost. The darkness fell deeper every moment, the silence more solemn. The whip-poor-will began his melancholy cry, and an owl sent forth a prolonged shriek, which, if I had not heard it before, would have frightened me. After a while my driver stopped and listened, and I could plainly hear the tinkling of cow-bells, I thought this a good sign, till the boy reminded me that it was the custom of the settlers to turn their cattle loose in the summer to seek their own food, and that they often strayed miles from the clearing.

[Footnote 11: When I remonstrated against this name for so beautiful a stream, Colonel Talbot told me that his first settlers had found a kettle on the bank, left by some Indians, and had given the river, from this slight circumstance, a name which he had not thought it worth while to alter.]

THE TALBOT COUNTRY.

We were proceeding along our dark path very slowly, for fear of accidents, when I heard the approaching tread of a horse, and the welcome sound of a man whistling. The boy hailed him with some impatience in his voice, "I say!--mister! whereabouts _is_ Colonel Talbot's?"

"The Colonel's? why, straight afore you;--follow your nose, you buzzard!"

Here I interposed. "Be so good, friend, as to inform me how far we are yet from Colonel Talbot's house?"

"Who have you got here?" cried the man in surprise.

"A lady, comed over the sea to visit the Colonel."

"Then," said the man, approaching my carriage--my cart, I should say--with much respect, "I guess you're the lady that the Colonel has been looking out for this week past. Why, I've been three times to St. Thomas's with the team after you!"

"I'm very sorry you've had the trouble!"

"O, no trouble at all--shall I ride back and tell him you're coming?"

This I declined, for the poor man was evidently going home to his supper.

To hear that the formidable Colonel was anxiously expecting me was very encouraging, and, from the man's description, I supposed that we were close to the house. Not so; the road, mocking my impatience, took so many bends, and sweeps, and windings, up hill and down hill, that it was an eternity before we arrived. The Colonel piques himself exceedingly on this graceful and picturesque approach to his residence, and not without reason; but on the present occasion I could have preferred a line more direct to the line of beauty. The darkness, which concealed its charms, left me sensible only to its length.

On ascending some high ground, a group of buildings was dimly descried. And after oversetting part of a snake-fence before we found an entrance, we drove up to the door. Lights were gleaming in the windows, and the Colonel sallied forth with prompt gallantry to receive me.

My welcome was not only cordial, but courtly. The Colonel, taking me under his arm, and ordering the boy and his horses to be well taken care of, handed me into the hall or vestibule, where sacks of wheat and piles of sheepskins lay heaped in primitive fashion; thence into a room, the walls of which were formed of naked logs. Here no fauteuil, spring-cushioned, extended its comfortable arms--no sofa here "insidiously stretched out its lazy length;" Colonel Talbot held all such luxuries in sovereign contempt. In front of a capacious chimney stood a long wooden table, flanked with two wooden chairs, cut from the forest in the midst of which they now stood. To one of these the Colonel handed me, with the air of a courtier, and took the other himself. Like all men who live out of the world, he retained a lively curiosity as to what was passing in it, and I was pressed with a profusion of questions as well as hospitable attentions; but wearied, exhausted, aching in every nerve, the spirit with which I had at first met him in his own style, was fast ebbing. I could neither speak nor eat, and was soon dismissed to repose.

With courteous solicitude, he ushered me himself to the door of a comfortable, well furnished bed room, where a fire blazed cheerfully, where female hands had evidently presided to arrange my toilet, and where female aid awaited me;--so much had the good Colonel been calumniated!

* * * * *

COLONEL TALBOT.

---- You shall
Go forth upon your arduous task alone,
None shall assist you, none partake your toil,
None share your triumph! still you must retain
Some one to trust your glory to--to share
Your rapture with. Browning's Paracelsus.

Port Talbot, July 10.

"Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope. He has no other possession but hope. This world of his is emphatically the place of hope:"[12] and more emphatically than of any other spot on the face of the globe, it is true of this new world of ours, in which I am now a traveller and a sojourner. This is the land of hope, of faith, aye, and of charity, for a man who hath not all three had better not come here:--with them he may, by strength of his own right hand and trusting heart, achieve miracles: witness Colonel Talbot.

Of the four days in which I have gone wandering and wondering up and down, let me now tell you something--_all_ I cannot tell you; for the information I have gained, and the reflections and feelings which have passed through my mind would fill a volume--and I have little time for scribbling.

