MY ROUTE INTO CANADA.
Lake Champlain was long known to the Dutch, and through them to the English, as the Lake of Corlaer. It seems that one Corlaer was for a long time the great man of a little Dutch settlement on the Mohawk, where for many years he swayed the civic sword so potently and with such terror to evil-doers among the Indians, that they adopted his name into their language to signify a white governor. This doughty Dutchman, therefore, left the title to his successors, and the Corlaers went through their decline and fall with as much dignity, in a small way, as history ascribes to the Pharaohs and the Cæsars. Like the founders of other dynasties, however, the original Van Corlaer came to a remarkable and tragic end; and as this deplorable event took place on the Lake, now known by the name of Champlain, the Dutch stubbornly regarded their own hero as having the best right to name it. For a time it seemed likely that fortune would decide for the Dutch; but, with a fickleness for which the flirt is proverbial, she suddenly declared for the French claim; and time having ratified the award, the name of Corlaer is no more heard among mortals, except when some one of antiquarian tastes, like myself, discovers, with a meditative sigh, that it once could start a ghost as soon as Cæsar, and come very near being “writ in water,” which, strange to say, would have rendered it immortal.
It seems that in those days there was, somewhere in the lake, a remarkable rock which the Mohawks regarded as the dome of a submarine palace, in which dwelt with his mermaids a wicked old Indian enchanter, who ruled over Boreas and Euroclydon. The superstition was quite coincident in its particulars with the more classical and familiar one which is served up in the story of Æneas: but this mischievous king of the winds had the merit of being easily propitiated; and the Indians, as they timidly passed his stronghold, never failed to send down to him the tributary peace offering of a pipe, an arrow, or any thing else, save their bottles of fire-water, of which the old fellow was dexterously cheated. The doughty Van Corlaer, undertaking a voyage to the north, was duly informed of these facts; but he swore “by stone and bone” that he would not pay the tribute, or ask any one’s permission to navigate the lake. I am sorry to add that he would not be argued out of his rash and inconsiderate vow. Tradition relates that, as he approached the rock, his mariners showed signs of fear, which appeared so puerile and idle to the enlarged soul of the hero, that he on the contrary steered close to the fearful citadel, and, shamefully exposing his person, made an unseemly gesture towards the abode of the Indian Æolus, and added some Dutch formula of defiance. It is almost needless to relate that the wrath of his ventose majesty was greatly excited. He scorned, indeed, to make a tempest about it; but despatching several angry little squalls after the insolent admiral, they bored him fore and aft, and beset him from so many quarters at once, in a narrow gorge of the lake, that, in short, he was effectually swamped, and thus made a warning example to all succeeding Van Corlaers. His name, as I said, was for a while bequeathed to the lake; but even this poor recompense for a disaster so terrible has proved as evanescent as the bubbles, in which the last sigh of the unfortunate Dutchman came up from the caves to which, like the great Kempenfelt, he went down in a moment.
The lake, therefore, retains its Gallic appellation, and preserves the name and memory of Samuel de Champlain, a servant of Henry IV., and justly surnamed the father ofLa Nouvelle France. The expedition in which it first received his name was a romantic one, and so well illustrates what I have already said of the border feuds of the seventeenth century, that I must be excused for relating its story. Champlain had come down to the shores of the lake with a party of Adirondacks, and was advancing through the forest towards the lands of the Iroquois, when suddenly they came in sight of a strong party of that nation, who showed no disposition to decline an encounter. On the contrary, setting up their warwhoop, they advanced pell-mell to the attack. The Frenchmen, betaking themselves to an ambuscade, made ready to receive them with their fusils; while their savage allies awaited the foe with their usual coolness and contempt of danger. The Iroquois were the more numerous, and, elated by their apparent superiority, came down with the sweeping violence of a whirlwind. The Adirondacks seemed in their eyes as chaff; and with howls and hatchets they were just pouncing upon their prey, when the blazing fusils of Champlain and his comrades laid the foremost of the Iroquois warriors in the dust. The remainder fled into the wilderness with the most frantic outcries of astonishment and despair. It was the first volley of fire-arms that ever reached the ear or the heart of an Iroquois—the first that ever startled the echoes