|
A GENTLEMAN EMIGRANT!”
cried an American backwoods farmer, to whom, we were one day describing
Australian bush life, “A Gentleman Emigrant! Why, what on airth’s that?
Guess he’s a British institution.”
A happier guess our
horny-handed, sun-embrowned Yankee friend could, we think, hardly have made
had he kept on guessing for a twelvemonth. The Gentleman Emigrant is a
British Institution. France knows him not, neither does the German
Fatherland. His counterpart will be searched for in vain among those
countless thousands yearly leaving the ports of Hamburg, Bremen, Havre, for
the shores of the New World; for he is an institution altogether, owing his
being to the existence amongst us of a variety of other
institutions—institutions which, although they may flourish singly in many
lands, are to be found united in no other country save England. If we gently
whisper Law of Primogeniture, Law of Entail, the reader will, we feel
assured, be able to complete the list to his own entire satisfaction.
To judge from the
heart-rending letters which he from time to time addresses to the editors of
our daily prints, paterfamilias, with large family and strictly entailed
estate, is just now at his wit’s end to know what he shall do with his
younger children. Having had to “keep up his position in the world,” the
amount he has been able to lay aside from year to year has been necessarily
small, the sum total being barely sufficient to portion his daughters. There
is the estate for Tom and the family living whenever it may chance to fall
in for Jim, but what in Heaven’s name is to be done with Bill and Dick and
Harry? and in the agony of his despair he can think of nothing better than
to impart his perplexities to the editor of the Times, and ask the sympathy
of its readers. The complainant has invariably been the very best of
fathers, and has done what lie could for his lads. There have been no
invidious distinctions made between the heir and his younger brothers; all
have received the very best education that money could procure. As boys,
they were sent to Eton or Harrow; as young men, to Cambridge or Oxford;
whilst at home, stables and stubbles were free to all. After such advantages
as these, the youngsters ought surely to be able to make their own way in
life without much pecuniary assistance. Were one to tell this worthy English
squire that, far from having done his best for his younger children, he had
selected the very surest plan for ruining their prospects in life, how
astonished he would be. And yet such an accusation would be but the plain
truth after all. When preferment in the Church is next to hopeless without
money for the purchase of a living; when, in both Army and Navy, the pay of
junior officers must be supplemented by an “allowance when, out of every
hundred young gentlemen called to the bar, there may perhaps be twenty who
can find employment; when there is no admittance into commercial circles
without an investment of capital; when almost every door to independence is
locked, and only to be opened with a golden key—to give an impecunious
younger son an education which, whilst it may or may not fit him for one of
the learned professions, totally unfits him for a life of drudgery and
privation, is not only unwise, it is cruel. Why is it that so many young men
of good family are now shepherding in the Australian bush, tent-keeping for
rough miners at the diggings, or begging for odd jobs in •Melbourne and St.
Francisco, when they ought to be employers of labour rather than the
employed ? Because the father, after having brought up the unhappy youth as
if he were heir to ten thousand per annum, has, in many instances, packed
him off to seek his fortune in the colonies, with perhaps as many crowns in
his pocket as the son of the village grocer has received sovereigns from his
father to start him in life—a liberal education being the sole makeweight. A
liberal education, indeed! How the words bring to our recollection many a
poor heart-broken wretch whom we have come across during our wanderings in
the Far West and in our explorations at the Antipodes!
The younger son question
has been so thoroughly discussed of late years, that the subject is worn
well nigh threadbare. Heaven forefend that we should court the ill-will of
"England’s firstborn by taking up the cudgels in behalf of Benjamin! Were
the laws relating to primogeniture and entail to be straightway blotted from
out the Statute Book, and all younger children be henceforth legally
entitled, as in other lands, to their fair share of the patrimony, what, it
has been plausibly asked, would become of Merry England ? Family estates,
cut up into infinitesimal portions, fine old country mansions falling to
rack and ruin, coverts converted into potato patches, and preserves into
cabbage gardens 1 No more splendid hospitalities ! no more Christmas
festivities! no more hunting! no more battues I no more coming of age as in
the olden time ! Leaving to heirs in tail and to tlieir assailants the
pleasant task of arguing the point, let us hark back to paterfamilias, and
to the question by him propounded —In the existing state of things, what can
be done with the younger children? Under the heading “Shirkers,” some
letters made their appearance in the columns of the Field newspaper. The aim
of the writer was to suggest a plan by which “those great lumbering, ’cute,
good-natured noodles who sprawl about the premises during consecutive
vacations, and yawn until one cannot help feeling it would be justifiable
homicide to knock them on the head,” might be put in the way of earning
their living. Divested of all extraneous matter, the plan proposed was
simply this:—That an emigrant college, granting “testamurs” of efficiency,
should be founded, where the shirks, or such other wretches as proved
themselves incapable- of mastering the dead languages, or of shining in one
of the learned professions, should be taught a trade, prior to their being
packed off to the Antipodes.
