Fort Desolation | Page 2

Canada. Dire
necessity drove him to this. He had been three weeks without money
and nearly two days without food before he succumbed. Having given
in, however, he worked like a Trojan, and would certainly have
advanced himself in life if his employer had not failed and left him,
minus a portion of his salary, to "try again."
Next, he became an engineer on board one of the Missouri steamers, in
which capacity he burst his boiler, and threw himself and the
passengers into the river--the captain having adopted the truly Yankee
expedient of sitting down on the safety-valve while racing with another

boat!
Afterwards, Jack Robinson became clerk in one of the Ontario
steam-boats, but, growing tired of this life, he went up the Ottawa, and
became overseer of a sawmill. Here, being on the frontier of civilisation,
he saw the roughest of Canadian life. The lumbermen of that district are
a mixed race--French-Canadians, Irishmen, Indians, half-castes,
etcetera,--and whatever good qualities these men might possess in the
way of hewing timber and bush-life, they were sadly deficient in the
matters of morality and temperance. But Jack was a man of tact and
good temper, and played his cards well. He jested with the jocular,
sympathised with the homesick, doctored the ailing in a rough and
ready fashion peculiarly his own, and avoided the quarrelsome. Thus he
became a general favourite.
Of course it was not to be expected that he could escape an occasional
broil, and it was herein that his early education did him good service.
He had been trained in an English school where he became one of the
best boxers. The lumberers on the Ottawa were not practised in this
science; they indulged in that kicking, tearing, pommelling sort of
mode which is so repugnant to the feelings of an Englishman. The
consequence was that Jack had few fights, but these were invariably
with the largest bullies of the district; and he, in each case, inflicted
such tremendous facial punishment on his opponent that he became a
noted man, against whom few cared to pit themselves.
There are none so likely to enjoy peace as those who are prepared for
war. Jack used sometimes to say, with a smile, that his few battles were
the price he had to pay for peace.
Our hero was unlucky. The saw-mill failed--its master being a drunkard.
When that went down he entered the lumber trade, where he made the
acquaintance of a young Scotchman, of congenial mind and
temperament, who suggested the setting up of a store in a promising
locality and proposed entering into partnership. "Murray and Robinson"
was forthwith painted by the latter, (who was a bit of an artist), over the
door of a small log-house, and the store soon became well known and
much frequented by the sparse population as well as by those engaged

in the timber trade.
But "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." There
must have been a screw loose somewhere, for bad debts accumulated
and losses were incurred which finally brought the firm to the ground,
and left its dissevered partners to begin the world over again!
After this poor Jack Robinson fell into low spirits for a time, but he
soon recovered, and bought a small piece of land at a nominal price in a
region so wild that he had to cut his own road to it, fell the trees with
his own hand, and, in short, reclaim it from the wilderness on the
margin of which it lay. This was hard work, but Jack liked hard work,
and whatever work he undertook he always did it well. Strange that
such a man could not get on! yet so it was, that, in a couple of years, he
found himself little better off than he had been when he entered on his
new property. The region, too, was not a tempting one. No adventurous
spirits had located themselves beside him, and only a few had come
within several miles of his habitation.
This did not suit our hero's sociable temperament, and he began to
despond very much. Still his sanguine spirit led him to persevere, and
there is no saying how long he might have continued to spend his days
and his energies in felling trees and sowing among the stumps and
hoping for better days, had not his views been changed and his
thoughts turned into another channel by a letter.
CHAPTER TWO.
THE LETTER, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
One fine spring morning Jack was sitting, smoking his pipe after
breakfast, at the door of his log cabin, looking pensively out upon the
tree-stump-encumbered field which constituted his farm. He had
facetiously named his residence the Mountain House, in consequence
of there being neither