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Emigrants suitable for Canada.--Qualities
requisite to ensure success.--Investment of Capital.--Useful Articles to be
brought out.-- Qualifications and Occupations of a Settler's
Family.--Deficiency of Patience and Energy in some Females.--Management of
the Dairy.--Cheese. --Indian Corn, and its Cultivation.--Potatoes.--Rates of
Wages.
August 9, 1833
WITH respect to the various questions, my dear
friend, to which you request my particular attention, I can only promise
that I will do my best to answer them as explicitly as possible, though at
the same time I must remind you, that brevity in epistolary correspondence
is not one of my excellencies. If I become too diffuse in describing mere
matters of fact, you must bear with mine infirmity, and attribute it to my
womanly propensity of over-much talking; so, for your comfort, if your eyes
be wearied, your ears will at least escape.
I shall take your queries in due rotation;
first, then, you ask, "Who are the persons best adapted for bush-settlers?"
To which I reply without hesitation--the poor
hard-working, sober labourers, who have industrious habits, a large family
to provide for, and a laudable horror of the workhouse and parish-overseers:
this will bear them through the hardships and privations of a first
settlement in the backwoods; and in due time they will realize an honest
independence, and be above want, though not work. Artisans of all crafts are
better paid in village-towns, or long-cleared districts, than as mere
bush-settlers.
"Who are the next best suited for emigration?"
Men of a moderate income or good capital may
make money in Canada. If they have judgment, and can afford to purchase on a
large scale, they will double or treble their capital by judicious purchases
and sales. But it would be easier for me to point out who are not fit for
emigration than who are.
The poor gentleman of delicate and refined
habits, who cannot afford to employ all the labour requisite to carry on the
business of clearing on a tolerable large scale, and is unwilling or
incapable of working himself, is not fitted for Canada, especially if his
habits are expensive. Even the man of small income, unless he can condescend
to take in hand the axe or the chopper, will find, even with prudent and
economical habits, much difficulty in keeping free from debt for the first
two or even three years. Many such have succeeded, but the struggle has been
severe.
But there is another class of persons most
unsuited to the woods: these are the wives and families of those who have
once been opulent tradesmen, accustomed to the daily enjoyment of every
luxury that money could procure or fashion invent; whose ideas of happiness
are connected with a round of amusements, company, and all the novelties of
dress and pleasure that the gay world can offer. Young ladies who have been
brought up at fashionable boarding schools, with a contempt of every thing
useful or economical, make very indifferent settlers' wives. Nothing can be
more unfortunate than the situations in the woods of Canada of persons so
educated: disgusted with the unpleasant change in their mode of life,
wearied and discontented with all the objects around them, they find every
exertion a trouble, and every occupation a degradation.
For persons of this description (and there are
such to be met with in the colonies), Canada is the worst country in the
world. And I would urge any one, so unfitted by habit and inclination, under
no consideration to cross the Atlantic; for miserable, and poor, and
wretched they will become.
The emigrant, if he would succeed in this
country, must possess the following qualities: perseverance, patience,
industry, ingenuity, moderation, self-denial; and if he be a gentleman, a
small income is almost indispensable; a good one is still more desirable.
The outlay for buying and clearing land,
building, buying stock, and maintaining a family, paying servants' wages,
with many other unavoidable expenses, cannot be done without some pecuniary
means; and as the return from the land is but little for the first two or
three years, it would be advisable for a settler to bring out some hundreds
to enable him to carry on the farm and clear the above-mentioned expenses,
or he will soon find himself involved in great difficulties.
Now, to your third query, "What will be the
most profitable way of employing money, if a settler brought out capital
more than was required for his own expenditure?"
On this head, I am not of course competent to
give advice. My husband and friends, conversant with the affairs of the
colonies, say, lend it on mortgage, on good landed securities, and at a high
rate of interest. The purchase of land is often a good speculation, but not
always so certain as mortgage, as it pays no interest; and though it may at
some future time make great returns, it is not always so easy to dispose of
it to an advantage when you happen to need it. A man possessing many
thousand acres in different townships, may be distressed for twenty pounds
if suddenly called upon for it when he is unprepared, if he invests all his
capital in property of this kind.
It would be difficult for me to enumerate the
many opportunities of turning ready money to account. There is so little
money in circulation that those persons who are fortunate enough to have it
at command can do almost any thing with it they please.
"What are the most useful articles for a
settler to bring out?"
