| Title: | From Thomas W. Magrath, Esq., Upper Canada, |
|---|---|
| ID | 4548 |
| Collection | Authentic Letters from Upper Canada [Rev. Thomas Radcliff] |
| File | radcliff/6 |
| Year | 1832 |
| Sender | Magrath, Thomas Wm |
| Sender Gender | male |
| Sender Occupation | superintendent for settlers |
| Sender Religion | unknown |
| Origin | Erindale, Toronto, Upper Canada |
| Destination | Dublin, Ireland |
| Recipient | Rev. Thomas Radcliff |
| Recipient Gender | male |
| Relationship | friends |
| Source | |
| Archive | |
| Doc. No. | |
| Date | |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | |
| Log | unknown |
| Word Count | 1594 |
| Genre | life in the colonies, farming |
| Note | |
| Transcript | to the Rev. Thomas Raddiff, Dublin. Erindale, Toronto, January, 1832. My dear Sir, With respect to one of the remarks contained in your last letter, it is true that every one who comes here, feels at the outset the difficulties of his new and trying circumstances; even the lowest peasant, on first entering his shanty, laments the loneliness of his situation, and experiences a sinking of the heart, and a longing after his potatoes and buttermilk at home; but as his comforts increase, he becomes reconciled to his lot; finding himself independent, he becomes happy, and experimentally learns that this is really a Paradise to him. Land is often managed on shares here, from want of money to pay for labour. The man who has land and seed, leaves the management of them to the labourer, who takes half the produce, and draws the rest into the barn of the proprietor. If we want timber sawed, we take the logs to the mill, and have them cut to any scantling we require, leaving one half for payment. In the same way, if we want wool made into cloth, it is sent to the mill, where it is carded into rolls for a certain share or portion, spun for another, and afterwards woven for a third; the want of money rendering all this traffic, and sometimes interchange, of commodities, in primeval simplicity, essentially necessary to the settler's wants and comforts. We have no walls to our gardens, because there are no stones, and if there were, building would be too expensive. When I say there are no stones, I speak of particular districts, about York, for instance, where wood is the universal substitute. The town gardens are enclosed by boarded fences, those of the country by paling. Apropos of gardens, it is extraordinary that there are few peaches at the north side, or at either extremity of Lake Ontario, but, such is their abundance on the south side, that they are sold there, for a shilling a bushel], and yet the heat is the same in all those places. I have heard it thus accounted for:—Lake Ontario (from its great depth,) never freezes, and the injurious north wind, which blows across it, is tempered before it reaches the southern shore, particularly in Spring, when the trees are in blossom. Melons, Cucumbers, and Pumpkins, grow freely and very abundantly in the open air, and require less attention than any crop we have. We preserved a barrel of cucumbers last year, and kept them in salt and water, pickling them in vinegar occasionally, as they were required either by our servants, or ourselves. Many of your garden plants grow wild here, tiger lilies, magnificent turncap and scarlet lilies, ladies' slippers, columbine, marygolds, and various others; but strange to say, I have not seen in Canada, the daisy, the holly, or the ivy, and the hawthorn very rarely: it is quite a garden shrub. I have planted three thousand trees, and a great variety of ever-greens to conceal our offices, and for ornament : for in truth the trees about us of natural growth are far from pleasing in their appearance, their closeness preventing the lateral furnishing of the branches, so essential to beauty. Our house stands in the garden, with a circular paling at one end to fence off the yard and offices. The poultry plague us a good deal, in Spring, by scratching up the seeds. In the severity of Winter their claws are, in many cases, frostnipped, and our seed beds become more secure: a good farm yard and a busy barn door are the best remedies. Many of the domestic fowl totally lose their toes in Winter, and consequently become harmless in the gardens; they are pitiable objects, when rambling about on their stumps, and we sometimes, in the excess of goodnatured feeling, wish them their full complement of pedal members, even at the expense of our seeds. When we first came here, our hands were soft and delicate, as those of a lady, from being unused to laborious occupation, but seeing every one around us employed at manual works—magistrates, senators, counsellors and colonels, without any feeling of degradation, we fairly set to, in the spirit of emulative industry, and have already