And first of Colonel Talbot himself. This remarkable man is now about sixty-five, perhaps more, but he does not look so much. In spite of his rustic dress, his good-humoured, jovial, weather-beaten face, and the primitive simplicity, not to say rudeness, of his dwelling, he has in his features, air, and deportment, that _something_ which stamps him gentleman. And that _something_ which thirty-four years of solitude has not effaced, he derives, I suppose, from blood and birth, things of more consequence, when philosophically and philanthropically considered, than we are apt to allow.

He came out to Upper Canada as aide-de-camp to Governor Simcoe in 1793, and accompanied the governor on the first expedition he made to survey the western district, in search (as it was said) of an eligible site for the new capital he was then projecting. At this time the whole of the beautiful and fertile region situated between the lakes was a vast wilderness. It contained not one white settler, except along the borders, and on the coast opposite to Detroit: a few wandering tribes of Hurons and Chippewas, and the Six Nations settled on Grand River, were its only inhabitants.

It was then that the idea of founding a colony took possession of Colonel Talbot's mind, and became the ruling passion and sole interest of his future life. I had always heard and read of him, as the "eccentric" Colonel Talbot. Of his eccentricity I heard much more than of his benevolence, his invincible courage, his enthusiasm, his perseverance; but, perhaps, according to the wordly nomenclature, these qualities come under the general head of "eccentricity," when devotion to a favourite object cannot possibly be referred to self-interest.

On his return to England, he asked and obtained a grant of 100,000 acres of land along the shores of Lake Erie, on condition of placing a settler on every two hundred acres. He came out again in 1802, and took possession of his domain, in the heart of the wilderness. Of the life he led for the first sixteen years, and the difficulties and obstacles he encountered, he drew, in his discourse with me, a strong, I might say a _terrible_ picture: and observe that it was not a life of wild, wandering freedom--the life of an Indian hunter, which is said to be so fascinating that "no man who has ever followed it for any length of time, _ever_ voluntarily returns to civilised society!"[13] Colonel Talbot's life has been one of persevering, heroic self-devotion to the completion of a magnificent plan, laid down in the first instance, and followed up with unflinching tenacity of purpose. For sixteen years he saw scarce a human being, except the few boors and blacks employed in clearing and logging his land: he himself assumed the blanket-coat and axe, slept upon the bare earth, cooked three meals a day for twenty woodsmen, cleaned his own boots, washed his own linen, milked his cows, churned the butter, and made and baked the bread. In this latter branch of household economy he became very expert, and still piques himself on it.

To all these heterogeneous functions of sowing and reaping, felling and planting, frying, boiling, washing and wringing, brewing and baking, he added another, even more extraordinary;--for many years he solemnised all the marriages in his district!

While Europe was converted into a vast battle-field, an arena

"Where distract ambition compassed
And was encompass'd,"

and his brothers in arms, the young men who had begun the career of life with him, were reaping bloody laurels, to be gazetted in the list of killed and wounded, as heroes--then forgotten;--Colonel Talbot, a true hero after another fashion, was encountering, amid the forest solitude, uncheered by sympathy, unbribed by fame, enemies far more formidable, and earning a far purer, as well as a more real and lasting immortality.

Besides natural obstacles, he met with others far more trying to his temper and patience. His continual quarrels with the successive governors, who were jealous of the independent power he exercised in his own territory, are humorously alluded to by Dr. Dunlop.

"After fifteen years of unremitting labour and privation," says the Doctor, "it became so notorious in the province, that even the executive government at Toronto became aware that there was such a place as the Talbot Settlement, where roads were cut and farms in progress; and hereupon they rejoiced--for it held out to them just what they had long felt the want of, a well-settled, opened, and cultivated country, wherein to obtain estates for themselves, their children, born and unborn, and their whole kith, kin, and allies. When this idea, so creditable to the paternal feelings of these worthy gentlemen, was intimated to the Colonel, he could not be brought to see the fitness of things in an arrangement which would confer on the next generation, or the next again, the fruits of the labour of the present; and accordingly, though his answer to the proposal was not couched in terms quite so diplomatic as might have been wished, it was brief, soldier-like, and not easily capable of misconstruction; it was in these words--'I'll be d--d if you get one foot of land here;' and thereupon the parties joined issue.

"On this, war was declared against him by his Excellency in council, and every means were used to annoy him here, and misrepresent his proceedings at home; but he stood firm, and by an occasional visit to the Colonial Office in England, he opened the eyes of ministers to the proceedings of both parties, and for a while averted the danger. At length, some five years ago, finding the enemy was getting too strong for him, he repaired once more to England, and returned in triumph with an order from the Colonial Office, that nobody was in any way to interfere with his proceedings; and he has now the pleasure of contemplating some hundreds of miles of the best roads in the province, closely settled on each side by the most prosperous farmers within its bounds, who owe all they possess to his judgment, enthusiasm, and perseverance, and who are grateful to him in proportion to the benefits he has bestowed upon them, though in many instances, sorely against their will at the time."

