Peeps at Many Lands: Canada

CANADIAN TIMBER

The largest share of the natural wealth of Canada is derived from her unlimited acres and square miles of wheat-lands. Next in importance to her wheat is her timber. Considerably more than one-third of the total area of the Dominion is covered with forests. With the exception of the province of Prince Edward Island, all the older provinces are rich in valuable trees. British Columbia is said to have "the greatest compact reserve of timber in the world." The vast prairies of the North-West have never, since the white man set foot on the American continent, been at all well wooded, although to the north of the settled wheat-lands there is a forest region nearly fifty times as big as England, stretching from Labrador on the east to Yukon on the west.

Wood is consequently of vast importance to almost every man in Canada. In one way or another it figures in the daily life of almost every inhabitant of the Dominion. The strange words, "M^3 Shiplap and Rustic," are familiar to the eye and ear of every builder of a house; and who is there in Canada who does not at some time or other build a house, or help to build one? "M^3" means "cubic feet." "Shiplap" and "rustic" are special cuts and pieces of timber used in house-building. Logs and lumber are therefore household words to the Canadian. As Dr. Fernow, head of the Forestry Department of the University of Toronto, puts it: "Our civilization is built on wood. From the cradle to the coffin in some shape or other it surrounds us as a conveyance or a necessity… We are rocked in wooden cradles, play with wooden toys, sit on wooden chairs, … are entertained by music from wooden instruments, enlightened by information printed on wooden paper with black ink made from wood." More than one-half the people of Canada live in wooden houses; more than two-thirds use wood as fuel. Thousands of miles of railway rest on wooden ties, or sleepers. The waters of the Canadian lakes are daily churned by the wooden paddles of wooden steamboats; fleets of wooden vessels ply up and down the coasts. More than 300 years ago the French, who were the first settlers in Canada, began to cut in her forests spars and masts for the royal navy, and later the practice was followed by the British.

The long droning whine of the saw-mill is to-day one of the most familiar sounds beside the lakes and rivers of Canada. Down at the water's edge you may see the woodman "poying" the big logs to the foot of the upward incline that feeds the saw-tables, skilfully guiding them so that the iron teeth of the endless gliding chain which runs up and down the incline may seize hold upon them and carry them up to the edge of the huge, whizzing, groaning, whining circular saw above. At the other end of the mill, or somewhere beside it, you will see the sawn wood stacked up in squares – planks of various widths and thicknesses.

If you turn away from the sawmill and wander alongside the river, you will see a perfect multitude of logs, thousands of them, held together inside a boom of logs, chained or ironed together, like a huge flock of sheep penned within a sheepfold. These immense masses of timber are floated down the streams in spring, when the snows, melting, flood the rivers with swift, eddying, and often turbulent freshets. Occasionally it happens that the stream grows so swift and violent that it causes the logs to burst the boom or log-linked enclosure within which they are confined. Then away career the logs down the bosom of the rebellious torrent, and the owner may esteem himself remarkably lucky if he recovers even a small proportion of them. The breaking of a boom in this way may therefore represent a loss of hundreds, and even thousands, of pounds. In some cases, where these lumber-rafts have to travel long distances, the men in charge of them live on the raft throughout the whole of their journey, which may last some weeks. If you want to read a fascinating story about the men who engage in this work, read "The Man from Glengarry," by the Canadian novelist, Ralph Connor.

If you travel up the stream until you reach one of its higher tributaries, and turn up beside the latter, you may eventually find yourself at one of the lumber-camps which feed the far-off saw-mill in the valley below. In a picturesque clearing in the forest you will see the low but comfortable log cabin and log stable; you will see the timber-slide, with a rill of water flowing down it to make the logs slide more easily as they are shot down into the tributary stream; you will hear the crack of the teamster's whip and his cheery cry as he urges on his horses – four, six, eight, or ten of them – straining at a rough sleigh on which rest the ends of one, two, three, four, or five big logs; you may hear the swish of the big, two-handled cross-cut saw, as the woodmen cut through the trunk of gigantic fir, cedar, or spruce, or the slow, resonant crash as the forest giant totters, falls, smashes prone to the earth; you may hear the ring of the woodmen's axes as they lop away its branches and strip off its bark.

