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CHAPTER III....continued
The first tenement which the settler in the forest contrives for himself is a camp, or shanty. It is constructed of logs rudely put together, the interstices filled up with moss, leaves, or clay, whatever can best keep out the wind and the cold; the roof consisting of the same materials, further protected by a covering of bark, eked out, it may be, with branches of the pine, the spruce, or the cedar. Warmed by a stove, or carefully prepared fireplace, the camp or shanty is considered to be a dwelling of surpassing comfort by the settler who commences his first winter in the forest. In a year or two, perhaps a longer time, the rude camp is abandoned for the more spacious and elaborately constructed log cabin, or log house; and when the settler arrives at the 'frame house' and the frame barn, he looks upon himself as having reached the climax of earthly comfort, and even the highest point of luxurious accommodation; though possibly in a few years after the frame house gives way to the substantial brick dwelling, porticoed, and pillared--the glory and delight of its hospitable owner.
Jolting and jumping over many an agreeable variety in the surface of the road, which the Bishop and I regarded with quite opposite feelings, we came to the end of our verdant avenue, and reached a little eminence crowned by a chapel of modest dimensions and unpretending architecture. From this vantage ground the first portion of the Irish settlement of Johnville opened out before us; and though, on that sharp October day, the sun but occasionally lit up the landscape with its cheerful beams, one could easily imagine how beautiful it must appear in summer, when the wide valley is filled with waving corn, varied with bright patches of potato, and the surrounding woods are clad in all the varied verdure of the living forest.
Bounded on all sides by a wall of trees, which in one direction cover a range of mountains as beautiful in their outline as those that are mirrored in the sweet waters of Killarney, an undulating plain of cleared land extends about two miles in length by a mile in breadth, dotted over with the most striking evidences of man's presence and the progress of civilisation,--comfortable dwellings, substantial and even spacious barns--horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry of all kinds, from the loud-crowing 'rooster' to the puddle-loving duck and the solemn goose. Even to the eye of an Irish farmer, the vast plain before us would have presented a rough and rather unpromising aspect, for not two acres of the many hundred already 'cleared' were yet free from the stumps of the great trees whose lofty branches had waved and moaned in the storms of ages. The road, bounded by rude log fences, and the limits of each holding marked out in the same primitive manner, and stumps a couple of feet high plentifully scattered over every field,--this at the first glance would not favourably impress the Irish farmer, to say nothing of the English Yeoman or the Scotch Lowlander; but were he to overcome his first impressions of the strangeness of all he saw, and enquire into its details, he would soon discover much to astonish and much to gratify him. The stumps, that impart so strange and rough an appearance to an early settlement, cannot be destroyed or eradicated for some years to come; yet, from the first year that the trees had been laid low by the settler's axe, abundant crops of grain and potatoes had been raised with comparatively little trouble; and large quantities of hay, priceless as winter food, had likewise borne witness to the fertility of the soil on which a constant succession of leaves had fallen and rotted through countless ages.
In the fall of 1861 the first settlers, a man and his wife--Mr. and Mrs. Hugh M'Cann--entered the forest, bringing with them provisions for the winter, and a very moderate stock of furniture and other valuables, which the prudent pair had accumulated by their industry in the city of St. John. Through a mere track, the oxen, lent by a kindly Irish family, slowly dragged after them the entire worldly wealth of this stout-hearted couple, the pioneers of the civilisation so soon to follow in their footsteps. Right in the midst of the forest--never before trodden save by the Indian, the lumberman, or the wild animal--the M'Canns settled down, resolved to brave the severity of the approaching season. The first thing to be done was to erect a log cabin, and for the rougher portion of this indispensable work the thrifty pair were able to pay; but they had to cover their dwelling by their own labour, which they did with great pieces of bark and branches torn from the trees under whose shadow they took up their abode. Here then they were, in the heart of what to them was a wilderness, more than two miles from a human habitation, and even uncertain of the way by which they could reach the outer world; their only guide being either a faint track, or an occasional mark, or scar, made on the bark of a tree. Still they were not in the least degree discouraged.