The original grant must have been much extended; for the territory now under Colonel Talbot's management, and bearing the general name of the Talbot Country, contains, according to the list I have in his own handwriting, twenty-eight townships, and about 650,000 acres of land, of which 98,700 are cleared and cultivated. The inhabitants, including the population of the towns, amount to about 50,000. "You see," said he gaily, "I may boast, like the Irishman in the farce, of having peopled a whole country with my own hands."

He has built his house, like the eagle his eyry, on a bold high cliff overhanging the lake. On the east there is a precipitous descent into a wild, woody ravine, along the bottom of which winds a gentle stream, till it steals into the lake: this stream is in winter a raging torrent. The storms and the gradual action of the waves have detached large portions of the cliff in front of the house, and with them huge trees. Along the lake-shore I found trunks and roots of trees half buried in the sand, or half overflowed with water, which I often mistook for rocks. I remember one large tree which, in falling headlong, still remained suspended by its long and strong fibres to the cliff above. Its position was now reversed: the top hung downwards, shivered and denuded; the large spread root, upturned, formed a platform, on which new earth had accumulated, and a new vegetation sprung forth, of flowers, and bushes, and sucklings. Altogether it was a most picturesque and curious object.

Lake Erie, as the geography book says, is two hundred and eighty miles long, and here, at Port Talbot, which is near the centre, about seventy miles across. The Colonel tells me that it has been more than once frozen over from side to side; but I do not see how this fact could be ascertained, as no one has been known to cross to the opposite shore on the ice. It is true that more ice accumulates in this lake than in any other of the great lakes, by reason of its shallowness: it can be sounded through its whole extent, while the other lakes are found in some parts unfathomable.

But to return to the chateau. It is a long wooden building, chiefly of rough logs, with a covered porch running along the south side. Here I found suspended, among sundry implements of husbandry, one of those ferocious animals of the feline kind, called here the cat-a-mountain, and by some the American tiger, or panther, which it more resembles. This one, which had been killed in its attack on the fold or poultry-yard, was at least four feet in length, and glared on me from the rafters above ghastly and horrible. The interior of the house contains several comfortable lodging-rooms, and one really handsome one, the dining-room. There is a large kitchen with a tremendously hospitable chimney; and underground are cellars for storing wine, milk, and provisions. Around the house stands a vast variety of outbuildings of all imaginable shapes and sizes, and disposed without the slightest regard to order or symmetry. One of these is the very log hut which the Colonel erected for shelter when he first "sat down in the bush," four-and-thirty years ago, and which he is naturally unwilling to remove. Many of these outbuildings are to shelter the geese and poultry, of which he rears an innumerable quantity. Beyond these is the cliff, looking over the wide blue lake, on which I have counted six schooners at a time with their white sails. On the left is Port Stanley. Behind the house lies an open tract of land, prettily broken and varied, where large flocks of sheep and cattle are feeding, the whole enclosed by beautiful and luxuriant woods, through which runs the little creek or river above mentioned.

The farm consists of six hundred acres; but as the Colonel is not quite so active as he used to be, and does not employ a bailiff or overseer, the management is said to be slovenly, and not so productive as it might be.

He has sixteen acres of orchard-ground, in which he has planted and reared with success all the common European fruits, as apples, pears, plums, cherries, in abundance; but what delighted me beyond everything else, was a garden of more than two acres, very neatly laid out and enclosed, and in which he evidently took exceeding pride and pleasure; it was the first thing he showed me after my arrival. It abounds in roses of different kinds, the cuttings of which he had brought himself from England in the few visits he had made there. Of these he gathered the most beautiful buds, and presented them to me with such an air as might have become Dick Talbot presenting a bouquet to Miss Jennings.[14] We then sat down on a pretty seat under a tree, where he told me he often came to meditate. He described the appearance of the spot when he first came here as contrasted with its present appearance, or we discussed the exploits of some of his celebrated and gallant ancestors, with whom my acquaintance was (luckily) almost as intimate as his own. Family and aristocratic pride I found a prominent feature in the character of this remarkable man. A Talbot of Malahide, of a family representing the same barony from father to son for six hundred years, he set, not unreasonably, a high value on his noble and unstained lineage; and, in his lonely position, the simplicity of his life and manners lent to these lofty and not unreal pretensions a kind of poetical dignity.