Tools, a good stock of wearing-apparel, and
shoes, good bedding, especially warm blankets; as you pay high for them
here, and they are not so good as you would supply yourself with at a much
lower rate at home. A selection of good garden-seeds, as those you buy at
the stores are sad trash; moreover, they are pasted up in packets not to be
opened till paid for, and you may, as we have done, pay for little better
than chaff, and empty husks, or old and worm-eaten seeds. This, I am sorry
to say, is a Yankee trick; though I doubt not but John Bull would do the
same if he had the opportunity, as there are rogues in all countries under
the sun.
With respect to furniture and heavy goods of
any kind, I would recommend little to be brought. Articles of hardware are
not much more expensive here than at home, if at all, and often of a kind
more suitable to the country than those you are at the trouble of bringing;
besides, all land-carriage is dear.
We lost a large package of tools that have
never been recovered from the forwarders, though their carriage was paid
beforehand to Prescott. It is safest and best to ensure your goods, when the
forwarders are accountable for them.
You ask, "If groceries and articles of
household consumption are dear or cheap?"
They vary according to circumstances and
situation. In towns situated in old cleared parts of the country, and near
the rivers and navigable waters, they are cheaper than at home; but in
newly-settled townships, where the water-communication is distant, and where
the roads are bad, and the transport of goods difficult, they are nearly
double the price. Where the supply of produce is inadequate to the demand
owing to the influx of emigrants in thinly-settled places, or other causes,
then all articles of provisions are sold at a high price, and not to be
procured without difficulty; but these are merely temporary evils, which
soon cease.
Competition is lowering prices in Canadian
towns, as it does in British ones, and you may now buy goods of all kinds
nearly as cheap as in England.
Where prices depend on local circumstances, it
is impossible to give any just standard; as what may do for one town would
not for another, and a continual change is going on in all the unsettled or
half-settled townships. In like manner the prices of cattle vary: they are
cheaper in old settled townships, and still more so on the American side the
river or lakes, than in the Canadas*.
[* The duties on goods imported to the Canadas
are exceedingly small, which will explain the circumstance of many articles
of consumption being cheaper in places where there are facilities of transit
than at home; while in the Backwoods, where roads are scarcely yet formed,
there must be taken into the account the cost of carriage, and increased
number of agents; the greater value of capital, and consequent increased
rate of local profit, &c.--items which will diminish in amount as the
country becomes settled and cleared.--Ed.]
"What are necessary qualifications of a
settler's wife; and the usual occupations of the female part of a settler's
family?" are your next questions.
To the first clause, I reply, a settler's wife
should be active, industrious, ingenious, cheerful, not above putting her
hand to whatever is necessary to be done in her household, nor too proud to
profit by the advice and experience of older portions of the community, from
whom she may learn many excellent lessons of practical wisdom.
Like that pattern of all good housewives
described by the prudent mother of King Lemuel, it should be said of the
emigrant's wife, "She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold
the distaff." "She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her
hands." "She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the
bread of idleness."
Nothing argues a greater degree of good sense
and good feeling than a cheerful conformity to circumstances, adverse though
they be compared with a former lot; surely none that felt as they ought to
feel, would ever despise a woman, however delicately brought up, for doing
her duty in the state of life unto which it may have pleased God to call
her. Since I came to this country, I have seen the accomplished daughters
and wives of men holding no inconsiderable rank as officers, both naval and
military, milking their own cows, making their own butter, and performing
tasks of household work that few of our farmers' wives would now condescend
to take part in. Instead of despising these useful arts, an emigrant's
family rather pride themselves on their skill in these matters. The less
silly pride and the more practical knowledge the female emigrant brings out
with her, so much greater is the chance for domestic happiness and
prosperity.
I am sorry to observe, that in many cases the
women that come hither give way to melancholy regrets, and destroy the
harmony of their fireside, and deaden the energies of their husbands and
brothers by constant and useless repining. Having once made up their minds
to follow their husbands or friends to this country, it would be wiser and
better to conform with a good grace, and do their part to make the burden of
emigration more bearable.
One poor woman that was lamenting the miseries
of this country was obliged to acknowledge that her prospects were far
better than they ever had or could have been at home. What, then, was the
cause of her continual regrets and discontent? I could hardly forbear
smiling, when she replied, "She could not go to shop of a Saturday night to
lay out her husband's earnings, and have a little chat with her naibors,
while the shopman was serving the customers,--for why? there were no shops
in the bush, and she was just dead-alive. If Mrs. Such-a-one (with whom, by
the way, she was always quarrelling when they lived under the same roof) was
near her she might not feel quite so lonesome." And so for the sake of a
dish of gossip, while lolling her elbows on the counter of a village-shop,
this foolish woman would have forgone the advantages, real solid advantages,
of having land and cattle, and poultry and food, and firing and clothing,
and all for a few years' hard work, which, her husband wisely observed, must
have been exerted at home, with no other end in view than an old age of
poverty or a refuge from starvation in a parish workhouse.
