Canada and the Canadians Volume I Part 8

The garrison is three miles from the village, and is always called "The Establishment;" and in the forest between the two places is a new church, built of wood, very small, but sufficient for the Established Church, as it is sometimes called, of that portion of Canada. A clergyman is constantly stationed here for the army, navy, and civilians, and near the church is a collection of log huts, which I placed there some years ago by order of Lord Seaton, with small plots of ground attached to each as a refuge for dest.i.tute soldiers who had commuted their pensions.

This Chelsea in miniature flourished for a time, and drained the streets of the large towns of Canada of the miserable objects; but, such was the improvidence of most of these settlers and such their broken const.i.tutions, that, on my present visit, I found but one old serjeant left, and he was on the point of moving.

The commutation of pensions was an experiment of the most benevolent intention. It was thought that the married pensioner would purchase stock for a small farm, and set himself down to provide for his children with a sum of money in hand which he could never have obtained in any other way. Many did so, and are now independent; but the majority, helpless in their habits, and giving way to drink, soon got cheated of their dollars and became beggars; so that the government was actually obliged at length to restore a small portion of the pension to keep them from starvation. They died out, would not work at the Penetanguishene settlement, and have vanished from the things that be. Poor fellows!

many a tale have they told me of flood and field, of being sabred by the cuira.s.siers at Waterloo, of being impaled on a Polish lance, and of their wanderings and sufferings.

The military settlement, however, of the Penetanguishene road is a different affair. It was effected by pensioned non-commissioned officers and soldiers, who had grants of a hundred acres and sometimes more; and it will please the benevolent founder, should these pages meet his eye, to know that many of them are now prosperous, and almost all well to do in the world.

But we must retrace our steps, and waggon back again by their doors to Barrie.

I left the village at half-past six in the morning, raining still, with the wind in the south-east, and very cold. We arrived at the Widow Marlow's, nineteen miles, at mid-day; the weather having changed to fine and blowing hard--certainly not pleasant in the forest-road, on account of the danger of falling trees, to which this pa.s.s is so liable that a party of axemen have sometimes to go ahead to cut out a way for the horses.

We pa.s.sed through the twelve mile woods by a new road, which reduces the extent of actual forest to five, and avoids altogether the Trees of the Two Brothers, noted in Penetanguishene history for the fatal accident, narrated in a former volume, by which one soldier died, and his brother was, it is supposed, frightened to death, in the solemn depths of the primeval and then endless woods.

Near the end of the five mile Bush, about a mile from the first clearance, Jeffrey, the landlord of the inn at the village, has built a small cottage for the refreshment of the traveller, and in it he intends to place his son. In the mean time, until quite completed, for money is scarce and things not to be done at railroad pace so near the North Pole, he has located here an old well known black gentleman, called Mr.

Davenport, who was once better to do in the world, and kept a tavern himself.

Having had the honour of his acquaintance for many years, I stopped to see how my old friend was getting on, particularly as I heard that he was now very old, and that his white consort had left him alone in the narrow world of the house in the woods. He received me with grinning delight, and told me that he had just left the new jail at Barrie for selling liquor without a license, which, I opine, is rather hard law against a poor old n.i.g.g.e.r, who had literally no other means of support, and was most usefully stationed, like the monks of St. Bernard, in a dangerous pa.s.s.

But the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and the woolly head of old Davenport had matter of satisfaction in it from a source that he never dreamed of.

Alone--far away from the whole human world, in the depth of a hideous forest, with a road nearly impa.s.sable one half of the year,--he found an unexpected friend.

For fear of the visits of two-footed and four-footed brutes during the long nights of his Robinson Crusoe solitude, old Davenport always shut up his log castle early, and retired to rest as soon as daylight departed; for it did so very early in the evening there, as the solemn pines, with their gray trunks and far-spreading moss-grown arms and dismal evergreen foliage, if it can be called foliage, stood close to his dwelling--nay, brushed with the breath of the wind his very roof.

Recollect, reader, that this lonely dweller in the Bush resided near the spot where the two soldier brothers perished; and you may imagine his thoughts, after his castle was closed at night by the lone warder. No one could come to his a.s.sistance, if he had the bugle that roused the echoes of Fontarabia.