I told him of the surmises of the people relative to his early life and his motives for emigrating, at which he laughed.

"Charlevoix," said he, "was, I believe, the true cause of my coming to this place. You know he calls this the 'Paradise of the Hurons.' Now I was resolved to get to paradise by hook or by crook, and so I came here."

He added, more seriously, "I have accomplished what I resolved to do--it is done; but I would not, if any one was to offer me the universe, go through again the _horrors_ I have undergone in forming this settlement. But do not imagine I repent it; I like my retirement."

He then broke out against the follies, and falsehoods, and restrictions of artificial life, in bitter and scornful terms; no ascetic monk or _radical_ philosopher could have been more eloquently indignant.

I said it was granted to few to live a life of such complete retirement, and at the same time such general utility; in flying from the world, he had benefited it: and I added, that I was glad to see him so happy.

"Why, yes, I'm very happy here." And then the old man sighed.

I understood that sigh, and in my heart echoed it. No, "it is not good for man to be alone;" and this law, which the Father of all life pronounced himself at man's creation, was never yet violated with impunity. Never yet was the human being withdrawn from, or elevated above, the social wants and sympathies of his human nature, without paying a tremendous price for such isolated independence.

With all my admiration for what this extraordinary man has achieved, and the means, the powers, through which he has achieved it, there mingles a feeling of commiseration which has more than once brought the tears to my eyes while listening to him. He has passed his life in worse than solitude. He will admit no equal in his vicinity. His only intercourse has been with inferiors and dependents, whose servility he despised, and whose resistance enraged him--men whose interests rested on his favour--on his will, from which there was no appeal. Hence despotic habits, and contempt even for those whom he benefited; hence, with much natural benevolence and generosity, a total disregard, or rather total ignorance, of the feelings of others--all the disadvantages, in short, of royalty, only on a smaller scale. Now, in his old age, where is to him the solace of age? He has honour, power, obedience; but where are the love, the troops of friends, which also should accompany old age? He is alone--a lonely man. His constitution has suffered by the dreadful toils and privations of his earlier life. His sympathies have had no natural outlet; his affections have wanted their natural food. He suffers, I think; and not being given to general or philosophical reasoning, causes and effects are felt, not known. But he is a great man who has done great things; and the good which he has done will live after him. He has planted, at a terrible sacrifice, an enduring name and fame, and will be commemorated in this "brave new world," this land of hope, as Triptolemus among the Greeks.

For his indifference or dislike to female society, and his determination to have no settler within a certain distance of his own residence, I could easily account when I knew the man; both seemed to me the natural result of certain habits of life acting upon a certain organisation. He has a favourite servant, Jeffrey by name, who has served him faithfully for more than five-and-twenty years, ever since he left off cleaning his own shoes and mending his own coat. This honest fellow, not having forsworn female companionship, began to sigh after a wife--

"A wife! ah! Saint Marie Benedicite,
How might a man have any adversite
That hath a wife?"

And, like the good knight in Chaucer, he did

"Upon his bare knees pray God him to send
A wife to last unto his life's end."

So one morning he went and took unto himself the woman nearest at hand--one, of whom we must needs suppose that he chose her for her virtues, for most certainly it was not for her attractions. The Colonel swore at him for a fool; but, after a while, Jeffrey, who is a favourite, smuggled his wife into the house; and the Colonel, whose increasing age renders him rather more dependent on household help, seems to endure very patiently this addition to his family, and even the presence of a white-headed chubby little thing, which I found running about without let or hindrance.

The room into which I first introduced you, with its rough log-walls, is Colonel Talbot's library and hall of audience. On leaving my apartment in the morning, I used to find groups of strange figures lounging round the door, ragged, black-bearded, gaunt, travel-worn and toil-worn emigrants, Irish, Scotch, and American, come to offer themselves as settlers. These he used to call his land-pirates; and curious, and characteristic, and dramatic beyond description, were the scenes which used to take place between this grand bashaw of the wilderness and his hungry, importunate clients and petitioners.

Another thing which gave a singular interest to my conversations with Colonel Talbot was, the sort of indifference with which he regarded all the stirring events of the last thirty years. Dynasties rose and disappeared; kingdoms were passed from hand to hand like wine decanters; battles were lost and won;--he neither knew, nor heard, nor cared. No post, no newspaper brought to his forest-hut the tidings of victory and defeat, of revolutions of empires, "or rumours of unsuccessful and successful war."

