The Backwoods of Canada eBook



In spite of all the trials he had encountered, I found this gentleman was so much attached to a settler’s life, that he declared he would not go back to his own country to reside for a permanence on any account; nor is he the only one that I have heard express the same opinion; and it likewise seems a universal one among the lower class of emigrants.  They are encouraged by the example of others whom they see enjoying comforts that they could never have obtained had they laboured ever so hard at home; and they wisely reflect they must have had hardships to endure had they remained in their native land (many indeed had been driven out by want), without the most remote chance of bettering themselves or becoming the possessors of land free from all restrictions.  “What to us are the sufferings of one, two, three, or even four years, compared with a whole life of labour and poverty,” was the remark of a poor labourer, who was recounting to us the other day some of the hardships he had met with in this country.  He said he “knew they were only for a short time, and that by industry he should soon get over them.”

I have already seen two of our poor neighbours that left the parish a twelvemonth ago; they are settled in Canada Company lots, and are getting on well.  They have some few acres cleared and cropped, but are obliged to “hire out”, to enable their families to live, working on their own land when they can.  The men are in good spirits, and say “they shall in a few years have many comforts about them that they never could have got at home, had they worked late and early; but they complain that their wives are always pining for home, and lamenting that ever they crossed the seas.”  This seems to be the general complaint with all classes; the women are discontented and unhappy.  Few enter with their whole heart into a settler’s life.  They miss the little domestic comforts they had been used to enjoy; they regret the friends and relations they left in the old country; and they cannot endure the loneliness of the backwoods.

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The Backwoods of Canada from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
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