of that lake, which was so soon destined to tremble beneath the bellowing thunders of navies. They were defeated they knew not how; but they retired to the depths of the forest, muttering the deadliest vows of revenge. It so happened that another collision of the same kind occurred soon after on the Saurel—a little river, much broken by rapids, through which the waters of the lake make their way to the sea. There was among the Algonquins a bold and dashing chief whose name was Pisquaret. He had made an incursion against the Iroquois, and was laden with the scalps which he had taken from an Indian village which he surprised at night and completely destroyed. As he was navigating the rapids of the Saurel with his Adirondacks and several Frenchmen, he was surprised by a powerful armament of Iroquois, who immediately bore down upon him, with great advantage from the current. The treacherous Algonquins feigned to give themselves up for lost, and, setting up the death-song of the Adirondacks, appeared to await their inevitable fate. The Frenchmen, throwing themselves flat in the batteaux, and resting the muzzles of their carbines upon the gunnels, coolly calculated the effects of the coming discharge; but Pisquaret and his warriors raised their voices in chanting the victories of their tribe, inflaming the Iroquois by vaunts of injuries which they had done them, and defying them in return not to spare any torture in seeing how the Algonquins could die. The exasperated foe was just pealing the war-cry, when the deadly blaze of the carbines changed their exultation in a moment to howls of agony and dismay. But these were tricks which could not be repeated; and, long after, the empire of the Grande Monarque paid dearly for these frolics in the unpruned wilderness. Those who are fond of tracing the greatest political events and changes to accidents inconsiderable in themselves, have maintained that the first volley of fire-arms that startled the echoes of Lake Champlain, decided the fate and fixed the limits of French dominion in America. Nor is this theory to be lightly dismissed as fanciful; for it cannot be doubted that the subsequent spread of the Anglo-Saxon race over the hunting-grounds of the Mohawks, and through them to the further west, was owing to the favourable treaties which the English were able to effect with the Iroquois in the days of their power,—treaties which, had they been secured by the French, would have opened the whole region now called New York to their countrymen, and filled it with a mongrel population under the absolute control of Jesuits and political adventurers. Nor can any thing be ascertained more decisive of what was at first a game and a problem, than the collisions I have described. The Iroquois soon found out the secret of their discomfiture, and associated the name of a Frenchman with that of the Algonquins in their inveterate hatred. And when they in turn found Pale-faces to seek their alliance, and supply them with arms, they became the barrier of British enterprise against the encroachments of France; and so it was that the beautiful vale of Mohawk, the shores of Erie and Ontario, and the rugged mountains of Vermont, came to be filled with the sons of Englishmen, and not with the dwarfish overgrowth of the French Canadian provinces. The laws, civil institutions, and the religion of England thus found a footing in that great territory, which, as more or less influencing all the other members of the American confederacy, is called the empire state:—and perhaps the bells that ring for the English service throughout that region would have been tolling for the Latin mass, but for those early encounters on the shores of Lake Champlain.
Our delay at Whitehall was owing to a blunder of Freke’s. He had assured us that we would certainly arrive in time to take the steamer down the lake to St John’s; but it had been several hours on its way when we arrived at the inn. Since the burning of a steamer several years before, there had been but one on these waters; and as it was now on its downward trip, it could not again leave Whitehall for several days. Here was a pretty mess for some half-dozen of us!
There was nothing for us but bedtime; and poor enough beds it brought us. I was up before the sun had found a chance to send a squint into the town over its rocky eastern wall; and I wonder not that the sun is slow to visit it, for it is altogether a disagreeable hole. For this I was unprepared. Whitehall hath a royal prestige, and the notion of the head of a lake had given me the pleasing expectation of a picturesque little harbour, and a romantic water view. There is nothing of the sort. The harbour is well called the basin; and Wood-creek, the canal, and the lake, just here, are all ditches together. Vessels of different sorts and sizes lie huddled and crowded at their confluence, and the waters are precisely of the colour ofcafé-au-lait! Shade of merry Charles, how came they to change Skenesborough into Whitehall?
