Early Settlements in British Canada—their Rise and Progress.

Bruce Herald, Volume VI, Issue 476, 1 April 1873, Page 7

Early Settlements in British Canada— their Rise and Progress.

(A Series of Papers illustrative of Colonial development, and containing instructive hints for all classes.)

About the year of our Lord 1800, the tide of colonisation begad to flow steadily towards the British American Provinces, and settlements began to form in the interior of the Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Upper and Lower Canada; and as in the first mentioned provinces lumbering and fishing were the • chief modes of acquiring a livelihood, many immigrants passed on to tlie United' States and Lower Canada, which presented greater development and broader fields of progress than the minor provinces. However, : these, began to show signs of progress jnship-buiJding in the year 1820 v and buJleUaga began bo spring up, and about the year 1840 there were considerable cities cropping up on the rocky promqnotbries which bounded them barbors. All this while vigorous operations wete being earned on in the backwoods, Snd millions of feet of lumber had found its way to the sea, either in the shape of logs, deal, or spars, and from thence shipped b.ff to the London, Liverpool and G-lasgoy markets. Eishing also was carried on on an extensive scale, arid formed another part of the early development of those pro vipfces^ finding trade' in the "West Indies a^d* South Pacific selaboard, in the Sotttff- American Republics, as well as on those of the Western Atlantic from y Demerara to the Bio. Yet while pushing forward their two main supports, they were making progress in farming, mining and ship-build-ing, and the introduction of local industries with. a. perseverance which the subsequent progress of the country has fully shown. The difficulties attendant on acquiring money were met by the independence and progressive character of the colonists, who exerted their combined capabilities to render each other comfortable, thriving and respectable, and thus in a country shut up for six months of the year by the frosts of a northern winter, the father of Canadian colonisation pulled vigorously against the stream. Meanwhile, with the advancing tide of time, those wooden cities which characterised the years of 1820 to 1840 be«*an to disappear, having been swept away by successive conflagrations, and the new era of -brick and stone set in ; and with this period began the steady tide of prosperity which has carried them along to the present day, despite the many commercial changes which have proved so destructive to the progress of other lands. In my first paper I shall give a concise account of lumbering, its rise and progress, and, as arising from it, ship building. In all timber countries, lumbering is one of the most productive of their industries, the more so because to a greater or less extent it can be carried on successfully by the whole farming, or rather backwoods settling community. This has been abundantly shown by the history of Canadian lumbering especially in its early days. Take the province of New Brunswick for example, whose harbor, the St. Johns, being open all the year gives it the presidence over all the other Canadian ports. The immense tracts of crown land lying in the interior were covered heavily with dense forests of timber, and sparsely settled here and there up the St. John to Fredrickton, the capital, a distance of nearly 100 miles^ and from thence to Woodstock, 60 miles, thence to Grand Falls, 30 miles, the lumbering rendezvous for the up river streamdrivers — on the British side the Arostock, one of the head waters of the St. John, which takes its rise in the State of Maine, forming the rendezvous of the American loggers, a distance of 200 miles from St. John Harbor. The valley of the St. John is the chief water-shed of the province, and, therefore, an outlet for the timber produced on either side for miles east and west. A dense forest, broken by long chains of lakes linked to each other by small streams, some of which form minor rivers and find their way into the Bay of Funday, all of which are used as roads for the conveyance of logs to the mills situated at their mouths. Having thus given a brief outline of the country from which I purpose to take my sketch, I shall begin by transporting your readers into the back woods of New Brunswick, and opening a scene of singular interest to their view— amidst the sombre shadows of the spruce pine forest are the red skirted fallers, dealing blow on blow in perfect time, and hewing down the great spruce trunks; the crashing of the branches mark the fall of tree after tree. The active woodmen lop off the limbs and square the butts with great precision and nicety. "In this way the work goes on, while teams of horses and bullocks twitch the logs to ! the yard, so called, because the logs are collected at this point, which is the most suitable for the after transmission of the logs to the settlement, saw-mill, creek, river,' or lake, as the case may be. Sometimes these yards are formed on the, precipitous banks of a river -and thence rolled in at the breaking up of the ice, at other times on a frozen lake, but of ten they are dragged on a bob slide 10 or 12 miles. The Grown lands leased for this .purpose are subject to certain restrictions, of which the most particular is one which prevents the destruction of healfcHy. young trees ; thus, all trees cutting under 14ft. at the base are reserved, and ndiforfesi area, logged on-during tbe space of Tone year, in which time all available^mbfer has heeeri. cut,, can again toucned;for; seven years, thus allowing the ygung timber 'to- come forward^ andkeeppg up the supply. These lauds are leased