The men who guide these big timber-booms down the broad, swift rivers of the Canadian forest-lands, and pilot them over the boiling rapids, are marvellously clever in keeping their balance on the unsteady, ever-rolling logs. A favourite pastime with them is log-rolling. Wearing boots for the purpose – boots shod with sharp steel spikes – they walk out, each man on a broad log, and set it rolling. Once the log is started, it begins to roll at an increasing speed. Faster and faster go the feet of the raftsman; faster and faster spins the log. With arms outstretched and every muscle tense, the raftsman preserves his balance long after an ordinary landsman would have gone over – souse! – into the stream. That is indeed the fate which overtakes all of the competitors except one, and he – the man who preserves his balance the longest – is, of course, the winner of the game, the envied of his companions, the admired of all the lumber-jacks and their numerous friends. The cleverest men at this sport are the French-Canadians.

Nevertheless, all is not always peace and contentment in a Canadian forest. To say nothing of the wild beasts —e. g., bear, lynx, mountain lion – which live in them, the actual trees of the forest are themselves a source of menace and danger to men. During the hot, dry days of summer an unheeded spark from a woodman's pipe, a red-hot cinder from a passing train, a neglected camp-fire – the ashes left unextinguished – are each enough to ignite the highly inflammable undergrowths of the forest; and once set alight, the moss which carpets the floor of the forest, the broken sticks which litter the ground from many a winter storm, the bushes, the dead trees, all catch up the flame, and after smouldering, it may be for weeks, the whole forest suddenly bursts into flame. If this happens when a strong wind is blowing, nothing hardly can save the town or settlement, the ranch or saw-mill, that may chance to lie on the side of the fire towards which the wind is blowing. And it is indeed not only a grand but also a terrible sight to stand and watch a large "bush" – fire raging over, say, a square mile or two on a mountain-side. You see the red flames towering up like so many gigantic pillars of fire, now leaping up, now sinking down. As the fire appears to die down in one quarter, you see it break out with great and sudden fury in another, and then ere long it takes a fresh lease of life in the direction in which it first died down. A forest fire such as this advances with terrible swiftness, and woe to the houses which lie in its path! In the summer of 1908 the town of Fernie, a place of 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants, situated in the Crow's Nest Pass of the Rocky Mountains, was almost completely blotted out and extinguished in the course of a few hours; and so sudden was the onset or the fire that the people had literally to flee for their very lives, leaving everything they possessed behind them, and even in some cases in their hurry and confusion losing touch with those who were near and dear to them. A bush-fire is an awful visitation. It also means a very serious loss of valuable timber, no matter where it occurs.

The maple, whose leaf in conjunction with the beaver is the national emblem of Canada, yields in the spring a very sweet sap, which is boiled down to produce a syrup or sugar of a very delicious flavour. Doubtless its qualities were learned from the Indians, and the earlier settlers in the woods depended on it altogether for sugar. Now it is prepared as a luxury. "Sugar-making weather," bright, clear days, with frosty nights, come in March. To the great delight of the children the trees are tapped by boring a small hole in the trunk, and affixing a small iron spout, which leads the sap to a pail. The rate at which it drops varies, but as much as two gallons may be collected from a tree in a day. This is boiled in iron pots, hung over a fire in the woods, or in the up-to-date way in a large flat pan, till it thickens to syrup.

In the old days sugaring off was a great occasion; all the neighbouring boys and girls were asked in, and amid much jollification around the bright fire at night in the forest, the hot sugar was poured off on the snow, forming a delicious taffy, and all "dug in" at the cost of burnt fingers and tongue. Songs were sung, ghost-stories told, the girls were frightened by bears behind the trees, and this unique gathering broke up in groups of two or three, finding their way home in the moonlight through the maple wood.