He had retired to rest early one night in the young spring-time, when he heard a singular noise on the outside of his house, like somebody moaning, and rubbing forcibly under his window, which was close to the head of his pallet-bed. Quivering with fear, he lay, with these sounds continuing at short intervals, through the whole night, and did not rise until the sun was well up. He then peeped cautiously about, but neither heard nor saw any thing; and, axe in hand and gun loaded, he went forth, but could not perceive aught more than that the ground had been slightly disturbed. This went on for some time, until at last, one fine moonlight night, the old man ventured to open a part of his narrow window; and there he saw rubbing himself, very composedly, a fine large he bear, who looked up very affectionately at him, and whined in a decent melancholy growl.

Davenport had, it seems, thrown some useless article of food out of this window; and Bruin supposed, no doubt, that Blackey did it out of compa.s.sionate feeling for a fellow denizen of the forest, and repeated his visits to obtain something more substantial, rubbing himself, to get rid of the mosquitoes, as it was his custom of an afternoon, against the rough logs of the dwelling. He had, moreover, become a little impatient at not being noticed, and scratched like a dog to make the lord of the mansion aware of his presence. This usually occurred about nine o'clock.

Davenport, at last, threw some salt pork to Bruin, which was most gratefully received; and every night after that, for the whole summer and autumn, at nine o'clock or thereabouts, the bear came to receive bread, meat, milk, or potatoes, or whatever could be spared from the larder, which was left on the ground under the window for him. In fact, they soon came to be upon very friendly terms, and spent many hours in each other's company, with a stout log-wall between Davenport and his brother, as he always calls the bear.

When the snows of winter, the long, severe winter of these northern woods, at last came, Bruin ceased his nocturnal visitations, and has never been seen since, the old man thinking that he has been shot or trapped by the Indian hunters.

I asked Davenport if he ever ventured out to look for his brother, but he shook his head and replied, "My brudder might have hugged me too hard, perhaps." The poor old fellow is very cheerful, and regrets his brother's absence daily. The bailiffs most likely would not have put him in jail for selling whiskey to a tired traveller, but would have avoided the castle in the woods, if they thought there was any chance of meeting Bruin.

CHAPTER VI.

Barrie and Big Trees--A new Capital of a new District--Nature's Ca.n.a.l--The Devil's Elbow--Macadamization and Mud--Richmond Hill without the La.s.s--The Rebellion and the Radicals--Blue Hill and Bricks.

We reached Barrie safely that night, and slept at the Queen's Arms. Next morning, I had an excellent opportunity of seeing this thriving village.

It is very well situated on the sh.o.r.e of Kempenfeldt Bay, on ground rising gradually to a considerable height, and is neatly laid out, containing already about five hundred people.

On the high ground overlooking the place are a church, a court-house, and a jail, all standing at a small distance from each other, nearly on a line, and adding very much indeed to the appearance of the place. The deep woods now form a background, but are gradually disappearing. I went about a mile into them, and saw several new clearances, with some nice houses building or built; and particularly one by Bingham, our landlord, a very comfortable, English-looking, large cottage, with outhouses and an immense barn, round which the rascally ground squirrels were playing at hide-and-seek very fearlessly.

The Court House contains the district school, which appears very respectable, and is conducted by a young Irishman; it also contains all the district offices, and is two stories high, ma.s.sively and well built, the lower story being of stone and the upper of brick, both from materials on the spot.

The church is of wood, plain and neat. The jail is worth a visit, and shows what may be done in the forest and in a brand-new district, as the district of Simcoe is, although I believe about half the money it cost would have been better employed on the roads; for it has never been used, except as a place of confinement for an unfortunate lunatic.

It is formed in the castellated style, of a handsome octagonal tower, of very white, sh.e.l.ly limestone, with a square turreted stone enclosure, on the top of which is an iron _chevaux de frize_, and which enclosure is subdivided into separate day-yards for prisoners. The entrance is under a Gothic archway; and in the centre of the tower is an internal s.p.a.ce, open from top to bottom, and preventing all access to the stairs from the cells, which are very neat, clean, and commodious, with a good supply of water, and excellent ventilation. It is, in short, as pretty a toy penitentiary as you could see anywhere, and looks more like an Isle of Wight gentleman's fortress, copied after the most approved Wyattville pattern of baronial mansion, with a little touch of the card-house. In short, it is as fine as you can conceive, and sets off the village wonderfully well.