The female of the middling or better class, in
her turn, pines for the society of the circle of friends she has quitted,
probably for ever. She sighs for those little domestic comforts, that
display of the refinements and elegancies of life, that she had been
accustomed to see around her. She has little time now for those pursuits
that were ever her business as well as amusement. The accomplishments she
has now to acquire are of a different order: she must become skilled in the
arts of sugar-boiling, candle and soap making, the making and baking of huge
loaves, cooked in the bake-kettle, unless she be the fortunate mistress of a
stone or clay oven. She must know how to manufacture hop-rising or
salt-rising for leavening her bread; salting meat and fish, knitting
stockings and mittens and comforters, spinning yarn in the big wheel (the
French Canadian spinning-wheel), and dyeing the yarn when spun to have
manufactured into cloth and coloured flannels, to clothe her husband and
children, making clothes for herself, her husband and children;--for there
are no tailors nor mantua-makers in the bush.
The management of poultry and the dairy must
not be omitted; for in this country most persons adopt the Irish and Scotch
method, that of churning the _milk_, a practice that in our part of England
was not known. For my own part I am inclined to prefer the butter churned
from cream, as being most economical, unless you chance to have Irish or
Scotch servants who prefer buttermilk to new or sweet skimmed milk.
There is something to be said in favour of
both plans, no doubt. The management of the calves differs here very much.
Some persons wean the calf from the mother from its birth, never allowing it
to suck at all: the little creature is kept fasting the first twenty-four
hours; it is then fed with the finger with new milk, which it soon learns to
take readily. I have seen fine cattle thus reared, and am disposed to adopt
the plan as the least troublesome one.
The old settlers pursue an opposite mode of
treatment, allowing the calf to suck till it is neatly half a year old,
under the idea that it ensures the daily return of the cow; as, under
ordinary circumstances, she is apt to ramble sometimes for days together,
when the herbage grows scarce in the woods near the homesteads, and you not
only lose the use of the milk, but often, from distention of the udder, the
cow is materially injured, at least for the remainder of the milking season.
I am disposed to think that were care taken to give the cattle regular
supplies of salt, and a small portion of food, if ever so little, near the
milking-place, they would seldom stay long away. A few refuse potatoes, the
leaves of the garden vegetables daily in use, set aside for them, with the
green shoots of the Indian corn that are stripped off to strengthen the
plant, will ensure their attendance. In the fall and winter, pumpkins, corn,
straw, and any other fodder you may have, with the browse they get during
the chopping and underbrushing season, will keep them well.
The weanling calves should be given skimmed
milk or buttermilk, with the leafy boughs of basswood and maple, of which
they are extremely fond. A warm shed or fenced yard is very necessary for
the cattle during the intense winter frosts: this is too often disregarded,
especially in new settlements, which is the cause that many persons have the
mortification of losing their stock, either with disease or cold. Naturally
the Canadian cattle are very hardy, and when taken moderate care of, endure
the severest winters well; but owing to the difficulties that attend a first
settlement in the bush, they suffer every privation of cold and hunger,
which brings on a complaint generally fatal, called the "hollow horn;" this
originates in the spine, or extends to it, and is cured or palliated by
boring the horn and inserting turpentine, pepper, or other heating
substances.
When a new comer has not winter food for his
cattle, it is wise to sell them in the fall and buy others in the spring:
though at a seeming loss, it is perhaps less loss in reality than losing the
cattle altogether. This was the plan my husband adopted, and we found it
decidedly the better one, besides saving much care, trouble, and vexation.
I have seen some good specimens of native
cheese, that I thought very respectable, considering that the grass is by no
means equal to our British pastures. I purpose trying my skill next summer:
who knows but that I may inspire some Canadian bard to celebrate the produce
of my dairy as Bloomfield did the Suffolk cheese, yclept "Bang." You
remember the passage,--for Bloomfield is your countryman as well as
mine,--it begins:
"Unrivalled stands thy county cheese, O
Giles," &c.
I have dwelt on the dairy information; as I
know you were desirous of imparting all you could collect to your friends.
You wish to know something of the culture of
Indian corn, and if it be a useful and profitable crop.
