interest in the growth of the settlement, they often
looked back with a smile to the “home-sickness”
which oppressed their hearts, while struggling with
the first hardships of life in the bush. Mr.
Ainslie and his family, notwithstanding their many
privations, enjoyed uninterrupted health through the
winter, and before the arrival of spring they already
felt a growing interest in their new home. Mrs.
Ainslie regarded the labours of the workmen with much
attention during the winter, while they felled the
trees which had covered nearly ten acres of their farm.
As each tree fell to the ground it opened a wider
space in the forest and afforded a broader view of
the blue sky. A stream of water, which in many
places would have been termed a river, but which there
only bore the name of Hazel-Brook, flowed near their
dwelling, and as the spring advanced, the belt of
forest which concealed it from view having been felled,
she gained a view of its sparkling waters when the
warm showers and genial rays of the sun loosened them
from their icy fetters; and she often afterwards remarked
that the view of those clear waters was the first
thing which tended to reconcile her to a home in the
forest. With the coming of spring their “life
in the woods” began in earnest. When the
earth was relieved of its snowy mantle, the fallen
trunks of the trees, with piles of brush-wood, were
scattered in every direction about their dwelling.
But the fallow was burned as soon as it was considered
sufficiently dry, the blackened logs were piled in
heaps, and the ground was prepared for its first crop
of grain. The green blades soon sprang up and
covered the ground, where a short time before was only
to be seen the unsightly fallow or the remains of
the partially consumed logs.
It was a long time before Mr. and Mrs. Ainslie became
reconciled to the change in their circumstances, when
they exchanged the comforts and conveniences of their
home beyond the sea, for the log cabin in the wilderness.
Cut off as they were from the privileges of society
to which they had been accustomed from childhood,
they felt keenly the want of a place of worship, with
each returning Sabbath, and next to this, the want
of a school for their two boys; for taken as a people
the Scotch are intelligent; and we rarely meet with
a Scotchman, even among the poorer classes, who has
not obtained a tolerable education. And the careful
parents felt much anxiety when they beheld their children
debarred from the advantages of education; but to remedy
the want as much as lay in their power, they devoted
the greater part of what little leisure time they
could command to the instruction of their boys.
They had been regular attendants at their own parish
church in the old country; and very sensibly they
felt the want, as Sabbath after Sabbath passed away,
with no service to mark it from other days. “It
just seems,” said Mr. Ainslie, “that sin’
we cam’ to America we ha’e nae Sabbath
ava.” In order to meet the want in some