CHAPTER XX.

_Goderich Hotels—Eagle’s Nest—Doctor Dunlop—Cheap Dinner—Search for an East Lothian Farmer—Goderich—Poverty of Settlers—Canada Company—State of Goderich Settlement—Journey to London—Mr T***—Aux Sable Creek—Ship-builder from Essex—Negro Settlement—Notices of Nature—Robinson Hotel—Mode of Travelling—Huron Track Roads—London—St Thomas—Port Stanley—Emigrants from Argyleshire—Dirty Beds—Agricultural Notices._

On arriving at Goderich, we could not get admittance to Reid’s hotel, unless my friend and I would occupy half a bed, which induced us to drive to that of Mr Fisher, where we slept uncomfortably on the floor, the landlady telling us, while preparing the pallet, that Goderich was a poor place. While partaking of tea, served up after the fashion of the States, I imagined the sugar had been put into the pot, as there was none visible in the apartment, but next morning I discovered it was mixed with the cream. Fisher’s hotel was crowded with workmen of all descriptions, and by way of kindness, I suppose, we were invited to breakfast with the family. My shoes had long remained uncleaned, and I got them blackened here by paying 3d. sterling, which was unprofitably spent money, as a few minutes’ walking in dewy grass rendered them as brown as before.

After breakfast, we walked in the direction of Dr Dunlop’s new cottage, on the north side of the river Maitland, and named the Eagle’s Nest. The situation seems happily chosen, and the name is characteristic of the owner. We spent a considerable time in examining the vegetable productions of the large islands formed by the river, which, at the time we saw it, was a mere brook, until overtaken by a shower, which compelled us to return to Goderich without reaching the Nest. I understood the islands at the mouth of the Maitland and the adjoining banks, had been granted as a common to the inhabitants of Goderich. The grass was very limited in quantity as well as variety of species, but tall growing weeds of great beauty covered the surface. I do not know whether these plants flavoured dairy produce; but the butter we got at Goderich was so nauseous, that neither my friend nor I could eat this substance for some days afterwards. The butter of Upper Canada was generally of the worst quality.

On returning from our walk we called on Dr Dunlop, at the office of the Canada Company, who introduced us to his brother the captain, recently arrived in the country. I had been furnished with an introductory letter to the Doctor, from a _well-known character_, both in Scotland and Canada, and which I left with Mr Jones at York. The Doctor seemed busy, and our conversation was limited, which I did not much regret, as I visited America with a determination to judge of matters more from what I saw than what might be told me, and there appeared nothing in the circumstances of the Goderich settlement requiring much explanation.

As Mr Fisher’s establishment did not appear of the first order, we determined on dining at the principal hotel, where we were admitted to what Mr Reid termed a family dinner. The table seemed surrounded by all the inmates of the houses twelve or fourteen in number, including boarders and travellers of all descriptions. Mr Reid presided, and amused me by distributing a tureen full of Scotch broth, with a tea-cup for a divider, and from the shortness of the handle, his fingers were immersed in stirring up the liquid. The entertainment was poor enough, and cost the moderate sum of sixpence sterling.

Having promised, on parting at Montreal with Mr D——, to endeavour to visit, if possible, a friend of his in the neighbourhood of Goderich, who once farmed in one of the finest situations in East Lothian, I felt anxious to witness the proceedings of an East Lothian farmer in so new a settlement as this; and immediately after dinner set out in search of Mr K——, who, we were told, lived about four miles from Goderich, on the shores of Lake Huron. We at first attempted to walk along the margin of the lake; but the quantity of drift and fallen timber which lined the shore, joined to the surge which was rushing from the west with the violence of a tempestuous ocean, rendered this route impracticable. On regaining the banks above the lake, I approached a cottage, and enquired the way. A young gentleman asked me to walk into his house, and he would furnish a hand-sketch of the road. He was employed in mapping for the Canada Company, and his productions did him credit. He told me he was from Edinburgh, and brother to ——, a well-known engraver there, and whose name was quite familiar to me. On enquiring the way a second time, a mile or two farther on, I was astonished at a gentleman mentioning my name, when he said he had seen me in Edinburgh, where he was a brassfounder in the Grassmarket, and had only been a few weeks is the country. Notwithstanding the assistance of a sketch of the road, and minute directions received regarding it, we could not find the object of our search, and must have passed the night in the woods, had not the light of the moon, which was fortunately within a night of being full, enabled us to reach Goderich. The road on which we travelled is termed a concession line, and was marked by a blaze or axe-chip on the bark of trees. From this concession line, the different lots of property diverged, and were distinguished by marks which old countrymen could not readily notice; and I have no doubt we passed over the property of Mr K——, without discovering the tract leading to his abode. The concession line, a mile from Goderich, was almost an undistinguishable path, on which a horse or sleigh seemed never to have travelled. The cleared spaces on the different lots seldom exceed a few acres; and while conversing with my friend, I compared our route through the forest to a hare-path in an East Lothian wheat field, and the openings around the dwelling places to the forms of that animal.

