Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains. Catharine Parr Strickland Traill

CHAPTER II.

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“Fear not, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

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      The sun had risen in all the splendour of a Canadian summer morning, when the sleepers arose from their leafy beds. In spite of the novelty of their situation, they had slept as soundly and tranquilly as if they had been under the protecting care of their beloved parents, on their little paliasses of corn straw; but they had been cared for by Him who neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, and they waked full of youthful hope, and in fulness of faith in His mercy into whose hands they had commended their souls and bodies before they retired to rest.

      While the children slept in peace and safety, what terrors had filled the minds of their distracted parents! what a night of anguish and sorrow had they passed!

      When night had closed in without bringing back the absent children, the two fathers, lighting torches of fat pine, went forth in search of the wanderers. How often did they raise their voices in hopes their loud halloos might reach the hearing of the lost ones! How often did they check their hurried steps to listen for some replying call! But the sighing breeze in the pine tops, or sudden rustling of the leaves caused by the flight of the birds, startled by the unusual glare of the torches, and the echoes of their own voices, were the only sounds that met their anxious ears. At daybreak they returned, sad and dispirited, to their homes, to snatch a morsel of food, endeavour to cheer the drooping hearts of the weeping mothers, and hurry off, taking different directions. But, unfortunately, they had little clue to the route which Hector and Louis had taken, there being many cattle paths through the woods. Louis’s want of truthfulness had caused this uncertainty, as he had left no intimation of the path he purposed taking when he quitted his mother’s house: he had merely said he was going with Hector in search of the cattle, giving no hint of his intention of asking Catharine to accompany them: he had but told his sick sister, that he would bring home strawberries and flowers, and that he would soon return. Alas, poor thoughtless Louis, how little did you think of the web of woe you were then weaving for yourself, and all those to whom you and your giddy companions were so dear! Children, think twice, ere ye deceive once! Catharine’s absence would have been quite unaccountable but for the testimony of Duncan and Kenneth, who had received her sisterly caresses before she joined Hector at the barn; and much her mother marvelled what could have induced her good dutiful Catharine to have left her work and forsaken her household duties to go rambling away with the boys, for she never left the house when her mother was absent from, it, without her express permission, and now she was gone—lost to them, perhaps for ever. There stood the wheel she had been turning, there hung the untwisted hanks of yarn, her morning task—and there they remained week after week and month after month, untouched, a melancholy memorial to the hearts of the bereaved parents of their beloved.

      It were indeed a fruitless task to follow the agonized fathers in their vain search for their children, or to paint the bitter anguish that filled their hearts as day passed after day, and still no tidings of the lost ones. As hope faded, a deep and settled gloom stole over the sorrowing parents, and reigned throughout the once cheerful and gladsome homes. At the end of a week the only idea that remained was, that one of these three casualties had befallen the lost children:—death, a lingering death by famine; death, cruel and horrible, by wolves or bears; or yet more terrible, with tortures by the hands of the dreaded Indians, who occasionally held their councils and hunting parties on the hills about the Rice Lake, which was known only by the elder Perron as the scene of many bloody encounters between the rival tribes of the Mohawks and Chippewas: its localities were scarcely ever visited by our settlers, lest haply they should fall into the hands of the bloody Mohawks, whose merciless dispositions made them in those days a by-word even to the less cruel Chippewas and other Indian nations.

      It was not in the direction of the Rice Lake that Maxwell and his brother-in-law sought their lost children; and even if they had done so, among the deep glens and hill passes of what is now commonly called the Plains, they would have stood little chance of discovering the poor wanderers. After many days of fatigue of body and distress of mind, the sorrowing parents sadly relinquished the search as utterly hopeless, and mourned in bitterness of spirit over the disastrous fate of their first-born and beloved children.—“There was a voice of woe, and lamentation, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were not.” The miserable uncertainty that involved the fate of the lost ones was an aggravation to the sufferings of the mourners: could they but have been certified of the manner of their deaths, they fancied they should be more contented; but, alas! this fearful satisfaction was withheld.

      “Oh, were their tale of sorrow known,

       ’Twere something to the breaking heart,

       The pangs of doubt would then be gone,

       And fancy’s endless dreams depart.”