Sketches and Tales Illustrative of Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick: Gleaned from Actual Observation and Experience During a Residence of Seven Years in That Interesting Colony — John Shaqi
Sketches and Tales Illustrative of Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick: Gleaned from Actual Observation and Experience During a Residence of Seven Years in That Interesting ColonyBeavan, F. (Frederick), Mrs.
History
Sketches and Tales Illustrative of Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick: Gleaned from Actual Observation and Experience During a Residence of Seven Years in That Interesting Colony
Beavan, F. (Frederick), Mrs.
Beavan, F. (Frederick), Mrs., 1818-1897 -- Homes and haunts -- New Brunswick; Country life -- New Brunswick -- History -- 19th century; New Brunswick -- Social life and customs
obeyed their spell, and just at the time his labours would have been
repaid, he left, and, with all the money he could procure, paid his
passage to England, where he soon after died in the workhouse of his
parish. Yet even there the thought, perhaps, might soothe him, that
though he filled a pauper's grave, it was in the soil where his fathers
slept. The forsaken lot is still unclaimed, for people prefer the
woodlands to those neglected clearings, from which to procure a crop
infinitely more trouble and expense would be required than in taking it
at once from the forest. Our way is not now so lonely as it was in the
morning. Parties of the male population are frequently passing. One of
the settlers has to-day a "barn-raising frolic," and thither they are
bound. They present a fair specimen of their class in the forest
settlements. The bushwhacker has nothing of the "bog-trotter" in his
appearance, and his step is firm and free, as though he trod on marble
floor. The attire of the younger parties which, although coarse, is
perfectly clean and whole, has nothing rustic in its arrangement. His
kersey trowsers are tightly strapped, and the little low-crowned hat,
with a streaming ribbon, is placed most jauntily on his head. His axe is
carried over one shoulder and his jacket over the other, which in summer
is the common mode of carrying this part of the apparel. Those who have
been _lumbering_ may easily be known among the others, by sporting a
flashy stock or waistcoat, and by being arrayed in "_boughten_" clothes,
procured in town at a most expensive rate in lieu of their _lumber_.
Little respect is, however, paid here to the cloth, (that is,
broadcloth), for it is a sure sign of bad management, and most likely of
debt, for the back settlers to be arrayed in any thing but their own
home-made clothing. The grave and serious demeanour of these people is
as different from the savage scowl of the discontented peasant,
murmuring beneath the burthen of taxation and ill-remunerated toil, as
from the free, light-hearted, and careless laughter, both of which
characterise the rural groups in the fertile fields of England. New
Brunswick is the land of strangers; even the first settlers, the "sons
of the soil," as they claim to be, have hardly yet forgot their exile,
a trace of which character, be he prosperous as he may, still hovers
over the emigrant. Their early home, with its thousand ties of love,
cannot be all forgotten. This feeling descends to their children, losing
its tone of sadness, but throwing a serious shade over the national
character, which, otherwise has nothing gloomy or melancholy in its
composition. There is also a kind of "_looking a-head_" expression of
countenance natural to the country, which is observed even in the
children, who are not the careless frolicsome beings they are in other
countries, but are here more truly miniature men and women, looking, as
the Yankees express it, as if they had all cut their "_eye-teeth_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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