The cultivation of Indian corn on newly
cleared lands is very easy, and attended with but little labour; on old
farms it requires more. The earth is just raised with a broad hoe, and three
or four corns dropped in with a pumpkin-seed, in about every third or fourth
hole, and in every alternate row; the seed are set several feet apart. The
pumpkins and the corn grow very amicably together, the broad leaves of the
former shading the young plants and preventing the too great evaporation of
the moisture from the ground; the roots strike little way, so that they rob
the corn of a very small portion of nourishment. The one crop trails to an
amazing length along the ground, while the other shoots up to the height of
several feet above it. When the corn is beginning to branch, the ground
should be hoed once over, to draw the earth a little to the roots, and cut
down any weeds that might injure it. This is all that is done till the cob
is beginning to form, when the blind and weak shoots are broken off, leaving
four or five of the finest bearing shoots. The feather, when it begins to
turn brown and dead, should also be taken off; that the plant may have all
the nourishment to the corn.
We had a remarkable instance of smut in our
corn last summer. The diseased cobs had large white bladders as big as a
small puff-ball, or very large nuts, and these on being broken were full of
an inky black liquid. On the same plants might be observed a sort of false
fructification, the cob being deficient in kernels, which by some strange
accident were transposed to the top feather or male blossoms. I leave
botanists to explain the cause of this singular anomaly; I only state facts.
I could not learn that the smut was a disease common to Indian corn, but
last year smut or dust bran, as it is called by some, was very prevalent in
the oat, barley and wheat crops. In this country especially, new lands are
very subject to the disease.
The ripe corn is either shocked as beans are
at home, or the cobs pulled and braided on ropes after the manner of onions,
and hung over poles or beams in the granaries or barns. The stripping of the
corn gives rise among some people, to what they call a husking-bee, which,
like all the other bees, is one of Yankee origin, and is not now so
frequently adopted among the more independent or better class of settlers.
The Indian corn is a tender and somewhat
precarious crop: it is liable to injury from the late frosts while young,
for which reason it is never put in before the 20th of May, or beginning of
June, and even then it will suffer; it has also many enemies; bears, racoons,
squirrels, mice, and birds, and is a great temptation to breachy cattle;
who, to come at it, will even toss down a fence with stakes and riders for
protection, i.e. a pole or cross-bar, supported between crossed stakes, that
surmounts the zig-zag rail fences, for better securing them from the
incursions of cattle.
Even in Canada this crop requires a hot summer
to ripen it perfectly; which makes me think Mr. Cobbett was deceiving the
English farmer when he recommended it as a profitable crop in England.
Profitable and highly useful it is under every disadvantage, as it makes the
richest and sweetest food for all kinds of granivorous animals, even in its
green state, and affords sound good food when ripe, or even partially ripe,
for fattening beasts and working oxen.
Last summer was very favourable, and the crops
were abundant, but owing to the failure of the two preceding ones, fewer
settlers grew it. Our small patch turned out very good. The flour makes a
substantial sort of porridge, called by the Americans "Supporne;" this is
made with water, and eaten with milk, or else mixed with milk; it requires
long boiling. Bread is seldom if ever made without a large portion of
wheaten flour, mixed with the corn meal.
With respect to the culture of other grain, I
can tell you nothing but what every book that treats on emigration will give
you. The potatoe instead of being sown in drills is planted in hills, which
are raised over the sets; this crop requires hoeing.
With respect to the usual rate of wages, this
also differs according to the populousness of the place: but the common
wages now given to an active able man are from eight to eleven dollars per
month; ten is perhaps the general average; from four to six for lads, and
three and four for female servants. You may get a little girl, say from nine
to twelve years, for her board and clothing; but this is far from a saving
plan, as they soon wear out clothes and shoes thus bestowed. I have once
tried this way, but found myself badly served, and a greater loser than if I
had given wages. A big girl will go out to service for two and two and a
half dollars per month, and will work in the fields also if required,
binding after the reapers, planting and hoeing corn and potatoes. I have a
very good girl, the daughter of a Wiltshire emigrant, who is neat and
clever, and respectful and industrious, to whom I give three dollars only:
she is a happy specimen of the lower order of English emigrants, and her
family are quite acquisitions to the township in which they live.
I think I have now answered all your queries
to the best of my ability; but I would have you bear in mind that my
knowledge is confined to a small portion of the townships along the Otanabee
lakes, therefore, my information after all, may be but local: things may
differ, and do differ in other parts of the province, though possibly not
very materially.
I must now say farewell. Should you ever feel
tempted to try your fortune on this side the Atlantic, let me assure you of
a warm welcome to our Canadian home, from your sincerely attached friend. |
