Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life

Elizabeth H. Walshe

Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life

CHAPTER I

WHY ROBERT WYNN EMIGRATED

A night train drew up slowly alongside the platform at the Euston Square terminus. Immediately the long inanimate line of rail-carriages burst into busy life: a few minutes of apparently frantic confusion, and the individual items of the human freight were speeding towards all parts of the compass, to be absorbed in the leviathan metropolis, as drops of a shower in a boundless sea.

One of the cabs pursuing each other along the lamplit streets, and finally diverging among the almost infinite ramifications of London thoroughfares, contains a young man, who sits gazing through the window at the rapidly passing range of houses and shops with curiously fixed vision. The face, as momentarily revealed by the beaming of a brilliant gaslight, is chiefly remarkable for clear dark eyes rather deeply set, and a firm closure of the lips. He scarcely alters his posture during the miles of driving through wildernesses of brick and stone: some thoughts are at work beneath that broad short brow, which keep him thus still. He has never been in London before. He has come now on an errand of hope and endeavour, for he wants to push himself into the army of the world's workers, somewhere. Prosaically, he wants to earn his bread, and, if possible, butter wherewith to flavour it. Like Britons in general, from Dick Whittington downwards, he thinks that the capital is the place in which to seek one's fortune, and to find it. He had not expected streets paved with gold, nor yet with the metaphorical plenty of penny loaves; but an indefinite disappointment weighs upon him as he passes through quarters fully as dingy and poverty-stricken as those in his own provincial town.

Still on—on—across 'the province covered with houses;' sometimes in a great thoroughfare, where midnight is as noisy as noon-day, and much more glaring; sometimes through a region of silence and sleep, where gentility keeps proper hours, going to bed betimes in its respectable streets. Robert Wynn began to wonder when the journey would end; for, much as he knew of London by hearsay and from books, it was widely different thus personally to experience the metropolitan amplitude. A slight dizziness of sight, from the perpetual sweeping past of lamps and shadowy buildings, caused him to close his eyes; and from speculations on the possible future and the novel present, his thoughts went straight home again.

Home to the Irish village where his ancestors had long been lords of the soil; and the peasantry had deemed that the greatest power on earth, under majesty itself, was his Honour Mr. Wynn of Dunore, where now, fallen from greatness, the family was considerably larger than the means. The heavily encumbered property had dropped away piece by piece, and the scant residue clung to its owner like shackles. With difficulty the narrow exchequer had raised cash enough to send Robert on this expedition to London, from which much was hoped. The young man had been tolerably well educated; he possessed a certain amount and quality of talent, extolled by partial friends as far above the average; but the mainstay of his anticipations was a promise of a Civil Service appointment, obtained from an influential quarter; and his unsophisticated country relatives believed he had only to present himself in order to realize it at once.

He was recalled to London by the sudden stoppage of the cab. On the dim lamp over a doorway was stained the name of the obscure hotel to which he had been recommended as central in situation, while cheap in charges. Cabby's fare was exorbitant, the passenger thought; but, after a faint resistance, Mr. Wynn was glad to escape from the storm of h-less remonstrances by payment of the full demand, and so entered the coffee-room.

It was dingy and shabby-genteel, like the exterior; a quarter of a century might have elapsed since the faded paper had been put up, or a stroke of painting executed, in that dispiriting apartment. Meanwhile, all the agencies of travel-stain had been defacing both. An odour of continual meal-times hung about it; likewise of smoke of every grade, from the perfumed havanna to the plebeian pigtail. The little tables were dark with hard work and antiquity; the chair seats polished with innumerable frictions. A creeping old waiter, who seemed to have known better days in a higher-class establishment, came to receive the new-comer's orders; and Robert sat down to wait for his modest chop and glass of ale.

That morning's Times lay on his table: he glanced over the broad sheet of advertisements—that wondrous daily record of need and of endeavour among the toiling millions of London. The inexplicable solitude in a crowd came about the reader's heart: what a poor chance had a provincial stranger amid the jostling multitude all eager for the prizes of comfort and competence! Robert went back for anchor to one strong fact. The Honourable Mr. Currie Faver, Secretary to the Board of Patronage, had declared to the member for the Irish county of C–, on the eve of an important division, that his young friend should have the earliest appointment at his disposal in a certain department. Robert Wynn felt an inward gratulation on the superiority of his auspices. True, the promise made in January yet remained due in July; but there were numberless excellent good reasons why Mr. Currie Faver had been as yet unable to redeem his pledge.

