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Busy Spring.--Increase of
Society and Comfort.--Recollections of Home.--Aurora Borealis
THIS has been a busy spring
with us. First, sugar-making on a larger scale than our first attempt was,
and since that we had workmen making considerable addition to our house; we
have built a large and convenient kitchen, taking the former one for a
bedroom; the root-house and dairy are nearly completed. We have a well of
excellent water close beside the door, and a fine frame-barn was finished
this week, which includes a good granary and stable, with a place for my
poultry, in which I take great delight.
Besides a fine brood of
fowls, the produce of two hens and a cock, or rooster, as the Yankees term
that bird, I have some ducks, and am to have turkeys and geese this summer.
I lost several of my best fowls, not by the hawk but a horrid beast of the
same nature as our polecat, called here a scunck; it is far more destructive
in its nature than either fox or the hawk, for he comes like a thief in the
night and invades the perch, leaving headless mementos of his barbarity and
blood-thirsty propensities.
We are having the garden,
which hitherto has been nothing but a square enclosure for vegetables, laid
out in a prettier form; two half circular wings sweep off from the entrance
to each side of the house; the fence is a sort of rude basket or
hurdle-work, such as you see at home, called by the country folk wattled
fence: this forms a much more picturesque fence than those usually put up of
split timber.
Along this little enclosure
I have begun planting a sort of flowery hedge with some of the native shrubs
that abound in our woods and lake-shores.
Among those already
introduced are two species of shrubby honeysuckle, white and rose-blossomed:
these are called by the American botanists quilostium.
Then I have the white _Spiroeafrutex_,
which grows profusely on the lake-shore; the Canadian wild rose; the red
flowering raspberry (rubus spectabilis), leather-wood (dircas) called
American mezereon, or moose-wood; this is a very pretty, and at the same
time useful shrub, the bark being used by farmers as a substitute for cord
in tying sacks, &c.; the Indians sew their birch-bark baskets with it
occasionally.
Wild gooseberry, red and
black currants, apple-trees, with here and there a standard hawthorn, the
native tree bearing nice red fruit I named before, are all I have as yet
been able to introduce.
The stoup is up, and I have
just planted hops at the base of the pillars. I have got two bearing shoots
of a purple wild grape from the island near us, which I long to see in
fruit.
My husband is in good
spirits; our darling boy is well, and runs about everywhere. We enjoy a
pleasant and friendly society, which has increased so much within the last
two years that we can hardly regret our absence from the more populous town.
My dear sister and her
husband are comfortably settled in their new abode, and have a fine spot
cleared and cropped. We often see them, and enjoy a chat of home--sweet,
never-to-be-forgotten home; and cheat ourselves into the fond belief that,
at no very distant time we may again retrace its fertile fields and flowery
dales.
With what delight we should
introduce our young Canadians to their grandmother and aunts; my little
bushman shall early be taught to lisp the names of those unknown but dear
friends, and to love the lands that gave birth to his parents, the bonny
hills of the north and my own beloved England.
Not to regret my absence
from my native land, and one so fair and lovely withal, would argue a heart
of insensibility; yet I must say, for all its roughness, I love Canada, and
am as happy in my humble log-house as if it were courtly hall or bower;
habit reconciles us to many things that at first were distasteful. It has
ever been my way to extract the sweet rather than the bitter in the cup of
life, and surely it is best and wisest so to do. In a country where constant
exertion is called for from all ages and degrees of settlers, it would be
foolish to a degree to damp our energies by complaints, and cast a gloom
over our homes by sitting dejectedly down to lament for all that was so dear
to us in the old country. Since we are here, let us make the best of it, and
bear with cheerfulness the lot we have chosen. I believe that one of the
chief ingredients in human happiness is a capacity for enjoying the
blessings we possess.
Though at our first outset
we experienced many disappointments, many unlooked-for expenses, and many
annoying delays, with some wants that to us seemed great privations, on the
whole we have been fortunate, especially in the situation of our land, which
has increased in value very considerably; our chief difficulties are now
over, at least we hope so, and we trust soon to enjoy the comforts of a
cleared farm.
My husband is becoming more
reconciled to the country, and I daily feel my attachment to it
strengthening. The very stumps that appeared so odious, through long custom,
seem to lose some of their hideousness; the eye becomes familiarized even
with objects the most displeasing till they cease to be observed. Some
century hence how different will this spot appear! I can picture it to my
imagination with fertile fields and groves of trees planted by the hand of
taste;--all will be different; our present rude dwellings will have given
place to others of a more elegant style of architecture, and comfort and
grace will rule the scene which is now a forest wild.
You ask me if I like the
climate of Upper Canada; to be candid I do not think it deserves all that
travellers have said of it. The summer heat of last year was very
oppressive; the drought was extreme, and in some respects proved rather
injurious, especially to the potatoe crop. The frosts set in early, and so
did the snows; as to the far-famed Indian summer it seems to have taken its
farewell of the land, for little of it have we seen during three years'
residence. Last year there was not a semblance of it, and this year one
horrible dark gloomy day, that reminded me most forcibly of a London fog,
and which was to the full as dismal and depressing, was declared by the old
inhabitants to be the commencement of the Indian summer; the sun looked dim
and red, and a yellow lurid mist darkened the atmosphere, so that it became
almost necessary to light candles at noonday. If this be Indian summer, then
might a succession of London fogs be termed the "London summer," thought I,
as I groped about in a sort of bewildering dusky light all that day; and
glad was I when, after a day or two's heavy rain, the frost and snow set in.
Very variable, as far as
our experience goes, this climate has been; no two seasons have been at all
alike, and it is supposed it will be still more variable as the work of
clearing the forest goes on from year to year. Near the rivers and great
lakes the climate is much milder and more equable; more inland, the snow
seldom falls so as to allow of sleighing for weeks after it has become
general; this, considering the state of our bush-roads, is rather a point in
our favour, as travelling becomes less laborious, though still somewhat
rough.
I have seen the aurora
borealis several times; also a splendid meteoric phenomenon that surpassed
every thing I had ever seen or even heard of before. I was very much amused
by overhearing a young lad giving a gentleman a description of the
appearance made by a cluster of the shooting-stars as they followed each
other in quick succession athwart the sky. "Sir," said the boy, "I never saw
such a sight before, and I can only liken the chain of stars to a
logging-chain." Certainly a most natural and unique simile, quite in
character with the occupation of the lad, whose business was often with the
oxen and logging-chain, and after all not more rustic than the familiar
names given to many of our most superb constellations,--Charle's wain, the
plough, the sickle, &c.
Coming home one night last
Christmas from the house of a friend, I was struck by a splendid pillar of
pale greenish light in the west: it rose to some height above the dark line
of pines that crowned the opposite shores of the Otanabee, and illumined the
heavens on either side with a chaste pure light, such as the moon gives in
her rise and setting; it was not quite pyramidical, though much broader at
the base than at its highest point; it gradually faded, till a faint white
glimmering light alone marked where its place had been, and even that
disappeared after some half-hour's time. It was so fair and lovely a vision
I was grieved when it vanished into thin air, and could have cheated fancy
into the belief that it was the robe of some bright visitor from another and
a better world;--imagination apart, could it be a phosphoric exhalation from
some of our many swamps or inland lakes, or was it at all connected with the
aurora that is so frequently seen in our skies?
I must now close this
epistle; I have many letters to prepare for friends, to whom I can only
write when I have the opportunity of free conveyance, the inland postage
being very high; and you must not only pay for all you receive but all you
send to and from New York.
Adieu, my kindest and best
of friends.
Douro, May 1st, 1833. |