Goderich is situated on the margin of Lake Huron, at the mouth of the river Maitland, and consists of about forty mean wooden houses, scattered irregularly over a considerable space. With exception of half-a-dozen of houses, near what is termed the pier, the rest of the village is about 200 feet above the level of the lake, partly on a cedar swamp, through which there is a street of corduroy. The Maitland river, when seen by me, on 28th August, was incapable of floating a canoe, and a vessel, a few tons burden, could not enter the mouth of the harbour.

I found the Canada Company very unpopular at Goderich, although Dr Dunlop is a favourite amongst the settlers, who are of the poorest class, and seemingly without industry or energy of any kind. Indeed, when men despair of overcoming their pecuniary difficulties, which must have been the case with most of the first settlers, they are apt to become both indolent and dissipated. The Canada Company charge 7s. 6d. per acre for land, payable, with interest, by instalments; and when a specified extent is taken, part of the settler’s travelling expenses are allowed him out of the second instalment. This is a most disadvantageous regulation for emigrants, being a premium to purchase beyond their means of paying, and an unprofitable locking up, or perhaps rather transfer of capital, which cannot by possibility fail of ending in ruin, as it hath been proved by the whole history of American wood settlers, that they find it difficult, for the first three years, with the utmost industry, to do more than maintain their families. In this case, the interest on the unpaid instalments is more than the cleared part of the farm will yield of profit at the end of five or six years, where a person trusts alone to his personal labour for improving. When all the instalments are duly paid, the price of the forest land, which seldom yields a blade of grass, and is totally unproductive, remains an overwhelming burden on what is cleared. Dr Dunlop told me, that only one of the original settlers continued to hold his land at the time of my visit to Goderich, and alluded to a cause for their removal, which I did not think likely to have produced the effect. The first settlers at Goderich were people of limited means, the majority of them paupers, and they soon became so involved to the Company, as to induce them to leave the district. Many of the recent purchasers, perhaps forty or fifty of them, were working on the Company’s roads while I was present, which the Doctor told me was the only means by which they could render payment.

It seem bad policy in a nation overflowing with population to sell a large though distant tract of land to speculators, like the Canada Company, who must seek immediate gain, without regard to the ultimate welfare of settlers, and only pursue revenue without aiming to develope the permanent resources of the district. Such an extent of territory as the Canada company possess, gives a monopoly of land, and a power of enhancing price, operating on the emigrant as a tax, which is transferred to the shareholders in England, instead of being employed on the spot. The affairs of the Company are not likely to be soon wound up, as the lands of insolvent purchasers will, from time to time, return to its management, and the price of land will be raised beyond the demands of the population, as well as let on lease. The political power of the Company will soon be felt, and its minions thrust into the legislature of the country, to the retarding of every local improvement affecting the finances of the Company. The shareholders will ultimately occupy the position of absentee landlords, and become the most avaricious of taskmasters.

The first settlement in the Huron tract having been made in 1829, it would be unreasonable to expect any thing like luxury or old-country comfort in the neighbourhood of Goderich. The habitations of the farmer are generally of the meanest description, and often quite equal in wretchedness to the worst hovels of Ireland and Scotland, and perhaps the notions of many of the settlers lead them to desire no better accommodation. It has already been noticed, that only one of the original farmers retains his possessions, and their successors are an improved race. A change proceeding in this manner may have benefited society, but at present there is a coarse rawness about men and things at Goderich which I felt far from being agreeable.

We left Goderich at seven in the morning of the 28th of August, and about seventeen miles distant, met Mr T—— and his friends journeying to Goderich, and resting on the wayside till their horse had fed, and I enjoyed highly a piece of bread which he presented to me. This gentleman had one of his horses stolen by an Indian the night preceding, and which was seen by us grazing with a halter on its head a few miles distant. I had become acquainted with Mr T—— in travelling from Montreal to York, and we regretted missing him at Goderich, where his local knowledge, joined to his sound sense, would have rendered him a most desirable companion.

It had rained pretty heavily in the afternoon, and we reached an inn at Aux Sable creek, hungry and wet. In a miserable log-house of two apartments, ten travellers passed the night, partly in beds and partly on the floor. The door was a collection of open boards, and the walls and roof admitted air and light in all directions. The bed which I occupied, in common with my friend, was hard and uneven, and I arose from it unrefreshed. The morning was so cold that I could hardly warm myself by walking, and the rays of a cloudless sun were courted for warmth at midday. After travelling nearly seven hours we made seventeen miles, at the end of which I enjoyed the company of an old Irishwoman, cooking pork, potatoes, apples, and tea to breakfast, for a party which had travelled together from Aux Sable creek. This old lady and her husband had been thirteen years on a farm of 150 acres, eighty of which were cleared, and every thing around them looked comfortable. I joined two reapers, and cut a few sheaves in a very fine field of oats, which I was told had been cropped for twelve successive years without an application of manure. After resting the horses, we proceeded on our journey to London.