I have compared the ditch-water tocafé-au-lait; but all I can say of my breakfast is, that its coffee was not comparable to ditch-water. Freke was despatched to look us out a vessel willing to take us any where, for staying here was out of the question. He had given us the Indian name of the place asKaw-ko-kaw-na, assuring us that this euphonious polysyllable was good Iroquois forthe place where they catch fish. This little item of knowledge proved to us a dangerous thing, for it suggested a fishing excursion to fill up the hours of Freke’s anticipated absence. We rowed ourselves for some distance along a narrow channel, with marshes on both sides, which looked like the stronghold of that cohort of agues and fevers which, since the days of Prometheus, have delighted in burning and shaking the race of mortals. Wood-creek throws itself into the basin with a foaming cataract of waters; and beyond the marshes are precipitous walls of rocks, that confine the view. These rocks they call the Heights; and I doubt not they would look well at a distance, but the mischief is, there is no viewing them in so favourable a way. They rise like a natural Bastile, and so near your nose, that your only prospect is perpendicular; and you are consequently obliged to think more of your nose than the prospect. In the moonlight, the evening before, I did think there was something magnificent about the Heights; but this impression, like other visions of the night, did not survive the daybreak. I should think a geologist or a stone-mason might find them interesting; and an unprincipled inhabitant of Whitehall, out of patience with life in such a place, or emulous of the Lesbian Sappho, would doubtless find them suitable to the nefarious purpose of breaking his neck. This is all I can say for them; and as for the fishing excursion, we soon gave it up, and paddled back to the quay, out of patience with Freke for his instructions in Indian philology, and heartily tired of attempting to catch fish in Kaw-ko-kaw-na.
Freke, for once in his life, had been employed to some purpose. He met us on the quay, and immediately conducted us to a gay little sloop, to which he had already transferred our luggage, and which was ready for a start down the lake to Plattsburgh. We were introduced to a raw-boned, barethroated Vermonter as “Captain Pusher,” and, ratifying the bargain of our commissary, were soon snugly on board his vessel; of which I regret that I forget the name, though I distinctly remember the letters that shone on the painted sterns we passed—such as the Macdonough, the Congress, the Green-Mountain-Boy, and the Lady of the Lake. Whatever was its name, its deck contained several baskets of vegetables and joints of meat, which gave us promise of a good dinner; and scarcely were we under weigh, before Sambo the cook began to pare turnips, and grin from ear to ear over savoury collops of mutton, which he was submitting to some incipient process of cookery.
We were favoured with a good breeze; but the channel of which I have spoken seemed to drag its length like an Alexandrine. We reached a place where it is so narrow, and makes an angle so abrupt, that there is a contrivance on the bank which steamers are obliged to employ in turning. It is best described by the name which has been given to it by the sailors, from
“A pigmy scraper wi’ his fiddle,Wha used at tryste and fairs to driddle,Wi’ hand on haunch, and upward e’e.”
“A pigmy scraper wi’ his fiddle,Wha used at tryste and fairs to driddle,Wi’ hand on haunch, and upward e’e.”
“A pigmy scraper wi’ his fiddle,Wha used at tryste and fairs to driddle,Wi’ hand on haunch, and upward e’e.”
“A pigmy scraper wi’ his fiddle,
Wha used at tryste and fairs to driddle,
Wi’ hand on haunch, and upward e’e.”
They call it the Fiddler’s Elbow; and as it seems the limit of Whitehall, we were glad to double the cape as speedily as possible. A squadron of ducks that were puddling in the dirty water of the marshes gave point to a quotation from Voltaire, with which one of our company paid his parting compliments toKaw-ko-kaw-na, as its author did to Holland—Adieu! canards, canailles, canaux.
After clearing this place, we found an object of interest in the decaying hulks of the two flotillas that came to an engagement in Plattsburgh bay, in the year 1814. The British and America galleys lay there rotting together, with many marks of the sharp action in which they had well borne their part. The more imposing proportions of Captain Downie’s flag-ship the Confiance arrested our particular attention. She was a sheer hulk, charred and begrimed by fire, and a verdant growth of grass was sprouting from her seams and honourable scars. A few years before, she was a gallant frigate, cruising upon the open lake, and bearing proudly in the fight the red-cross of St George. Her commander fell upon her deck in the first moment of the action; and after a fierce engagement, during which she received 105 round-shot in her hull, she was surrendered. There was something in the sight of these rival squadrons thus rotting side by side, that might have inspired a moralist. How many brave fellows that once trode their decks were likewise mouldering in the dust of death! But in another view of the matter there was something inspiring. They were a witness of peace between the two nations who hold Lake Champlain between them; and long may it be before either shall wish to recall them from the nothingness into which they have long since crumbled!