The Canadian youth has many opportunities for a life in the wilds which all boys enjoy. In order to prevent the occurrence of the destructive forest-fires, fire-rangers are appointed throughout the whole of Northern Ontario, whose duty it is to patrol a certain part of the woods and see that no careless camper has left his fire smouldering when he strikes camp. The young men appointed for this duty are usually students from the colleges who are on their holidays; they work in pairs, and live in a tent pitched at some portage; they see no one but passing tourists or prospectors, and each day they walk over the trail and return – a certain stated distance. The rest of their time they have for fishing and other pleasures of life in the forest. They return in the autumn brown as Indians, and strong and healthy after the most enjoyable and useful of holidays.

CHAPTER X

WEALTH IN ROCK AND SAND

The history of gold and silver has always been romantic and exciting, and Canada has furnished her full share of adventure and fortune, riches won in a day and lost in a night. All known minerals are found scattered here and there over the thousands of miles of north land. Besides the precious metals, the most important are coal, iron, nickel, and asbestos, and the deposits of the last two are much the most important in the world. Gold was first found by the Indians, who made ornaments of it; they found it in the sands of the rivers, and from there prospectors followed it to where it was hidden in ore in the mountains. The most famous deposits are in the Yukon, and no mining camp had a more exciting history than this, where working men staked claims that brought them a fortune and lost it in cards and dice overnight. But the Government saw that rights were respected, and soon banks were opened to keep the "dust," and the miner everywhere admits that he gets a "square deal" in Canada. At Cobalt it is said that the silver deposits were first found when a horse, pawing the rock with his iron shoe, uncovered the "cobalt bloom," the colour that there is the sign of silver. Another story is that a man picked up a stone to throw at a squirrel and found it so heavy that he examined it, to find it solid silver. If you went there you would be shown the famous "silver sidewalk" (pavement), 18 inches wide, and running for several hundred yards, of solid silver. It sounds like a tale from the "Arabian Nights."

Every night in the year for the last seventeen years, halfway up the side of a lofty mountain overhanging a beautiful lake in Western Canada, and opposite to one of the most progressive towns of the interior of the Dominion, a solitary light might be seen burning. The stranger naturally wonders what the light can mean in such a spot. The mountain-side consists entirely of bare rock, with a few trees growing out of the crevices. There is not a blade of grass, not a sign of any single thing that could be of the slightest use to any human being. What does that light mean, then, up on the steep and lonely mountain-side? It does not move. It is always stationary, always visible, in exactly the same place, and always burning in exactly the same way. What does it mean?

If you address your inquiry to one of the older residents in the town opposite, he will tell you: "Oh, that's Coal-Oil Johnnie's light."

"But who is Coal-Oil Johnnie?" you at once ask again.

"Coal-Oil Johnnie's a half-crazy miner, who lives up there and works a mine."

"What sort of a mine?"

"A gold-mine."

"But is it really a gold-mine? And is he working up there all by himself?"

"Sure," replies your informant, in the word that is sterling Canadian for "Yes, certainly."

"And does he never come down? Does he always live by himself?"

Then you will be told all that is known about Coal-Oil Johnnie – namely, that he is slightly affected in his mind, that for seventeen years he has with unwavering perseverance worked away at a gold-bearing vein, worked in solitude, doggedly, perseveringly, drilling, cutting, and blasting a tunnel to wealth and fortune, which he implicitly believes is locked fast in the granite heart of the mountain.

Then will come your next question: "But why do you call him Coal-Oil Johnnie?"

"Oh, that's because, when he wants money to buy himself bread or more dynamite for blasting, he comes down into the town, and peddles round coal-oil to people's houses."

"Coal-oil! That's what they call petroleum in England, isn't it?"

"Sure."

Now, Coal-Oil Johnnie has not yet found his fortune, but who knows how soon he may do so? Scores of other men have worked away with the same faith and the same hope, and have reaped the rewards they have toiled for in a much shorter time than Coal-Oil Johnnie has devoted to the one great object of his life. And yet others have laboured longer, and are still living on the faith, hope, and perseverance that is in them.

