Frontier and pioneer life -- Québec (Province) -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Short stories
The journey was tedious and toilsome, but when they sailed into the
bay on which Morton’s land was situated, saw its quality and fine
situation, they felt they had been rewarded for coming so far. That
Maggie proved an admirable help-mate need hardly be told, but what
was remarkable is, that Morton became a successful farmer. Willing to
put his hand to whatever there was to do, under his father-in-law’s
tuition, he quickly became proficient, and when there was work to be
done he did not say to his helpers “Go” but “Come,” and set them an
example of cheerful and persevering exertion. Having land and enough
to spare, he induced a good class of immigrants to buy from him, so
that, before twenty years, his settlement was known as one of the most
prosperous on Lake Ontario. Influential and public-spirited, Morton, as
his circumstances grew easy and did not exact the same close attention
to his personal affairs, took a leading part in laying the commercial
and political foundations of Upper Canada, and Maggie was widely known
in its best society. That they were a happy couple everybody knew,
and their descendants are among the most prominent subjects of the
Dominion.
ARCHANGE AND MARIE.
I.--THEIR DISAPPEARANCE.
During the revolutionary war a number of Acadians left the New
England States for Canada, preferring monarchic to republican rule.
The British authorities provided for these twice-exiled refugees
with liberality, giving them free grants of lands and the necessary
tools and implements, also supplying them from the nearest military
posts with provisions for three years, by which time they would be
self-sustaining. Some half dozen families asked for and received lots
in the county of Huntingdon and settled together on the shore of the
St Lawrence. Accustomed to boating and lumbering in their old Acadian
homes, they found profitable exercise in both pursuits in their new,
and after making small clearances left their cultivation to the women,
while they floated rafts to Montreal or manned the bateaux which
carried on the traffic between that place and Upper Canada. The shanty
of one of these Acadians, that of Joseph Caza, occupied a point that
ran into the great river near the mouth of the LaGuerre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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