Читать книгу The Canadian Settler's Guide - Catharine Parr Traill - Страница 14

In furnishing a Canadian log-house the main study should be to unite simplicity with cheapness and comfort. It would be strangely out of character to introduce gay, showy, or rich and costly articles of furniture into so rough and homely a dwelling. A log-house is better to be simply furnished. Those who begin with moderation are more likely to be able to increase their comforts in the course of a few years.

Let us see now what can be done towards making your log parlour comfortable at a small cost. A dozen of painted Canadian chairs, such as are in common use here, will cost you £2 10s. You can get plainer ones for 2s. 9d. or 3s. a chair: of course you may get very excellent articles if you give a higher price; but we are not going to buy drawing-room furniture. You can buy rocking chairs, small, at 7s. 6d.; large, with elbows, 15s.: you can cushion them yourself. A good drugget, which I would advise you to bring with you, or Scotch carpet, will cover your rough floor; when you lay it down, spread straw or hay over the boards; this will save your carpet from cutting. A stained pine table may be had for 12s. or 15s. Walnut or cherry wood costs more; but the pine with a nice cover will answer at first. For a flowered mohair you must give five or six dollars. A piece of chintz of suitable pattern will cost you 16s. the piece of twenty-eight yards. This will curtain your windows: and a common pine sofa stuffed with wool, though many use fine hay for the back and sides, can be bought cheap, if covered by your own hands. If your husband or elder sons are at all skilled in the use of tools, they can make out of common pine boards the frame-work or couches, or sofas, which look when covered and stuffed, as well as what the cabinet-maker will charge several pounds for. A common box or two stuffed so as to form a cushion on the top, and finished with a flounce of chintz, will fill the recess of the windows. A set of book-shelves stained with Spanish brown, to hold your library.—A set of corner shelves, fitted into the angles of the room, one above the other, diminishing in size, form an useful receptacle for any little ornamental matters, or for flowers in the summer, and gives a pleasant finish and an air of taste to the room. A few prints, or pictures, in frames of oak or black walnut, should not be omitted, if you can bring such ornaments with you. These things are sources of pleasure to yourselves, and of interest to others. They are intellectual luxuries, that even the very poorest man regards with delight, and possesses if he can, to adorn his cottage walls, however lowly that cottage may be.

I am going to add another comfort to your little parlour—a clock: very neat dials in cherry or oak frames, may be bought from 7s. 6d. to $5. The cheapest will keep good time, but do not strike. Very handsome clocks may be bought for ten dollars, in elegant frames; but we must not be too extravagant in our notions.

I would recommend a good cooking-stove in your kitchen: it is more convenient, and is not so destructive to clothes as the great log fires. A stove large enough to cook food for a family of ten or twelve persons, will cost from twenty to thirty dollars. This will include every necessary cooking utensil. Cheap stoves are often like other cheap articles, the dearest in the end: a good, weighty casting should be preferred to a thinner and lighter one; though the latter will look just as good as the former: they are apt to crack, and the inner plates wear out soon.

There are now a great variety of patterns in cooking-stoves, many of which I know to be good. I will mention a few:—"The Lion," "Farmers' Friend," "Burr," "Canadian Hot-Air," "Clinton Hot-Air;" these two last require dry wood; and the common "Premium" stove, which is a good useful stove, but seldom a good casting, and sold at a low price. If you buy a small-sized stove, you will not be able to bake a good joint of meat or good-sized loaves of bread in it.

If you have a chimney, and prefer relying on cooking with the bake-kettle, I would also recommend a roaster, or bachelor's oven: this will cost only a few shillings, and prove a great convenience, as you can bake rolls, cakes, pies and meat in it. An outside oven, built of stones, bricks, or clay, is put up at small cost, and is a great comfort.[3] The heating it once or twice a week, will save you much work, and you will enjoy bread much better and sweeter than any baked in a stove, oven or bake-kettle.

Many persons who have large houses of stone or brick, now adopt the plan of heating them with hot air, which is conveyed by means of pipes into the rooms. An ornamented, circular grating admits the heated air, by opening or shutting the grates. The furnace is in the cellar, and is made large enough to allow of a considerable quantity of wood being put in at once.

A house thus heated is kept at summer heat in the coldest weather; and can be made cooler by shutting the grates in any room.

The temperature of houses heated thus is very pleasant, and certainly does not seem so unhealthy as those warmed by metal stoves, besides there being far less risk from fire.

Those who wish to enjoy the cheerful appearance of a fire in their sitting room, can have one; as little wood is required in such case.

The poorer settlers, to whom the outlay of a dollar is often an object, make very good washing tubs out of old barrels, by sawing one in half, leaving two of the staves a few inches higher than the rest, for handles. Painted washing-tubs made of pine, iron hooped, cost a dollar; painted water-pails only 1s. 6d. a piece; but they are not very durable. Owing to the dryness of the air, great care is requisite to keep your tubs, barrels and pails in proper order. Many a good vessel of this kind is lost for want of a little attention.