Plausible as such a project
may seem to those having no personal experience of colonial life, it does
not take the initiated long to discover that it carries failure on the face
of it. At what age would the probationer be admitted? At sixteen? at twenty?
It is too late; and yet before that age it would be next to impossible to
determine of what the lad might be ultimately capable. Like racers, some men
are good to make the running; others come out strong at the finish. We have
known lads who were always head of their class at school, and who brought
home prizes every vacation, absolutely nowhere when it came to taking their
degree; and, on the other hand, many a lagger to the distance-post, who,
rushing gamely to the front when a few strides from home, carried the
winning colours. A very unpromising yearling may, be a slashing horse at
three years old, and there is no reason why the Eton or Harrow dullard
should not ultimately develop into the first-class man. If you throw your
son out of training simply because he does not promise well, you do him an
injustice ; if he break down hopelessly when running his intellectual Derby,
it is too late to begin his education. anew. Sending a young man whose
tastes and habits are already formed to an emigrant college to learn
turnery, the use of the file, farriers’ forge work, joinery, cabinet work,
upholstery, basket making, any useful manual trade by which he is sure to
earn his bread,” may be very well in theory, but it is unfortunately
impracticable. Even supposing that he could forget the old home, and conquer
his craving for those luxuries to which he has been since childhood
accustomed, what kind of a trade could he learn in a twelvemonth, or even in
two years’ time? If in the learned professions mediocrity means failure/5 it
does so no less in the lower walks of life. A bungling carpenter has as
little chance of employment as a blundering physician—less so, indeed, as
the latter’s handiwork cannot be produced in evidence against him. Is it to
be supposed that the trade which it has taken a smart, hardworking lad five
or seven years’ apprenticeship to acquire can be picked up in a twelvemonth
by the young gentleman who has already proved himself a dolt? We trow not.
But even admitting that it were possible, and that the shirk could succeed
in obtaining his testamur at the end of two years’ time, how far advanced
would he be on his road to independence? Not much further than when he
started. He might be master of a handicraft, but how about obtaining
employment? His testamur wouldn’t help him. To represent himself as a
graduate of the Gentleman Emigrants’ College would be to have the door shut
in his face, for there is nothing that a master mechanic hates more than to
have a workman in his employ who is above his business. “We don’t want no
gentlemen here !” would be the response to his application, and he would be
politely requested to seek elsewhere for employment. But it would not be the
employers alone that would snap at him. The real working bees—all artisans
by vocation—would be down upon him to a man. The British workman is
doubtless a fine, intelligent fellow; but beware, 0 presumptuous interloper!
how you interfere with his blessed rights and privileges. Sheffield tactics
are known, unfortunately, beyond the confines of Yorkshire.
No! If a father be desirous
that his son receive the education of a gentleman, and enter one of the
learned professions, he must be prepared to furnish him with the means of
subsistence in the event of failure. If he have no higher ambition than to
see him a skilled mechanic, let him send the lad away from home before he
has acquired a taste for luxuries which once launched in life will be beyond
his means.
