Thirty years ago, when I went into the Bush, quite a young girl, with my newly-made husband, the part in which we settled was a complete wilderness. Our lot was taken up about thirty miles east of Belle Ewart, now quite a flourishing village, with the railway passing through it.

Our small log-house was perfectly isolated, as at that time we had not a single neighbour nearer to us than twelve miles; all was dense forest, with but a very faint imperfect track leading by degrees to the main road. Here I passed the first years of my married life, encountering many hardships and enduring many troubles. By degrees my husband cleared and cultivated as much land as would supply our wants, though he never took heartily to the farming, not having been used to it, being by trade a gunsmith.

After several years, neighbours began to gather round us at the distance of two or three miles, and in time quite a settlement was formed. By one of these neighbours a few miles off I was invited to a wedding when my first baby was about a year old. My husband had a strong serviceable pony, but no buggy, and it was settled that I should ride on the pony with baby on my lap, and my husband walk at the side.

When we were within a mile of our destination we noticed a tree fallen across the path, which was a narrow track with forest on both sides, and we also saw that the tree had a bushy green top to it. We arrived at our friend’s, partook of the wedding festivities, and started on our return home at ten o’clock on a bright starlight night.

As we approached the fallen tree over which the pony had stepped quite quietly in the morning, the poor animal began to shiver all over, to snort, to caper about the road in a most extraordinary manner, and appeared too frightened to move on.

I whispered to my husband that I saw the green top of the tree moving, and that I had better get off with the baby for fear of the pony starting and throwing us off. He took me down, and we stepped across the tree, dragging the pony after us with the greatest difficulty; hardly had we got to the other side when from the bushy head of the tree out walked a great brown bear, who certainly looked very much astonished at our little party.

We were terribly frightened, expecting him to attack the pony, but he stood quite still. We thought it better to move on, slowly at first, and afterwards more quickly as we got nearer home. He followed us for more than a mile, indeed till we were quite in sight of our own door, then finding himself near a human habitation he gave one fearful growl before gliding off into the forest, and we lost sight of him.

When we were safely housed, and the poor pony well fed and locked into his little shed, I felt nearly dead with terror and fatigue.

My next interview with Bruin was in a buggy, three years afterwards, in which I was being driven homeward by my husband. This time we had two children with us, and had been to a considerable distance to purchase articles at a newly-established store, which could not be procured nearer. We were more than six miles from home, when the pony (the same mentioned before) began to be greatly agitated, refused to go on, then tried to start off, and gave loud snorts of distress.

My husband got out and stood at the pony’s head, holding him firmly to prevent his starting. The light was very dim in the shade of the Bush, but we both saw something large creeping along the edge of the forest next to where my husband stood; he had no weapon with him but his woodman’s knife and a thick stake picked up from the roadside. Presently a bear came slowly out of the forest, and advanced into the middle of the road at some distance from us, as if preparing for fight. I was terribly frightened, but my husband stood quite still, holding in the horse, but keeping in full view the bear, knowing what a terror they have of man.

After steadily looking at each other for at least five minutes—minutes of suspense and agony to us, Bruin evidently understood the difficulties of his position, and quietly slunk away into the Bush on the other side of the road; and we were glad to get home in safety.

At another time, I had a visit from a lynx; but as I certainly invited him myself, I could not be surprised at his coming as he did, almost close to my cottage door. My husband had been gone for two days on important business to a village a long way off, and on this particular evening I fully expected him home.

We were living in quite a small shanty till we could build a larger house; it had a fireplace on the floor, and an open chimney; the room was very low, and easy of access from the outside. I was living then with my three little children and a young sister of fourteen who helped me to take care of them. As it was getting dusk I thought I heard a human voice distinctly calling from the forest, “Hallo!” I went to the door and immediately answered in the same tone, “Hallo!” making sure that it was my husband, who finding the track very faint from the gloom of the forest, wanted our voices to guide him right. The voice replied to me. I hallooed again, and this went on for some minutes, the sound drawing nearer and nearer, till at length advancing from the edge of the forest, not my husband, but a good-sized lynx, attracted by my answering call, stood quite in front of the cottage—nothing more than the width of a broad road between us and it.