An ordinary Italian labourer, who came out to Canada and found employment in a gold-mine, worked on there until the mine was given up as being exhausted. But Pietro Lavoro was of a different opinion. After a while he went to the owners and asked them to grant him a lease of the mine. They agreed. Shouldering his pick, therefore, and lashing his tent and axe, his rock-drills, his miner's hammer, and some sticks of dynamite, as well as a bag of flour and a case or two of tinned meat, upon a small hand-sleigh – the whole of his fortune, in fact – Pietro set off to trudge up the mountain-side, and for several hours toiled along the steep trail leading to the Auro Rosso mine. At the end of two years Pietro Lavoro was a wealthy man. He had a big mining camp up at the Auro Rosso, and over forty men were employed in getting out the ore. At the bank down in the town below there was a sum of $50,000 standing to his credit, and packed in bags, close to the entrance to the gallery that pierced the mountain, was sufficient ore to yield him another $50,000. Pietro is only waiting for the snow to come to "raw-hide" the ore down to the lake, that he may get it transported to the smelter, where the gold will be separated for him from the stone.

The ore from which the gold is extracted is packed into bags each about a foot long, and weighing two or three hundredweight. The way these heavy bags are taken down the steep mountain-side, where it is utterly impossible for a vehicle on wheels to move, is to pack them into a bullock's raw hide spread out on the ground. The corners are then gathered up and tied together. After that the hide, harnessed to horses, is dragged down over the frozen snow. In that way a horse is able to take down a much larger quantity of ore than it could possibly carry on its back, and with much greater safety to itself. This is called "raw-hiding."

An even greater degree of faith and hope and perseverance was shown by the man who laboured for nine years at the opening up and development of another mine, working, not with his own hands, but in directing the systematic construction of galleries, the erection of stamp-mills, and the building of all the other appurtenances of a scientifically-equipped and up-to-date mine. This man risked very much more than the other – than Pietro Lavoro – namely, a large amount of capital. But at the end of nine years he, too, reaped his reward, for he sold his mine as a going concern to a party of American capitalists for a goodly sum.

All the three mines thus far spoken of are mines cut into the solid rock, and the hard stone has to be crushed in powerful stamping-mills and roasted in smelters before the precious metal can be extracted. There are mines of this description in both the east and the west of Canada. But gold is also obtained from a different source – namely, from the sands of rivers, out of which it is got by a process of washing the sand, or "dirt" as the miners call it. In the course of the washing, the gold, which is heavier than the sand, sinks to the bottom of the wooden trough, or rocker, or other receptacle, in which the gold-bearing sands are sluiced.

Two rivers of Western Canada have been especially famous for yielding gold in this way. One is the Fraser and the other is the Yukon. The discovery of gold in the sands of the former led to a wild miners' rush in 1858, and that was followed, three years later, by an equally mad rush into the neighbouring district of Caribou, in British Columbia; but in both cases the fever abated in the course of a year or two, after the gold-bearing sands had all been worked over. The rush to the Yukon was, perhaps, even greater than either of these, notwithstanding that the hardships which had to be encountered were immeasurably greater. The gold-fields of the Yukon, known as Klondyke, are situated near the Arctic Circle, many hundreds of miles from the settled abodes of civilization, and in a part of the world where the winter cold is of appalling severity. Except for a limited amount of garden produce, food, and indeed every kind of supplies, have to be transported many hundreds of miles.