About noon of the preceding day, I had some conversation with a ship-builder from Essex, in England, settled on the London road in the Huron tract, and at whose dwelling I made an unsuccessful application for something to eat. Like most settlers, he was full of hope, and extolled the fertility of his soil. On remarking to him that his wheat crop, which had been sown in spring, was destroyed by mildew, he reluctantly admitted the fact, and added that he was assured mildew did not visit the district above once in twenty years; not perhaps being aware that I knew the district had only been inhabited three or four years, and not even visited by a white person more than six years previous to the time of our conversation. Some of this person’s family had a sickly appearance, and on questioning him if any of them ever had ague, he told me several caught the complaint while residing at Hamilton, on Lake Ontario, but it was quite unknown in his present situation. I record these anecdotes as two of the thousand instances which occurred, of settlers lessening the evils, or rather magnifying the advantages, of their situation, and how necessary it is to sift, by reflection, the grain from the chaff of common conversation.

On the boundary of the Huron tract, next to the London district, we passed a negro settlement. The houses of the coloured people appeared of a particular construction, having the chimney-stack on the outside of the log-house, and which stack is composed of thin sawn timber, placed horizontally, and mixed with clay. Their chief crop was Indian corn, well cultivated. Before my departure from Britain, I had heard this settlement instanced as a complete failure, and used as an argument against the emancipation of slaves, then a general topic of conversation. The houses, barns, fences, and general appearances of this settlement are certainly mean enough, but I considered it in most respects equal, and in some superior, to settlements of whites in the Huron tract of the same standing of three years. But admitting, for argument’s sake, that this negro settlement had been a failure, the circumstance could not form a good reason of expediency against emancipation generally. When individuals attain maturity in a state of slavery, they will become so demoralized as to be incapable of acting with the feelings and aspirations of freemen and moral agents, and it is the rising and not the risen generation that much improvement is to be expected from. Perhaps the neglected and depressed state in which the poor Irish are reared in their native country is the chief cause of their making improvident settlers in Canada, and continuing hewers of wood and carriers of water over so great a portion of the globe.

The land in the Huron tract is truly excellent, with exception of a few miles around Goderich, which is sandy or gravelly, and some small cedar, ash, and larch swamps, being fine clay with a covering of black vegetable mould. The soil on the road leading from Van Egmont’s tavern to London, is particularly fine clay, especially near the Bayfield river, and the whole surface is perfectly level, with exception of the margins of the creeks. The London district is gently undulating, the soil greatly inferior to the Huron tract, and near the village becomes barren sand.

The wood on the road from Goderich to London is chiefly maple, interspersed with beech and elm, the latter being of considerable size. White clover is seldom seen on the waysides, red never, timothy plentiful, and a few plants of cocksfoot. Alder was growing in every place where the forest had been cut down, and put forth shoots of uncommon luxuriance, which seemed to die yearly, as I never observed a trunk or branch of a former year’s growth. The species appeared the same as that common in Britain, and perhaps the young shoots cannot withstand the rigours of a Canadian winter.

I observed a wasp-nest in the ground on the Goderich road, where swarms of the insects were passing out and in. They appeared similar to the wasp of Britain; but my friend was not philosopher enough to be prevailed on to try their stinging powers.

On reaching London we stopped at the Robinson hotel, christened a few days previous to our arrival, in compliment to the chief justice of the province, who had honoured the house by his presence while on the circuit. The landlord told us the dinner was over, but that he would prepare something for us immediately. In the meantime we retired to wash, and at the end of an hour and a half discovered it was intended to put off our eating till the arrival of tea hour. We had been treated in the same manner at Brantford; and after remonstrating with the landlord on the impropriety of promising dinner without furnishing it, we removed to the Mansion House hotel, where we experienced civility and attention.

This evening we parted with our waggoner, Francis Packet, who had brought us from Brantford. Unlike his countrymen, he possessed little wit or humour, but he was very good-natured, strictly sober, accommodating, and an excellent driver. He seemed disposed to accompany us throughout the remainder of our tour, and I confidently recommend him and his chestnut horses, John and Charlie, to all who may require their services. Francis was seldom disposed to talk much, but he invariably accosted every person on the road, by saying, in broken English, “How far tavern?”