It is, no doubt, highly
desirable that every man—be he prince or peasant—should be master of a
trade; but to insure a livelihood by any particular calling, that calling
must have been slowly and steadily learnt as a craft, not picked up
haphazard as a makeshift. All attempts to combine the gentleman with the
skilled mechanic will assuredly prove a failure. Does the reader desire to
know the reason why? It is that he of gentle blood cannot forget the home of
his youth, and keeps on hankering after the. comforts and good cheer of the
paternal mansion. Much worldly wisdom is displayed in the story of the
prodigal. How came it that poor Prodigal, instead of keeping a stiff upper
lip under his misfortunes, so quickly broke down and resolved to return to
his father? It was that he remembered how many hired servants of that father
had “bread enough and to spare.” Had he not done so, he would doubtless have
tried to labour, and to wait patiently until such time as he should find an
occupation more to his taste than that of swineherd. The Australian Newchum
(who need not necessarily be a prodigal), as he munches his damper and gulps
the poisonous infusion supposed by bushmen to be tea, thinks with a sigh of
the prime joints and sound homebrewed gracing the board in his father’s
servants’ hall, and cries, in the words of his prototype, “I will arise, and
go to my father;” and another returned shirk is soon added to the already
lengthy list. Had Mr. Newchum not been so thoroughly acquainted with the
internal economyof his father’s kitchen,the chances are that the damper
would have found its way down, and that he would have tackled the tea
without winking.
But although a college for
the conversion of confirmed blockheads into skilful mechanics might prove a
failure, there is no earthly reason why a school for emigrants of the better
class should not be started in every county in England. There ought to be
plenty of pupils to fill them all. By the better class, we mean the sons of
men who can afford to start their children in life with a capital of from
one to five thousand pounds. Less than one thousand pounds is no capital at
all; with upwards of five at command, young men of average ability ought to
be able to find an opening even in England. There is, so far as we can see,
but one serious objection to the establishment of such schools, and it is
this. Would the tender-hearted British matron consent to be separated from
her bantlings; for the child would have to leave his father’s roof, never to
return? To make an education such as the lad would receive at an emigrant
school of any real service to him in after life, there must be no going home
for the holidays. Six weeks at home, unless that home were very homely,
would most assuredly nullify the half year’s training. To teach a lad habits
of thrift and order for nine months out of the twelve, only to pamper him
with every luxury for the remaining three, would be time and labour thrown
away. If English parents are of so very affectionate a nature that they
would scout such an arrangement as cruel and heartless, useless to attempt
the foundation of emigrant schools. But then, if the parent be too
tender-hearted to deprive his child of his half-yearly holiday, he ought
surely to be too tender-hearted to turn him adrift in the world with an
education which is valueless, and with a purse so poorly garnished that the
poor fellow might just as well have no purse at all.
Supposing, however, for the
sake of argument, that pater familias would gladly send his younger sons to
an emigrant school, if by so doing he could assure to them a contented and
independent, if not a very brilliant future; and that mater families would,
for a like reason, consent to be separated from Benoni, the question
naturally arises—given the lad, how would you train him?
It is a question much more
easily asked than answered; and if we attempt its solution it is more for
the sake of pointing out where the schemes hitherto proposed would in all
probability fail, than of offering one of our own to the reader.
We have already given our
reasons for believing that all attempts to combine the gentleman with the
skilled mechanic would, be futile; we may go a little further, and add, that
to teach our gentleman emigrant a trade as a trade, would be likewise
useless. The most that can be expected of any ordinary mortal is, that be
should be an expert in one particular handicraft. What is essential for the
settler, is not so much that he be master of one trade, as that he be handy
at half a dozen. The saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none,” may have
exceeding point so far as the Old World is concerned; but away from the
townships, it does not hold good in the colonies. At an emigrant school,
general handiness, rather than special dexterity, should be the order of the
day. ( Handiness, but no fancy work. Chair-making, cabinet work, upholstery,
basket-making, turnery, are all capital trades no doubt— in Europe—but of
what earthly use would they be in the bush or backwoods? Just imagine a poor
wretch having to depend on chair-making for his daily bread in Canada, where
chairs are turned out by machinery, at a ridiculously low figure—by
basket-making in the backwoods, where an Indian squaw will weave one a
clothes’-basket for an old shirt and a fig of tobacco—or on a knowledge of
turnery in the Australian bush, where the transport of his lathe would more
than swallow up all the possible profit? In Melbourne or Sydney the skilled
artisan might probably be able to earn a living by such trades; but of what
use would a superficial knowledge of them be to our friend from the emigrant
college? Suppose we say of about as much real value as is a knowledge of
mat-making to the discharged convict. No! The professor’s chair at an
emigrant college would have to be filled by a very different stamp of man to
“Mr. Holzapffell, the turner, of Charing Cross.” With the exception of the
head master or warden, none of the instructors need necessarily be above the
grade of journeyman artisan. In fact, they ought not to be so, and for this
reason. Solidity, not finish, is what is wanted in the bush or backwoods;
and a master mechanic would be too apt to sacrifice the former for the
latter, and be looking to the appearance of his pupil’s work rather than to
its utility. If the pupils did not exceed one hundred, the professorships at
an emigrant school might be limited to six. Firstly, the warden, whose
qualifications for office would be, not that he had taken a double first, or
been senior wrangler of his year, but that he was a man of general
information, qualified not only to impart a sound English education, but
likewise competent to teach his pupils the rudiments of surveying, botany,
geology, surgery, &c.—that he were, in fact, a walking cyclopaedia.
