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But, as we have in this favourite hobbyhorse style of ours, which causes description to start up as recollections occur, accompanied the lumberer on his voyage to that lumberer's Paradise, Quebec, whither he has conducted his charge to The Coves, for the culler to cull, the marker to mark, the skipper to ship, and the lumber-merchant to get the best market he can for it, so we shall return for a short time to Lower Canada, to talk a little about settlement there.
I have heard my father and old Jacob the lumberer say that, roasted in their shells in the ashes, with a seasoning of salt and pepper, they are good eating when nothing better is to be got." "No doubt, if the seasoning can be procured," said Hector; "but, alas for the salt and the pepper!" "Well, we can eat them with the best of all sauces hunger.
It is the material expression of the status of the family, such people in such a place. Hence the two-fold requirement of fitness for its use and of harmony with its surroundings. A log-house is the appropriate dwelling of the lumberer in the woods; but transplant it to a suburban lawn and it becomes an absurdity, and a double absurdity.
My next neighbour was a stalwart, bronzed Kentucky farmer, in a palm-leaf hat, who, strange to say, never made any demonstrations with his bowie- knife, and, having been a lumberer in these forests, pointed out all the objects of interest. The monotonous sublimity of these primeval woods far exceeded my preconceived ideas.
After we had breakfasted by ourselves, one of our bedfellows, who had also breakfasted, came along, and, being invited, took a cup of tea, and finally, taking up the common platter, licked it clean. But he was nothing to a white fellow, a lumberer, who was continually stuffing himself with the Indians' moose-meat, and was the butt of his companions accordingly.
It is not often that they find their way into the jail or penitentiary. A young lady told me an adventure that befell her and her sister, which is rather a droll illustration of the manners of a French Canadian lumberer.
It sounds like the old chanson my father used to sing;" and Louis, raising his voice, began to sing the words of an old French Canadian song, which we will give in the English, as we heard it sung by an old lumberer, "Down by those banks where the pleasant waters flow, Through the wild woods we'll wander, and we'll chase the buffalo. And we'll chase the buffalo."
Their life afterwards is a bitter struggle to get above water; that tyrant monster, their heavy debt, still chaining them downwards, devouring with insatiate greed their whole means, for interest or bond, until it be discharged; a hard matter for them to accomplish so hard that few do it, and the ruined lumberer sinks, to the grave with its burthen yet upon him.
Up to their waists in snow in winter, and up to their waists in summer and autumn in water, with all the moving accidents by flood and field; the occasional breaking-up of the raft in a rapid, the difficulty of the winter and spring transport of the heavy logs of squared timber out of the deep and trackless woods, combine to form a portion of the hard and reckless life of a lumberer, whose morale is not much better than his physicale.
What with the railroad from Halifax to Lake Huron, from the Atlantic Ocean to the great fresh ocean of the West what with the electric telegraph now in operation on the banks of the Niagara by the Americans what with the lighting of villages on the shores of Lake Erie with natural gas, as Fredonia is lit, and as the city of the Falls of Niagara, if ever it is built, will also be, there is no telling what will happen: at all events, the poor lumberer must benefit in the next generation, for the worst portion of his toils will be done away with for ever.
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