The lake becomes gradually wider, and though not remarkable for beauty, affords scenes to engage the eye and occupy the mind. It is rather river scenery, than what we naturally associate with lakes. On the left are the mountain ridges that divide its waters from those of Lake George; on the right, is the rocky boundary of Vermont. The lake occupies the whole defile, lying very nearly due north and south. As we approached Ticonderoga, the region became more mountainous, and the view was consequently more attractive. Before us on the east was Mount Independence, and just opposite, on the west, rose the bold height of Mount Defiance, completely covering the fortress, which we knew lurked behind it to the north. By the help of a good wind, we were not long in reaching the spot where the outlet of Lake George debouches. It comes into Lake Champlain, apparently from the north-west, at the foot of Mount Defiance; the lake making a bend and winding eastward; and between the lake and the outlet, on a sloping and partially wooded promontory of some hundred feet in height, rise the rough but picturesque ruins of Ticonderoga. They present an appearance not usual in American scenery; and having every charm of association which Indian, French, British, and patriotic warfare can throw around such places, are naturally enough endeared to Americans, and gratifying to the curiosity of travellers.
This fortress was originally built by the French, in 1756; and subsequently, until the ascent of Mount Defiance by Burgoyne proved its exposure to attack on that point, it was contested, captured, and recaptured, and held by French, English, and Americans, as a stronghold of mastery and power. It commanded the avenue to the Hudson, and the pass to Lake George. The name Ticonderoga, in which every ear must detect a significant beauty, is said to denote, in the Indian dialect, the noise of the cataracts in the outlet; but the French called the fort Carillon, and afterwards Vaudreuil, in honour of one of their governors in Acadie, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. In 1757, when Montcalm (who fell in the defence of Quebec two years afterwards) was making his expedition against the English forts on Lake George, he remained at this place awaiting that powerful reinforcement of savages, whose treachery and thirst for blood rendered the campaign so lamentably memorable. To one who stands, as I did, on that beautiful peninsula, and surveys the quiet scene of land and water—sails betokening civilised commerce, and a trading village in Vermont, exhibiting every mark of prosperous thrift—it seems incredible that within the lifetime of persons yet surviving, that very scene was alive with savage nations who called it their own, and gave it to whom they would; but of whom nothing remains but wild traditions, and the certainty that they have been. Yet, only forty-three years before British and American flotillas were contending for this lake, in sight of a village with spires, and with none other than civilised arts of war, the same waters were covered with two hundred canoes of Nipistingues, Abnakis, Amenekis, and Algonquins, paddling their way to the massacre of a British force in a fortress at the head of Lake George. From Father Roubaud, a Jesuit priest who accompanied them, the particulars of that expedition have been handed down. He describes the savages as bedaubed with green, yellow, and vermillion; adorned with glistening ornaments, the gifts of their allies; their heads shaven, saving their scalp-locks, which rose from their heads like crests, stiffened with tallow, and decorated with beads and feathers; their chiefs bedizened with finery, and each nation embarked under wild but appropriate ensigns. Such were the Christians with whom Father Roubaud travelled as chaplain, and whom he led against his fellow Christians like another Peter the Hermit pursuing Turks. It is the plague of Popery that it often expends itself in inspiring the deepest religious sentiment, without implanting the least religious principle. The Italian bandit kneels at a wayside crucifix, to praise God and the Virgin for the plunder he has taken with bloodshed; the Irish priest, at the altar, devotes to death his unoffending neighbours, with the very lips which, as he believes, have just enclosed the soul, body, and divinity of the world’s Redeemer; and the Jesuit missionary of New France had no scruple in consecrating with the most awful rites of religion, an expedition whose object was the scalps of baptised men, and whose results were the massacre of women and children. The holy father himself is particular to relate the fact that he celebrated a mass before the embarkation, for the express purpose of securing the Divine blessing, and he compliments the fervour with which the savages assisted at the solemnity! He had described the English to them as a race of blasphemers, and they, at least, were not to blame for embarking in the spirit of crusaders “against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens.” Daily, for a whole week, as the armament advanced, did the wily Jesuit land them on one of the many isles that gem the lower waters of Lake Champlain, on purpose to renew the august sacrament of the altar before their eyes: and he describes these savages as chanting the praises of the Lamb of God, with a fervour from which he augured the consummation of their character as Christians. At the end of a week, they descried with joy the French lilies as they waved over the walls of Carillon; and in order to make their approach more imposing, they immediately arranged their canoes under their ensigns, and advanced in battle array. From the height on which I stood, Montcalm beheld his allies, on a bright July morning, their hatchets and tomahawks gleaming in the sun; their standards and scalp-locks fluttering in the breeze; and their thousand paddles hurrying them through the waves of that beautiful water: such a sight as no eye will ever see again. To a nobleman fresh from the gallantries of Versailles, it must have been a spectacle full of wild and romantic interest; and the picture is altogether such a one as any imagination may delight to reproduce. Yet, when we reflect that it is even now but fourscore years and ten since such a scene was a terrible reality, how striking the reflection that it has as absolutely vanished from the earth, beyond the possibility of revival, as the display of tournaments, and the more formidable pageants of the Crusades.