The children, most fortunately, were playing inside, but my sister and myself distinctly saw the eyes of the creature like globes of fire, and in the stillness of the evening we could hear its teeth gnashing as if with anxiety to attack us. Fortunately, through the open door of the shanty the savage animal could see the blazing fire on the hearth, and came no nearer.

We hastily shut the door, and my poor little sister began to cry and bemoan the danger we were in:

“Oh! the roof was so low, and it would clamber up and drop down the chimney, or it would spring through the window, or push open the door,” etc.

I begged her not to frighten the poor children who were playing in a corner, but at once to put more wood on the fire and make a good blaze. I now found that we had hardly any wood without going to the stack outside, which luckily was very close to the door, and fearing that my husband might at any moment return, and be pounced upon unawares, I made my sister light a candle, and opening the door placed her at it, telling her to move the light about so as to bewilder the lynx. Still the dreadful animal remained, uttering cries at intervals, but not moving a step. As quickly as I could I got plenty of wood, as much as I thought would last the night, and very gladly we again shut the door. We now piled up wood on the hearth till there was a great blaze, and no doubt the showers of sparks which must have gone out at the chimney-top greatly alarmed the lynx; it now gave a number of fierce angry cries and went off into the forest, the sound becoming fainter and fainter till it died away.

My husband did not return till the evening of the next day, and he had seen nothing of our unwelcome visitor.

At the time I speak of, the woods of Muskoka were quite infested with wolves, which, however, were only dangerous when many were together. A single wolf is at all times too cowardly to attack a man. My husband knew this, and therefore if he heard a single howl he took no notice, but if he heard by the howling that a pack was in the forest near at hand, he went on his road very cautiously, looking from side to side so as to secure a tree for climbing into should they attack him.

The Canadian wolf has not the audacity of the prairie wolf; should it drive a traveller to the shelter of a tree it will circle round it all night, but at the dawn of day is sure to disappear.

A neighbour’s child, a boy of twelve years old, had a narrow escape from four or five of them, having mistaken them for dogs. It was his business to feed the animals, and having neglected one morning to cut the potatoes small enough, a young calf was unfortunately choked from a piece too large sticking in her throat. The dead calf was laid under a fence not far from the shanty, and the boy having been severely scolded for his carelessness, remained sulkily within doors by himself.

He was engaged in peeling a long stick for an ox-whip, when he heard, as he thought, the barking of some dogs over the dead carcase of the calf; he rushed out with the long stick in his hand, and saw four or five animals busily tearing off the flesh from the calf; without a moment’s reflection he ran in among them, shouting and hallooing with all his might, and so valiantly laid about him with his stick that they all ran off to the covert of the forest, where they turned; and he heard a series of yells and howls which made his blood run cold, for he knew the sound well, and saw that they were wolves and not dogs whose repast he had interrupted. He said, that so great was his terror that he could hardly get back to the shanty and fasten the door.

All the Canadian wild animals are timid; they only begin to prowl about at dusk; they never attempt to enter a dwelling, and have a salutary dread of attacking a man; if attacked themselves they will fight fiercely, and a she-bear with cubs is always dangerous.

Since the time I speak of, the settlements all over the district have become very numerous, and the quantity of land cleared up is so great that the wild animals keep retreating farther and farther into the recesses of the forest; and even the trappers by profession find their trade much less lucrative than it was, they have so much more difficulty in finding game in any quantity.

It is hardly possible to make people understand, who are unacquainted with Bush-life, what the early settlers in Muskoka and other parts had to suffer. Young creatures with their babies were left alone in situations which in more settled countries call for the greatest care and tenderness, and in desolate solitudes where they were far from all human help.

Three weeks before the birth of my fourth child I became so ill with erysipelas that my husband thought he had better go to the place where my parents lived—more than twenty miles off, and bring back one of my sisters to nurse me. He started after breakfast, and soon after he left I became so dreadfully ill that I could not lift my head from the pillow, or indeed turn myself in the bed.