When he first took to the bush, Napoleon was consul; when he emerged from his solitude, the tremendous game of ambition had been played out, and Napoleon and his deeds and his dynasty were numbered with the things o'erpast. With the stream of events had flowed by equally unmarked the stream of mind, thought, literature--the progress of social improvement--the changes in public opinion. Conceive what a gulf between us! but though I could go to him, he could not come to me--my sympathies had the wider range of the two.

The principal foreign and domestic events of his _reign_ are the last American war, in which he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by a detachment of the enemy, who ransacked his house, and drove off his horses and cattle; and a visit which he received some years ago from three young Englishmen of rank and fortune, Lord Stanley, Mr. Stuart Wortley, and Mr. Labouchere, who spent some weeks with him. These events, and his voyages to England, seemed to be the epochs from which he dated. From these occasional flights he returns like an old eagle to his perch on the cliff, whence he looks down upon the world he has quitted with supreme contempt and indifference, and around that on which he has created, with much self-applause and self-gratulation.

[Footnote 12: Vide Sartor Resartus.]

[Footnote 13: Dr. Dunlop.]

[Footnote 14: Dick Talbot married Frances Jennings--la belle Jennings of De Grammont's Memoirs, and elder sister of the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough.]

* * * * *

PORT TALBOT.

It was not till the sixth day of my sojourn at Port Talbot that the good Colonel could be persuaded to allow of my departure.

He told me, with good-humoured peremptoriness, that he was the grand autocrat of the forest, and that to presume to order horses, or take any step towards departing, without his express permission, was against "his laws." At last he was so good as to issue his commands--with flattering reluctance, however--that a vehicle should be prepared, and a trusty guide provided; and I bade farewell to this extraordinary man with a mixture of delighted, and grateful, and melancholy feelings not easily to be described, nor ever forgotten.

My next journey was from Port Talbot to Chatham on the river Thames, whence it was my intention to cross Lake St. Clair to Detroit, and there take my chance of a vessel going up Lake Huron to Machinaw. I should, however, advise any future traveller, not limited to any particular time or plan of observation, to take the road along the shore of the Lake to Amherstberg and Sandwich, instead of turning off to Chatham. During the first day's journey I was promised a good road, as it lay through the Talbot settlements; what was to become of me the second day seemed a very doubtful matter.

The best vehicle which the hospitality and influence of Colonel Talbot could provide was a farmer's cart or team, with two stout horses. The bottom of the cart was well filled with clean soft straw, on which my luggage was deposited. A seat was slung for me on straps, and another in front for the driver, who had been selected from among the most respectable settlers in the neighbourhood as a fit guide and protector for a lone woman. The charge for the two days' journey was to be twelve dollars.

As soon as I had a little recovered from the many thoughts and feelings which came over me as we drove down the path from Colonel Talbot's house, I turned to take a survey of my driver, and from his physiognomy, his deportment, and the tone of his voice, to divine, if I could, what chance I had of comfort during the next two days. The survey was, on the whole, encouraging, though presenting some inconsistencies I could by no means reconcile. His dress and figure were remarkably neat, though plain and homely; his broad-brimmed straw hat, encircled with a green ribbon, was pulled over his brow, and from beneath it peered two sparkling, intelligent eyes. His accent was decidedly Irish. It was indeed a brogue as "nate and complate" as ever was sent forth from Cork or Kerry; but then his face was not an Irish face; its expression had nothing of the Irish character; the cut of his features, and his manner and figure altogether in no respect harmonised with his voice and accent.

JOURNEY TO CHATHAM.

After proceeding about three miles, we stopped in front of a neat farmhouse, surrounded with a garden and spacious outbuildings, and forth came a very pretty and modest-looking young woman, with a lovely child in her arms, and leading another by the hand. It was the wife of my driver; and I must confess she did not seem well pleased to have him taken away from her. They evidently parted with reluctance. She gave him many special charges to take care of himself, and commissions to execute by the way. The children were then held up to be kissed heartily by their father, and we drove off. This little family scene interested me, and augured well, I thought, for my own chances of comfort and protection.

When we had jogged and jolted on at a reasonable pace for some time, and I had felt my way sufficiently, I began to make some inquiries into the position and circumstances of my companion. The first few words explained those discrepancies in his features, voice, and appearance, which had struck me.

His grandfather was a Frenchman. His father had married an Irishwoman, and settled in consequence in the south of Ireland. He became, after some changes of fortune, a grazier and cattle-dealer; and having realised a small capital which could not be safely or easily invested in the old country, he had brought out his whole family, and settled his sons on farms in this neighbourhood. Many of the first settlers about this place, generally emigrants of the poorest and lowest description, after clearing a certain portion of the land, gladly disposed of their farms at an advanced price; and thus it is that a considerable improvement has taken place within these few years by the introduction of settlers of a higher grade, who have purchased half-cleared farms, rather than waste toil and time on the wild land.