Secondly, vol. I. d the professor of carpentry, who ought to be an American,
as he would be required to understand the construction and repair of “frame”
houses, a branch of the business not generally known in England. Thirdly, he
of the anvil, who, besides farriery, including the shoeing of oxen, should
possess a thorough knowledge of veterinary surgery. Fourthly, the
harness-maker, who with his trade might combine that of cobbler. Fifthly,
the stonemason, whose teachings might be confined to the underpinning of
wooden houses, the building of cellars and chimneys, and the construction of
loose stone walls. Lastly, the professor of agriculture, who, far from being
a graduate of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, ought to be a
plain, hard-working farmer. And here let us lay down an axiom which will be
found to hold good in all new countries—one to which we shall have to revert
again and again before we write the word finis. No greater folly can be
committed than to attempt to introduce into a country where land is cheap
and labour dear, the costly high-class farming in vogue in England, where
land is dear and labour comparatively cheap. High farming may answer very
well in Norfolk, but it does not pay in a country where land can be
purchased for, say two pounds an acre, and where your ploughman
demands for his services
twenty, perhaps thirty dollars a month and ratios. To own a model farm is
doubtless very gratifying to one’s vanity; but what the wide-awake settler
has to consider is, not if his farm be the model one of the district, but if
he can make it pay better than his neighbour’s. To teach the embryo settler
our English system of high-class farming would be to ruin him. His head
would be so crammed with subsoiling and draining and Gurneyism and what not,
that when it came to simple backwoods farming, he would be nonplussed. Like
a certain gentleman of our acquaintance, after spending his capital on
experiments, he would in the end have to put in his crops in more primitive
fashion than even the bumpkins whom he had been trying to teach. In colonial
farming there is such a thing as knowing too much. If the settler understand
sufficient of chemistry to be able to determine the texture and nature of
soils and their management, and the properties of the various manures and
their application, of scientific farming he has learned enough. Of practical
farming he cannot well know too much. Not only must he be thoroughly
conversant with everything appertaining to both farm and garden, from
preparing the swill for the pigs to grafting a choice pippin, but he must be
able and willing to lay hold of the plough-handles and show his help how to
turn a furrow, or to teach him how wheat is stacked in the “old country.”
The master’s eye may suffice at home, it is the master’s hand that is
requisite in the Far West and at the Antipodes. That the pupil’s education
might be thoroughly complete, emigrant schools would have to be in a great
measure dependent upon one another; for it would never do to bring up a lad
whose intention it was to try “squatterizing” in Australia on a strong clay
farm, nor one who had the backwoods in view, on a Highland sheep-walk. Four
farms in different parts of the country might constitute an emigrant
school—say a sandy-loam farm in Notts, a heavy clay ditto in Yorkshire, a
dairy farm in Cheshire, and a Highland sheep-run. This arrangement would
offer a double advantage, for not only would the pupils be thereby enabled
thoroughly to comprehend the systems pursued on the different farms, but the
change from one part of the kingdom to another would benefit their health,
and seem to them almost as jolly as going home for the holidays.