The following year an expedition against this fort was made by the gallant Abercrombie, who approached it from Lake George, and endeavoured to take it by storm. It is commonly said that Lord Howe fell in this assault before the walls; but in fact he fell the day before, while leading an advanced guard through the forest. Ticonderoga was garrisoned by about four thousand men—French, Canadians, and Indians—and their entrenchments were defended by almost impregnable outworks. The British troops nevertheless made the attack with the greatest intrepidity, and in spite of a murderous fire, forced their way to the walls, and even scaled them, to be immediately cut down. But after repeated assaults, and the loss of two thousand men, General Abercrombie was forced to desist from the attempt; and the French kept the post for a time. It of course became English in the following year, when the French power in America was destroyed by the taking of Quebec.
I have already referred to its seizure by the eccentric Ethan Allen, on the breaking out of the American war in 1775. This officer was a native of Vermont, who had been an infidel preacher, and was notorious as the editor of the first deistical publication that ever issued from the American press. The revolution was hardly begun, when the province of Connecticut gave him a commission to capture Ticonderoga. With about three hundred of his hardy “Green-mountain-boys,” he was hastening to the spot, when he fell in with Arnold, bearing a similar commission from Massachusetts. After some dispute as to the command, Allen was made leader, and Arnold his assistant. They arrived by night on the Vermont shore, opposite the fort. There they found a lad who had been accustomed to visit the fort every day with provisions and pedlar’s wares, and crossing by his directions, without noise, they were shown a secret and covered entrance into the fort itself. Climbing up through this passage, Allen led his men within the walls, and drew them up in the area of the fortress, having silenced and disarmed the only sentry who guarded the entrance. The commander of the post, who hardly knew there was war, was actually startled from his sleep, by Allen’s demand for its surrender. The drowsy officer inquired—“By what authority?” And was answered by Allen, half in banter and half in bombastic earnest,—“In the name of the Great Jehovah, and of the Continental Congress!” To one in his straits, with a sword at his naked breast, such a reply, however unintelligible, was sufficiently overpowering, and the post was surrendered without resistance. Its reduction in 1777, by Burgoyne, has been already described; but Ticonderoga is for ever endeared to Americans from the fact, that the flag of their independence was so early given to the breeze from its summit.
A guide, who called himself Enoch Gold, led me over the ruins. He pretended to have been with St Clair, and to have seen Burgoyne and his men on Mount Defiance. He showed us the way through which Allen gained his entrance, and took us down into the vaults and magazines. A subterranean apartment was shown as a kitchen, and the old fellow declared he had eaten bread hot out of its ovens. We gave thesoi-disantveteran the liberal rewards of a hero; but I suspect we were paying him for his imagination, rather than for his hardships.
The shadows of the fortress were beginning to lengthen on the lake before we returned to our bark. The mountains of Vermont, which are mostly well wooded, looked brightly green in the broad sunshine, and tempted us to wish we had time for an excursion to their heights. It was afterwards my happiness to go into Vermont, on a visit to Lake Dunmore, which lies among its mountains, and supplies delicious fish. I found it a truly Arcadian region, abounding with streams and pasturages, and rich in flocks and herds. It breeds a rugged race of men, with some characteristics decidedly Swiss. It is said, indeed, that a Switzer, who had come to settle in America, preferred these diminutive Alps, with their lakes and mountaineer population, to any other part of the country; and, fixing his dwelling accordingly, soon ceased to be home-sick, and sigh at theranz des vaches.