My new friend, John B----, had a farm of one hundred and sixty acres, for which, with a log-house and barn upon it, he had paid 800 dollars (about 200_l._); he has now one hundred acres of land cleared and laid down in pasture. This is the first instance I have met with in these parts of a grazing farm, the land being almost uniformly arable, and the staple produce of the country, wheat. He told me that he and his brother had applied most advantageously their knowledge of the management and rearing of live stock; he had now thirty cows and eighty sheep. His wife being clever in the dairy, he was enabled to sell a good deal of butter and cheese off his farm, which the neighbourhood of Port Stanley enabled him to ship with advantage. The wolves, he said, were his greatest annoyance; during the last winter they had carried off eight of his sheep and thirteen of his brother's flock, in spite of all their precautions.

The Canadian wolf is about the size of a mastiff, in colour of a dirty yellowish brown, with a black stripe along his back, and a bushy tail of about a foot in length. His habits are those of the European wolf; they are equally bold, "hungry, and gaunt, and grim,"--equally destructive, ferocious, and troublesome to the farmer. The Canadian wolves hunt in packs, and their perpetual howling during the winter nights has often been described to me as frightful. The reward given by the magistracy for their destruction (six dollars for each wolf's head) is not enough. In the United States the reward is fifteen and twenty dollars a head, and from their new settlements the wolves are quickly extirpated. _Here_, if they would extend the reward to the Indians, it would be of some advantage; for at present they never think it worth while to expend their powder and shot on an animal whose flesh is uneatable, and the skin of little value; and there can be no doubt that it is the interest of the settlers to get rid of the wolves by all and any means. I have never heard of their destroying a man, but they are the terror of the sheepfold--as the wild cats are of the poultry yard. Bears become scarcer in proportion as the country is cleared, but there are still a great number in the vast tracts of forest land which afford them shelter. These, in the severe winters, advance to the borders of the settlements, and carry off the pigs and young cattle. Deer still abound, and venison is common food in the cottages and farmhouses.

My guide concluded his accounts of himself by an eloquent and heartfelt eulogium on his wife, to whom, as he assured me, "he owed all his _peace of mind_ from the hour he was married!" Few men, I thought, could say the same. _She_, at least, is not to be numbered among the drooping and repining women of Upper Canada; but then she has left no family--no home on the other side of the Atlantic--all her near relations are settled here in the neighbourhood.

SETTLERS IN THE BUSH.

The road continued very tolerable during the greater part of this day, running due west, at a distance of about six or ten miles from the shore of Lake Erie. On either side I met a constant succession of farms partially cleared, and in cultivation, but no village, town, or hamlet. One part of the country through which I passed to-day is settled chiefly by Highlanders, who bring hither all their clannish attachments, and their thrifty, dirty habits--add also their pride and their honesty. We stopped about noon at one of these Highland settlements, to rest the horses and procure refreshments. The house was called Campbell's Inn, and consisted of a log-hut and a cattle-shed. A long pole, stuck into the decayed stump of a tree in front of the hut, served for a sign. The family spoke nothing but Gaelic; a brood of children, ragged, dirty, and without shoes or stockings (which latter I found hanging against the wall of the best room, as if for a show), were running about--and all stared upon me with a sort of half-scared, uncouth curiosity, which was quite savage. With some difficulty I made my wants understood, and procured some milk and Indian corn cakes. This family, notwithstanding their wretched appearance, might be considered prosperous. They have a property of two hundred acres of excellent land, of which sixty acres are cleared, and in cultivation: five cows and forty sheep. They have been settled here sixteen years,--had come out destitute, and obtained their land gratis. For them, what a change from abject poverty and want to independence and plenty! But the advantages are all outward; if there be any inward change, it is apparently retrogradation, not advancement.

