_ CHAPTER ONE. A CANADIAN SETTLEMENT
The first tree felled in the wilderness that lay to the south and west of the range of hills of which Hawk's Head is the highest, was felled by the two brothers Holt. These men left the thickly-settled New England valley where they were born, passed many a thriving town and village, and crossed over miles and miles of mountain and forest to seek a home in a strange country. Not that they thought of it as a strange country, for it was a long time ago, and little was known by them of limits or boundary lines, when they took possession of the fertile Canadian valley which had till then been the resort only of trappers and Indians. They were only squatters, that is, they cut down the great trees, and built log-houses, and set about making farms in the wilderness, with no better right to the soil than that which their labour gave. They needed no better right, they thought; at least, there was no one to interfere with them, and soon a thriving settlement was made in the valley. It turned out well for the Holts and for those who followed them, for after a good many years their titles to their farms were secured to them on easy terms by the Canadian Government, but they had held them as their own from the first.
Within ten years of the coming of the brothers, the cluster of dwellings rising around the saw-mill which Gershom Holt had built on the Beaver River--the store, the school-house, the blacksmith's shop--began to be spoken of by the farmers as "the village." Every year of the ten that followed was marked by tokens of the slow but sure prosperity which, when the settlers have been men of moral lives and industrious habits, has uniformly attended the planting of the later Canadian settlements.
Gradually the clearings widened around the first log-houses, and the unsightly "stumps" grew smaller and blacker under the frequent touch of fire. The rough "slash fences" made of brushwood and fallen trees, gave place to the no less ugly, but more substantial "zigzag" of cedar rails. The low, log farm-houses began to be dwarfed by the great framed barns which the increasing harvest rendered necessary, until a succession of such harvests rendered possible and prudent the building of framed dwellings as well.
As the clearings widened and the farms became more productive, the prosperity of the village advanced. A "grist-mill" was added to the saw-mill, and as every year brought move people to the place, new arts and industries were established. The great square house of Gershom Holt, handsome and substantial, was built. Other houses were made neat and pretty with paint, and green window-blinds, and door-yard fences, as time went on.
Primitive fashions and modes of life which had done for the early days of the settlement, gave place by degrees to the more artificial requirements of village society. The usual homespun suit, which even the richest had considered sufficient for the year's wear, was supplemented now by stuffs from other looms than those in the farm-house garrets. Housewives began to think of beauty as well as use in their interior arrangements. "Boughten" carpets took the place of the yellow paint and the braided mats once thought the proper thing for the "spare room" set apart for company, and articles of luxury, in the shape of high chests of drawers and hard hair-cloth sofas, found their way into the houses of the ambitious and "well-to-do" among them. The changes which increasing means bring to a community were visible in the village and beyond it before the first twenty years were over. They were not all changes for the better, the old people declared; but they still went on with the years, till Gershom, as the village came to be called, began to be looked upon by the neighbouring settlements as the centre of business and fashion to all that part of the country.
The Holts were both rather indifferent as regarded religious matters, but they had the hereditary respect of their countrymen for "school and meeting privileges," and they were strong in the belief that the ultimate prosperity of their community, even in material things, depended mainly on the growing intelligence and morality of the people; so it happened that much earlier than is usual in new settlements, measures were taken to secure the means of secular and religious instruction for the people. But it was not merely in material wealth and prosperity that was evident the progress of which the inhabitants of Gershom were becoming so justly proud.
As the Holts were the first comers to Gershom, so for a long time they kept the first place in the town, both in social and in business matters. "The Holts had made Gershom," the Holts said, and other people said it too, only sometimes it was added, that "they had also made themselves, and that all the pains they had taken had been to that end." But this was saying too much, for all the Holts had great pride in the place and its prosperity, and almost all the industries that contributed to its growth, as time went on, had been commenced by one or other of them.