Mrs. M'Cann had pluck and cheerfulness sufficient for a more hazardous enterprise. With a good stove, and an occasional quilt or blanket, suspended on the walls as tapestry, the cold was effectually kept out, and the lonely hours made comfortable during the bitter winter. Armed with his keen axe, Hugh cut and chopped through the months while the snow covered the ground; and so resolutely did he work, that when the white mantle vanished from the earth before the warmth of the spring, the M'Canns had cleared several acres of their land; and in the autumn of 1862 they gathered in their first produce--an abundant harvest of potatoes, oats, and buckwheat. A proud woman was Mrs. Hugh M'Cann, as she did the honours of her forest home to the settlers of 1862; and prouder still as she afforded hospitality and the shelter of her warm roof to many who had yet to raise a dwelling over their heads.
I could well appreciate the brave and cheery nature of this humble Irishwoman, as the Bishop and I--after a lengthened and somewhat laborious tour through the settlement--sat before the well-replenished stove which had so often warmed the limbs of the wayfarer, and smiled its ruddy welcome to the heart of the exile; and I listened to Mrs. M'Cann while she chatted gaily to her guests, making light of trials and difficulties that would have daunted many a lord of the creation. She laughed, as she told of her furniture being flung by a surly captain on the shore of the river; how she lost her temper 'with the fellow,' and did not recover it for ever so long; how tartly she replied, in a spirit not of the mildest theology, to the kindly-intentioned queries of a Free-will Baptist; how 'it was as good as any theaytre' to see Hugh and herself tramping after the lumbering oxen, and all their cherished property nodding and shaking on the jolting waggon; how Hugh spent a portion of his first Sunday--'after saying our prayers, Bishop, by all means'--in making the frame of the door, while she constructed the door 'with her own two hands;' how happy they felt as, the cold being effectually barred out, they sat down before their bright stove, and drank a rousing cup of tea; how, as time rolled on, and the forest receded before the resolute axe, and the fields grew in dimensions, and cattle lowed round their house, and hogs grunted in the piggery, and roosters and their wives strutted and clucked, she had a tremendous battle with a skunk that assailed her chickens, and how, single-handed, and appealing in vain to unheroic or sleepy Hugh, she slew the invader of infamous odour, and then nearly fainted through fatigue, excitement, and the overpowering stench it emitted; how as many as sixteen used to lie at night on every available spot of the floor, and the priest was curtained off by a quilt in a corner to himself; and how, with the help of God, the more she gave the more she had to give. A pleasant hour's chat was that with Mrs. M'Cann, who did the honours of her log cabin with the ease of a duchess.
The second woman settler merits special notice, were it only to prove, to would-be sceptics, that the relations between the landlord and the tenant in the old country have really something to do with the Irish peasant's migration to the New World.
Mr. and Mrs. Crehan, of Galway, had been tenants on a certain property in that county; and this property having, in some way respecting which Mrs. Crehan was a little bewildering in her explanation, come into the possession of a gentleman with a fine old Galwegian name, the tribulation of the Crehans commenced. The first thing done by the new landlord was to raise the rent on his tenants, the second to deprive them of their mountain pasture, the third to cut off the shore and its seaweed from their free use, and the fourth to persecute a cherished pig with degrading pound, and its indignant owners with harassing fines. It is the last drop that causes the glass to overflow; and possibly the wrongs inflicted on the mend of the family and traditional rentpayer filled to overflowing the brimming measure of their woes; for the Crehans made up their minds to go somewhere--anywhere--'to the end of the world'--rather than remain in a state of abject vassalage, dependent on the caprice or avarice of the gentleman with the fine old Galwegian name, 'and a holy Roman, too, if you plaze,' as Mrs. Crehan scoffingly assured me. The Parish Priest was consulted by the afflicted pair; and he, having seen the letters of the Bishop of St. John, which had been published in the Irish papers, advised them to proceed at once to New Brunswick, and take land for themselves and their children in the Johnville settlement, 'where no man or no law can take it from you or them,' added their counsellor. The advice was instantly adopted by the Crehans, to whom the now wiser landlord would have been glad to let a much larger farm than that whose rent he had so arbitrarily raised. But it was too late; and so, after paying, 'to the last farthing, everything they owed in the world,' they took ship for St. John with their large family of children, their hard-earned savings, and, what they prized scarcely less, a letter from their Parish Priest to the Bishop.
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