I know it has been laid down as a principle, that the more and the closer men are congregated together, the more prevalent is vice of every kind; and that an isolated or scattered population is favourable to virtue and simplicity. It may be so, if you are satisfied with negative virtues and the simplicity of ignorance. But here, where a small population is scattered over a wide extent of fruitful country, where there is not a village or a hamlet for twenty, or thirty, or forty miles together--where there are no manufactories--where there is almost entire equality of condition--where the means of subsistence are abundant--where there is no landed aristocracy--no poor laws, nor poor rates, to grind the souls and the substance of the people between them, till nothing remains but chaff,--to what shall we attribute the gross vices, the profligacy, the stupidity, and basely vulgar habits of a great part of the people, who know not even how to enjoy or turn to profit the inestimable advantages around them?--And, alas for them! there seems to be no one as yet to take an interest about them, or at least infuse a new spirit into the next generation. In one log-hut in the very heart of the wilderness, where I might well have expected primitive manners and simplicity, I found vulgar finery, vanity, affectation, under the most absurd and disgusting forms, combined with a want of the commonest physical comforts of life, and the total absence of even elementary knowledge. In another, I have seen drunkenness, profligacy, stolid indifference to all religion; and in another, the most senseless fanaticism. There are people, I know, who think--who fear, that the advancement of knowledge and civilisation must be the increase of vice and insubordination; who deem that a scattered agricultural population, where there is a sufficiency of daily food for the body; where no schoolmaster interferes to infuse ambition and discontent into the abject, self-satisfied mind; where the labourer reads not, writes not, thinks not--only loves, hates, prays, and toils--that such a state must be a sort of Arcadia. Let them come here!--there is no march of intellect here!--there is no "schoolmaster abroad" here! And what are the consequences? Not the most agreeable to contemplate, believe me.

I passed in these journeys some school-houses built by the way side: of these, several were shut up for want of schoolmasters; and who that could earn a subsistence in any other way, would be a schoolmaster in the wilds of Upper Canada? Ill fed, ill clothed, ill paid, or not paid at all--boarded at the houses of the different farmers in turn, I found, indeed, some few men, poor creatures! always either Scotch or Americans, and totally unfit for the office they had undertaken. Of female teachers I found none whatever, except in the towns. Among all the excellent societies in London for the advancement of religion and education, are there none to send missionaries here?--such missionaries as we want, be it understood--not sectarian fanatics. Here, without means of instruction, of social amusement, of healthy and innocent excitements--can we wonder that whisky and camp-meetings assume their place, and "season toil" which is unseasoned by anything better?

Nothing, believe me, that you may have heard or read of the frantic disorders of these Methodist love-feasts and camp-meetings in Upper Canada can exceed the truth; and yet it is no less a truth that the Methodists are in most parts the only religious teachers, and that without them the people were utterly abandoned. What then are our church and our government about? Here, as in the old country, they are quarrelling about the tenets to be inculcated, the means to be used: and so, while the shepherds are disputing whether the sheep are to be fed on old hay or fresh grass--out of the fold or in the fold--the poor sheep starve, or go astray.

I supped here on eggs and radishes, and milk and bread. On going to my room, I found that the door, which had merely a latch, opened into the road. I expressed a wish to fasten it, on which the good lady of the house brought a long nail, and thrust it lengthways over the latch, saying, "That's the way we lock doors in Canada!" The want of a more secure defence did not trouble my rest, for I slept well till morning. After breakfast, my guide, who had found what he called a "shake-down" at a neighbouring farm, made his appearance, and we proceeded.

For the first five or six miles the road continued good, but at length we reached a point where we had to diverge from the Talbot road, and turn into what they call a "town line," a road dividing the Howard from the Harwich township. My companion stopped the team to speak to a young man who was mixing lime, and as he stood talking to us, I thought I had never seen a better figure and countenance: his accent was Irish; his language and manner infinitely superior to his dress, which was that of a common workman. I soon understood that he was a member of one of the richest and most respectable families in the whole district, connected by marriage with my driver, who had been boasting to me of their station, education, and various attainments. There were many and kind greetings and inquiries after wives, sisters, brothers, and children. Towards the conclusion of this family conference, the following dialogue ensued.

"I say, how are the roads before us?"

"Pretty bad!" (with an ominous shake of the head.)

"Would we get on at all, do you think?"

"Well, I don't know, but you may."

"If only we a'n't _mired down_ in that big hole up by Harris's, plaze God, we'll do finely! Have they done anything up there?"

"No, I don't know that they have; but (with a glance and a good-humoured smile at me) don't be frightened! you have a good stout team there. I dare say you'll get along--first or last!"

"How are the mosquitoes?"

"Pretty bad too; it is cloudy, and then they are always worse; but there is some wind, and that's in your favour again. However, you've a long and hard day's work, and I wish you well through it; if you cannot manage, come back to _us_--that's all! Good-bye!" And lifting the gay handkerchief knotted round his head, he bowed us off with the air of a nobleman.