Gold is not, however, the only mineral of value that is obtained from the bowels of the earth in Canada. Very many of the other metals which are prized by man are also extracted, such as silver, lead, zinc, copper, coal, and iron. The Cobalt silver-mines in Northern Ontario and those of the Slocan district of British Columbia are equally famous. Coal is yielded at Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, at Fernie, Michel, and other places in the Crow's Nest Pass of the Rocky Mountains, and in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

At the fairs and annual festivals, which are a prominent institution of both American and Canadian towns and cities of the West, a good deal of interest centres round the competition known as rock-drilling. This is carried on by sets of two men, both expert miners. The task the two men set themselves is to drive their rock-drills as far as ever they can into a solid piece of rock in the course of fifteen minutes. One man holds the rock-drill, whilst the other smites it with a big miner's hammer. At the end of each minute the two men change places, so that the man who held the drill the first minute wields the hammer in the second, and his mate, who wielded the hammer during the first minute, gets a rest during the second, whilst he is in his turn holding the drill. And terribly hard work it is, for the hammerman smites with all his might, and his blows fall like lightning. At the end of the contest both men are generally dripping with perspiration. And no wonder! when in the space of fifteen minutes two men such as these will drive their drills, as they really do, no less than 1 yard deep into a solid block of granite, or at the rate of over 2 inches in each minute. A marvellous exhibition, not merely of muscular strength, but also of skill and quickness! And truly it is a wonderful sight to see with what rapidity the men change places again and again, without appearing to miss a single stroke of the ponderous hammer.

CHAPTER XI

SPOILS OF SEA AND WOOD

"You often hear tall stories of the way the salmon swarm in the Fraser River," remarked an old frontiersman one day to a "new chum" recently arrived in Canada from England. "Those stories are often dished up to suit a palate that is just waiting to be tickled with cayenne, but they are not altogether fiction."

The new chum, having still "tender feet," hesitated about putting his foot in, and merely looked the inquiry which he was unable to conceal.

"Well, you may believe me or not, sir, but it is God's truth that I once saw a man standing on the bank of the river at – ," and he named a village near New Westminster in the delta of the Fraser, "and he was flinging the salmon out on the bank with an ordinary hay-fork, and he was working so that the sweat rolled off him."

"But what did he want so many fish for as that? Surely he could not eat them all?"

"No, sir; his meadow was in want of fertilization, and fish manure, even when it consists of the carcasses of salmon, is not to be despised."

Other stories about the enormous numbers of salmon in the Fraser River of British Columbia tell how the fish are so crowded together that it is impossible for a man to thrust his hand in between them, and how they form such a solid mass that it almost looks as if you could walk across the big broad river on their backs, and could reach the opposite bank dryshod.

The tinned salmon that is such a familiar object in grocers' shops is captured, killed, cooked, and sealed down in those tins in big factories called "canneries," which stand pretty thick beside the river in certain parts of the lower course of the Fraser.

On the eastern side of Canada, again, off the coasts of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland (which, by the way, is an independent colony, and does not yet form part of the Dominion of Canada), Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island, there is a large population of hardy fisher-folk, who for generations have fished for cod on the inexhaustible "banks of Newfoundland." And even before their ancestors settled on American soil the hardy fishermen from Brittany, in France, and from the Basque country on the borders of France and Spain, used to dare the perils of the stormy Atlantic that they might go and reap the silvery harvest of the sea in the same fish-teeming waters. And for over 300 years great fleets of fishing-boats from both Europe and the maritime provinces of Canada have continued to brave the terrors and perils of the deep in pursuit of cod, mackerel, lobsters, herring, and haddock.

The earliest Europeans, or white men, to penetrate into the wilds of the Canadian backwoods were the coureurs de bois– that is, hunters and trappers of French, or mixed French and Indian, descent, who collected furs to sell to the trading companies of the French. These bodies had factories along the Lower St. Lawrence. In the early days – that is to say, for a couple of hundred years after the French settled colonists in Canada – the principal fair for the trade in furs was Montreal. There every spring a crowd of trappers and hunters brought the bales of furs which they had stripped off beaver, bear, or fox, musk-rat or racoon, and handed them over in barter to the agents of the autocratic fur-trading company; and at the same time large fleets of canoes came paddling down the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa rivers, bringing whole boatloads of furs which the Indians had collected all along the Great Lakes, and even from the distant Ohio River, and the great plains of the West.

Who does not know the haunting melody of the "Canadian Boat-Song"? —

"Faintly as tolls the evening chime,
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.
Soon as the woods on the shores grow dim,
We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.