Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush Read online

  The two young squaws, who were the principal performers in this travelling Indian opera, were the most beautiful Indian women I ever beheld. There was no base alloy in their pure native blood. They had the large, dark, humid eyes, the ebon locks tinged with purple, so peculiar to their race, and which gives such a rich tint to the clear olive skin and brilliant white teeth of the denizens of the Canadian wilderness.

  Susannah Loft and her sister were the beau ideal of Indian women; and their graceful and symmetrical figures were set off to great advantage by their picturesque and becoming costume, which in their case was composed of the richest materials. Their acting and carriage were dignified and queenlike, and their appearance singularly pleasing and interesting.

  Susannah, the eldest and certainly the most graceful of these truly fascinating girls, was unfortunately killed last summer by the collision of two steam-carriages, while travelling professionally with her sister through the States. Those who had listened with charmed ears to her sweet voice, and gazed with admiring eyes upon her personal charms, were greatly shocked at her untimely death.

  A little boy and girl belonging to the same talented family have been brought before the public, in order to supply her place, but they have not been able to fill up the blank occasioned by her loss.

  The steamboat again leaves the north shore, and stands across from the stone mills, which are in the Prince Edward district, and form one of the features of the remarkable scenery of what is called the “high shore.” This mountainous ridge, which descends perpendicularly to the water’s edge, is still in forest; and, without doubt, this is the most romantic portion of the bay, whose waters are suddenly contracted to half their former dimensions, and glide on darkly and silently between these steep wood-crowned heights.

  There is a small lake upon the highest portion of this table-land, whose waters are led down the steep bank, and made to work a saw-mill, which is certainly giving a very unromantic turn to them. But here, as in the States, the beautiful and the ideal are instantly converted into the real and the practical.

  This “lake of the mountains” is a favourite place for picnics and pleasure trips from Northport and Belleville. Here the Sabbath-school children come, once during the summer, to enjoy a ramble in the woods, and spread their feast beneath the lordly oaks and maples that crown these heights. And the teetotallers marshall their bands of converts, and hold their cold water festival, beside the blue deep waters of this mysterious mountain-lake.

  Strange stories are told of its unfathomable depth, of the quicksands that are found near it, and of its being supplied from the far-off inland ocean of Lake Huron. But like the cove in Tyendenaga, of which everybody in the neighbourhood has heard something, but which nobody has seen, these accounts of the lake of the mountain rest only upon hearsay.

  The last rays of the sun still lingered on wood and stream when we arrived at Picton, which stands at the head of the “long reach.” The bay here is not wider than a broad river. The banks are very lofty, and enclose the water in an oblong form, round which that part of the town which is near the shore is built.

  Picton is a very beautiful place viewed from the deck of the steamer. Its situation is novel and imposing, and the number of pretty cottages that crown the steep ridge that rises almost perpendicularly from the water, peeping out from among fine orchards in full bearing, and trim gardens, give it quite a rural appearance. The steamboat enters this fairy bay by a very narrow passage; and, after delivering freight and passengers at the wharf, backs out by the way she came in. There is no turning a large vessel round this long half-circle of deep blue water. Few spots in Canada would afford a finer subject for the artist’s pencil than this small inland town, which is so seldom visited by strangers and tourists.

  The progress to wealth and importance made by this place is strikingly behind that of Belleville, which far exceeds it in size and population. Three years ago a very destructive fire consumed some of the principal buildings in the town, which has not yet recovered from its effects. Trade is not so brisk here as in Belleville, and the streets are dull and monotonous, when compared with the stir and bustle of the latter, which, during the winter season, is crowded with sleighs from the country. The Bay of Quinte during the winter forms an excellent road to all the villages and towns on its shores. The people from the opposite side trade more with the Belleville merchants than with those in their own district; and during the winter season, when the bay is completely frozen from the mouth of the Trent to Kingston, loaded teams are passing to and fro continually. It is the favourite afternoon drive of young and old, and when the wind, sweeping over such a broad surface of ice, is not too cold, and you are well wrapped up in furs and buffalo robes, a sleigh ride on the ice is very delightful. Not that I can ever wholly divest myself of a vague, indistinct sense of danger, whilst rapidly gliding over this frozen mirror. I would rather be out on the bay, in a gale of wind in a small boat, than overtaken by a snow storm on its frozen highways. Still it is a pleasant sight of a bright, glowing, winter day, when the landscape glitters like a world composed of crystals, to watch the handsome sleighs, filled with well-dressed men and women, and drawn by spirited horses, dashing in all directions over this brilliant field of dazzling white.

  Night has fallen rapidly upon us since we left Picton in the distance. A darker shade is upon the woods, the hills, the waters, and by the time we approach Fredericksburg it will be dark. This too is a very pretty place on the north side of the bay; beautiful orchards and meadows skirt the water, and fine basswood and willow-trees grow beside, or bend over the waves. The green smooth meadows, out of which the black stumps rotted long ago, show noble groups of hiccory and butter-nut, and sleek fat cows are reposing beneath them, or standing mid-leg in the small creek that wanders through them to pour its fairy tribute into the broad bay.