Thus encouraged, we proceeded; and though I was not _mired down_, nor yet absolutely eaten up, I suffered from both the threatened plagues, and that most severely. The road was scarcely passable; there were no longer cheerful farms and clearings, but the dark pine forest, and the rank swamp, crossed by those terrific corduroy paths (my bones ache at the mere recollection!) and deep holes and pools of rotted vegetable matter, mixed with water, black, bottomless sloughs of despond! The very horses paused on the brink of some of these mud-gulfs, and trembled ere they made the plunge downwards. I set my teeth, screwed myself to my seat, and commended myself to Heaven--but I was well nigh dislocated! At length I abandoned my seat altogether, and made an attempt to recline on the straw at the bottom of the cart, disposing my cloaks, carpet-bags, and pillow, so as to afford some support--but all in vain; myself and all my well-contrived edifice of comfort were pitched hither and thither, and I expected at every moment to be thrown over headlong; while to walk, or to escape by any means from my disagreeable situation, was as impossible as if I had been in a ship's cabin in the midst of a rolling sea.

But the worst was yet to come. At the entrance of a road through the woods,

If road that might be called where road was none
Distinguishable,

we stopped a short time to gain breath and courage, and refresh the poor horses before plunging into a forest of about twenty miles in extent.

The inn--the only one within a circuit of more than five-and-thirty miles, presented the usual aspect of these forest inns; that is, a rude log-hut, with one window and one room, answering all purposes, a lodging or sleeping place being divided off at one end by a few planks; outside, a shed of bark and boughs for the horses, and a hollow trunk of a tree disposed as a trough. Some of the trees around it were in full and luxuriant foliage; others, which had been girdled, stood bare and ghastly in the sunshine. To understand the full force of the scripture phrase, "desolate as a lodge in a wilderness," you should come here! The inmates, from whom I could not obtain a direct or intelligible answer to any question, continued during the whole time to stare upon me with stupid wonder. I took out a card to make a sketch of the place. A man stood near me, looking on, whose appearance was revolting beyond description--hideous, haggard and worn, sinewy and fierce and squalid. He led in one hand a wild-looking urchin of three or four years old; in the other he was crushing a beautiful young pigeon, which panted and struggled within his bony grasp in agony and terror. I looked on it, pitying.

"Don't hurt it!"

He replied with a grin, and giving the wretched bird another squeeze, "No, no, I won't hurt it."

"Do you live here?"

"Yes, I have a farm hard by--in the bush here."

"How large is it?"

"One hundred and forty acres."

"How much cleared?"

"Five or six acres--thereabout."

"How long have you been on it?"

"Five years."

"And only five acres cleared? That is very little in five years. I have seen people who had cleared twice that quantity of land in half the time."

He replied, almost with fierceness, "Then they had money, or friends, or hands to help them: I have neither. I have in this wide world only myself! and set a man with only a pair of hands at one of them big trees there!--see what he'll make of it! You may swing the axe here from morning to night for a week before you let the daylight in upon you."

"You are right!" I said, in compassion and self-reproach, "and I was wrong! pray excuse me!"

"No offence."

"Are you from the old country?"

"No, I was _raised_ here."

"What will you do with your pigeon there?"

"O, it will do for the boy's supper, or may be he may like it best to play with."

I offered to redeem its life at the price of a shilling, which I held out. He stretched forth immediately one of his huge hands and eagerly clutched the shilling, at the same moment opening the other, and releasing his captive; it fluttered for a moment helplessly, but soon recovering its wings, wheeled round our heads, and then settled in the topmost boughs of a sugar-maple. The man turned away with an exulting laugh, thinking, no doubt, that he had the best of the bargain--but upon this point we differed.

* * * * *

Turning the horses' heads again westward, we plunged at once into the deep forest, where there was absolutely no road, no path, except that which is called a _blazed_ path, where the trees marked on either side are the only direction to the traveller. How savagely, how solemnly wild it was! So thick was the overhanging foliage, that it not only shut out the sunshine, but almost the daylight; and we travelled on through a perpetual gloom of vaulted boughs and intermingled shade. There were no flowers here--no herbage. The earth beneath us was a black, rich vegetable mould, into which the cart-wheels sank a foot deep; a rank, reedy grass grew round the roots of the trees, and sheltered rattlesnakes and reptiles. The timber was all hard timber, walnut, beech, and bass-wood, and oak and maple of most luxuriant growth; here and there the lightning had struck and shivered one of the loftiest of these trees, riving the great trunk in two, and flinging it horizontally upon its companions. There it lay, in strangely picturesque fashion, clasping with its huge boughs their outstretched arms as if for support. Those which had been hewn to open a path lay where they fell, and over their stumps and roots the cart had to be lifted or dragged. Sometimes a swamp or morass lay in our road, partly filled up or laid over with trunks of fallen trees, by way of bridge.