Chapter 16
As I ate my supper that first evening, my eyes were busy taking in all that was to be seen. The house was of logs, the spaces between being filled up with chips and then plastered with mud. There was but one room, but it was a good size and held all the family possessions. In one corner was a large homemade bed curtained off with sheets. Here the family spent the night. My brother used to say that he never understood the passage in the Gospel before: “My children are with me in bed”. The house was fairly high and logs had been laid across so that an upstairs could be put in. At present a lot of loose boards were across the logs and on this extempore floor Graham slept and with him another young man, Holmes by name, a friend of Mr. Cooper’s.
Mr. Cooper was, I believe, a carpenter by trade. He was a man well over 40 years and he was a man of intelligence and industry. His wife was quite young and they had three small children, Johnny, Louise and a baby boy. I was wondering where I was to be stowed but Mrs. Cooper made no difficulty about that. A “lunge” as she called it, made of saplings, with a straw tick on it, stood in one corner and round this she securely fastened a sheet and soon made me up a little bed in this private apartment. Over my head a large clock ticked noisily and struck the hours but after a night or two I became accustomed to it. Youth is a great help pioneering.
“Did you notice anything peculiar about the bread?” inquired my hostess after supper. I had to confess that it tasted of something unusual. “Yes,” she replied, “that’s coal oil; we ran out of flour and coal oil and my husband went to the portage as it is only 40 miles, but the coal oil spilt over the flour, the roads were so awful.” Mr. Cooper himself had lived in Petrolia where the oil comes from and said he got so used to the taste he never noticed it, but not having had this experience, I never failed to detect it, however much syrup I covered it with. But a week after our arrival, Mrs. Cooper had a box sent her from home. In it was a large roll of butter, unfortunately packed in the close vicinity of a parcel of spices. I had been told butter takes the flavor of whatever is beside it. I have never doubted since that this is strict truth. You can hardly imagine a more nauseous dose than coal oil bread and spiced butter, but what used to be known as the “Manitoba fever” had come upon me and I was simply ravenous and “downed” whatever came in my way.
The snow was going very slowly. It was a cold late spring, but my brother spent all his time working at the house. One of my first walks was to visit it. It looked rather hopeless, just four walls of logs, but it was soon chinked and a roof put on and then I found that the loose lumber, on which the boys slept, was waiting to make our floor. Mrs. Cooper envied me that floor; hers was made of hewn logs and was very hard to keep clean.
One morning Mr. Cooper told us that neighbors had arrived; an old man and several daughters had come to keep house for the three young Radfords. They lived, I think, in the next township but we felt it would be kind to go and visit them, so getting full directions and leaving the children with their father, we set off after breakfast. It was a lovely walk. I had never felt anything so exhilarating as that cold frosty air. One felt able for anything. My headaches had vanished as if by magic. After walking two or three miles we reached the cabin, a long low building of logs. In it we found the entire Radford family; the old father, bent with rheumatism, but cheerful and courageous, two unmarried daughters, a married daughter, her husband and two young children, two tall, stalwart sons and a widower (who afterwards married the elder daughter) and his little boy. It certainly must have been a tremendous change from the large comfortable farm house they had left, but not one of the party gave a murmur. Our Manitoba pioneers were good stuff. None of their luggage had arrived but I think what they regretted most was having no broom. They had come from near a broom factory and had brought a dozen but now they were reduced to a bunch of twigs to sweep out the exceedingly dirty cabin. All were cheerful and very glad to see us and I found the old man was a nice Christian though I do not think any of the others were. I often visited the old man afterwards and he was glad of a little Christian intercourse.
Opposite to Mr. Cooper’s house stood the “other” house, of much the same size and build. It was the Post Office, a mail being brought in once a week by sleigh. It was also called the store, but when I arrived the stock was much reduced. I do not remember ever buying anything there but lamp glasses and by the following winter these were all disposed of. In this house lived the rest of the community; Messrs. Christie and Wright, Edgar Atheling Bredin and Frank Woods, who came from near Brantford. They had begun the winter well, but the cold, the discomfort, the monotony and loneliness had told on their spirits and by spring they were barely on speaking terms. Mr. Cooper kept out of all their quarrels and was friend and adviser to each one. Bredin, wearying of the bickering, had established himself in a tiny log house on his own land, where he used to maintain he could sit in the middle of the floor and touch everything in the house. He was a regular Irishman, always good tempered and good company.
