The View from Castle Rock

like to be here as a free man, without wife or father or sister or children, without a single burden on your back, what could you do then? He tells himself it is no use to think about it.
    Agnes has heard women on the boat say that the officers you see in the street here are surely the best-looking men you can meet anywhere in the world, and she thinks now that this is surely true. A girl would have to watch herself with them. She has heard also that the men anyplace over here are ten or twenty times more numerous than the women. That must mean you can get what you want out of them. Marriage. Marriage to a man with enough money to let you ride in a carriage and buy paints to cover any birthmark on your face and send presents to your mother. If you were not married already and dragged down with two children.
    Walter reflects that his brother is strong and Agnes is strong-she can help him on the land while Mary cares for the children. Whoever said that he should be a farmer? When they get to Montreal he will go and attach himself to the Hudson’s Bay Company and they will send him to the frontier where he will find riches as well as adventure.

    Old James has sensed defection, and begins to lament openly. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

    But he recovered himself. Here he is, a year or so later, in the New World, in the new town of York which is just about to have its name changed to Toronto. He is writing to his eldest son Robert.

    … the people here speaks very good English there is many of our Scots words they cannot understand what we are saying and they live far more independent then King George… There is a Road goes Straight North from York for fifty miles and the farm Houses almost all Two Stories High. Some will have as good as 12 Cows and four or five horses for they pay no Taxes just a perfect trifell and ride in their Gigs or chire like Lords… there is no Presbetarian minister in this town as yet but there is a large English Chapel and Methodist Chapel… the English minister reads all that he Says unless it be for his Clark Craying always at the end of every Period Good Lord Deliver us and the Methodist prays as Loud as Ever He Can and the people is all doun on there knees Craying Amen so you can Scarce Hear what the Priest is Saying and I have Seen some of them Jumping up as if they would have gone to Heaven Soul and Body but there Body was a filthy Clog to them for they always fell down again altho craying O Jesus O Jesus as He had been there to pull them up threw the Loft… Now Robert I do not advise you to Come Hear so you may take your own will when you did not come along with us I do not Expect Ever to See you again… May the good will of Him that Dwelt in the Bush rest up on you… if I had thought that you would have deserted us I would not have corned hear it was my ame to get you all Near me made me Come to America but mans thoughts are Vanity for have Scattered you far wider but I Can not help it now… I shall say no more but wish that the God of Jacob be your god and may be your gide for Ever and Ever is the sincer prayer of your Loving Father till Death…

    There is more-the whole letter passed on by Hogg’s connivance and printed in
Blackwoods Magazine,
where I can look it up today.
    And some considerable time after that, he writes another letter, addressed to the Editor of
The Colonial Advocate,
and published in that newspaper. By this time the family is settled in Esquesing Township, in Canada West.

    … The Scots Bodys that lives heare is all doing Tolerably well for the things of this world but I am afraid that few of them thinks about what will Come of thear Soul when Death there Days doth End for they have found a thing they call Whiskey and a great mony of them dab-bales and drinks at it till they make themselves worse than a ox or an ass… Now sir I could tell you bit
of
Stories but I am afraid you will put me in your Calonial Advocate I do not Like to be put in prent I once wrote a bit of a letter to my Son Robert in Scotland and my friend James Hogg the Poet put it in Blackwoods Magazine and had me all through North America before I knew my letter was gone Home… Hogg poor man has spent most of his life in conning Lies and if I read the Bible right I think it says that all Liares is to have there pairt in the Lake that Burns with Fire and Brimstone but I supose they find it a Loquarative trade for I belive that Hogg and Walter Scott has got