The red pine, near Barrie and through all the Penetanguishene country, grows to an enormous size. I measured one near Barrie no less than twenty-six feet in girth, and this was merely a chance one by the path-side. Its height, I think, must have been at least two hundred feet, and it was vigorously healthy. What was its age? It would have made a plank eight feet broad, after the bark was stripped off.

But the woods generally disappoint travellers, as they never penetrate them; and the lumberers have cut down all available pines and oaks within reach of the settlements, excepting where they were not worth the expence of transport. The pines, moreover, take no deep root; and, as soon as the underbrush or thicket is cleared, they fall before the storm. Provident settlers, therefore, rarely leave large and lofty trees near their dwellings for fear of accident.

The pine, in the Penetanguishene country, has a strange fancy to start out of the earth in three, five, or more trunks, all joined at the base, and each trunk an enormous tree. I have an idea that this has arisen from the stony, loose soil they grow in, which has caused this strange freak of Nature, by making it difficult for the young plant to rear its head out of the ground. Whatever is the reason, however, all the masts of some "great Amiral" might be truly provided out of a single pine-tree.

But we must leave Barrie, after just mentioning Kempenfeldt, about a mile or so distant, which was the original village; and, although at the actual terminus of the land road, has never flourished, and still consists of some half dozen houses. The newer Admiral superseded the more ancient one; for Barrie did deeds of renown, which it suited the Canadians to commemorate much more than the unfortunate Kempenfeldt and his melancholy end.

If ever there was an infamous road between two villages so close together, it is the road between these two places; I hope it will be mended, for it is both dark and dangerous.

I always wondered not a little how it happened that Bingham of Barrie kept such a good table, where fresh meat was as plentiful as at Toronto.

I looked for the market-place of the capital of Simcoe: there was none.

But the mystery was solved the moment I put my foot on board the Beaver steamer to go back by the water road.

What will the reader think of Leadenhall Market being condensed and floating? Such, however, was the case; there was a regular travelling butcher's-shop, for the supply of the settlers around Lake Simcoe; and meat, clean and enticing as at the finest stall in the market aforesaid, where upon regular hooks were regularly displayed the fine roasting and boiling joints of the season. And a very fair speculation no doubt it is, this pedlar butchery.

On the 3rd of July, at half-past twelve, I left the capital of the Simcoe district, and am particular as to dates and seasons, because it tells the traveller for pleasure what are the times and the tides he should choose.

We embarked on board the good s.h.i.+p Beaver, a large steam-vessel, for the Holland Landing, distant twenty-eight miles--twenty-one of them by the lake, and seven by the river. The vessel stops by the way at several settlements, where half-pay officers generally have pitched their tents; and twice a week she makes the grand tour of the whole lake, at an alt.i.tude of upwards of seven hundred and fifty feet above Lake Ontario, and not forty miles from it.

This navigation of the Holland river is very well worth seeing, as it is a natural ca.n.a.l flowing through a vast marsh, and very narrow, with most serpentine convolutions, often doubling upon itself.--Conceive the difficulty of steering a large steamboat in such a course; yet it is done every day in summer and autumn, by means of long poles, slackening the steam, backing, &c., though very rarely without running a little way into the soft mud of the swamp. The motion of the paddles has, however, in the course of years, widened the channel and prevented the growth of flags and weeds.

There is one place called the Devil's Elbow, a common name in Canada for a difficult river pa.s.s, where the sluggish water fairly makes a double, and great care is necessary. Here the enterprising owner and master of the vessel tried to cut a channel; but, after getting a straight course through the mud for two-thirds of the way, he found it too expensive to proceed, but declares that he will persevere. Why does not the Board of Works, which has literally the expenditure of more than a million, take the business in hand, and complete it? One or two hundred pounds would finish the affair. But perhaps it is too trifling, and, like the cut at the Long Point, Lake Erie, to which we shall come presently, is overlooked in the magnitude of greater things.