At Brantford we engaged a waggon in preference to horses, under an idea of its being an easier mode of conveyance, but I am now satisfied our opinion was erroneous, as horseback would have been more expeditious, and less fatiguing than our waggon, over such roads as we travelled. The roads formed by the Canada Company in the Huron tract have been styled good by the Backwoodsmen, and so puffed off in every British newspaper, that Englishmen may be apt to imagine they are Macadamized. They are simply straight lines, formed by felling trees, the branches and trunks of which have been burnt, or formed into corduroy, and the stumps, from two to three feet in height, left standing. I have already alluded to the extent of corduroy, a description of roads which most travellers speak of with horror, and, without meaning to praise it, I must say it was by far the best and smoothest portions of the Goderich roads. The roots projecting from the stumps in a slanting direction kept the wheels and axles of our waggon moving up and down with the regularity of the beam of a steam-engine, and were alike annoying to us, and fatiguing to the horses, and more especially when travelling between Van Egmont’s tavern and London. In the neighbourhood of Goderich people were engaged in burning out the stumps, and throwing the earth from the sides into the middle of the road, giving it a convex form, which, in American phraseology, is called turnpiking, and this operation will be extended in time, if settlers have not cash to discharge their engagements to the Company.

London is situated at what is termed the Forks of the Thames, and when the forest is a little more cleared away than at present, few situations will be accounted more beautiful. At present a number of houses are being erected, and the village is rising rapidly into importance. It contains three or four large hotels, many well-filled stores, and a court house, of which the inhabitants feel proud.

On the 30th August we left London for St Thomas and Port Stanley, in a waggon belonging to St Thomas, and enjoyed our drive after the jolting snail pace we had experienced on the horrid roads of the Huron tract. Dining at St Thomas, we walked to Port Stanley, where we remained for the night. Next morning we returned to St Thomas, in the midst of a heavy ran, which confined us to the house for the greater part of the day.

St Thomas seems healthily situated on a bend of Kettle creek, about 200 feet above its waters. Three years ago it consisted of thirteen houses, now there are about fifty. Mr Gregory, at whose hotel we stopt, then had four beds, now he has twenty-five, and is engaged in enlarging his house to twice its present size. There are other two good hotels in the village.

Port Stanley is situated at the mouth of Kettle creek, and has a tolerably good harbour, formed by wooden piers jutting into the lake. This is almost the only port at present on the north side of Lake Erie, and from its proximity to London and St Thomas, its trade will greatly increase. A steam-boat commenced this season to ply regularly from Buffalo, by which a number of British emigrants reach the London district by way of New York and the Erie Canal. Steam-boats also touch in passing from Chippaway to Sandwich and Chatham.

Kettle creek is a small stream running in a deep channel, the banks being clay, and nearly 200 feet high at its mouth on the shores of the lake, from the bosom of which we saw the moon rise majestically, while examining the banks. On Kettle creek there is a carding, grist, and saw-mill, a distillery and brewery, situated between St Thomas and Port Stanley.

At Port Stanley I conversed with a party of emigrants encamped on the wharf, from Argyleshire, Scotland, who had come by way of New York, and seemed in comfortable circumstances. The males of the party had gone into the country in search of relations, who had settled some years before, and the females were anxiously looking for their return. Several women, apparently on the verge of seventy years of age, and infant children, were amongst the number. A middle-aged woman complained to me of the dirtiness of the beds at Port Stanley, and the extravagance of the charges. On the preceding night she had been charged 1s. for a bed. Water to wash her children’s faces could not be obtained, and the party preferred lying in the open air to the nasty beds. This was a sensible and well-informed woman, although she had not got quit of her home prejudices in some little matters. The difficulty of obtaining water to wash her children might soon have been got over, by going for it herself to the lake or creek, neither of which were seventy yards distant; and if a vessel for holding water had been denied her, she might have taken the children to the water. People brought up in an artificial state of society must often wonder at their own helplessness on first arriving in Canada. I quite agree with my countrywoman in the dirtiness of the beds in some parts of western Canada. My friend C—— much oftener slept on the floor than in the beds; but long before this time my notions of delicacy in this respect had been overcome by reflection, if not blunted by habit, and I reposed as soundly while in Canada, as ever I did in the most luxurious night of my life.

The surface between the village of London and Lake Erie is undulating, varying from clay to sand, and a very small portion can be termed rich. Three miles from Port Stanley the soil is oak openings of the poorest sand. There is a scarcity of running water, Kettle Creek being the only instance seen in a distance of thirty miles. Many orchards are to be met with, and soil and climate seem highly congenial to the apple-tree.

The settlers on what is known by Talbot road, running through St Thomas, and at no great distance from Lake Erie, live in mean log-houses, with miserable barns and fences. The clearances extend from thirty to sixty acres, and improvement of every description seems at a stand amongst them. Labourers’ wages were stated at $120 a-year, with bed and board. Wheat, crop 1832, was 2s. 9d. cash, and 3s. sterling, store-pay, per bushel. Mr Gregory told me he had purchased good wheat at St Thomas at 1s. 9d. per bushel, and it has been known as low as 1s. sterling.