Life in the Clearings versus the BushMoodie, Susanna
History
Life in the Clearings versus the Bush
Moodie, Susanna
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Moodie, Susannah, 1803-1885; Ontario -- Description and travel
The sheep in Canada are not subject to the diseases which carry off so
many yearly in Britain; and though these animals have to be housed
during the winter, they are a very profitable stock. The Canadian
grass-fed mutton is not so large as it is in England, and in flavour
and texture more nearly resembles the Scotch. It has more of a young
flavour, and, to my thinking, affords a more wholesome, profitable
article of consumption. Beef is very inferior to the British; but since
the attention of the people has been more intently directed to their
agricultural interests, there is a decided improvement in this respect,
and the condition of all the meat sent to market now-a-days is ten per
cent better than the lean, hard animals we used to purchase for winter
provisions, when we first came to the province.
At that time they had a race of pigs, tall and gaunt, with fierce,
bristling manes, that wandered about the roads and woods, seeking what
they could devour, like famished wolves. You might have pronounced them,
without any great stretch of imagination, descended from the same stock
into which the attendant fiends that possessed the poor maniacs of
Galilee had been cast so many ages ago. I knew a gentleman who was
attacked in the bush by a sow of this ferocious breed, who fairly treed
him in the woods of Douro, and kept him on his uncomfortable perch
during several hours, until his swinish enemy's patience was exhausted,
and she had to give up her supper of human flesh for the more natural
products of the forest, acorns and beech-mast.
Talking of pigs and sheep recals to my mind an amusing anecdote, told
to me by a resident of one of our back townships, which illustrates,
even in a cruel act of retaliation, the dry humour which so strongly
characterizes the lower class of emigrants from the emerald isle. I will
give it in my young friend's own words:--
"In one of our back townships there lived an old Dutchman, who was of
such a vindictive temper that none of his neighbours could remain at
peace with him. He made the owners of the next farm so miserable that
they were obliged to sell out, and leave the place. The farm passed
through many hands, and at last became vacant, for no one could stay
on it more than a few months; they were so worried and annoyed by this
spiteful old man, who, upon the slightest occasion, threw down their
fences and injured their cattle. In short, the poor people began to
suspect that he was the devil himself, sent among them as a punishment
for their sins.
"At last an Irish emigrant lately out was offered the place very cheap,
and, to the astonishment of all, bought it, in spite of the bad
_karacter_, for the future residence of himself and family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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