At last the house was finished and Graham said we would move in. Oh, how glad we were! It was April 13, a cold day and still deep snow. There were drifts too and I remember the sleigh upset and my goods were tossed into the snow, but nothing was hurt. Mr. Cooper helped carry everything in and then went home and we were left to our own devices.
It was certainly very cold. We had a stove, the smallest sized cook stove that is made, but the house was high, intended at some future time to have an upstairs. It also, though “chinked”, was only mudded at one side and our little stove was quite inadequate for warming it. But we did not mind. We worked in fur caps, overcoats and mitts. Graham had made a little furniture; a large arm chair of “shaganappy” (undressed skin), a small and very rickety table, two or three stools, perhaps eight inches wide and which had to be sat on very carefully, but his chef d’oeuvre was a bed for me. It was made of saplings and had only one failing. One of the saplings had a large protruding knot which caught you right in the middle of the back, but in time I got accustomed to manipulating it and slept soundly and comfortably in that bed for nearly two years.
What fun we had unpacking. Graham put up shelves for the dishes and we were proud of them. Then he arranged the tent over my bed, which made it a little warmer.
We undid the mattress and laid down the carpet at one end of the part we intended for a kitchen and living-room.
The sacking which had covered the carpet and mattress was made into a partition between my room and the kitchen. Then we divided my room into two with sacking so we each had a bedroom. Later, I arranged a barrel by my bed with a board over it for a wash stand and my trunk stood at the bottom of the bed. Poor Graham did not boast a bed.
He slept in the outer room on a buffalo robe. They were common then, for buffalos were still roaming the plains of the great, silent West.
Besides what I had brought up, Graham had laid in provisions in Emerson: a barrel of pork, a 5-gallon keg of syrup, sugar, rice and porridge and good sweet flour, also, several bags of potatoes. I think possibly he had grown these. These were piled in one corner, and with our second buffalo robe over them made a good resting place. We called it a sofa.
I was proud of cooking our first dinner. Graham had a kettle and two heavy iron pots went with the stove. I had brought up a small iron saucepan (graniteware had not come into use and of course our modern aluminum was unheard of). Our most useful utensil was the frying pan and my brother instructed me in the mysteries of frying “mess pork”. We boiled rice and I opened one of the six little pots of peach jam my grandmother had given me. It snowed all day, but we were too busy and happy to mind. Mrs. Cooper had given us a loaf of bread and a pot of yeast which had frozen solid on the way over, but I was too ignorant to feel uneasy at that.
We worked all that day and the next. The third day was fine and all the lads arrived to help put up the stable. The house was quite tidy, our dishes fairly shone on their shelves, the table boasted a tablecloth and the carpet looked clean and comfortable. We had a few books and some pictures and there was the general homey look which only a woman’s hand gives. Charley Wright told me afterwards that when he saw the house he at once made up his mind to bring up his sisters and mother.
The one thing I had learned to do before leaving Toronto was to bake bread. The Cayley’s cook, a very nice woman, had carefully taught me and I proudly set my bread the night before the “bee”, expecting to find it well up in the morning. Alas, and alas, the morning found no change in it. I had not reckoned on frozen yeast, and a bitterly cold house. The men arrived early and set to work at the stable. It was to be a superior building, as all the logs were large and had been squared off, so they fitted much better than the round ones. I called Mr. Cooper in about 10 o’clock and told him my perplexities. He was very sympathetic but could tender no advice. Left to my own devices, a bright thought struck me. I got out the currants my mother had provided, kneaded in a good supply to the heavy lump of unraised dough, rolled it out and baked it as cookies. When the men came in starving at 12 o’clock, a good dinner was ready, lots of potatoes and fried pork, tea and the remarkable biscuits—but they were all eaten and enjoyed.