My children, of the respective ages of two, four, and six, were playing about, and as I lay watching them my terror was extreme lest one of them should fall into the fire; I can hardly tell how they fed themselves, or got to bed, or got up the next morning, for by that time I could move neither hand nor foot, and was in dreadful pain. Thus I lay all day, all night, and all the next day till the evening, when my husband returned with one of my sisters. After that I became delirious, and had hardly recovered when my child was born.

As soon as our land was well cleared up and a good house built, my husband sold the property and bought a piece of ground at Belle Ewart, where we have lived ever since, as his health would not allow him to continue farming.

I was always afraid when living in the Bush of the children being lost when they began to run about. The Bush at that time was so wild, and so few paths through it, that there was every fear of children straying once they turned off the narrow track.

A poor little boy, of eight years old, living some miles from us, was lost for more than a week, and only by a miracle was found alive. There was a windfall caused by a hurricane, not very far from his father’s shanty. It was not very broad, but extended in length for more than twenty miles, distinctly marking out the path of the tempest as it swept through the Bush. All this windfall was overgrown with blackberry-bushes, and at this time of year (the autumn) there were quantities of fruit, and parties used to be made for picking them, with a view to preserving.

Our poor little wanderer having strayed alone one morning and reached the windfall, began to eat the berries with great delight, and kept going about from bush to bush, till when it got late he became so bewildered that he could no longer tell in which direction his home lay. Days went by; he was missed and hunted for, but misled by some imaginary trace the first parties went in quite a wrong direction.

The child had no sustenance but the fruit; at length he became too much exhausted to pick, and, as he described it, only felt sleepy. Providentially, in passing an uprooted tree, he saw underneath a large hole, and creeping in found it warm, soft, and dry, being apparently well lined with moss and leaves. Here he remained till found by a party who fortunately took the direction of the windfall, accompanied by a sagacious dog used to tracking bears and other game.

The parties searching would have passed the tree, which was a little out of the track, and many others of the kind lying about, but seeing the dog suddenly come to a stop and begin sniffing and barking they made a careful examination; they found the poor child in his concealment almost at the point of death, and so scratched by the brambles and stained by the juice of the berries as to be scarcely recognisable. They had had the precaution to take with them a bottle of new milk, and very carefully they put down his throat a little at a time till he was able to swallow freely.

Now comes the extraordinary part of the story. The nights were already very chilly; when asked on his recovery if he had not felt the cold, he replied, “Oh no!” and said that every night at dusk a large brown dog came and lay down by him, and was so kind and good-natured that it let him creep quite close to it, and put his arms round it, and that in this way he slept quite warm. He added, that the brown dog went away every morning when it was light. Of course, as there was no large dog answering to this description in any of the adjacent settlements, and as the poor child was evidently in a bear’s den, people could not but suppose that it was a bear who came to his side every evening, and that the animal, moved by some God-given instinct, refrained from injuring the forlorn child. Years afterwards this boy used to talk of the “kind brown dog” who had kept him so nice and warm in his hole in the tree.

My last fright from a bear was only a few years ago, when I was driving a married daughter home, who had been with me to pay a visit to a friend in the Bush twelve miles off. We had one of her little children with us, and were driving slowly, though the road was a good one, as the horse had been many miles that day.

It was getting dusk, and the road, being narrow like all Bush roads, was very gloomy. We were talking quietly of the visit we had just paid, when from the thick top of a tree overhanging the roadside, dropped down a large bear, who just grazed the back of the buggy in his fall. I had but a glimpse of him, as hearing the noise I turned my head for an instant; my daughter’s wild shriek of alarm as she clutched her little one firmly, added to the growl of the bear, so frightened our horse that he dashed off at full speed, and providentially meeting with no obstacle, never stopped till he reached the fence of my husband’s clearing. Even when locked into the house for the night we could hardly fancy ourselves in safety.

The respectable person to whom I was indebted for the above anecdotes, and who was in the capacity of nurse-tender to the mistress of the hotel where I was staying, was much to my regret suddenly called away to a fresh situation, by which I lost many more of her interesting experiences, for as she truly said, numberless were the expedients by which the wives of the early settlers protected themselves and their little ones during the unavoidable absences of their husbands. The pleasant gentlemanly host of the hotel where I was staying at Bracebridge told me of his sitting entranced, when a little child, at the feet of his old grandmother, to hear her stories of the wild beasts which abounded at the time of her first settlement in the Canadian wilderness.