Of all the unformed, unfinished public establishments in Canada, it has always appeared to me that the Crown Lands department, and the Board of Works, are pre-eminent. One costs more to manage the funds it raises than the funds amount to; and the other was for several years a mere political job. No very eminent civil engineer could have afforded to devote his time and talents to it, as he must have been constantly exposed to be turned out of office by caprice or cupidity. I do not know how it is now managed, but the political jobbing is, I believe, at an end, as the same person presides over the office who held it when it was in very bad odour. This gentleman must, however, be quite adequate to the office, as some of the public works are magnificent; but I cannot go so far as to say that one must approve of all. The St. Lawrence Ca.n.a.l has cost the best part of a million, is useless in time of war, and a mere foil at all times to the Rideau navigation, which the British government constructed free of any provincial funds. The timber slides on the Trent are so much money put into the timber-merchants' pockets, to the extreme detriment of the neighbouring settlers, whose lands have been swept of every available stick by the lawless hordes of woodcutters engaged to furnish this work; and who, living in the forest, were beyond the reach of justice or of reason, destroying more trees than they could carry away, and defying, gun and axe in hand, the peaceable proprietors.

It was intended, before the rebellion broke out, to render the river Trent navigable by a splendid ca.n.a.l, which would have opened the finest lands in Canada for hundreds of miles, and eventually to have connected Lake Huron with Lake Ontario. A large sum of money was expended on it before the Board of Works was const.i.tuted, and an experienced clerk of works, fresh from the Rideau Ca.n.a.l, was chosen to superintend; but the troubles commenced, and the money was wanted elsewhere.

When money became again plentiful, and the country so loudly demanded the Trent Ca.n.a.l, why was it not finished? I shall give by and by an account of a recent excursion to the Trent, and then we shall perhaps learn more about it, and why peris.h.i.+ng timber slides were subst.i.tuted for a magnificent ca.n.a.l.

But the Devil's Elbow should be straightened by the Board of Works at all events, otherwise it may stick in the mud, and then n.o.body can help it; for the marsh is very extensive, and there would be no Jupiter to cry out to.

Well, however, in spite of all obstacles, Captain Laughton piloted us safe to Ague and Fever Landing, where, depend upon it, we did not stay a moment longer than sufficed to jump into a coloured gentleman's waggon, which was in waiting, and in which we were driven off as a coloured gentleman always drives, that is to say, in a hand-gallop, to Winch's tavern, our old accustomed inn at St. Alban's, where we arrived in due time, and there hired another Jehu, who was an American Irishman (a sad compound), to take us as far towards Yonge Street as practicable. We reached Richmond Hill, seventeen miles from the Landing, at about eight o'clock, having made a better day's journey than is usually accomplished on a road which will be macadamized some fine day; for the Board of Works have a Polish engineer hard at work surveying it--of course no Canadian was to be found equal to this intricate piece of engineering--and I saw a variety of sticks stuck up, but what they meant I cannot guess at. I suppose they were going to _grade_ it, which is the favourite American term--a term, by the by, by no manner or method meaning gradus ad Parna.s.sum, or even laying it out in steps and stairs, like the Scotch military road near Loch Ness; but which, as far as my limited information in Webster's Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon tongue goes, signifies levelling. I may, however, be mistaken; and this puts me in mind of another tale to beguile the way.

A character set out from England to try his fortune in Canada. He was conversing about prospects in that country, on board the vessel, with a person who knew him, but whom he knew not. "I have not quite made up my mind," said the character, "as to what pursuit I shall follow in Canada; but that which brings most grist to the mill will answer best; and I hear a man may turn his hand to anything there, without the folly of an apprentices.h.i.+p being necessary; for, if he has only brains, bread will come--now, what do you think would be the best business for my market?"

"Why," said the gentleman, after pondering a little, "I should advise you to try civil engineering; for they are getting up a Board of Works there, and want that branch of industry very much, for they won't take natives; nothing but foreigners or strangers will go down."

"What is a civil engineer?" said the character.