Brought up in this way, any
young man who, at the age of twenty-one, should prove unfitted for colonial
life, might, we think, fairly be considered an idiot, and be straightway
transferred to an asylum; for were he not so he would have surely managed to
pick up, during his ten or twelve years’ apprenticeship, the rudiments at
least of half a dozen useful trades, and have acquired a practical knowledge
of farming. If he were not sufficiently handy with awl and needle to make a
new set of harness, he ought, at least, to be able to mend an old one. If he
could not undertake the building of a house from cellar to attic, he might
surely manage to mend a broken door or rebuild a fallen chimney. If his
veterinary knowledge was incomplete, he would be sufficiently wide-awake to
know a splint from a spavin. Above all, he would have acquired habits of
thrift and regularity; have discovered that riches are not absolutely
essential to human happiness; that enough is as good as a feast; and last,
not least, that manual labour, if not exactly “ dignified,” is very far from
being derogatory. With average luck—for there is such a thing—the shrewdest
man amongst us being but a puppet in the hands of Fortune, the betting
should be ten to one on him, two to one against, being a fair quotation for
our friend of the gentlemanly education, whom we have lost sight of
altogether. Let us hasten to return to him; for the emigrant school question
is hut looming in the distance, whilst the gentleman emigrant question is a
topic of the day.
From information which we
have from time to time received, and from our own personal experience, we
can arrive at no other conclusion than that the expedients by which young
gentlemen who have been unfortunate in their examinations hope to escape the
penalties attached to nonsuccess are at present limited to three. Either
they can wait until something turns up, or they intend to fall back on their
own resources, or, if the worst comes to the worst, they will emigrate.
“Waiting for something to turn up” signifies, so far as we can understand,
the hiring of furnished chambers in town, and pestering one’s friends and
relatives to obtain for one a secretaryship or some other easy billet.
“Falling back on one’s own resources”—making a book (betting, of
course)—pool-playing—loo—varied by an occasional letter to the “Gov.” for a
little more specie. What ultimately becomes of these young gentlemen it
would be no easy task to discover. A small percentage find their way to
distant lands, and die there; but, as a rule, their oubliette lies much
nearer home than the Antipodes.
With the gentlemen
belonging to the third category—those who, “if the worst comes to the worst,
will emigrate”—it is different. The story of their lives from year to year
can be clearly traced from the hour they leave the Liverpool or London docks
up to that in which they return home with a competency to end their days in
their native land, or, weary and way-worn, lay them down to die in lonely
bush or wild sierra— that is, always presuming that they do not return home
at an early date in the character of victimized Newchums.
Supposing the entire body
of gentlemen emigrants to represent an army, these form the infantry
division; the cavalry brigade being composed of men of comparatively
independent means, who emigrate merely because they have not sufficient to
keep up their position in England. Married men, for the most part with
growing families to provide for, they have perhaps been appalled at the
steadily increasing total of the monthly bills, or have been induced to
emigrate by glowing accounts of cheap living, high interest for capital,
profitable farming, or, more probably still, opportunities of sport not to
be found at home at any price. Immigrants of this class are to be met with
in all parts of the world; and to judge from the never-ending inquiries
addressed to the editors of our sporting journals respecting desirable
locations for the gentlemen settler desirous of combining profitable farming
with a little shooting and fishing, the number must be steadily on the
increase. In the Field these inquiries usually appear under the heading
“Notes and Queries on Travel.” Utopia would, perhaps, be more appropriate.
The would-be settler almost invariably wants too much. Not only must he find
some spot where he can farm profitably and enjoy a little sport, but it is
highly desirable, if not indispensable, that the climate be fine, the
society genteel, education cheap and good, and the servants hard-working and
trustworthy. If such a terrestrial paradise exist, we should particularly
like to hear of it. Instead of writing on emigration for the benefit of
others, we would ourselves emigrate thither without a moment's delay. Were
it not for certain books purporting to be truthful descriptions of settlers’
life in far-off lands, it would be difficult to understand how any
reasonable being could believe in the existence of such Utopia; as it is, no
very great amount of book lore is necessary to enable one to determine the
originator of the hoax which has been taken au serieux. How well we know
‘the style! Is the winter long and severe? It does but increase the
friability of the soil, and make the harvests more abundant. Is it short and
mild? The productions of both the temperate and torrid zones grow
harmoniously together, and the process of vegetation goes on uninterruptedly
during the whole year. In the North you glide over the frozen ground to the
merry tinkle of sleigh-bells; in the South you steam cheerily along with
your produce to market under a cloudless sky. Far be it from us to damp the
ardour of the emigrant; it is our desire to encourage rather than to
dissuade. But that our writings be of any real service to the intending
settler, we must not draw upon our imagination'; we must stick to facts.