Her husband belonged to an old and wealthy family in America, who, remaining loyal during the war of Independence, were driven over into Canada and all their property confiscated. They settled down, glad to be in safety in a wild unfrequented part; and whenever provisions were wanting, it was an affair of some days for the husband to go and return, the nearest settlement being fifty miles off.

Packs of wolves used to prowl about the log-hut as evening came on, and during the night the barking and howling was dreadful to hear; the only thing to keep them off was a large fire of pine-logs which his grandfather used to light of an evening as near the house as was consistent with safety. It depended on which way the wind blew at which end of the log-hut the fire was made. When he went away on an expedition, he used to take out a large chink at each end of the house and leave his wife an immense pointed pole, with which, putting it through the chink-hole, she was enabled in safety to brand up the fire, that is to draw the logs together so as to last through the night.

Wolves have long disappeared into the depths of the forest; a chance one may now and then be heard of, but rarely in the vicinity of large clearings. The visits of bears are becoming more and more frequent, for Bruin is very partial to young pig, and does not disdain a good meal of ripe grain. The barley-patch in my clearing, as the corn began to ripen this summer, was very much trodden down by a bear whose tracks were plainly to be seen, and he was supposed to be located in a cedar-swamp on my land, as every now and then he was seen, but always coming to or from that direction. One night we were roused from our sleep by a fearful noise of cattle-bells outside of the fence, and when we went out we found that there was a regular “stampede” of all the cattle in the immediate neighbourhood; cows, oxen, steers, were all tearing madly through the Bush towards a road at the other side of a deep gully near the edge of my lot. They were evidently flying from the pursuit of some wild animal.

Presently on the still night air rose a horrid fierce growl which was repeated at intervals two or three times, getting fainter in the distance till it quite died away. We all recognised the noise we had recently heard in France from the bears in a travelling show, only much fiercer and louder. My son, fully armed, started in pursuit, accompanied by a young friend armed also, but though, guided by the noise, they went far down the road, they caught but one glimpse of Bruin in the moonlight as he disappeared down a deep gully and from thence into the Bush, where at night it would not have been safe to follow him.

Hoping that towards morning he might, as is usually the case, return the same way, they seated themselves on a log by the roadside close to the edge of the forest that they might not be palpably in the bear’s sight, and there they remained for some hours till the cold of the dawn warned them to come home, being very lightly clad. The very next evening my son and his friend were pistol-shooting at a mark fixed on a tree at the end of the clearing, when “Black Bess,” the dog, gave tongue and rushed into the forest on the side next the cedar-swamp. Guided by her barking the two gentlemen followed quickly, and this time had a full view in broad daylight of a large brown bear in full flight, but never got within shooting distance. Unluckily the dog, though a good one for starting game, was young and untrained, and had not the sense to head the animal back so as to enable her master to get within range. This bear baffled all the arts of the settlers to get at it, and settlers with cows and oxen were mostly afraid to set traps for fear of accidents to their cattle.

A short time ago a settler living on the Muskoka Road was returning to his home by a short cut through the Bush, when he came suddenly upon a she-bear with two cubs. He had no weapon but a small pocket-knife, and hoped to steal past unobserved, but in a moment the beast attacked him, knocked his knife out of his hand and tore his arm from the shoulder to the wrist. He would probably have been killed but that his shouts brought up a party of men working on the Government road at no great distance, and Mrs. Bruin was only too glad to get safe off with her progeny into the depths of the Bush.

Two or three bears and a lynx were killed in the fall of 1873, in the vicinity of Bracebridge, and one within a mile of the village, on the road to the “South Falls,” one of my favourite walks when I was staying there. There is, however, but little danger of meeting any wild animal in the broad daylight. The words of David in the 104th Psalm are as strictly true now as they were in his time: “The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.”

TERRA INCOGNITA;

OR,

THE WILDS OF MUSKOKA.