I got more yeast from Mrs. Cooper and fresh directions and my next bread turned out a success—not that her directions ever helped me much. This conversation would be gone through. “How much flour should I have?” “Well, I don’t know, as much as you’ve a mind to.” “And then how much water?” “I never measure, just what you think enough.” And so on and on, till I found she “darkened counsel by words without knowledge”. I needed a friend and helper too, for I was absolutely ignorant of housekeeping in any form. I lost the stove lifter a dozen times a day, until Graham tied it to a nail with a long string. The fire was hard to make burn. It was a dreadful little stove. The top was in two terraces, two holes in each terrace; of course, nothing would ever boil on the back, whereas with a good fire, the iron pots invariably burnt in front. The weary hours I spent scraping those pots. Then I forgot to put water in the kettle and burnt a hole in it and Graham put it on one of the beams where I could not reach it. My hands, never accustomed to any hard work, were very soft and they soon became cracked and very sore, till it was perfect agony to put them into the barrel of brine and lift out the “chunk” of pork, to cut and fry.
It must have been towards the end of the month that Graham announced his intention of going for the cow he had purchased some time before. “You won’t mind staying alone?” he inquired. “I shall only be away one night.” Of course I answered that I should be all right. Thinking I would like company, I went up to Mrs. Cooper’s, about two miles, after he had gone and borrowed her cat, a very good mouser, brought by some Mennonites from Russia, but sold to Mrs. Cooper for fifty cents. I might have been better alone. Mistress Puss found the house swarming with mice and all night she occupied herself pouncing on them, waking me each time with a start. I was relieved when morning came, but oh the condition of the house! Mice and portions of mice in every direction.
Meantime, Graham was having his own time. He had ridden the little Indian pony and arrived quite safely, stayed the night and started back with his cow. All went well till they came to a stream which the cow refused to cross, guessing, I suppose, that the ice was weak. Graham tried to drag her across, the ice gave way and pony, cow and man went into the cold, icy water. The cow scrambled out the wrong side and he had to cross and recross in the water. Evening was coming on and it was freezing hard, but fortunately the Radford’s shack was near at hand and he made for it, in his frozen clothes. As soon as the Miss Radfords saw him they said: “it was such a fine evening they thought they would take a walk”, so he changed into some clothes of the brother’s, had a cup of hot tea and hurried home. I am sure he was glad to get back and I was more than glad to see him.
A few days after this little episode, Graham announced one day at dinner time that he intended to spend the afternoon getting in wood for use during the summer. A Mr. Harvey, a friend of Mr. Christie’s and a newcomer, had agreed to accompany him. Mr. Harvey was a good many years older than most of our little colony and had had experience farming in Canada. His land was next to ours but he had not yet built a house. Though it was now the early part of May, there was still sleighing and they set forth briskly with the oxen and sleigh. I do not think an hour had elapsed when they returned. Graham had cut his foot badly and I was indeed thankful that he had had an experienced companion who knew what to do. After helping him into the house, Mr. Harvey proceeded to bind up the cut, which was on the instep, most scientifically. Then he attended to the cow and oxen and left us for the night.
At first the cut had not caused much pain, but before long the foot began to swell and my poor brother was in great agony. At last in desperation, I loosed the bandages and he got some relief, but we neither of us had much sleep that night. In the morning, one of the young men came over to see about the oxen and cow. He was also a newcomer, a brother of Frank Woods. After a short time he came to the house and informed us that a little calf was in the stable. This was a great event and we built air castles in which much cream and butter figured. Poor Graham suffered a good deal for some days but he was not the kind to remain quietly in the house. Long before the cut was healed, he was out at work.
The warm weather had come suddenly upon us. The snow disappeared as if by magic and each day new life appeared in the trees and bushes. Standing at the door, I could gaze far over the little river and the broad brown fields to a fringe of trees which skirted the horizon. Each day they looked greener and more beautiful, each day some fresh flower sprang up at our very door, first the marsh marigold in the slough to the north of us, then violets verily carpeting the earth, blue, white, yellow. How I rejoiced in them. Then all the bushes seemed to spring into flower, wild cranberry, wild plum, wild cherry, and many more.
But my brother’s mind was not set on flowers, but grain. Day by day he yoked up the oxen, and painfully dragged his sore foot along after the plough. He could not put on a boot but used a moccasin. Once he tried riding the pony, but that did not work. The moccasin was a poor substitute for a boot; it let in the damp earth and night after night I spent an hour or more bathing the wound, till every speck of dirt was out of it, and then I bound it up again as well as I knew how. Knowing as I do now something of the danger of blood poisoning in such a wound, I look back in wonder to the fact that finally it got perfectly well. I can only think that surely the Angel of the Lord had a special care over us.
