Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An Autobiography. Samuel Thompson
of a tree fully forty feet from the ground, tumbling over and over, but alighting safely, and "making tracks" with the utmost expedition.
An Englishman whom I knew, of a very studious temperament, was strolling along the Medonte road deeply intent upon a volume of Ovid or some other Latin author, when, looking up to ascertain the cause of a shadow which fell across his book, he found himself nearly stumbling against a huge brown bear, standing erect on its hind legs, and with formidable paw raised ready to strike. The surprise seems to have been mutual, for after waiting a moment or two as if to recognise each other's features should they meet again, the student merely said "Oh! a bear!" coolly turned on his heel, plunged into his book again, and walked slowly back toward the village, leaving Bruin to move off at leisure in an opposite direction. So saith my informant.
Another friend, when a youth, was quail-shooting on the site of the City of Toronto, which was nothing but a rough swampy thicket of cedars and pines mixed with hardwood. Stepping hastily across a rotten pine log, the lad plumped full upon a great fat bear taking its siesta in the shade. Which of the two fled the fastest is not known, but it was probably the animal, judging by my own experience in Sunnidale.
Wolves often disturbed us with their hideous howlings. We had a beautiful liver and white English setter, called Dash, with her two pups. One night in winter, poor Dash, whom we kept within doors, was excited by the yelping of her pups outside, which appeared to be alarmed by some intruder about the premises. A wolf had been seen prowling near, so we got out our guns and whatever weapon was handy, but incautiously opened the door and let out the slut before we were ourselves quite dressed. She rushed out in eager haste, and in a few seconds we heard the wolf and dog fighting, with the most frightful discord of yells and howls that ever deafened the human ear. The noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun. We followed as fast as we could to the scene of the struggle, but found nothing there except a trampled space in the snow stained with blood, the dog having evidently been killed and dragged away. Next morning we followed the track further, and found at no great distance another similar spot, where the wolf had devoured its victim so utterly, that not a hair, bone, nor anything else was left, save the poor animal's heart, which had been flung away to a little distance in the snow. Beyond this were no signs of blood. We set a trap for the wolf, and tracked him for miles in the hope of avenging poor Dash, but without effect. This same wolf, we heard afterwards, was killed by a settler with a handspike, to our great satisfaction.
Among our neighbours of the Sunnidale settlement was a married couple from England, named Sewell, very well-conducted and industrious. They had a fair little child under two years old, named Hetty, whom we often stopped to admire for her prettiness and engaging simplicity. They also possessed, and were very proud of, several broods of newly-hatched chickens, some of which had been carried off by an immense falcon, which would swoop down from the lofty elm-trees still left standing in the half-chopped clearing, too suddenly to be easily shot. One day Hetty was feeding the young chickens when the hawk pounced upon the old hen, which struggled desperately; whereupon little Hetty bravely joined in the battle, seized the intruder by the wings from behind and held him fast, crying out loudly, "I've got him, mother!" It turned out, after the hawk was killed, that it had been blind of one eye.
In the spring of 1834, we had with infinite labour managed to clear off a small patch of ground, which we sowed with spring wheat, and watched its growth with the most intense anxiety, until it attained a height of ten inches, and began to put forth tender ears. Already the exquisite pleasure of eating bread the product of our own land, and of our own labour, was present to our imaginations, and the number of bushels to be reaped, the barn for storage, the journeys to mill, were eagerly discussed. But one day in August, occurred a hail-storm such as is seldom experienced in half a century. A perfect cataract of ice fell upon our hapless wheat crop. Flattened hailstones measuring two and a half inches in diameter, seven and a half in circumference, covered the ground several inches deep. Every blade of wheat was utterly destroyed, and with it all our sanguine hopes of plenty for that year. I have preserved a tracing which I made at the time, of one of those hailstones. The centre was spherical, an inch in girth, from which laterally radiated lines three fourths of an inch long, like the spokes of a wheel, and outside of them again a wavy border resembling the undulating edge of pie crust. The superficial structure of the whole, was much like that of a full blown rose. A remarkable hail-storm occurred in Toronto, in the year 1878, but the stones, although similar in formation, were scarcely as bulky.
