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By ALEXANDER MACKENZIE.
The reader is already
acquainted with the misery endured by those evicted from Barra and South
Uist by Colonel Gordon, after their arrival in Canada. This was no
isolated case. We shall here give a few instances of the unspeakable
suffering of those pioneers who left so early as 1773, in the ship
Hector, for Pictou, Nova Scotia, gathered from trustworthy sources
during the writer's late visit to that country. The Hector was owned by
two men, Pagan and Witherspoon, who bought three shares of land in
Pictou, and they engaged a Mr. John Ross as their agent, to accompany
the vessel to Scotland, to bring out as many colonists as could be
induced, by misrepresentation and falsehoods, to leave their homes. They
offered a free passage, a farm, and a year's free provisions to their
dupes. On his arrival in Scotland, Ross drew a glowing picture of the
land and other manifold advantages of the country to which he was
enticing the people.
The Highlanders knew
nothing of the difficulties awaiting them in a land covered over with a
dense unbroken forest; and, tempted by the prospect of owning splendid
farms of their own, they were imposed upon by his promise, and many of
them agreed to accompany him across the Atlantic and embraced his
proposals. Calling first at Greenock, three families and five single
young men joined the vessel at that port. She then sailed to Lochbroom,
in Ross-shire, where she received 33 families and 25 single men, the
whole of her passengers numbering about 200 souls. This band, in the
beginning of July, 1773, bade a final farewell to their native land, not
a soul on board having ever crossed the Atlantic except a single sailor
and John Ross, the agent. As they were leaving, a piper came on board
who had not paid his passage ; the captain ordered him ashore, but the
strains of the rational instrument affected those on board so much that
they pleaded to have him allowed to accompany them, and offered to share
their own rations with him in exchange for his music during the passage.
Their request was granted, and his performances aided in no small degree
to cheer the noble bandof pioneers in their long voyage of eleven weeks,
in a miserable hulk, across the Atlantic.
The pilgrim band kept up
their spirits as best they could by song, pipe-music, dancing,
wrestling, and other amusements, through the long and painful voyage.
The ship was so rotten that the passengers could pick the wood cut of
her sides with their fingers. They met with a severe gale off the
Newfoundland coast, and were driven back by it so far that it took them
about fourteen days to get back to the point at which the storm met
them. The accommodation was wretched, smallpox and dysentry broke out
among the passengers. Eighteen of the children died, and were committed
to the deep amidst such anguish and heart-rending agony as only a
Highlander can understand. Their stock of provisions became almost
exhausted, the water became scarce and bad; the remnant of provisions
left consist€d mainly of salt meat, which, from the scarcity of water,
added greatly to their sufferings. The oatcake carried by them became
mouldy, so that much of it had been thrown away before they dreamt of
having such a long passage. Fortunately for them, one of the passengers,
Hugh Macleod, more prudent than the others, gathered up the despised
scraps into a bag, and during the last few days of the voyage his
fellows were too glad to join him in devouring this refuse to keep souls
and bodies together.
At last the Hector
dropped anchor in the harbour, opposite where the town of Pictou now
stands. Though the Highland dress was then proscribed at home, this
emigrant band carried theirs along with them, and, in celebration of
their arrival, many of the younger men donned their national dress—to
which a few of them were able to add the sgian dubh and the
claymore—while the piper blew up his pipes with might and main, its
thrilling tones, for the first time, startling the denizens of the
endless forest, and its echoes resounding through the wild solitude.
Scottish E migrants are admitted upon all hands to have given its
backbone of moral and religious strength to the Province, and to those
brought over from the Highlands in this vessel is due the honour of
being in the forefront—the pioneers and vanguard.
But how different was the
reality to the expectations of these poor creatures, led by the
plausibility of the emigration agent, to expect free estates on their
arrival.
The whole scene, as far
as the eye could see, was a dense forest. They crowded on the deck to
take stock of their future home, and their hearts sank within them. They
were landed without the provisions promised, without shelter of any
kind, and were only able by the aid of those few before them, to erect
camps of the rudest and most primitive description, to shelter their
wives and their children from the elements. Their feelings of
disappointment were most bitter, when they compared the actual facts
with the free farms and the comfort promised them by the lying
emigration agent. Many of them sat down in the forest and wept bitterly;
hardly any provisions were possessed by the few who were before them,
and what there was among them was soon devoured; making all—old and new
comers—almost destitute. It was now too late to raise any crops that
year. To make matters worse they were sent- some three miles into the
forest, so that they could not even take advantage with the same ease of
any fish that might be caught in the harbour. The whole thing appeared
an utter mockery. To unskilled men the work of clearing seemed hopeless;
they were naturally afraid of the Red Indian and of the wild beasts of
the forest ; without roads or paths, they were frightened to move for
fear of getting lost.