During these weeks, I was gaining new experience every day. The first thing I learned was the making of butter. I had never seen butter made, though I had had much dealing with cream at Mrs. Cayley’s. “Do try and make some butter,” said Graham, as soon as a cupful of cream had been collected. “How do you make it?” I inquired. “Oh just beat it up,” was the reply, as he went off to his work. I put it in a little bowl and beat it for two or three minutes with a fork. Lo, a change came over it; it seemed to all turn to curd. “What had I done?” I had spoiled it somehow. I looked out and saw Mr. Cooper planting peas in a piece of ground not far off, and carried my bowl and my difficulties to him. “You are all right,” he said, “beat a little longer.” Sure enough, a few more beats and the apparent curd changed to a small lump of solid butter. Then I had directions as to washing it and was indeed proud when I produced my pat of butter for supper.
The calf was small and weak and Graham gave it a good deal of new milk, but still I had enough cream to keep us in butter and sell a pound or so a week. I had no scales to weigh it, but I borrowed an old fashioned steelyard from Mr. Cooper and found out how much a certain bowl held and this I used as a measure. I never had a churn, but always beat it up in a shallow bowl, using really thick cream. I suppose I am prejudiced, but no butter has ever tasted so good to me as that made by beating. The buttermilk was very good and much sought after by the lads. Many a time I had my health drunk in buttermilk.
As I look back over that first spring, so much comes crowding into my mind. It was all so novel to me, and then I was so inexperienced and made so many blunders, and I had no one to go to to ask advice. My bread was constantly a failure, on account of the yeast which would not rise. I had plenty of hops, which Graham had picked in the woods the autumn before, but to make them into really good yeast seemed an impossibility. At last I bethought me of the Miss Radfords and one afternoon Graham caught the pony, put my fine red saddle on it and I rode over to the Radford’s, about 5 miles. I was received with great kindness and enjoyed my visit very much, returning with a supply of homemade yeast cakes and full directions for making yeast.
This ended that particular trouble, but I had many more. The water was a real trial. We had melted snow at first, but when that failed us, we had to get it from the slough or creek beside us. Graham dug a hole and sank a barrel and from evening to morning perhaps two pails would filter in, but when that was used, one simply had to wait for more, and on Monday, washing day, and a real black Monday, I found it most difficult. How hard I found that washing. I had never done anything of the kind in my life. Those were not the days when a girl thought nothing of washing out her own blouses. There were no blouses to begin with and the washing of an elaborate print dress was a formidable undertaking. Then remember we had no electric irons. The iron used everywhere in 1880 was the old fashioned flat iron and little girls still worked iron holders as Christmas presents. My brother’s rough homespun shirts were my greatest trial, and many times I skinned my knuckles over them. The water was very hard and I had nothing to soften it. I had heard of boiling clothes and put my underclothes in boiling water with no soap and the result was disastrous. How my back ached when those washings were finished and how disappointing to find the clothes yellow and not very clean, but I learned in time and have never regretted doing so.
As the soft June days came in, greater hardships awaited us. With June came the heavy rains, and with the rain came mosquitoes; not one or two or a hundred or a thousand; I am sure they ran into the millions. The air seemed alive with them. You could hardly tell the color of the cattle for them. You had no rest day or night. We had no mosquito nets, nothing to hinder the bites or allay the irritation, and we were 100 miles from any place where we could procure such things. So we just endured as best we might and when evening came and we wearied of the unequal struggle, we would light a smudge in the stove and sit in the smoke till the tears rolled down our cheeks, then make a dash for the door and the mosquito-stricken outside. The house was all open, for though chinked between the logs, it had only been mudded on one side, and there was space for hundreds of the pests to enter. And enter they did and bite me they did. One evening, having finished my duties, I lay down on our “sofa”, composed of potato bags covered with the buffalo robe.
