After the second injury he received, he seldom went
to them himself, but sent his oxen and servant in his place. In these
odious gatherings, the sober, moral, and industrious man is more
likely to suffer than the drunken and profane, as during the delirium
of drink these men expose others to danger as well as themselves.
The conduct of many of the settlers, who considered themselves
gentlemen, and would have been very much affronted to have been
called otherwise, was often more reprehensible than that of the poor
Irish emigrants, to whom they should have set an example of order and
sobriety. The behaviour of these young men drew upon them the severe
but just censures of the poorer class, whom they regarded in every
way as their inferiors.
"That blackguard calls himself a gentleman. In what respect is he
better than us?" was an observation too frequently made use of at
these gatherings. To see a bad man in the very worst point of view,
follow him to a bee: be he profane, licentious, quarrelsome, or a
rogue, all his native wickedness will be fully developed there.
Just after the last of these logging-bees, we had to part with our
good servant Mary, and just at a time when it was the heaviest loss
to me. Her father, who had been a dairyman in the north of Ireland,
an honest, industrious man, had brought out upwards of one hundred
pounds to this country. With more wisdom than is generally exercised
by Irish emigrants, instead of sinking all his means in buying a
bush farm, he hired a very good farm in Cavan, with cattle, and
returned to his old avocation. The services of his daughter, who was
an excellent dairymaid, were required to take the management of the
cows; and her brother brought a wagon and horses all the way from
the front to take her home.
This event was perfectly unexpected, and left me without a moment's
notice to provide myself with another servant, at a time when
servants were not to be had, and I was perfectly unable to do the
least thing. My little Addie was sick almost to death with the
summer complaint, and the eldest still too young to take care of
herself.
This was but the beginning of trouble.
Ague and lake fever had attacked our new settlement. The men in the
shanty were all down with it; and my husband was confined to his bed
on each alternate day, unable to raise hand or foot, and raving in
the delirium of the fever.
In my sister and brother's families, scarcely a healthy person
remained to attend upon the sick; and at Herriot's Falls, nine
persons were stretched upon the floor of one log cabin, unable to
help themselves or one another. After much difficulty, and only by
offering enormous wages, I succeeded in procuring a nurse to attend
upon me during my confinement. The woman had not been a day in the
house before she was attacked by the same fever. In the midst of
this confusion, and with my precious little Addie lying insensible
on a pillow at the foot of my bed - expected at every moment to
breathe her last - on the night of the 26th of August the boy I had
so ardently coveted was born. The next day, old Pine carried his
wife (my nurse) away upon his back, and I was left to struggle
through, in the best manner I could, with a sick husband, a sick
child, and a newborn babe.
It was a melancholy season, one of severe mental and bodily
suffering. Those who have drawn such agreeable pictures of a
residence in the backwoods never dwell upon the periods of sickness,
when, far from medical advice, and often, as in my case, deprived of
the assistance of friends by adverse circumstances, you are left to
languish, unattended, upon the couch of pain.
The day that my husband was free of the fit, he did what he could
for me and his poor sick babes, but, ill as he was, he was obliged
to sow the wheat to enable the man the proceed with the drag, and
was therefore necessarily absent in the field the greater part of
the day.
I was very ill, yet for hours at a time I had no friendly voice to
cheer me, to proffer me a drink of cold water, or to attend to the
poor babe; and worse, still worse, there was no one to help that
pale, marble child, who lay so cold and still, with "half-closed
violet eyes," as if death had already chilled her young heart in
his iron grasp.
There was not a breath of air in our close, burning bed-closet; and
the weather was sultry beyond all that I have since experienced.
How I wished that I could be transported to a hospital at home,
to enjoy the common care that in such places is bestowed upon the
sick. Bitter tears flowed continually from my eyes over those young
children. I had asked of Heaven a son, and there he lay helpless by
the side of his almost equally helpless mother, who could not lift
him up in her arms, or still his cries; while the pale, fair angel,
with her golden curls, who had lately been the admiration of all
who saw her, no longer recognized my voice, or was conscious of my
presence. I felt that I could almost resign the long and eagerly
hoped-for son, to win one more smile from that sweet suffering
creature. Often did I weep myself to sleep, and wake to weep again
with renewed anguish.
