Even Down Main Street The Roads Are Not Stoned Or Paved In
Any Way.
We bumped a good deal in our carriage, and for
consolation at any worse bumping than usual were told,
"This is
nothing, wait until you get stuck in a mud-hole out west." Then
our route, thanks to the floods which have been very bad this year
and are still out enormously - the upper floors of two-storied
houses only being visible in many places, - was most intricate. We
had to be pioneered over a ditch into a wood, supposed to be
cleared, with the stumps of trees left sticking about six inches
out of the ground for your wheels to pass over, on to a track, and
then through a potato garden to the house.
We were quite ready for our supper, it being about 8 o'clock when
we got here; and the food at Glyndon, where we stopped twenty
minutes in the middle of the day to "put away" the contents of
sixteen dishes of some various mess or another, had not been of
the most inviting of meals; and though the chops here were the
size of a small leg of mutton and had the longest bones I ever
saw, hunger was the best of appetisers, and we did credit to our
meal, which had been cooked by our host.
This morning we were awoke by the same kind person depositing a
can of water at our door for our baths. He gets up very early, as
he has to fetch the water, milk the cow, feed the calf, etc., all
before breakfast and starting off for his office.
There is a man-servant here who gets 5 to 6 pounds a month, apparently
to do nothing, as he is the only one on the premises who can
afford to be idle and smoke his pipe of peace; but servants are so
difficult to get in this country, and our host being on the move,
having got a better Government appointment at Perth, is anxious
not to change now, so, like everybody else, puts up with anything.
The last servant they had in this house was the son of a colonel
in the English Army, who was described as "a nice boy but very
lazy"; but this man-servant hasn't even the recommendation of
being nice. He was out at the farm working for his board and
lodging, and no wages for some months, but A - - could not stand
his idleness.
We all had to cook our breakfasts this morning, and as everyone
was, by way of helping, either making toast, poaching the eggs,
cooking hunks of bacon, or mending up the fire, the stove was
pronounced much too small. The moment we had finished our meal we
had to retire upstairs and make the beds and tidy up a little; a
half-breed woman living about half-a-mile off is supposed to come
in for an hour and wash up and clean the house, but if it is bad
weather she is unable to get through the mud; therefore when the
ladies of the establishment are away the house is left a good deal
to its own devices, the dust and cobwebs not often disturbed.
* * * * *
C - - FARM, May 21st.
Our last letter to you was written with the first impression of
our colonist life whilst in Winnipeg, where we had a very good
insight of the way English people will rough it when they come
out. It would horrify our farmers to have to do what gentlemen do
out here. They are all their own servants. That lazy servant in
Winnipeg, we were told, gave notice to leave, because one night he
was requested to keep the kitchen fire in so that we might have a
kettle of hot water when we went to bed.
We spent as little time as we could at our suburban residence, so
as to save him any extra trouble, always lunching and sometimes
dining in Winnipeg; and though all the restaurants are bad, still
the food was almost as good as what we cooked ourselves. Our chief
mistake for our first meals was that we put everything on the fire
at the same time, and, funnily enough, our fish boiled quicker
than the sausages, and they again much quicker than the pudding.
Once there was a bread-and-butter one, about which there has been
a good deal of chaff, as it was supposed to be first cousin to
bread-and-milk!
The weather was very bad, constant rain, and we had a fair specimen of
Winnipeg mud. To these buckboards (which is a buggy with a board
behind for luggage), or to any of the carriages, there are no wings to
protect one from the mud, so that we always came in bespattered all
over, a great trial to our clothes. But in spite of the rain and bad
weather we were determined to come out here on Friday. We hired a
democrat, a light waggon with two seats, and started during the
afternoon in the rain, hoping it might clear which it eventually did
when we were about a third of our way. It was awfully cold, and the
jolting of the carriage over the prairie so fearful that our wraps
were always falling off. I had always understood the prairie was so
beautifully smooth to drive over; but found it much resembling an
English arable field thrown out of cultivation, with innumerable
mole-hills and badger-holes, and natural cracks about an inch wide,
which drain the water off into the marshes. If your carriage is
heavily weighted it runs pretty easy; but woe betide you if driving by
yourself - you bump up and down like a pea on a shovel.
We nearly upset, shortly after leaving Winnipeg, as a house was on
the move, or, more properly speaking, had been, as it was stuck in
a mud-hole; a load of hay, trying to get round it, had stuck as well;
and the only place given us to pass was fearfully on the slant down to
a deepish dyke, into which a buggy had already capsized.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 6 of 34
Words from 5070 to 6104
of 34200