It was one night in November following, when our axeman, William Whitelaw, who had risen from bed at eleven o'clock to fetch a new log for the fire shouted to us to come out and see a strange sight. Lazily we complied, expecting nothing extraordinary; but, on getting into the cold frosty air outside, we were transfixed with astonishment and admiration. Our clearing being small, and the timber partly hemlock, we seemed to be environed with a dense black wall the height of the forest trees, while over all, in dazzling splendour, shone a canopy of the most brilliant meteors, radiating in all directions from a single point in the heavens, nearly over-head, but slightly to the north-west. I have since read all the descriptions of meteoric showers I could find in our scientific annals, and watched year after year for a return of the same wonderful vision, but neither in the records of history nor otherwise, since that night, have I read of or seen anything so marvellously beautiful. Hour after hour we gazed in wonder and awe, as the radiant messengers streamed on their courses, sometimes singly, sometimes in starry cohorts of thousands, appearing to descend amongst the trees close beside us, but in reality shooting far beyond the horizon. Those who have looked upwards during a fall of snow will remember how the large flakes seem to radiate from a centre. Thus I believe astronomers account for the appearance of these showers of stars, by the circumstance that they meet the earth full in its orbit, and so dart past it from an opposite point, like a flight of birds confronting a locomotive, or a storm of hail directly facing a vessel under full steam. No description I have read has given even a faint idea of the reality as I saw it on that memorable night. From eleven p.m. to three in the morning, the majestic spectacle continued in full glory, gradually fading away before the approach of daybreak.
We often had knotty and not very logical discussions about the origin of seeds, and the cause of the thick growth of new varieties of plants and trees wherever the forest had been burnt over. On our land, and everywhere in the immediate neighbourhood, the process of clearing by fire was sure to be followed by a spontaneous growth, first of fire-weed or wild lettuce, and secondly by a crop of young cherry trees, so thick as to choke one another. At other spots, where pine-trees had stood for a century, the outcome of their destruction by fire was invariably a thick growth of raspberries, with poplars of the aspen variety. Our Celtic friends, most of whom were pious Presbyterians, insisted that a new creation of plants must be constantly going on to account for such miraculous growth. To test the matter, I scooped up a panful of black soil from our clearing, washed it, and got a small tea-cupful of cherry-stones, exactly similar to those growing in the forest. The cause of this surprising accumulation of seed was not far to find. A few miles distant was a pigeon-roost. In spring, the birds would come flying round the east shore of Lake Huron, skirting the Georgian Bay, in such vast clouds as to darken the sun; and so swiftly that swan-shot failed to bring them down unless striking them in rear; and, even then, we rarely got them, as the velocity of their flight impelled them far into the thicket before falling. These beautiful creatures attacked our crops with serious results, and devoured all our young peas. I have known twenty-five pigeons killed at a single shot; and have myself got a dozen by firing at random into a maple-tree on which they had alighted, but where not one had been visible.
The pigeon-roost itself was a marvel. Men, women and children went by the hundred, some with guns, but the majority with baskets, to pick up the countless birds that had been disabled by the fall of great branches of trees broken off by the weight of their roosting comrades overhead. The women skinned the birds, cut off their plump breasts, throwing the remainder away, and packed them in barrels with salt, for keeping. To these pigeons we were, doubtless, indebted for our crop of young cherry-trees.
Where there was so much seed, a corresponding crop might be expected; and dense thickets of choke-cherry trees grew up in neglected clearings accordingly. Forcing my way through one of these, I found myself literally face to face with a garter snake five feet long, which was also in search of cherries, and had wriggled its way to the upper