I had a book, but the light was failing and presently I heard the well known hum of the mosquito. I brushed it away and tried to go on reading, but the sound continued and looking up I saw a terrible creature just at my head. One look was sufficient. I was off the bed and out of the door and at the place where Graham was milking our cow, in a moment. “Oh Graham,” I cried, “there is a horrible creature, I think it is a scorpion.” Graham sprang up, left his pail and ran to the house. “It looks terrible,” he said, “you go and get the ax and I will watch it.” I did as advised and soon returned. “Light a candle,” said my brother, “but do not come too near.” He gave a quick stroke with the ax and then to my astonishment rolled over on the “sofa” in fits of laughter. When at last he could control himself, he pointed out that our “scorpion” was a tail of the buffalo robe with a large fly sitting upon it. The joke was too good to keep to ourselves and many a good laugh it caused.
Perhaps it is not to be wondered at that I was on the look out for snakes of all kinds. The place abounded in them. They crept in and out through the interstices between the logs and seemed to be everywhere. Resting on my bed one afternoon, I waked with a start and found one reared up, apparently on its tail, gazing at me. Many a one I put out of the way with an ax, but they continued as plentiful. One night when we had both gone to bed, Graham called out, “A snake is in bed with me.” I only laughed, never thinking of it’s being true, but when I turned over the buffalo robe, which served him for a bed, in the morning, there was the snake coiled up where his feet had been.
Mosquitoes were not the only pests we had to contend with. Black flies had their season, and then came the horse fly, which nips a piece out of you, and the “bull dogs”, a sort of large blue bottle, and most troublesome of all perhaps, the housefly. I had no safe, or cupboard, and how to keep them out of the food I did not know. In vain I tied papers over the milk pans; they still seemed to get in—not one or two but dozens. One day a buffalo bird came flying into the kitchen. They are something like a blackbird, only brown and rather smaller. It made itself quite at home and flew around eating “bull dogs” to my great satisfaction. After a day or two it came again and established itself on the window of the inner room. It was quite tame and would take a fly from my hand. It stayed all day and then flew away. The third day it did not go away at night, but alas in the morning it was dead. These birds are a great solace to the cattle and I have seen the oxen plowing with three or four birds on the back of each. The poor cattle suffered terribly with the flies and the pony would come and stand with his head in the kitchen door for hours. At night Graham used to make a big smudge, and the pony always stood in the thickest smoke, then the cow and Buck and Bright the oxen.
I have spoken of the June rains, but I think I must go a little more into detail regarding them. They generally were accompanied by violent thunder storms and the rain would pour down as one has seen it do in the tropics. Our door, made by inexperienced hands, was lower than the ground outside and with each storm the kitchen was flooded. Not only did it run in under the door but found out every crevice between the logs. Now I understood why Graham had not “mudded” all the house; with the rain came the mud and the new pots and pans, hanging behind the stove, which I was so proud of, were constantly streaked with mud when taken down for use. Ruefully I looked at the floor. How could I wipe up the water? Graham solved the difficulty by boring holes in the floor, and into these I swept the flood, which was often deep enough to soak our shoes. Oh those June mornings, can I ever forget them? We got up early and Graham would don his ragged old white mackintosh and go gloomily out into the rain to hunt the cow, which as he used to say, “might be anywhere between our house and the Rockies”. My business was to light the fire. At best I was a poor fire maker, but with the stove wet inside and out, for the rain ran persistently down the stovepipe which served for a chimney, with often no paper, and wet wood, it seemed well nigh impossible to get a cheery blaze. Often I used the three-bladed knife, a present from Mrs. John Cartwright, to cut pieces from underneath the seats of the stools, being the only dry thing I could lay my hands on.
I had a text on the wall, which I often took courage from as I knelt before that loathsome little stove, blowing and puffing and trying to make a fire which would cook our breakfast. It was, “Endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Tim. 2:33Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. (2 Timothy 2:3)). I am glad to be able to say that I never once failed to make a fire, and we always had breakfast. Porridge and milk, fried pork and potatoes, bread and butter and syrup, was our unfailing menu, and very much the same for dinner. Then as the summer wore on we had a great variety of vegetables, for in spite of his sore foot Graham had a splendid garden, and how the things grew in that new land! Before I finish this chapter, with its flies and mosquitoes, I will write down the song of the mosquito, which I heard so often that it is indelibly printed on my mind:
“The blood of the Indian is thick and flat,
The blood of the buffalo is hard to get at,
But the blood of the white man is clear and bright,
So we’ll drink it by day and we’ll drink it by night.”