22 EMIGRATION TO CANADA 



I enjoyed the winter in the shanty very much and no accidents 

 took place and no men were injured. 



I left the shanty afterwards and engaged as clerk in the store 

 of John Gibb, in Campbell ford. I remained with him until late 

 in the spring, when I got tired of being a clerk and hired with a 

 lady called Mrs. Carlow, for a year, at $10.00 per month with my 

 board. 



During that summer my brother-in-law, John Spence, had 

 hired out with a farmer named Fraser, who had been an old gar- 

 dener in the north of England and was very enthusiastic about 

 the flowers of Canada. I had been much interested in seeing the 

 strange flowers the past summer but thought little of making a 

 study of them, but his talks about flowers so roused my interest 

 that I talked flowers with him every Sunday when I went to see 

 John Spence. This was the first time I took any interest in the 

 flowers of Canada and to encourage me he presented me with an 

 old book, that is in my collection at Ottawa, which was a list of 

 the plants of Northumberland and Durham in England, published 

 in 1806. This book I studied like a child with a picture book and 

 learned the names of the flowers of England before I knew those 

 of our own country. During the next two years, I had many 

 talks with this old man but he died and my visits to his place 

 ceased. At odd times during the next winter, Frederick and I 

 took out cedar rails from a swamp that he had on our place. I 

 cut and split and he carried the rails on his back for nearly half a 

 mile. These rails eventually fenced in the 1 1 \ acres of the clear- 

 ing on his farm. Our friends called us fools now instead of loafers, 

 as they had done in the summer. A whole series of accidents took 

 place while we were engaged with the rails, as we actually knew 

 nothing about the work. One day, a cedar limb fell off a tree in 

 the swamp and it had a sliver sticking out at the butt end of it 

 and it fell straight on Frederick's back and penetrated between 

 two of his ribs, close to the backbone. We thought little of it 

 that evening but the next morning he was unable to move and 

 had great trouble with the wound in his back. At that time, bal- 

 sam gum was the great cure-all for wounds and I went to the 

 woods and got a small vial filled with the gum and brought it 