Robert turned his paper to look for the news: a paragraph in the corner arrested his attention.

'We learn from the best authority that, owing to the diminution of business consequent upon recent Acts of the Legislature, it is the intention of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Public Locomotion to reduce their staffs of officials, so that no fresh appointments can be made for some months.'

He gazed at this piece of intelligence much longer than was necessary for the mere reading of it. The Board of Public Locomotion was the very department in which he had been promised a clerkship. Robert made up his mind that it could not be true; it was a mere newspaper report: at all events, Mr. Currie Faver was bound by a previous pledge; whoever remained unappointed, it could not be a friend of the hon. member for C–.

There were voices in the next compartment, and presently their conversation was forced on Mr. Wynn's attention by the strongly stated sentiment, 'The finest country in the world—whips all creation, it does.'

Some rejoinder ensued in a low tone.

'Cold!' with a rather scornful accent, 'I should think so. Gloriously cold! None of your wet sloppy winters and foggy skies, but ice a yard and a half thick for months. What do you think of forty degrees below zero, stranger?'

Robert could fancy the other invisible person shrugging his shoulders.

'Don't like it, eh? That's just a prejudice here in the old country; natural enough to them that don't know the difference. When a man hears of seventy degrees below the freezing-point, he's apt to get a shiver. But there, we don't mind it; the colder the merrier: winter's our time of fun: sleighing and skating parties, logging and quilting bees, and other sociabilities unknown to you in England. Ay, we're the finest people and the finest country on earth; and since I've been to see yours, I'm the steadier in that opinion.'

'But emigrants in the backwoods have so few of the comforts of civilisation,' began the other person, with a weak, irresolute voice.

'Among which is foremost the tax-gatherer, I suppose?' was the triumphant rejoinder. 'Well, stranger, that's an animal I never saw in full blow till I've been to the old country. I was obliged to clear out of our lodgings yesterday because they came down on the furniture for poor-rate. Says I to the landlady, who was crying and wringing her hands, "Why not come to the country where there's no taxes at all, nor rent either, if you choose?" Then it would frighten one, all she counted up on her fingers—poor-rate, paving-rate, water-rate, lighting, income-tax, and no end of others. I reckon that's what you pay for your high civilisation. Now, with us, there's a water privilege on a'most every farm, and a pile of maple-logs has fire and gaslight in it for the whole winter; and there's next to no poor, for every man and woman that's got hands and health can make a living. Why, your civilisation is your misfortune in the old country; you've got to support a lot of things and people besides yourself and your family.'

'Surely you are not quite without taxes,' said the other.

'Oh, we lay a trifle on ourselves for roads and bridges and schools, and such things. There's custom-houses at the ports; but if a man chooses to live without tea or foreign produce, he won't be touched by the indirect taxes either. I guess we've the advantage of you there. You can't hardly eat or drink, or walk or ride, or do anything else, without a tax somewhere in the background slily sucking your pocket.'

'A United States citizen,' thought Robert Wynn. 'What a peculiar accent he has! and the national swagger too.' And Mr. Wynn, feeling intensely British, left his box, and walked into the midst of the room with his newspaper, wishing to suggest the presence of a third person. He glanced at the American, a middle-aged, stout-built man, with an intelligent and energetic countenance, who returned the glance keenly. There was something indescribably foreign about his dress, though in detail it was as usual; and his manner and air were those of one not accustomed to the conventional life of cities. His companion was a tall, pale, elderly person, who bore his piping voice in his appearance, and seemed an eager listener.

'And you say that I would make an independence if I emigrated?' asked the latter, fidgeting nervously with a piece of paper.

'Any man would who has pluck and perseverance. You would have to work hard, though;' and his eyes fell on the white irresolute hands, dubious as to the requisite qualities being there indicated. 'You'd want a strong constitution if you're for the backwoods.'