Good wine needs no bush; a good country needs no trumpeter. There are plenty
of noble fields for the enterprising emigrant, but—alas! that it should be
so—there are no Edens. Nothing can well do more harm than overrating a
colony, or describing as “paradisiacal” what is only commonplace. Of the
two, it is better to disparage than to eulogize. The immigrant who has
pictured to himself a terrestrial paradise, is so grievously disappointed
when he surveys his burnt-up lot or heavily timbered section in the heart of
the lonely forest, that he not unfrequently breaks down under the
affliction; whilst his neighbour, who finds things better than he expected,
sets blithely to work, and in the end prospers. Our gentleman emigrant, out
of the romances he has read, and from the answers he has received from “
disinterested” correspondents, creates for himself a little fairy land.
Forgeting that emigration is, at best, but a remedy for a disease—
consumption of the purse—and expatriation a bitter trial, he hugs himself
with the belief that the settler’s is a very jolly, independent sort of
existence, and that a little extra roughing is all that he will have to
encounter. Finding his mistake, he straightway rushes into the opposite
extreme, and views everything with a jaundiced eye. The country is a howling
wilderness; the land is poor; his neighbours are churls; the climate is
detestable; and he inwardly curses the day upon which he resolved to
emigrate.
It is a wise dispensation
of Providence, that advantages and disadvantages should be so equally
balanced in this world, that the best country as a residence must ever
remain a moot question. We do not, of course, include countries having
nothing but disadvantages to offer, like those on the West Coast of Africa,
but only such as have attractions in a pre-eminent degree. The advantages
offered by England, France, Germany, and Italy are of so widely different a
nature, that individual taste can alone decide which of them is the most
desirable residence. As in the Old World, so in the New. To arbitrarily
assert that this or that country is the one best adapted for the gentleman
emigrant, would not only be presumptuous—it would be foolish. Circumstances
alter cases. The*district that would be admirably suited to the married man
with large family might offer but few attractions to the bachelor who had no
one but himself to consider. In the choice of a locality, every man must be
guided by his own particular tastes and requirements.
Whilst scrupulously
avoiding all attempts to force our own private opinions on the reader, it
shall be our endeavour as we proceed to point out to him what struck us as
being the peculiar advantages and disadvantages of those three great fields
of emigration—Canada, Australia, and the United States, across which we are
about to journey together. We are perfectly willing that these impressions
be appraised at whatever they may appear to be worth, for experience can
alone determine whether we are right or wrong.
But before proceeding on
our visiting rounds, it would perhaps be as well to disabuse the would-be
settler’s mind of certain fallacies which he may perchance have picked up in
the romances of paid emigration agents, and expose to his view some few of
those hidden rocks and quicksands upon which so many of his kind have made
shipwreck. We have already had occasion to mention one of them—high farming.
Next in succession comes the “ social” quicksand. Our Gentleman Emigrant
would like to pitch his tent in a district where there is good society.
Good society, that is to
say the society of well-educated men and women, is to be found in America
and Australia as elsewhere; of that there can be no doubt. But whilst in the
Old World the intellectual and refined are disseminated throughout the
length and breadth of the land, in the New it is chiefly in the vicinity of
the great centres of fashion and commerce that they are to be met with. Land
in the immediate neighbourhood of large cities being proportionately dear,
if the emigrant wants good society he must be content to pay for it, and so
high a price that it is only by the very best of farming that a living can
be made. To obviate this too evident disadvantage, it has been suggested by
the emigration agents aforesaid that nothing would be easier than .for
emigrants of the better classes to form themselves into parties of say a
dozen families, each making little coteries of their own, and dividing five
or more sections of land amongst them. A more Quixotic scheme could not well
be suggested. Supposing the families to be twelve in number, the farms of
3u0 acres each, and six sections—3840 acres to have been taken up—how would
the lots be apportioned? By the hazard of the die? It would be the first
step towards a general collapse of the undertaking. Unless it be on the
western prairies, or on the Australian downs, to find 3800 acres in a ring