  We must leave the deck and retreat into the ladies’ cabin, for the air from the water grows chilly, and the sense of seeing can no longer be gratified by remaining where we are. But if you open your eyes to see, and your ears to hear, all the strange sayings and doings of the odd people you meet in a steamboat, you will never lack amusement.

  The last time I went down to Kingston, there was a little girl in the cabin who rejoiced in the possession of a very large American doll, made so nearly to resemble an infant, that at a distance it was easy to mistake it for one. To render the deception more striking, you could make it cry like a child by pressing your hand upon its body. A thin, long-faced farmer’s wife came on board, at the wharf we have just quitted, and it was amusing to watch her alternately gazing at the little girl and her doll.

  “Is that your baby, Cisy?”

  “No; it’s my doll.”

  “Mi! what a strange doll! Isn’t that something oncommon? I took it for a real child. Look at its bare feet and hands, and bald head. Well, I don’t think it’s ‘zactly right to make a piece of wood look so like a human critter.”

  The child good-naturedly put the doll into the woman’s hands, who, happening to take it rather roughly, the wooden baby gave a loud squall; the woman’s face expressed the utmost horror, and she dropped it on the floor as if it had been a hot coal.

  “Gracious, goodness me, the thing’s alive!”

  The little girl laughed heartily, and, taking up the discarded doll, explained to the woman the simple method employed to produce the sound.

  “Well, it do sound quite nataral,” said her astonished companion. “What will they find out next? It beats the railroad and the telegraph holler.”

  “Ah, but I saw a big doll that could speak when I was with mamma in New York,” said the child, with glistening eyes.

  “A doll that could speak? You don’t say. Oh, do tell!”

  While the young lady described the automaton doll, it was amusing to watch the expressions of surprise, wonder, and curiosity, that flitted over the woman’s long cadaverous face. She would have made a good study for a painter.

  A young relative o
f mine went down in the steamboat, to be present at the Provincial Agricultural Show that was held that year in the town of Buckville, on the St. Lawrence. It was the latter end of September; the weather was wet and stormy, and the boat loaded to the water’s edge with cattle and passengers. The promenade decks were filled up with pigs, sheep and oxen. Cows were looking sleepily in at the open doors of the ladies’ cabin, and bulls were fastened on the upper deck. Such a motley group of bipeds and quadrupeds were never before huddled into such a narrow space; and, amidst all this din and confusion, a Scotch piper was playing lustily on the bagpipes, greatly to the edification, I’ve no doubt, of himself and the crowd of animal life around him.

  The night came on very dark and stormy, and many of the women suffered as much from the pitching of the boat as if they had been at sea. The ladies’ cabin was crowded to overflowing; every sofa, bed, and chair was occupied; and my young friend, who did not feel any inconvenience from the storm, was greatly entertained by the dialogues carried on across the cabin by the women, who were reposing in their berths, and lamenting over the rough weather and their own sufferings in consequence. They were mostly the wives of farmers and respectable mechanics, and the language they used was neither very choice nor grammatical.

  “I say, Mrs. C—, how be you?”

  “I feel bad, any how,” with a smothered groan.

  “Have you been sick?”

  “Not yet; but feel as if I was going to.”

  “How’s your head coming on, Mrs. N—?”

  “It’s just splitting, I thank you.”

  “Oh, how awful the boat do pitch!” cries a third.

  “If she should sink, I’m afeard we shall all go to the bottom.”

  “And think of all the poor sheep and cattle!”

  “Well, of course, they’d have to go too.”

  “Oh, mi! I’ll get up, and be ready for a start, in case of the worst,” cried a young girl.

  “Mrs. C—, do give me something good out of your basket, to keep up my spirits.”

  “Well, I will. Come over here, and you and I will have some talk. My basket’s at the foot of my berth. You’ll find in it a small bottle of brandy and some curls.”

  So up got several of the sick ladies, and kept up their spirits by eating cakes, chewing gum, and drinking cold brandy punch.

  “Did Mrs. H—lose much in the fire last night?” said one.

  “Oh, dear, yes; she lost all her clothes, and three large jars of preserves she made about a week ago, and sarce in accordance!”*

  There was an honest Yorkshire farmer and his wife on board, and when the morning at length broke through pouring rain and driving mist, and the port to which they were bound loomed through the haze, the women were very anxious to know if their husbands, who slept in the gentlemen’s cabin, were awake.”

  “They arn’t stirring yet,” said Mrs. G—,” for I hear Isaac (meaning her husband) breezing below” – a most expressive term for very hard snoring.

  The same Isaac, when he came up to the ladies’ cabin to take his wife on shore, complained, in his broad Yorkshire dialect, that he had been kept awake all night by a jovial gentleman who had been his fellow-traveller in the cabin.

  “We had terrible noisy chap in t’cabin. They called him Mr. D—, and said he ‘twas t’mayor of Belleville; but I thought they were a-fooning. He wouldn’t sleep himself, nor let t’others sleep. He gat piper, an’ put him top o’ table, and kept him playing all t’night.”

