Roughing It in the Bush

by Susanna Moodie

Overview

Betty had plenty of potatoes, without the trouble of planting, or the expense of buying; she never kept a cow, yet she sold butter and milk; but she had a fashion, and it proved a convenient one to her, of making pets of the cattle of her neighbours.... we all looked upon Betty as a sort of freebooter, living upon the property of others. -from Chapter V: "Our First Settlement, and the Borrowing System" A classic of Canadian frontier literature, this delightful volume was devoured by readers on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1852, who turned to it for an unvarnished portrait of homesteading in the woods of Upper Canada. Though Moodie depicts a life that is harsh and dangerous in an unforgiving environment far from civilization, her sense of humor and embracing of adventure are extraordinary, and create an invaluable first-person document of a formative time in North American history. Canadian writer SUSANNA MOODIE (1803-1885) was born in England and emigrated to Canada with her husband, a military officer, in 1832. The sister of author Catharine Parr Traill, Moodie also wrote Life in the Clearings (1853) and Matrimonial Speculations (1854).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781596055360
Publisher:	Cosimo Classics
Publication date:	11/01/2005
Series:	Cosimo Classics Travel & Exploration
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

SUSANNA MOODIE was born Susanna Strickland in Bungay, Suffolk, England, in 1803. The sixth and final daughter of a retired dock manager, she grew up in a middle-class family that encouraged the children in reading and in writing. Susanna's juvenilia include poetry and many fiction tales for young adults.
     In 1831 Susanna Strickland married John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie, a military officer who had returned to England from South Africa to explore publication projects and to find a wife. A year later, they emigrated to Upper Canada (Ontario). For their first seventeen months in Canada, the Moodies lived on cleared farmland near Port Hope, and later on a bush farm in Douro Township, north of Peterborough. Roughing It in the Bush (1852), describes their life in these two backwoods areas.
     Susanna Moodie died in Toronto, Ontario, in 1885.

Read an Excerpt

The early part of the winter of 1837, a year never to be forgotten in the annals of Canadian history, was very severe….

The morning of the seventh was so intensely cold that everything liquid froze in the house. The wood that had been drawn for the fire was green, and it ignited too slowly to satisfy the shivering impatience of women and children; I vented mine in audibly grumbling over the wretched fire, at which I in vain endeavoured to thaw frozen bread, and to dress crying children….

After dressing, I found the air so keen that I could not venture out without some risk to my nose, and my husband kindly volunteered to go in my stead.

I had hired a young Irish girl the day before. Her friends were only just located in our vicinity, and she had never seen a stove until she came to our house. After Moodie left, I suffered the fire to die away in the Franklin stove in the parlour, and went into the kitchen to prepare bread for the oven.

The girl, who was a good-natured creature, had heard me complain bitterly of the cold, and the impossibility of getting the green wood to burn, and she thought that she would see if she could not make a good fire for me and the children, against my work was done. Without saying one word about her intention, she slipped out through a door that opened from the parlour into the garden, ran round to the wood-yard, filled her lap with cedar chips, and, not knowing the nature of the stove, filled it entirely with the light wood.

Before I had the least idea of my danger I was aroused from the completion of my task by the crackling and roaring of a large fire, and a suffocating smell of burning soot. I looked up at the kitchen cooking-stove. All was right there. I knew I had left no fire in the parlour stove; but not being able to account for the smoke and smell of burning, I opened the door, and to my dismay found the stove red-hot, from the front plate to the topmost pipe that let out the smoke through the roof.

My first impulse was to plunge a blanket, snatched from the servant’s bed, which stood in the kitchen, into cold water. This I thrust into the stove, and upon it I threw water, until all was cool below. I then ran up to the loft, and by exhausting all the water in the house, even to that contained in the boilers upon the fire, contrived to cool down the pipes which passed through the loft. I then sent the girl out of doors to look at the roof, which, as a very deep fall of snow had taken place the day before, I hoped would be completely covered, and safe from all danger of fire.

She quickly returned, stamping and tearing her hair, and making a variety of uncouth outcries, from which I gathered that the roof was in flames.

Table of Contents

Advertisement     IX
Introduction     1
Canada     7
A Visit to Grosse Isle     11
Quebec     26
Our Journey Up the Country     42
Tom Wilson's Emigration     57
Our First Settlement, and the Borrowing System     84
Old Satan and Tom Wilson's Nose     113
Uncle Joe and His Family     126
John Monaghan     148
Phoebe H-, and Our Second Moving     166
Brian, the Still-Hunter     180
The Charivari     202
The Village Hotel     229
The Land-Jobber     245
A Journey to the Woods     276
The Wilderness, and Our Indian Friends     293
Burning the Fallow     328
Our Logging-Bee     338
A Trip to Stony Lake     354
The "Ould Dhragoon"     371
Disappointed Hopes     382
The Little Stumpy Man     398
The Fire     424
The Outbreak     446
The Whirlwind     471
The Walk to Dummer     482
A Change in Our Prospects     513
Adieu to the Woods     526
Canadian Sketches     543
Introductory Chapter to the-1871 Edition     580
Afterword     592