20 EMIGRATION TO CANADA 



ed them and they immediately crawled into the log and came out 

 on my side of the fence. After doing this two or three times they 

 seemed to get frightened and ran away grunting and never tried 

 the fence again. Many other circumstances might be spoken of 

 regarding the greenhorns when they come to a new country and, 

 even to-day, the old settlers laugh at the ignorance displayed by 

 the green youths from the old country. 



After our summer's work, James and myself returned to our 

 new house. The work that all settlers took up in the fall was 

 called "underbrushing," which was to cut all trees, under six 

 inches, at the base, down level with the ground and gather up 

 the rubbish of every kind and throw it into a wind-row. While 

 "underbrushing" we cut all fallen trees into lengths and every- 

 thing would then be in readiness for the cutting down of the larger 

 trees when the winter set in. James, Frederick and myself 

 were all "underbrushing" one day when we came to a tree that 

 had been blown out at the root and Frederick, being the best 

 chopper, took the cut at the root, while James and I cut near the 

 top. Frederick, being handy with the axe, was soon ready to cut 

 his length off, when he called to us : "Look out there !" We looked 

 and, behold, he was slung over the root of the tree and the 

 stump was turning back to where it had stood. By good luck, it 

 threw him so far off, that the stump went into its old place and he 

 was thrown beyond it. As soon as we saw that no harm was done 

 we sat down and had a good hearty laugh, but, we had learned a 

 lesson : under no consideration to stand on a log and sever it from 

 the stump but rather by the tree above the stump. After "under- 

 brushing" and cutting and getting ready for the winter I went to 

 a neighboring farmer for a month to chop wood and to thresh oats 

 in the barn with a flail. I received $7.00 for the month's work 

 and worked from daylight or before it, until after dark. One day, 

 when I was out chopping it was very cold and I was wearing a 

 pair of worsted gloves. One of my fingers got frozen and we had 

 been told that if any part of us got frozen we were to rub snow on 

 that part until we had thawed it out. As soon as I saw the finger 

 was frozen I took the gloves off and commenced to rub the frozen 

 one with snow and in a few moments I had five frozen fingers in- 