  One would think that friend Isaac had been haunted by the vision of the piper in his dreams; for, certes, the jovial buzzing of the pipes had not been able to drown the deep drone of his own nasal organ.

  A gentleman who was travelling in company with Sir A—told me an anecdote of him, and how he treated an impertinent fellow on board one of the lake boats, that greatly amused me.

  The state cabins in these large steamers open into the great saloon; and as they are often occupied by married people, each berth contains two beds, one placed above the other. Now it often happens, when the boat is greatly crowded, that two passengers of the same sex are forced to occupy the same sleeping room. This was Sir A—’s case, and he was obliged, though very reluctantly, to share his sleeping apartment with a well-dressed American, but evidently a man of low standing, from the familiarity of his manners and the bad grammar he used.

  In the morning, it was necessary for one gentleman to rise before the other, as the space in front of their berths was too narrow to allow of more than one performing his ablutions at a time.

  Our Yankee made a fair start, and had nearly completed his toilet, when he suddenly spied a tooth-brush and a box of tooth-powder in the dressing-case his companion had left open on the washstand. Upon these he pounced, and having made a liberal use of them, flung them back into the case, and sat down upon the only chair the room contained, in order to gratify his curiosity by watching how his sleeping partner went through the same process.

  Sir A—, greatly annoyed by the fellow’s assurance, got out of bed; and placing the washhand basin on the floor, put his feet into the water, and commenced scrubbing his toe-nails with the desecrated tooth-brush. Jonathan watched his movements for a few seconds in silent horror; at length, unable to contain himself, he exclaimed.

  “Well, stranger! that’s the dirtiest use I ever see a toothbrush put to, any how.”

  “I saw it put to a dirtier, just now,” said Sir A—, very coolly. “I always use that brush for cleaning my toes.”

  The Yankee turned very green, and fled to the deck, but his nausea was not sea-sickness.

  The village of Nappanee, on the north side of the Bay, is situated on a very pretty river that bears the same name, – Nappanee, in the Mohawk language, signifying flour. The village is a mile back from the Bay, and is not much seen from the water. There are a great many mills here, both grist and saw mills, from which circumstance it most likely derives its name.

  Amherst Island, which is some miles in extent, stands between Ontario and the Bay of Quinte, its upper and lower extremity forming the two straits that are called the Upper and Lower Gap. – and the least breeze, which is not perceptible in the other portions of the bay, is felt here. Passing through these gaps on a stormy day creates as great a nausea as a short chopping sea on the Atlantic, and I have seen both men and women retreat to their berths to avoid disagreeable consequences. Amherst Island is several miles in extent, and there are many good farms in high cultivation upon it, while its proximity on all sides to the water affords excellent sport to the angler and gunner, as wild ducks abound in this vicinity.

  Just after you pass the island and enter the lower gap, there are three very small islands in a direct line with each other, that are known as the three brothers. A hermit has taken up his abode on the centre one, and built a very Robinson Crusoe looking hut near the water, composed of round logs and large stones cemented together with clay. He gets his living by fishing and fowling, and you see his well-worn, weather-beaten boat, drawn up in a little cove near his odd dwelling. I was very curious to obtain some particulars of the private history of this eccentric individual, but beyond what I have just related, my informants could tell me nothing, or why he had chosen this solitary abode in such an exposed situation, and so far apart from all the comforts of social life.

  The town of Bath is the last place of any note on this portion of the Bay, until you arrive at Kingston.

  A MORNING SONG.

  “The young wheat is springing

  All tender and green,

  And the blackbird is singing

  The branches between;

  The leaves of the hawthorn

  Have burst from their prison,

  And the bright eyes of morn

  On the earth have arisen.

  “While sluggards are sleeping,

  Oh hasten with me;

  While the night mists are weeping

  Soft showers on each tree,

  And nature is glowing

>   Beneath the warm beam,

  The young day is throwing

  O’er mountain and stream.

  “And the shy colt is bounding

  Across the wide mead,

  And his wild hoofs resounding,

  Increases his speed;

  Now starting and crossing

  At each shadow he sees,

  Now wantonly tossing

  His mane in the breeze.

  “The sky-lark is shaking

  The dew from her wing,

  And the clover forsaking,

  Soars upwards to sing,

  In rapture outpouring

  Her anthem of love,

  Where angels adoring

  Waft praises above.

  “Shake dull sleep from your pillow,

  Young dreamer arise,

  On the leaves of the willow

  The dew-drop still lies,

  And the mavis is trilling

  His song from the brake,

  And with melody filling

  The wild woods – awake!”

  * A common Yankee phrase, often used instead of the word proportion

  GRACE MARKS

  “I dare not think – I cannot pray;

  To name the name of God were sin:

  No grief of mine can wash away

  The consciousness of guilt within.

  The stain of blood is on my hand,

  The curse of Cain is on my brow; –

  I see that ghastly phantom stand

  Between me and the sunshine now!

  That mocking face still haunts my dreams,

  That blood-shot eye that never sleeps,

  In night and darkness – oh, it gleams,

  Like red-hot steel – but never weeps!

  And still it bends its burning gaze