The Emigrant Boy
“Were you born in this country?”
“No; I’m from the old country.”
“From what part of it?”
“From about Glasgow.”
“What is your name?”
“Sholto ——.”
“Sholto!—that is rather an uncommon name, is it not?”
“I was called Sholto after a son of Lord Douglas. My father was Lord Douglas’s gardener.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I came over with my father about five years, ago.” (In 1832.)
“How came your father to emigrate?”
“My father was one of the commuted pensioners, as they call them.10 He was an old soldier in the veteran battalion, and he sold his pension of fivepence a day for four years and a grant of land, and came out here. Many did the like.”
“But if he was gardener to Lord Douglas, he could not have suffered from want.”
“Why, he was not a gardener then; he was a weaver; he worked hard enough for us. I remember often waking in the middle of the night, and seeing my father working still at his loom, as if he would never give over, while my mother and all of us were asleep.”
“All of us!—how many of you?”
“There were six of us: but my eldest brother and myself could do something.”
“And you all emigrated with your father?”
“Why, you see, at last he couldn’t get no work, and trade was dull, and we were nigh starving. I remember I was always hungry then—always.”
“And you all came out?”
“All but my eldest brother. When we were on the way to the ship, he got frightened and turned back, and wouldn’t come. My poor mother cried very much, and begged him hard. Now the last we heard of him is, that he is very badly off, and can’t get no work at all.”
“Is your father yet alive?”
“Yes, he has land up in Adelaide.”
“Is your mother alive?”
“No; she died of the cholera, coming over. You see the cholera broke out in the ship, and fifty-three people died, one after t’other, and were thrown into the sea. My mother died, and they threw her into the sea. And then my little sister, only nine months old, died, because there was nobody to take care of her, and they threw her into the sea—poor little thing!”
“Was it not dreadful to see the people dying around you? Did you not feel frightened for yourself?”
“Well—I don’t know—one got used to it—it was nothing but splash, splash, all day long—first one, then another. There was one Martin on board, I remember, with a wife and nine children—one of those as sold his pension: he had fought in Spain with the Duke of Wellington. Well, first his wife died, and they threw her into the sea; and then he died, and they threw him into the sea; and then the children, one after t’other, till only two were left alive; the eldest, a girl about thirteen, who had nursed them all, one after another, and seen them die—well, she died, and then there was only the little fellow left.”
“And what became of him?”
“He went back, as I heard, in the same ship with the captain.”
“And did you not think sometimes it might be your turn next.”
“No—I didn’t; and then I was down with the fever.”
“What do you mean by the fever?”
“Why, you see, I was looking at some fish that was going by the ship in shoals, as they call it. It was very pretty, and I never saw anything like it, and I stood watching over the ship’s side all day long. It poured rain, and I was wet through and through, and felt very cold, and I went into my berth and pulled the blanket round me, and fell asleep. After that I had the fever very bad. I didn’t know when we landed at Quebec, and after that I didn’t know where we were for five weeks, nor nothing.”
I assured him that this was only a natural and necessary consequence of his own conduct, and took the opportunity to explain to him some of those simple laws by which he held both health and existence, to all which he listened with an intelligent look, and thanked me cordially, adding,—
“Then I wonder I didn’t die! and it was a great mercy I didn’t.”
“I hope you will live to think so, and be thankful to Heaven. And so you were detained at Quebec?”
“Yes; my father had some money to receive of his pension, but what with my illness and the expense of living, it soon went; and then he sold his silver watch, and that brought us on to York—that’s Toronto now. And then there was a schooner provided by Government to take us on board, and we had rations provided, and that brought us on to Port Stanley, far below Port Talbot; and then they put us ashore, and we had to find our way, and pay our way, to Delaware, where our lot of land was: that cost eight dollars; and then we had nothing left—nothing at all. There were nine hundred emigrants encamped about Delaware, no better off then ourselves.”
“What did you do then? Had you not to build a house?”
“No; the Government built each family a house, that is to say, a log-hut, eighteen feet long, with a hole for the chimney; no glass in the windows, and empty of course; not a bit of furniture, not even a table or a chair.”
“And how did you live?”
“Why, the first year, my father and us, we cleared a couple of acres, and sowed wheat enough for next year.”
“But meantime you must have existed—and without food or money—?”
“O, why we worked meantime on the roads, and got half a dollar a day and rations.”
“It must have been rather a hard life?”
“Hard! yes, I believe it was; why, many of them couldn’t stand it, no ways. Some died; and then there were the poor children and the women—it was very bad for them. Some wouldn’t sit down on their land at all; they lost all heart to see everywhere trees, and trees, and nothing besides. And then they didn’t know nothing of farming—how should they? being soldiers by trade. There was one Jim Grey, of father’s regiment—he didn’t know how to handle his axe, but he could handle his gun well; so he went and shot deer, and sold them to the others; but one day we missed him, and he never came back; and we thought the bears had got him, or may be he cleared off to Michigan—there’s no knowing.”
“And your father?”
“O, he stuck to his land, and he has now five acres cleared: and he’s planted a bit of a garden, and he has two cows and a calf, and two pigs; and he’s got his house comfortable—and stopped up the holes, and built himself a chimney.”
“That’s well; but why are you not with him?”
“O, he married again, and he’s got two children, and I didn’t like my stepmother, because she didn’t use my sisters well, and so I came away.”
“Where are your sisters now?”
“Both out at service, and they get good wages; one gets four, and the other gets five dollars a month. Then I’ve a brother younger than myself, and he’s gone to work with a shoe-maker at London. But the man drinks hard—like a great many here—and I’m afeard my brother will learn to drink, and that frets me; and he won’t come away, though I could get him a good place any day—no want of places here and good wages too.”
“What wages do you receive?”
“Seven dollars a month and my board. Next month I shall have eight.”
“I hope you put by some of your wages?”
“Why, I bought a yoke of steers for my father last fall, as cost me thirty dollars, but they wont be fit for ploughing these two years.”
(I should inform you, perhaps, that a yoke of oxen fit for ploughing costs about eighty dollars.)
I pointed out to him the advantages of his present situation, compared with what might have been his fate in the old country, and urged him to avoid all temptations to drink, which he promised.
“You can read, I suppose?”
He hesitated and looked down. “I can read in the Testament a little. I never had no other book. But this winter,” looking up brightly,—“I intend to give myself some schooling. A man who has reading and writing, and a pair of hands, and keeps sober, may make a fortune here—and so will I, with God’s blessing!”
Here he gave his whip a very expressive flourish. We were now near the summit of a hill, which he called Bear Hill; the people, he said, gave it that name because of the number of bears which used to be found here. Nothing could exceed the beauty and variety of the timber trees, intermingled with most luxuriant underwood, and festooned with the wild grape and flowering creepers. It was some time, he said, since a bear had been shot in these woods; but only last spring one of his comrades had found a bear’s cub, which he had fed and taken care of, and had sold within the last few weeks to a travelling menagerie of wild beasts for five dollars.