The Life And Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner. Tim Flannery

cold on the Barrens, as the inhabitants call them, is dreadful. The Barrens are the spaces where there is no wood. Over these we must use our utmost speed to reach the woods. When once there, we are in comparative comfort; it is even warm among the trees. The thoughts of the Barrens again to be crossed is the only damp to our present enjoyment, as we are soon in a sweat from the exercise in cutting the wood.

      When the snow first sets in it is necessary to remain at home until the weather clears up. Then the men put on their snow shoes, and three or four abreast thus make a path to the woods. In the middle of the day the sun hardens the path, and along these the wood is dragged upon sledges to the town by dogs. A person, not knowing the cause, would smile to see us urging on our dogs, ourselves pulling with one hand and rubbing our ears with the other. I am certain it would be a cure for tardiness of any kind to be forced to cross the Barrens in winter.

      Numbers of the fishermen, who have gambled away their hard-won summer’s wages, are forced thus to earn their winter’s maintenance. At this time the greater part of the fishers were Irishmen, the wildest characters man can conceive. Gambling and every vice was familiar to them. Their quarrelling and fighting never ceased, and even murders were sometimes perpetrated upon each other. St Patrick’s day is a scene of riot and debauchery unequalled in any town in Ireland.

      I saw them myself march in line past an unfortunate man who had been killed in one of their feuds, and each man that passed him gave the inanimate body a blow, at the same time calling him by a term of abuse, significant of the party he had belonged to. It was unsafe to carry anything after nightfall. I have been attacked and forced to fight my way more than once. The respectable inhabitants are thus kept under a sort of bondage to this riotous race.

      In the summer I was much annoyed by the mos-quitos and yellow nippers, a worse fly; for they bite cruelly. They make such a buzzing and noise at night I could not close an eye without my mosquito dose, that is, rum and spruce.

1 Batteau: a light, flat-bottomed river boat used widely in Canada.

2 Spruce: a kind of beer made from spruce (Picea) and sugar, and slightly fermented.