exhibited pretty fair specimens of our efforts in clearing land, and afterwards ploughing it. My brother Charles can take, what is termed here, a great gap out of a field of corn, with a cradle scythe; he and his brother James once cut down two acres of Rye before dinner. The latter makes all the waggons, sleighs, harrows, &c. and when I am not superintending the emigrant setllements, my time at home is occupied in shoeing horses, making gates, fences, chimney pieces, and furniture. Indeed my mechanical labours are so multifarious that I can hardly enumerate them, but you may form some idea of their versatility, when I tell you that I made an ivory tooth for a very nice girl, and an iron one for the harrow within the same day. My younger brother lends a hand at every thing, from a duet on the piano-forte to the threshing of a sheaf of corn; and believe me, we are neither degraded in our own estimation, nor in that of the most elevated of our acquaintances, by thus earning the bread of independence; nor are we without our full share of amusement, which is much more grateful than can be imagined by those, whose days are spent in idleness, or vanity. We have frequently occupied the morning at work in a potato field, and passed the evening most agreeably in the ball room at York ! ! ! What would Mrs. Grundy say to that? When we contrast our peaceful and tranquil state here, with the turbulence of Ireland, our hearts overflow with gratitude to the Being who has cast our lot, where neither bars nor bolts are necessary, where neither Indian nor settler will molest; where we can leave our property lying carelessly around us, even in the solitude of the night, and where capital punishment has occurred only in three or four instances during many years. We have had, however, lest you should suppose us to be too perfect a set of beings, an Irish row or two. Some of our countrymen, in a drunken frolic, lately attacked the landlord of a tavern in which they had been drinking; broke every thing in his bar and pursued him into the Bush. Fortunately for him, he met one of his own men with a loaded rifle, which he seized; being closely pressed, he took refuge in a shanty, where two of the ruffians attacked him in front, while a third endeavoured to pounce upon him through the roof, with the benevolent design of battering out his brains (à la Tipperary,) with a stave. The fellow struck and broke the rifle, but, from the blow, it went off, and shot the assailant through the head. The landlord then took to his light pair of heels, and escaped from the other two. An inquest was held, and a verdict of "justifiable homicide" of course returned. A solitary instance of outrage need not alarm or deter a settler; let a man determine to exert himself, and, with even moderate capital, and health, he must prosper; if he be devoid of energy and become embarrassed, he will be ruined here, as he would elsewhere; and his creditors have a very summary way of recovering their demands upon him, as his land (though in perpetuity) can be sold, as if it were chattel property. But the vexatious and useless severities of the English laws, as they relate to debtor and creditor are mitigated in this colony by local statutes; no one here can be arrested for debt on mesne process. If it be justly apprehended that a debtor purposes to leave the country, a writ (on affidavit,) of ne exeat regno can be taken out, to which he must give bail, but no farther step is taken until judgment be given. Nor is the bail obliged to produce the debtor, if he can prove he is within the province, and in those cases in which arrest is legal, there are limits, of about sixteen acres, to the prisons, {generally including places of divine worship,) in which a debtor has power to reside; the sheriff being obliged to take sufficient security for his remaining within their precincts. Should he escape, the sheriff transfers the security to the creditor. Neither wearing apparel, beds, nor bedding can be taken in execution. A whimsical occurrence (for the truth of which, however, I do not absolutely vouch,) is said to have taken place shortly before our arrival here: a writ against a debtor fairly liable to the law of arrest, was put into the hands of one of our sheriffs—a fat and unwieldy person, to whom the debtor was pointed out, and finding himself hard pressed by the sheriff (who was well mounted,) made off for a morass, into which he dashed, laughing heartily at his pursuer. Now the puzzle to the sheriff was, how to make a proper return on the writ—he could not return, "non est inventus" for he had found his prey; he could not return "cæpi" as he had not succeeded in the capture. So after much deliberation, he made out the return, "non est comeatibus in swampo." Your's, my dear Sir, faithfully, T. W. MAGRATH. |