Can we wonder that, in
such circumstances, they refused to settle on the company's lands?
though, in consequence, when provisions arrived, the agents refused to
give them any. Ross and the company quarrelled, and he ultimately left
the newcomers to their fate. The few of them who had a little money
bought what provisions they could from the agents, while others, less
fortunate, exchanged their clothes for food; but the greater number had
neither money nor clothes to spend or exchange, and they were all soon
left quite destitute. Thus driven to extremity, they determined to have
the provisions retained by the agents, right or wrong, and two of them
went to claim them. They were positively refused, but they determined to
take what they could by force. They seized the agents, tied them, took
their guns from them, which they hid at a distance ; told them that they
must have the food for their families, but that they were quite willing
and determined to pay for them if ever they were able to do so. They
then carefully weighed or measured the various articles, took account of
what each man received and left, except one, the latter, a powerful and
determined fellow, who was left behind to release the two agents. This
he did, after allowing sufficient time for his friends to get to a safe
distance, when he informed the prisoners where they could find their
guns. Intelligence was sent to Halifax that the Highlanders were in
rebellion, from whence orders were sent to a Captain Archibald in Truro,
to march his company of militia to suppress and pacify them; but to his
honour be it said, he, point blank, refused, and sent word that he would
do no such thing. "I know the Highlanders," he said, "and if they are
fairly treated there will be no trouble with them." Finally, orders were
given to supply them with provisions, and Air. Paterson, one of the
agents, used afterwards to say that the Highlanders who arrived in
poverty, and who had been so badly treated, had paid him every farthing
with which he had trusted them.
It would be tedious to
describe the sufferings which they afterwards endured. Many of them
left. Others, fathers, mothers, and children, bound themselves away, as
virtual slaves, in other settlements, for mere subsistence. Those who
remained lived in small huts, covered only with the bark of branches of
trees to shelter them from the bitter winter cold, of the severity of
which they had no previous conception. They had to walk some eighty
miles, through a trackless forest, in deep snow to Truro, to obtain a
few bushels of potatoes, or a little flour in exchange for their labour,
dragging these back all the way again on their backs, and endless cases
of great suffering from actual want occurred. The remembrance of these
terrible days sank deep into the minds of that generation, and long
after, even to this day, the narration of the scenes and cruel hardships
through which they had to pass beguiled, and now beguiles many a
winter's night as they sit by their now comfortable firesides.
In the following spring
they set to work. They cleared some of the forest, and planted a larger
crop. They learned to hunt the moose, a kind of large deer. They began
to cut timber, and sent a cargo of it from Pictouthe first of a trade
very profitably and extensively carried on ever since. The population
had, however, grown less than it was before their arrival ; for in this
year it amounted only to 78 persons. One of the modes of laying up a
supply of food for the winter was to dig up a large quantity of clams or
large oysters, pile them in large heaps on the sea-shore, and then cover
them over with sand, though they were often, in winter, obliged to cut
through ice more than a foot thick to get at them. This will give a fair
idea of the hardships experienced by the earlier emigrants to these
Colonies.
In Prince Edward Island,
however, a colony from Lockerbie, in Dumfriesshire, who came out in
1774, seemed to have fared even worse. They commenced operations on the
Island with fair prospects of success, when a plague of locusts, or
field mice, broke out, and consumed everything, even the potatoes in the
ground; and for eighteen months the settlers experienced all the
miseries of a famine, having for several months only what lobsters or
shell-fish they could gather from the sea-shore. The winter brought them
to such a state of weakness that they were unable to convey food a
reasonable distance even when they had means to buy it.
In this pitiful position
they heard that the Pictou people were making progress that year, and
that they had even some provisions to spare. They sent one of their
number to make enquiry. An American settler, when he came to Pictou,
brought a few slaves with him, and at this time he had just been to
Truro to sell one of them, and brought home some provisions with the
proceeds of the sale of his negro. The messenger from Prince Edward
Island was putting up at this man's house. He was a bit of a humorist,
and continued cheerful in spite of all his troubles. On his return to
the Island, the people congregated to hear the news. "What kind of place
is Pictou?" enquired one. "Oh, an awful place. W Thy, I was staying with
a man who was just eating the last of his niggers;" and the poor
creatures were reduced to such a point themselves that they actually
believed the people of Pictou to be in such a condition as to oblige
them to live on the flesh of their coloured servants. They were told,
however, that matters were not quite so bad as that, and fifteen
families left for the earlier settlement, where, for a time, they fared
but very little better, but afterwards became prosperous and happy. A
few of their children and thousands of their grandchildren are now
living in comfort and plenty.
But who can think of
these early hardships and cruel existences without condemning--even
hating—the memories of the harsh and heartless Highland and Scottish
lairds, who made existence at home even almost as miserable for those
noble fellows, and who then drove them in thousands out of their native
land, not caring one iota whether they sank in the Atlantic, or were
starved to death on a strange and uncongenial soil? Retributive justice
demands that posterity should execrate the memories of the authors of
such misery and horrid cruelty. It may seem uncharitable to write thus
of the dead; but it is impossible to forget their inhuman conduct,
though, no thanks to them—cruel tigers in human form—it has turned out
for the better, for the descendants of those who were banished to what
was then infinitely worse than transportation for the worst crimes. Such
criminals were looked after and cared for; but those poor fellows,
driven out of their homes by the Highland lairds, and sent across there,
were left to starve, helpless, and uncared for. Their descendants are
now a prosperous and thriving people, and retribution is at hand. The
descendants of the evicted from Sutherland, Ross, Inverness-shires, and
elsewhere, to Canada, are producing enormous quantities of food, and
millions of cattle, to pour them into this country. What will be the
consequence? The sheep farmer the primary and original cause of the
evictions—will be the first to suffer. The price of stock in Scotland
must inevitably fall. Rents must follow, and the joint authors of the
original iniquity will, as a class, then suffer the natural and just
penalty of their past misconduct. |
