Oct 06, 2018 — GREENWOOD, BC (BG)

PART THREE

Mrs. C. P. Traill, who authored The Female Emigrants Guide: Hints on Canadian Housekeeping, was clearly a woman of vision. She understood not only the realities of leaving one's homeland for far-off places, but also the internal landscape of the heart, which would govern the travel experiences of emigrant women. Her wisdom is not limited by time or place. She writes:

"Those whose destination is intended to be in the Canadian towns will find little difference in regard to their personal comforts to what they were accustomed to enjoy at home. If they have capital they can employ it to advantage; if they are mechanics, or artizans they will have little difficulty in obtaining employment as journeymen. The stores in Canada are well furnished with every species of goods; groceries, hardware and food of all kinds can also be obtained. With health and industry, they will have little real cause of complaint.

It is those who go into the woods and into distant settlements in the uncleared wilderness that need have any fear of encountering hardships and privations; and such persons should carefully consider their own qualifications and those of their wives and children before they decide upon embarking in the laborious occupation of backwoodsmen in a new country like Canada.

Strong, patient, enduring, hopeful men and women, able to bear hardships and any amount of bodily toil, (and there are many such,) these may be pioneers to open out the forestlands; while the old-country farmer will find it much better to purchase cleared farms or farms that are partially cleared, in improving townships, where there are villages and markets and good roads; by so doing they will escape much of the disappointment and loss, as well as the bodily hardships that are too often the lot of those who go back into the unreclaimed forest lands.

Whatever be the determination of the intended emigrant, let him not exclude from his entire confidence the wife of his bosom, the natural sharer of his fortunes, be the path which leads to them rough or smooth. She ought not to be dragged as an unwilling sacrifice at the shrine of duty from home, kindred and friends, without her full consent: the difficulties as well as the apparent advantages ought to be laid candidly before her, and her advice and opinion asked; or how can she be expected to enter heart and soul into her husband's hopes and plans; nor should such of the children as are capable of forming opinions on the subject be shut out from the family council; for let parents bear this fact in mind, that much of their own future prosperity will depend upon the exertion of their children in the land to which they are going; and also let them consider that those children's lot in life is involved in the important decision they are about to make.

Let perfect confidence be established in the family: it will avoid much future domestic misery and unavailing repining. —Family union is like the key-stone of an arch: it keeps all the rest of the building from falling asunder. A man's friends should be those of his own household.

Woman, whose nature is to love home and to cling to all home ties and associations, cannot be torn from that spot that is the little centre of joy and peace and comfort to her, without many painful regrets. No matter however poor she may be, how low her lot in life may be cast, home to her is dear, the thought of it and the love of it clings closely to her wherever she goes. The remembrance of it never leaves her; it is graven on her heart.

Her thoughts wander back to it across the broad waters of the ocean that are bearing her far from it. In the new land it is still present to her mental eye, and years after she has formed another home for herself she can still recall the bowery lane, the daisied meadow, the moss-grown well, the simple hawthorn hedge that bound the garden-plot, the woodbine porch, the thatched roof and narrow casement window of her early home. She hears the singing of the birds, the murmuring of the bees, the tinkling of the rill, and busy hum of cheerful labour from the village or the farm, when those beside her can hear only the deep cadence of the wind among the lofty forest-trees, the jangling of the cattle-bells, or strokes of the chopper's axe in the woods.

As the seasons return she thinks of the flowers that she loved in childhood; the pale primrose, the cowslip and the bluebell, with the humble daisy and heath-flowers; and what would she not give for one, just one of those old familiar flowers! No wonder that the heart of the emigrant's wife is sometimes sad, and needs to be dealt gently with by her less sensitive partner; who if she were less devoted to home, would hardly love her more, for in this attachment to home lies much of her charm as a wife and mother in his eyes.

But kindness and sympathy, which she has need of, in time reconciles her to her change of life; new ties, new interests, new comforts arise; and she ceases to repine, if she does not cease to love, that which she has lost: in after life the recollection comes like some pleasant dream or a fair picture to her mind, but she has ceased to grieve or to regret; and perhaps like a wise woman she says —" All things are for the best. It is good for us to be here."

The Female Emigrants Guide: Part One — Part Two