fence which could be subdivided into twelve 300 acre farms of equal value
would be almost impossible. Land varies in quality all the world over. The
soil on one side of a river may be deep black loam, whilst on the other it
is poor and stony. This farm may lie high and dry—that one be liable to
inundation. There are besides other natural advantages which are seldom
evenly distributed—springs, favourable sites for house and farm buildings,
southern slopes for gardens, and such like. It would be out of the question
that every man’s lot should be precisely as good as his neighbour’s: and, as
a matter of course, those who had the worst lots would be dissatisfied. But
it is not this alone that would endanger the existence of the infant
settlement. Allowing that the men of the party were a veritable “band of
brothers,” and altogether too magnanimous to squabble over such trifles as
good or bad lots, is it to be supposed that little jealousies would not ere
long spring up amongst the ladies respecting precedence, family connexions,
taste in dress, or over some one or other of those thousand choice hones of
contention which arouse the bellicose tendencies of the fair sex ? Even
supposing that they had, with rare forethought, mutually agreed to eschew
all topics likely to cause dissent, is it probable that a year would elapse
without one of those twelve British matrons, grown weary of the monotony of
the existence, having wheedled or worried her husband into taking his
departure ? Mrs. Browne having carried her point, it would be Mrs. Greene’s
turn next. She only consented to expatriation because the Brownes were to be
of the party. Her dear Emily flown, it would be cruel to ask her to remain,
&c. &c. &c., and the Greenes would follow the Brownes. Remove two of the
foundation stones, and your house is on the totter. Unless there were some
written agreement that no member of the party should have the power to
dispose of his allotment without the consent of his associates— which would
be highly improbable, it being the proud boast of every bold Briton that he
can do what he likes with his own—Messrs. Browne and Greene would, prior to
their departure, have sold their improvements to the highest bidder,
probably to the very man of all others whom it would be the desire of the
remaining members to exclude, for when one’s own interests are at stake one
is apt to forget the interests of others. To buy up the lots would be but to
encourage secession. The black sheep would have to be admitted, and there
would be an end to your precious coterie. Again, in a new country, any
attempt at exclusiveness would be sure to raise the ire of the “sovereign
people.” The “gentleman’s” settlement would be held up to derision in the
district, it would be difficult to obtain labour, and any and every obstacle
that human ingenuity could devise would be thrown in the way of the
“aristocrats.”
And this brings us to
another dangerous reef —superciliousness. Our gentleman settler is wont to
give himself airs, and to treat his illiterate neighbours with a certain
degree of arrogance. It wont do. If he desire to lead a peaceful life, he
must put his pride in his pocket. To secure the good will and kind offices
of his neighbours, not only must he be courteous, he must be familiar. He
must not be hurt by hearing himself spoken of as Browne or Greene without
any prefix of Mr., nor be shocked when the wife of his bosom is inquired
after as “the woman.” “How’s the woman?” is a very common question in the
backwoods. Instead of frigidly responding, “Mrs. Greene is tolerably well, I
thank you" the answer should be, “Spry, thank’ee; how’s yourn?” We are, of
course, speaking of one’s intercourse with the neighbouring farmers. With
hired servants or helps it is different. It is always advisable to make them
treat you with a certain amount of respect, and with a little tact this can
be managed even in the United States.
Another quicksand is greed.
The gentleman emigrant, from the lying representations that have been made
to him, often forms the most preposterous ideas of the profits to be derived
from farming. Fortunes are not so easily made by husbandry. Large fortunes
have, we are aware, been amassed in India by the cultivation of indigo, tea,
and coffee, by the “ raising” of cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar in the
Southern States and W est Indies, and by sheep farming in Australia; but the
first outlay has in almost every instance been heavy, and the risk incurred
considerable. A distinction must be made between the planter or squatter and
the ordinary farmer. The former, from the heavy investments made and the
risks run, reasonably expects large returns; but the settler, who has only a
few thousands at command, should be content if, in addition to a fair
interest on his capital, he can manage to make a comfortable subsistence.