'The freedom of a settler's life, surrounded by all the beauties of nature, would have great charms for me,' observed the other.

'Yes,' replied the American, rather drily; 'but I reckon you wouldn't see many beauties till you had a log shanty up, at all events. Now that young man'—he had caught Robert Wynn's eye on him again—'is the very build for emigration. Strong, active, healthy, wide awake: no offence, young gentleman, but such as you are badly wanted in Canada West.'

From this began a conversation which need not be minutely detailed. It was curious to see what a change was produced in Robert's sentiments towards the settler, by learning that he was a Canadian, and not a United States man: 'the national swagger' became little more than a dignified assertion of independence, quite suitable to a British subject; the accent he had disliked became an interesting local characteristic. Mr. Hiram Holt was the son of an English settler, who had fixed himself on the left bank of the Ottawa, amid what was then primeval forest, and was now a flourishing township, covered with prosperous farms and villages. Here had the sturdy Saxon struggled with, and finally conquered, adverse circumstances, leaving his eldest son possessed of a small freehold estate, and his other children portioned comfortably, so that much of the neighbourhood was peopled by his descendants. And this, Hiram's first visit to the mother country—for he was Canadian born—was on colonial business, being deputed from his section of the province, along with others, to give evidence, as a landed proprietor, before the Secretary of State, whose gate-lodge his father would have been proud to keep when he was a poor Suffolk labourer.

'Now there's an injustice,' quoth Mr. Holt, diverging into politics. 'England has forty-three colonies, and but one man to oversee them all—a man that's jerked in and out of office with every successive Ministry, and is almost necessarily more intent on party manœuvres than on the welfare of the young nations he rules. Our colony alone—the two Canadas—is bigger than Great Britain and Ireland three times over. Take in all along Vancouver's Island, and it's as big as Europe. There's a pretty considerable slice of the globe for one man to manage! But forty-two other colonies have to be managed as well; and I guess a nursery of forty-three children of all ages left to one care-taker would run pretty wild, I do.'

'Yet we never hear of mismanagement,' observed Robert, in an unlucky moment; for Mr. Hiram Holt retained all the Briton's prerogative of grumbling, and in five minutes had rehearsed a whole catalogue of colonial grievances very energetically.

'Then I suppose you'll be for joining the stars and stripes?' said the young man.

'Never!' exclaimed the settler. 'Never, while there's a rag of the union jack to run up. But it's getting late;' and as he rose to his feet with a tremendous yawn, Robert perceived his great length, hitherto concealed by the table on which he leaned. 'This life would kill me in six months. In my own place I'm about the farm at sunrise in summer. Never knew what it was to be sick, young man.' And so the party separated; Robert admiring the stalwart muscular frame of the Canadian as he strode before him up the stairs towards their sleeping-rooms. As he passed Mr. Holt's door, he caught a glimpse of bare floor, whence all the carpets had been rolled off into a corner, every vestige of curtain tucked away, and the window sashes open to their widest. Subsequently he learned that to such domestic softnesses as carpets and curtains the sturdy settler had invincible objections, regarding them as symptoms of effeminacy not suitable to his character, though admitting that for women they were well enough.

Robert was all night felling pines, building log-huts, and wandering amid interminable forests; and when his shaving water and boots awoke him at eight, he was a little surprised to find himself a denizen of a London hotel. Mr. Holt had gone out hours before. After a hasty breakfast Mr. Wynn ordered a cab, and proceeded to the residence of the hon. member for C– county.

It was a mansion hired for the season in one of the fashionable squares; for so had the hon. member's domestic board of control, his lady-wife and daughters, willed. Of course, Robert was immensely too early; he dismissed the cab, and wandered about the neighbourhood, followed by suspicious glances from one or two policemen, until, after calling at the house twice, he was admitted into a library beset with tall dark bookcases. Here sat the M.P. enjoying the otium cum dignitate, in a handsome morning gown, with bundles of parliamentary papers and a little stack of letters on the table. But none of the legislative literature engrossed his attention just then: the Morning Post dropped from his fingers as he arose and shook hands with the son of his constituent.

