"Now, considering we are to be dependent on ourselves for furniture, the best thing I can fashion in the first instance will be a work bench,"
said Arthur, whose turn for carpentering was decided. "Little I ever thought that my childish tool-box was educating me for this."
"I think a door ought to be your first performance," suggested Robert.
"Our mansion would be snugger with a door than a screen of hemlock brush."
"But I must go to the "Corner" for boards, and that will take an entire day, the road is so vile. I can"t see why I couldn"t hew boards out of a pine myself; eh, Holt?"
"You want to try your hand at "slabbing," do you? I warn you that the labour is no joke, and the planks never look so neat as those from the sawmill."
"We have flung "looks" overboard long ago," replied Arthur. "Come, teach me, like a good fellow."
"Choose your tree as clean and straight in the grain as possible."
"And how am I to tell how its grain runs?" asked the pupil.
"Experiment is the only certainty; but if the tree be perfectly clear of knots for thirty or forty feet, and its larger limbs drooping downwards, so as to shelter the trunk in a measure from the influence of the sun, these are presumptions in favour of the grain running straight."
"What has the sun to do with it?"
"The grain of most trees naturally inclines to follow the annual course of the sun. Hence its windings, in great measure. Having selected and felled your pine, cut it across into logs of the length of plank you want."
"But you said something of experiment in deciding about the grain of the wood."
"Oh, by cutting out a piece, and testing it with the axe, to see whether it splits fair. When you have the logs chopped, mark the ends with a bit of charcoal into the width of your planks: then slab them asunder with wedges."
"Holt, where did you pick up such a variety of knowledge as you have?"
"I picked up this item among the lumber-men. You must know I spent more than one long vacation in exploring the most-out-of-the-way locations I could find. But I"d advise you to go to the sawmill for your planks, though I do understand the theory of slabbing."
After due consideration--and as gla.s.s for the window was a want for which the forest could supply no subst.i.tute--it was agreed that all should take a half-holiday next day, and go down to the "Corner" to Uncle Zack"s store.
"Now that is settled," said Robert, with a little difficulty, "I wanted to say--that is, I"ve been thinking--that we are here in the wilderness, far away from all churches and good things of that kind, and we ought to have prayers of our own every evening, as my mother has at home."
"Certainly," said both Arthur and Sam Holt.
"I have never so felt the presence of G.o.d," added Robert solemnly, "as since I"ve been in these forest solitudes; never so felt my utter dependence upon Him for everything."
"No," rejoined Sam. "He seems to draw very near to the soul in the midst of these His grand works. The very stillness exalts one"s heart towards Him."
And so that good habit of family worship was commenced, inaugurating the shanty that very night. Andy Callaghan sat by and listened.
"Throth, but they"re fine words," said he. "I wouldn"t believe any one now, that that book is bad to listen to."
"And at home you"d run away from the sight of it. How"s that, Andy?"
asked Mr. Wynn.
"It"s aisy explained, sir," replied the servant, looking droll. "Don"t you see, I haven"t his riverence at me elbow here, to turn me into a goat if I did anything contrary, or to toss me into purgatory the minit the breath is out of my poor body."
Thousands of Andy"s countrymen find the same relief to their consciences as soon as they tread the free soil of Canada West.
Truly a primitive settlement was the "Corner." The dusk forest closed about its half dozen huts threateningly, as an army round a handful of invincibles. Stumps were everywhere that trees were not; one log-cabin was erected upon four, as it had been, legs ready to walk away with the edifice. "Uncle Zack"s" little store was the most important building in the place, next to the sawmill on the stream.
"The situation must be unhealthy," said Robert; "here"s marsh under my very feet. Why, there"s a far better site for a town plot on my land, Holt."
"Ay, and a better water privilege too. Let me see what your energy does towards developing its resources, Robert."
They discovered one source of the storekeeper"s prosperity in the enormous price he exacted for the commonest articles. Necessity alone could have driven Arthur to pay what he did for the wretched little window of four panes to light the shanty. And Uncle Zack had as much to say about the expense and difficulty of getting goods to a locality so remote, and as much sympathizing with his purchaser because of the exorbitant cost, as if he were a philanthropist, seeking solely the convenience of his neighbours by his sales.
"That fellow"s a master of soft sawder when he chooses: but did you see how he clutched the hard cash after all? My opinion is, he don"t often get paid in the circulating medium," said Arthur.
"Of that you may be sure," rejoined Sam Holt; "currency here lies more in potash or flour, just as they have salt in Abyssinia. Society seems to be rather mixed at the "Corner." Yonder"s a French Canadian, and here"s an Indian."
No glorious red man, attired in savage finery of paint and feathers; no sculptor"s ideal form, or novelist"s heroic countenance; but a mild-looking person, in an old shooting jacket and red flannel shirt, with a straw hat shading his pale coppery complexion. He wield a tomahawk or march on a war trail! Never. And where was the grim taciturnity of his forefathers? He answered when spoken to, not in Mohawk, or Cherokee, or Delaware, but in nasal Yankeefied English; nay, he seemed weakly garrulous.
"There"s another preconceived idea knocked on the head," said Arthur.
"My glorious ideal Indian! you are fallen, never to rise."
CHAPTER XV.
ANDY TREES A "BASTE."
Door and window were fitted into the holes cut in the front wall of the shanty, and no carpenter"s "prentice would have owned to such clumsy joinery; but Arthur was flushed with success, because the door could positively shut and the window could open. He even projected tables and chairs in his ambitious imagination, _en suite_ with the bedstead of ironwood poles and platted ba.s.s-work bark, which he had already improvised; and which couch of honour would have been awarded by common consent to Mr. Holt, had he not adhered to the hemlock brush with all the affection of an amateur.
The great matter on the minds of our settlers now, was the underbrushing.
They might calculate on the whole month of November for their work--the beautiful dreamy November of Canada, as different from its foggy and muddy namesake in Britain as well may be. Measuring off thirty acres as next summer"s fallow, by blazing the trees in a line around, took up the best part of a day; and it necessitated also a more thorough examination of Robert"s domains. Such giant trees! One monarch pine must be nigh a hundred feet from root to crest. The great preponderance of maple showed that the national leaf symbol of Canada had been suitably selected.
"And is there no means," quoth Robert, who had been mentally gauging his small axe with the infinitude of forest--"is there no means of getting rid of wood without chopping it down?"
"Well, yes, some slower means still; the trees may be "girdled;" that is, a ring of bark cut from the trunk near the base, which causes death in so far that no foliage appears next spring: consequently the tall melancholy skeleton will preside over your crops without injury."
"Can"t say I admire that plan."
"You are fastidious. Perhaps you would like "n.i.g.g.e.rs" better?"
"I thought they were contraband in any but slave states."
"Oh, these are "n.i.g.g.e.rs" inanimate--pieces of wood laid round the trunk, and set on fire where they touch it; of course the tree is burned through in process of time. These two expedients might be useful in subsidiary aids; but you perceive your grand reliance must be on the axe."
"There is no royal road to felling, any more than to learning. And when may I hope to get rid of the stumps?"
"I don"t think the pine stumps ever decay; but the hardwood, or those of deciduous trees, may be hitched up by oxen and a crowbar after six or seven years; or you might burn them down."
"Hulloa! what"s that?"