Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush Read Free Page A

standard, she appears to us a giant for her years, and well worthy the most serious contemplation. Many are the weary, overtasked minds in that great, wealthy, and powerful England, that turn towards this flourishing colony their anxious thoughts, and would willingly exchange the golden prime of the mother country forthe healthy, vigorous young strength of this, her stalwart child, and consider themselves only too happy in securing a home upon these free and fertile shores.
    Be not discouraged, brave emigrant. Let Canada still remain the bright future in your mind, and hasten to convert your present day-dream into reality. The time is not far distant when she shall be the theme of many tongues, and the old nations of the world will speak of her progress with respect and admiration. Her infancy is past, she begins to feel her feet, to know her own strength, and see her way clearly through the wilderness. Child as you may deem her, she has already battled bravely for her own rights, and obtained the management of her own affairs. Her onward progress is certain. There is no
if
in her case. She possesses within her own territory all the elements of future prosperity, and
she must be great!
    The men who throng her marts, and clear her forests, are
workers
, not
dreamers
, who have already realized Solomon’s pithy proverb, “In all labour is profit;” and their industry has imbued them with a spirit of independence which cannot fail to make them a free and enlightened people.
    An illustration of the truth of what I advance, can be given in the pretty town we are leaving on the north side of the bay. I think you will own with me that your eyes have seldom rested upon a spot more favoured by Nature, or one that bids fairer to rise to great wealth and political importance.
    Sixty years ago, the spot that Belleville now occupies was in the wilderness; and its rapid, sparkling river and sunny upland slopes (which during the lapse of ages have formed a succession of banks to the said river), were only known to the Indian hunter and the white trader.
    Where you see those substantial stone wharfs, and the masts of those vessels, unloading their valuable cargoes toreplenish the stores of the wealthy merchants in the town, a tangled cedar swamp spread its dark, unwholesome vegetation into the bay, completely covering with an impenetrable jungle those smooth verdant plains, now surrounded with neat cottages and gardens.
    Of a bright summer evening (and when is a Canadian summer evening otherwise?) those plains swarm with happy, healthy children, who assemble there to pursue their gambols beyond the heat and dust of the town; or to watch with eager eyes the young men of the place engaged in the manly old English game of cricket, with whom it is, in their harmless boasting, “Belleville against Toronto-Cobourg; Kingston, the whole world.”
    The editor of a Kingston paper once had the barbarity to compare these valiant champions of the bat and ball to “singed cats – ugly to look at, but very devils to go.”
    Our lads have never forgiven the insult; and should the said editor ever show his face upon their ground, they would kick him off with as little ceremony as they would a spent ball.
    On that high sandy ridge that overlooks the town east-ward – where the tin roof of the Court House, a massy, but rather tasteless building, and the spires of four churches catch the rays of the sun – a tangled maze of hazel bushes, and wild plum and cherry, once screened the Indian burying-ground, and the children of the red hunter sought for strawberries among the long grass and wild flowers that flourish profusely in that sandy soil.
    Would that you could stand with me on that lofty eminence and look around you! The charming prospect that spreads itself at your feet would richly repay you for toiling up the hill.
    We will suppose ourselves standing among the graves in the burying-ground of the English church; the sunny heavensabove us, the