Gershom Holt was the more successful of the two brothers, partly because of his greater energy and capacity for business, and partly because he had "located" at that point on the Beaver River where the water-power could be made easily available for manufacturing purposes. No time was lost by him in doing what skill and will could do with only limited capital to make a beginning in that direction, and every new artisan who came to the town, and did well for himself in it, did something to increase the wealth of Gershom Holt also. So in course of time he became the rich man of the place. He dealt closely in business matters, he liked the best of a bargain, and, as a rule, got it; but he was of a kindly nature, and was never hard to the poor, and many a man in Gershom was helped to a first start in business through his means, so that he was better liked and more entirely trusted than the one rich man in a rising country place is apt to be.
His brother Reuben was not so fortunate, either in making money or in winning favours. His farm bordered on the river, but the meadows were narrow, and the land rose abruptly into round rocky hills, fit only for pasture. Beyond the hills, on the higher level, the land was fairly good, but the cultivation of it was difficult, and he had never done much with it. He was neither strong nor courageous. Some of his children died, and others "went wrong," and he fell into misanthropic ways, and for several years before his death he was seldom seen in the village.
For more than twenty years the Beaver River settlement, as it was at first called, was occupied by people of American origin who had come in with the Holts, or had followed after them. But about the time when the land of which they had taken possession was secured to them by the Government, a number of Scotch families came to settle in that part of the town called North Gore, lying just under the morning shadows of Hawk's Range. To these people, for whose land and ancestry they had a traditional admiration and respect, the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers extended a warm welcome, and it was called a good day for the town when they settled down in it.
With the best intentions on the part of all concerned, affairs will go wrong in the history of towns as well as of individuals. Unhappily the new settlers were not at first brought into contact with the best and kindest of the people. Some of them suffered in purse, not from "bad men," but from men whose easy consciences did not refuse to take advantage of their necessities, and of their ignorance of the country and its ways; and some of them suffered in their feelings from what they believed to be curiosity and "meddlesomeness" on the part of neighbours, who in reality meant to be helpful and friendly.
So the North Gore folk "kept themselves to themselves" as they expressed it, and struggled on through some hard years, which more friendliness with their neighbour; might have made easier. The old settlers watched with an interest, on the whole kindly, the patient labour, the untiring energy which did not always take the shortest way to success, but which made its ultimate attainment sure. But to them the firm adherence of the Scotchmen to their own opinions and plans and modes of life, looked like obstinacy and ignorance, and they spoke of them as narrow and bigoted, and altogether behind the times, and the last charge was the most serious in their estimation.
The new-comers refused to see anything admirable in the ease and readiness with which most of the old settlers, disciplined by necessity, could turn from one occupation to another, as circumstances required. The farmer who made himself a carpenter to-day and a shoemaker to-morrow was, in their estimation, a "Jack-of-all-trades," certainly not a farmer in the dignified sense which they had been accustomed to attach to the name.
The strong and thrifty Scotchwomen, who thought little of walking and carrying great baskets of butter and eggs the three or four miles that lay between North Gore and the village, found matter for contemptuous animadversion in the glimpses they got of their neighbours' way of life, and spoke scornfully to each other of the useless "Yankee" wives, who were content to bide within doors while their husbands did not only the legitimate field-work, but the work of the garden, and even the milking of the cows as well. The "Yankee" wives in their turn shrugged their shoulders at the thought of what the housekeeping must be that was left to children, or left altogether, while the women were in the hay or harvest-field as regularly and almost as constantly as their husbands and brothers. Of course they did not speak their minds to one another about all this, but they knew enough about one another's opinions to make them suspicious and shy when they met.
And they did not meet often. The mistress of a new farm found little time for visiting. Winter had its own work, and the snow and the bitter cold kept them within doors. When winter was over they could only think how best to turn to account the long days of the short Canadian summer for the subduing of the soil, out of which must come food for their hungry little ones. Every foot reclaimed from the swamp or the forest, every unsightly thing burned out of the rough, new land, meant store of golden grain and wholesome bread for the future. So, with brave hearts and willing hands, the North Gore women laboured out of doors as well as within, content to wait for the days when only the legitimate woman's work should fall to their share. There were some exceptions, of course, and friendly relations were established between individuals, and between families, in the North Gore and the village; but a friendly feeling was for a good many years by no means general, and two distinct communities lived side by side in the town of Gershom.