Our own experience is, that farming, whilst the pleasantest and most
independent of all occupations, is about the very last by which a fortune
can be realized. One more quicksand, and we have done. That quicksand is
sport. It is essential that there be some shooting and fishing in the
vicinity of the settler's abode. The man who emigrates with the intention of
combining farming with sport may rest assured that his farm will never be
the best paying one of the district, and he should consider himself
extremely fortunate if he do not go to the wall altogether. There may be,
for aught we know, hundreds and thousands of instances to the contrary; but
we can conscientiously say that in all our travels we have never yet met
with a sporting settler who was a thriving one. In Canada and the Northern
States, the fishing season is the one when he ought to be getting his crops
in—the hunting season that in which he ought to be getting them out, or be
doing his “fail” ploughing. In a country where farming operations can be
carried on with little or no intermission during the entire year, the loss
of a day or two, even in the busiest season, is a matter of small
importance; but in a country where there are only six short months between
the first spring ploughing and the setting in of frost, an hour lost is not
to be vol. i. u recovered. We do not mean that the settler, in order to
succeed, must needs lock up his gun and fly-rod in a cupboard, and throw the
key into the river. What we would impress upon him is simply that he cannot
be at one and the same time a Nimrod and a thriving farmer. Shooting and
fishing for a little relaxation is one thing, going in for hunting as a
pursuit is another. The settler who can content himself with whipping the
adjacent streams for trout, or with beating the surrounding woods for ruffed
grouse or “rabbits,” is all right; it is he who must have big game that is
all wrong. The man who imagines that in the forest primeval one has only to
take one's gun and beat about for an hour or two in order to bring home a
fat buck or bear, or a dozen brace of wild fowl, will find himself most
grievously disappointed. With the exception of wild duck and the passenger
pigeon in their respective seasons, ruffed grouse and the Virginian hare,
game is not plentiful in the backwoods. Unless systematically hunted,
months—ay, years—may elapse without the settler’s eye having been once
gladdened by the sight of bear, deer, moose, or caribou. Does he want them,
he must seek for them, not in his clearing, but away back in the heart of
the wilderness. If he be a very good backwoodsman and liaixl as nails, lie
may venture to start off unaccompanied; if not, he must take at least one
guide or Indian with him, and everything necessary for a prolonged camping
out. All this time his farm is left to take care of itself, and, as may be
imagined, it is seldom the better for it. Autumnal hunting in the grand old
North American forests is delightful, but it unfortunately does not pay.
There is certainly some hunting to be had in the winter, when work is slack,
but it is not so pleasant as in autumn. It is not every man who cares to
take up his night’s lodging in a snow-drift, and snow-shoeing, although very
jolly along the flat, is apt to grow wearisome when pursued amongst the
windfalls and cedar swamps of the dense forests.
In the Sunny South, it is
not alone the loss of time that the sporting farmer has to fear, but
likewise the expense he will inevitably incur, in the pursuit of his
favourite amusement. In the North, the difficulty is to find a man not so
over head and ears in business as to be able to accompany you. In the South,
to escape being overwhelmed with invitations to join a party.
Unless they have greatly
changed of late years, the Southerners are the most genial beings in
existence. Once let your neighbours know that you are fond of field sports,
and unless you can afford to engage an overseer, to take your place at home,
you may as well give up farming. One friend wants you to come up his way, to
have a crack at a deer, another insists upon your giving the canvas-backs,
in his neighbourhood, a trial. Even the very niggers will present themselves
at the door, and ask if Massa wouldn’t like go hunt ’possum by torch-light.
If you decline, you are considered churlish; if you accept, the least you
can do is to return the invitation, and then away flies the money. The only
way to get out of it is to say that you are unlucky with firearms, and never
fire a shot in company without dreading some accident. The man whose powder
is notoriously crooked is seldom considered a great acquisition to a hunting
party, either in America or elsewhere.
If the Australian settler,
or squatter, leave his crops, or his flocks, to hunt with horse and hound,
the bounding kangaroo, or to shoot the wonga-wonga, it will most assuredly
not be owing to the force of bad example that he does so. No body of
Englishmen has less of the sportsman about them than Australian squatters.
One rarely sees a fine kangaroo dog on a station, and shooting for
shooting’s sake would be considered by most squatters as a terrible waste of
time and powder. Kangaroo hunting knocks up the horses required for station
use ; and when the kangaroo want thinning out, there is a short drive and a
battue. Shooting under a fierce Australian sun, and tearing one’s way
through the dense myall scrubs, is very much like hard work, and there is
always plenty of that to be had on the station without going a-field to look
for it. And so the squatter’s shooting is limited to the potting of some
screaming cockatoo, an evening’s stalk along the banks of a neighbouring
creek in quest of wild-duck, and not unfrequently, on distant stations, a
little harmless “rubbing out” of aborigines.
The more dangerous reefs
and quicksands being plainly laid down on our chart, we can now safely
cat-head our anchor, top our boom, and fill away for the shores of the New
World. |
