Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red menJameson, Mrs. (Anna)
History
Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Indians of North America -- Canada; Ontario -- Description and travel
I passed in these journeys some school-houses built by the way side: of
these, several were shut up for want of schoolmasters; and who that
could earn a subsistence in any other way, would be a schoolmaster in
the wilds of Upper Canada? Ill fed, ill clothed, ill paid, or not paid
at all--boarded at the houses of the different farmers in turn, I found,
indeed, some few men, poor creatures! always either Scotch or Americans,
and totally unfit for the office they had undertaken. Of female teachers
I found none whatever, except in the towns. Among all the excellent
societies in London for the advancement of religion and education, are
there none to send missionaries here?--such missionaries as we want, be
it understood--not sectarian fanatics. Here, without means of
instruction, of social amusement, of healthy and innocent
excitements--can we wonder that whisky and camp-meetings assume their
place, and "season toil" which is unseasoned by anything better?
Nothing, believe me, that you may have heard or read of the frantic
disorders of these Methodist love-feasts and camp-meetings in Upper
Canada can exceed the truth; and yet it is no less a truth that the
Methodists are in most parts the only religious teachers, and that
without them the people were utterly abandoned. What then are our church
and our government about? Here, as in the old country, they are
quarrelling about the tenets to be inculcated, the means to be used: and
so, while the shepherds are disputing whether the sheep are to be fed
on old hay or fresh grass--out of the fold or in the fold--the poor
sheep starve, or go astray.
I supped here on eggs and radishes, and milk and bread. On going to my
room, I found that the door, which had merely a latch, opened into the
road. I expressed a wish to fasten it, on which the good lady of the
house brought a long nail, and thrust it lengthways over the latch,
saying, "That's the way we lock doors in Canada!" The want of a more
secure defence did not trouble my rest, for I slept well till morning.
After breakfast, my guide, who had found what he called a "shake-down"
at a neighbouring farm, made his appearance, and we proceeded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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