Even the good people among them--God's own people--who have so much in common that all lesser matters may well be made nothing of between them--even they did not come together across the wall which ignorance and prejudice and circumstances had raised. At least they did not for a time. The Grants and the Scotts and the Sangsters travelled Sabbath by Sabbath the four miles between the North Gore and the village, and, passing the house where a good man preached the Gospel in the name of the Lord Jesus, travelled four miles further still for the sake of hearing one of their own kirk and country preach the same Gospel in the name of the same Lord. And so the Reverend Mr Hollister, and Deacon Moses Turner, and other good men among them, thought themselves justified in setting them down as narrow-minded and bigoted, and incapable of appreciating the privileges which had fallen to their lot.
There was really no good reason why they should not all have worshipped together as one community, for in the doctrines which they held, the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers differed little from those who had been taught in Scottish kirks the truth for which their fathers had fought and died. The little band who kept together, and held to the form of church government which they had learned to revere in their native land, were by reason of their isolation, practically as independent in regard to the matters of their kirk as were their Puritan neighbours who claimed this independence as their right.
In point of numbers, and in point of means, the older settlers were the stronger of the two parties; in point of character and piety, even they themselves were not sure that the superiority was on their side. However that might be, all felt that the coming in among them of the North Gore men and their families was much to be desired, and after a time measures were taken to bring the subject of union before them in the most favourable manner.
So, accompanied and encouraged by Deacon Turner, Mr Hollister, the minister, visited the North Gore folk family by family, and was respectfully and kindly received by them all, but he did not make much progress in the good work he had undertaken. His remarks about brotherly love and the healing of breaches were for the most part listened to in silence, and so were Deacon Turner's cautious allusions to the subscription-list for the dealing with current expenses. Nowhere did they meet with much encouragement to hope that their efforts to bring the two communities together would be successful. For several years after this the North Gore folk continued to make their "Sabbath-day's journey" past the village church. Then for a while they had the monthly ministrations of a preacher of their own order in their own neighbourhood, and on other days kept up meetings among themselves, and did what they could in various ways to keep themselves to themselves as of old.
But time wrought changes. The children who had come to the North Gore grew up, and they did not grow up to be just such men and women as their fathers and mothers had been. It is not necessary to say whether they were worse men or better. They were different. There was not much change in the manner of life in many of the homes. The Sabbath was as strictly kept, and the young people were as strictly taught and catechised and looked after in Scottish fashion as of old, and they bade fair to grow up as cautious and as "douce," and as much attached to old ways and customs as if they had been brought up on the other side of the sea, quite beyond the reach of Yankee innovations and free-and-easy colonial ways. But even the most "douce" and cautious amongst them were without the stiffness and strength of the old-time prejudice, and the young people of the different sections of the township, brought together in the many pleasant ways that are open to young people in country places, no longer kept apart as their fathers had done.
There were troubles in Gershom still of various kinds, misunderstandings and quarrels, and violations of the golden rule between individuals and between families, and some of them took colour, and some of them took strength, from national feeling and national prejudice; but there were no longer two distinct communities living side by side in the town, as there once had been. And by and by, when old Mr Grant and Deacon Turner, and some others of the good men who had held with one or other of them on earth, were gone to sit down to eat bread together in the kingdom of heaven, the good men they had left behind them drew closer together by slow degrees. And when Mr Hollister grew old and feeble, and unable to do duty as pastor of the village church, all agreed that the chief consideration, in the appointment of a successor, must be the getting of such a man as might be able to unite the people of all sections into one congregation at last.
This was the state of things in Gershom when it began to be whispered that there was serious trouble arising between Jacob Holt and old Mr Fleming. _