'Ah, my dear Wynn—how happy—delighted indeed, I assure you. Have you breakfasted? all well at home? your highly honoured father? late sitting at the House last night—close of the session most exhausting even to seasoned members, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said to me last evening in the lobby;' and here followed an anecdote. But while he thus ran on most affably, the under-current of idea in his mind was somewhat as follows: 'What on earth does this young fellow want of me? His family interest in the county almost gone—not worth taking pains to please any longer—a great bore—yet I must be civil;—oh, I recollect Currie Paver's promise—thinks he has given me enough this session'—

Meanwhile, Robert was quite interested by his agreeable small talk. It is so charming to hear great names mentioned familiarly by one personally acquainted with them; to learn that Palmerston and Lord John can breakfast like ordinary mortals. By and by, with a blush and a falter (for the mere matter of his personal provision for life seemed so paltry among these world-famed characters and their great deeds, that he was almost ashamed to allude to it), Robert Wynn ventured to make his request, that the hon. member for C– would go to the hon. Secretary of the Board of Patronage, and claim the fulfilment of his promise. Suddenly the M.P. became grave and altogether the senator, with his finger thoughtfully upon his brow—the identical attitude which Grant had commemorated on canvas, beaming from the opposite wall.

'An unfortunate juncture; close of the session, when everybody wants to be off, and Ministers don't need to swell their majorities any longer. I recollect perfectly to what you allude; but, my dear young friend, all these ministerial promises, as you term them, are more or less conditional, and it may be quite out of Mr. Currie Paver's power to fulfil this.'

'Then he should not have made it, sir,' said Robert hotly.

'For instance,' proceeded the hon. gentleman, not noticing the interruption, 'the new arrangements of the Commissioners renders it almost impossible that they should appoint to a clerkship, either supernumerary or otherwise, while they are reducing the ordinary staff. But I'll certainly go to Mr. Faver, and remind him of the circumstance: we can only be refused at worst. You may be assured of my warmest exertions in your behalf: any request from a member of your family ought to be a command with me, Mr. Wynn.'

Robert's feelings of annoyance gave way to gratification at Mr. A–'s blandness, which, however, had a slight acid behind.

'And though times are greatly altered, I don't forget our old electioneering, when your father proposed me on my first hustings. Greatly altered, Mr. Wynn; greatly altered. I must go to the morning sitting now, but I'll send you a note as to the result of my interview. You must have much to see about London. I quite envy you your first visit to such a world of wonders; I am sure you will greatly enjoy it. Good morning, Mr. Wynn. I hope I shall have good news for you.'

And so Robert was bowed out, to perambulate the streets in rather bitter humour. Was he to return to the poor, scantily supplied home, and continue a drag on its resources, lingering out his days in illusive hopes? Oh that his strong hands and strong heart had some scope for their energies! He paused in one mighty torrent of busy faces and eager footsteps, and despised himself for his inaction. All these had business of one kind or other; all were earnestly intent upon their calling; but he was a waif and a straw on the top of the tide, with every muscle stoutly strung, and every faculty of his brain clear and sound. Would he let the golden years of his youth slip by, without laying any foundation for independence? Was this Civil Service appointment worth the weary waiting? Emigration had often before presented itself as a course offering certain advantages. Mr. Holt's conversation had brightened the idea. For his family, as well as for himself, it would be beneficial. The poor proud father, who had frequently been unable to leave his house for weeks together, through fear of arrest for debt, would be happier with an ocean between him and the ancestral estates, thronged with memories of fallen affluence: the young brothers, Arthur and George, who were nearing man's years without ostensible object or employment, would find both abundantly in the labour of a new country and a settler's life. Robert had a whole picture sketched and filled in during half an hour's sit in the dingy coffee-room; from the shanty to the settlement was portrayed by his fertile fancy, till he was awakened from his reverie by the hearty voice of Hiram Holt.

'I thought for a minute you were asleep, with your hat over your eyes. I hope you're thinking of Canada, young man?'

Robert could not forbear smiling.