from G-overriment by large contractors at a stum page rate— i.e., the timber Only—who either sub-lease or work it themselves on a gigantic scale, having four or five hundred men employed for periods of one to five years. Men in this employ sometimes remain in the woods for two years without visiting the settlements, when they come out to spend their wages. These bodies of men are called drivers, chiefly, because their spring work consists of driviug the logs down stream until enabled to form them into rafts. The drivers are divided into various camps which take a distinct portion of forest to log in, by which means the work is proceeded with systematically, and yards are formed to bring _the timber in as near as possible together for the spring freshets. • Their living is of the most homely character, consisting of bread, biscuit, mess pork, dried fish, tea, and molasses ; such luxuries as butter, mutton, beef, Ac., are unknown,, and even potatoes are scarce ; this is accounted for from the difficulty of transporting stores to extreme points in the backwoods, where morasses and the rocky mouutainous character forms a bar, and even pork has been portaged over miles of impassable roads, the barrels slung on a pole between two men. The men's wages are 4s 2d per diem, and they consist of the hardiest young men in the country, very few being able to stand more than ten years of this life. When the winter is over, the snow which has accumulated to the depth 'of six feet over the country, begins to melt, the small streams flood their banks, and the logs which are yarded on them drift away on the current, while the ice-bound rivers. become free and the logs are rolled into their swollen waters pel mcl, finding their way hither, also by the streams and lakes driven along by the stream drivers. Very often on the whirling tide a log comes drifting, and on it a driver with a long pike pole in his hand standing on the rolling spruce with wonderful dexterity, now steadying himself carefully and anon spinning round, then shooting ahead, but rarely capsizing, his duty being to float off all timber lodged on the banks or points of the stream. The winter logs having found their way to the main stream, they are then rafted, aud with a screw tug boat ahead find their way to one of the great timber depots near the sea where it is surveyed, numbered, valued, fand sold, and afterwards cut into deal, planks, &c, for the home market. Of the varieties of timber, I may mention spruce, of which many spars are taken for various uses ; white pine, which grows to a great size, I have seen a log of it six feet in diameter ; the timber is used for furnishing purposes, shingles, &c. ; yellow birch, used in ship and boat-building, and temarak or larch, which affords first-class knees for shipbuilding. In the early times the labor of getting logs to the main depots near the coast was prodigious, on account of the great want of modern assistance iv the way of steamers. These rafts composed of millions of ieet of timber, sometimes a mile in length, and half to a quarter of a mile broad, built in sections of four or five hundred logs, fastened together with spars, pinned down with spruce trunnells — i.e., wooden bolts driven through two-inch auger holes, carrying cross piles of logs on them — formed the most unmanageable description of conveyance. It is usually steered by long spars, shaped like oars, and made to work on a wooden pin or swivel ; these are fixed at convenient points of the raft, to enable its conductors to assist in swinging it off or on shore, and to keep it straight when in motion, which was effected by means of sculling, and when the wind was fair getting sail on the raft. Sometimes they would come to grief in the heavy gales which sweep the St. John, making months of work for the drivers and great loss for the owners. As time wore on, however, large saw mills opened at Fi-ed-ricton aud in its vicinity, and another branch of industry sprang up in woodboats, built especially for carrying deal cargoes and for other native produce. These boats carry immense deck loads, building the deal pile some feet out beyond the sides, and from six to eight feet high ; they carry as much as 80,000 feet of deal at once, and come sweeping down the rivers, before the freshening gale, like racehorses. They are schooner built, have very bluff bows, shallow holds from six to seven feet deep, great beam, main and fore hatches, strong straight masts of the same height, .well stayed, no bowsprit, the fore-stay coming down to the stem, and having extraordinary spread of sail, the main-sail, containing as much as 750 yards of cloth. The masters and owners of these boats are farmers sons and retired lumber men, and very often the boats are their own handiwork, the timber coming from their freehold forests, the rigging from the St. John rope- walks, the iron work from their own forge; the rest of the work is done by means of the broad axe, adze, and saw, the trunnelling hammer and caulking chisel, with the usual coat of tar and paint finishing the job. At the launch some fair one breaks over the bows the usual bottle, and the future breadwinner cleaves the waters of the old St. John. A full-rigged wood-boat is worth L7OO or LBOO, and if properly worked will produce from L2OO to L4OO per season. By this means of transport deal finds its way to the immense timber yards of Pollock and Grilmore, of Longshore, St. John harbor, or into the holds of the timber clippers of the Black Ball aud White Star, or P. G-. lines. The principal gaw mills on the St. John River are situated at the Narrows, Indian Town, Grand Bay, G-age Town, Oramucto, Fredricton, Spring Hill, and Woodstock ; there are, of course, many others on this river and its tributaries. The northern portion of N. B. produces large quantities of timber, of which Merrimache and Restigoush are the chief, the latter place" launching a gtiqd many ships; Having given "a brief outline of the timber trade, I will go pa

to ship huilding, which was engaged, in on a small scale by a few firms up to the year 1850, when the "Australian' trade sprang up, through its goldfields, and gave an iminense*impetus to the ship-building interests of Ni 8., through the increased demandfor the fast-sailing vessels built there. Messrs Wright and Co., in 1852, built the Marco Polo, which was bought in Liverpool, and placed on the Australian packet line,- made at that time the name of that firm. They afterwards launched the Morning Light, and. subsequently many other clipper ships, and it was commonly! reported, cleared, .up to 1855, the handsome sum of L150,Q00. When a commercial crisis occurred and ruined them, nothing daunted, these men started again,- and maintained their reputation up to the period of the American civil war, when ship building again shot ahead, and the firm regained their prestige and fortune. The timber used by the St. John ship builders is almost entirely native, the keels being of yellow birchT; Imees, larch, : worth irom LI to L 3 10s and upwards ; sheathing, spruce or pine ; timbers, spruce ; built spruce, lower masts ; tap masts, and top-gallant yards the same, while the royal masts were usually pitch pine, from Florida. The riggers' work was of first-rate order, and the finish given in .painting, gilding, etc., in the saloons in keeping with the symmetry and convenience of the whole vessel. These ships often made splendid runs to Liverpool, the Morning Light getting from, port to port in 15 .days, a distance of nearly 3000 miles. In my next, sir, I shall endeavor to show how agriculture was carried on in this Province, and the way in which the Crown laads have become the means of positive prosperity to the colonists of N. 8., by the wise application of land laws and liberal colonisation.