The washing tubs should be kept in the cellar, or with water in them. Those who keep servants must not forget to warn them of this fact.

In fitting up your house, do not sacrifice all comfort in the kitchen, for the sake of a best room for receiving company.

If you wish to enjoy a cheerful room, by all means have a fireplace in it. A blazing log-fire is an object that inspires cheerfulness. A stove in the hall or passage is a great comfort in winter; and the pipe conducted rightly will warm the upper rooms; but do not let the stove supersede the cheering fire in the sitting-room. Or if your house has been built only to be heated by stoves, choose one that, with a grate in front, can be opened to show the fire. A handsome parlour-stove can now be got for twelve dollars. Tanned and dyed sheep-skins make excellent door mats, and warm hearth-rugs. With small outlay of money your room will thus be comfortably furnished.

A delightful easy-chair can be made out of a very rough material—nothing better than a common flour barrel. I will, as well as I can, direct you how these barrel-chairs are made. The first four or five staves of a good, sound, clean flour barrel are to be sawn off, level, within two feet of the ground, or higher, if you think that will be too low for the seat: this is for the front: leave the two staves on either side a few inches higher for the elbows; the staves that remain are left to form the hollow back: augur holes are next made all round, on a level with the seat, in all the staves; through these holes ropes are passed and interlaced, so as to form a secure seat: a bit of thin board may then be nailed, flat, on the rough edge of the elbow staves, and a coarse covering, of linen or sacking, tacked on over the back and arms: this is stuffed with cotton-wool, soft hay, or sheep's wool, and then a chintz cover over the whole, and well-filled cushion for the seat, completes the chair. Two or three of such seats in a sitting-room, give it an air of great comfort at a small cost.

Those settlers who come out with sufficient means, and go at once on cleared farms, which is by far the best plan, will be able to purchase very handsome furniture of black walnut or cherry wood at moderate cost. Furniture, new and handsome, and even costly, is to be met with in any of the large towns; and it would be impertinent in me to offer advice as to the style to be observed by such persons: it is to the small farmer, and poorer class, that my hints are addressed.

The shanty, or small log-house of the poorer emigrant, is often entirely furnished by his own hands. A rude bedstead, formed of cedar poles, a coarse linen bag filled with hay or dried moss, and bolster of the same, is the bed he lies on; his seats are benches, nailed together; a table of deal boards, a few stools, a few shelves for the crockery and tinware; these are often all that the poor emigrant can call his own in the way of furniture. Little enough and rude enough. Yet let not the heart of the wife despond. It is only the first trial; better things are in store for her.

Many an officer's wife, and the wives of Scotch and English gentlemen, in the early state of the colony have been no better off.—Many a wealthy landowner in Canada was born in circumstances as unfavourable. Men who now occupy the highest situations in the country, have been brought up in a rude log-shanty, little better than an Indian wigwam. Let these things serve to cheer the heart and smooth the rough ways of the settler's first outset in Canadian life.—And let me add that now there is more facility for the incoming emigrant's settling with comfort, than there was twenty or thirty years ago; unless he goes very far back into the uncivilized portions of the country, he cannot now meet with the trials and privations that were the lot of the first settlers in the Province. And there is no necessity for him to place himself and family beyond the outskirts of civilization. Those who have the command of a little capital can generally buy land with some clearing and buildings; and the working man can obtain good employment for his wife and elder girls or boys, so as to enable them by their united savings, to get a lot of land for themselves, to settle upon. This is more prudent than plunging at once into the bush, without possessing the experience which is necessary for their future welfare, almost for their very existence, in their new mode of life. When they have earned a little money, and some knowledge of the ways of the country, they may then start fair, and by industry and sobriety, in a few years become independent.

To pay for his land by instalments, is the only way a poor man can manage to acquire property: to obtain his deed, is the height of his ambition: to compass this desirable end all the energies of the household are directed. For this the husband, the wife, the sons and the daughters all toil: each contributes his or her mite: for this they endure all sorts of privations, without murmuring. In a few years the battle is won. Poverty is no longer to be feared.

The land is their own: with what pride they now speak of it; with what honest delight they contemplate every blade of wheat, every ear of corn, and the cattle that feed upon their pastures. No rent is now to be paid for it. God has blessed the labours of their hands. Let them not forget that to him is the glory and praise due.

When they have acquired land and cattle, let them not in the pride of their hearts say—"My hand and the power of my arm has gotten me all these;" for it is God that giveth the increase in all these things.

[3] Two men, or a man and a boy will build a common-sized clay oven in a day or less, if they understand the work and prepare the materials beforehand.