'Now,' said Mr. Holt, apparently speaking aloud a previous train of thought, 'of all things in this magnificent city of yours, which I'm free to confess beats Quebec and Montreal by a long chalk, nothing seems queerer to me than the thousands of young men in your big shops, who are satisfied to struggle all their lives in a poor unmanly way, while our millions of acres are calling out for hands to fell the forests and own the estates, and create happy homes along our unrivalled rivers and lakes. The young fellow that sold me these gloves'—showing a new pair on his hands—'would make as fine a backwoodsman as I ever saw—six feet high, and strong in proportion. It's the sheerest waste of material to have that fellow selling stockings.'

But Mr. Holt found Robert Wynn rather taciturn; whereupon he observed: 'I'm long enough in the world young man, to see that to-day's experience, whatever it has been, has bated your hopes a bit; the crest ain't so plumy as last night. But I say you'll yet bless the disappointment, whatever it is, that forces you over the water to our land of plenty. Come out of this overcrowded nation, out where there's elbow-room and free breathing. Tell you what, young man, the world doesn't want you in densely packed England and Ireland, but you're wanted in Canada, every thew and sinew that you have. The market for such as you is overstocked here: out with us you'll be at a premium. Don't be offended if I've spoke plain, for Hiram Holt is not one of them that can chop a pine into matches: whatever I am thinking, out with the whole of it. But if you ever want a friend on the Ottawa'—

Robert asserted that he had no immediate idea of emigration; his prospects at home were not bad, etc. He could not let this rough stranger see the full cause he had for depression.

'Not bad! but I tell you they're nothing compared to the prospects you may carve out for yourself with that clever head and those able hands.' Again Mr. Holt seized the opportunity of dilating on the perfections of his beloved colony: had he been a paid agent, he could not have more zealously endeavoured to enlist Robert as an emigrant. But it was all a product of national enthusiasm, and of the pride which Canadians may well feel concerning their magnificent country.

Next morning a few courteous lines from the hon. member for C– county informed Mr. Wynn, with much regret, that, as he had anticipated, Mr. Currie Faver had for the present no nomination for the department referred to, nor would have for at least twelve months to come.

'Before which time, I trust,' soliloquized Robert a little fiercely, 'I shall be independent of all their favours.' And amidst some severe reflections on the universal contempt accorded to the needy, and the corrupted state of society in England, which estimates a man by the length of his purse chiefly, Robert Wynn formed the resolution that he would go to Canada.

CHAPTER II

CROSSING THE 'FERRY.'

Robert Wynn returned home to Dunore, having gained nothing by his London trip but a little of that bitter though salutary tonic called experience. His resolve did not waver—nay, it became his day-dream; but manifold obstacles occurred in the attempt to realize it. Family pride was one of the most stubborn; and not until all hope from home resources was at an end, did his father give consent.

About a month after his meeting with Hiram Holt in the London coffee-house, he and his brother Arthur found themselves on board a fine emigrant vessel, passing down the river Lee into Cork harbour, under the leadership of a little black steam-tug. Grievous had been the wailing of the passengers at parting with their kinsfolk on the quay; but, somewhat stilled by this time, they leaned in groups on the bulwarks, or were squatted about on deck among their infinitude of red boxes and brilliant tins, watching the villa-whitened shores gliding by rapidly. Only an occasional vernacular ejaculation, such as 'Oh, wirra! wirra!' or, 'Och hone, mavrone!' betokened the smouldering remains of emotion in the frieze coats and gaudy shawls assembled for'ard: the wisest of the party were arranging their goods and chattels 'tween-decks, where they must encamp for a month or more; but the majority, with truly Celtic improvidence, will wait till they are turned down at nightfall, and have a general scramble in the dusk.

Now the noble Cove of Cork stretches before them, a sheet of glassy water, dotted with a hundred sail, from the base of the sultry hill faced with terraces and called Queenstown, to the far Atlantic beyond the Heads. Heavy and dark loom the fortified Government buildings of Haulbowline and the prisons of Spike Island, casting forbidding shadows on the western margin of the tide. Quickly the steam-tug and her follower thread their way among islets and moored barques and guard-ships, southward to the sea. No pause anywhere; the passengers of the brig Ocean Queen are shut up in a world of their own for a while; yet they do not feel the bond with mother country quite severed till they have cleared the last cape, and the sea-line lies wide in view; nor even then, till the little black tug casts off the connecting cables, and rounds away back across the bar, within the jaws of the bay.