Crown Point, the twin sister of Ticonderoga, is only ten miles beyond; but we did not reach it as soon as we had expected, for the wind had changed, and we were obliged to tack. Every now and then, the man at the helm, which was our gallant captain himself, would cry out,—“Heads!” and the boom would come sweeping across the deck, with woe to the head that wore a hat, or did not bow soon enough to save it. Several times I expected to see our friend Freke carried overboard bodily, and engulfed like another Corlaer; for so profoundly was he engaged with his cigar, as he sat, or rather squatted, on the hatches, that the captain’s monotonous warning failed to alarm him till the whole company had echoed “Heads!” and, with other demonstrations of affectionate solicitude, forced him to fall on all-fours.
At Crown Point the lake greatly improves. The water appears much clearer, and the width of the lake is nearly if not quite fourfolded. It continues to expand till it becomes ten or twelve miles in breadth, and islands begin to be numerous. To the northward the higher peaks of the Green Mountains stretch away with magnificent outlines; and on the west, a bleak and craggy range of hills, which are said to harbour even yet the wolf and the bear, approach, and then recede from the shore. Here, as early as 1731, the French built Fort Frederick, as the first move towards the seizure and claim of the whole surrounding territory; and from this point they made their bloody and atrocious incursions into New England, and towards the Mohawk, or dismissed their hireling savages to do it for them. The recesses of Fort Frederick are believed to have rivalled the dungeons of the Inquisition in scenes of misery and crime. In its gloomy cells were plotted the inhuman massacres which drenched the American settlements in blood. There, it is said, the Indian butchers received their commissions to burn, tomahawk, and scalp; and there, in the presence of Jesuit fathers, or at least with their connivance, was the gleaming gold counted down to the savages in return for their infernal trophies of success; the silvery locks of the aged colonist, the clotted tresses of women, and the crimsoned ringlets of the child. In 1759 this detestable hold of grasping and remorseless tyranny was blown up, and abandoned by the French to General Amherst. Soon after, the British Government began to erect a fortification in the vicinity of the ruins, and a noble work it was; though it proved of no use at all, after the enormous sum of two millions sterling had been expended on its walls of granite, and ditches blasted in the solid rock. The exploits of Arnold and Sir Guy Carleton in this vicinity have been already described. Since the close of the war of the Revolution, the costly works at Crown Point have been suffered to fall into decay; and they are now piles of ruin, covered with weeds, among which the red berries of the sumach are conspicuously beautiful in their time.
Though “Captain Pusher” made a landing at this point to procure a little milk for our tea, we did not go ashore, and were soon on our way once more with a freer prospect, and perhaps with somewhat expanded spirits. The setting sun, in the clear climate of America, is in fair weather almost always beautiful; and my recollections of the rosy and purple tints with which it adorned the feathery flakes of cloud that floated around the peaks of the Green Mountains, are to this day almost as bright in memory as when they first made my heart leap up to behold them in the soft summer sky of Vermont. As the lake grew wider and the darkness deeper, there was of course less and less to be seen; and the noble scenery at Burlington, where the width of the lake is greatest, and the shores assume a bolder and higher character of beauty, was to our great regret unavoidably passed in the night. Still, there is something in starlight upon the waters, in new and romantic regions, which peculiarly inspires me. The same constellations which one has long been accustomed to view in familiar scenes and associations, come out like old friends in the heavens of strange and untried lands; shining witnesses to the brotherhood of differing nations, and to the impartial benevolence and unsleeping love of God. But I have no reason to regret that the only night I ever passed on Lake Champlain was mostly spent in watching; for long before I was tired of gazing at Orion and the Pleiads, I was rewarded by the sight of one of the most splendid auroras that I ever beheld. In a moment, the whole northern heaven was illuminated with columnar light; and the zenith seemed to rain it down, so to speak—while the surface of the lake reflecting it, gave us, to our own eyes, the appearance of sailing in some bright fluid, midway between a vault and an abyss of fire. This display of glory continued to flash and quiver above us for several hours. There were, in quick succession, sheets and spires and pencils of variegated light, rolling and tremulous, wavy and flame-like, blazoning heaven’s azure with something like heraldic broidery and colours. Towards morning, the intense cold and heavy mountain dews drove me for a season to my berth; but I was on deck again in time to see the moon make her heliacal rising over the eastern peaks, in the wan paleness of her last quarter. The approach of day was attended with a fog; but it soon thinned off, and we made Plattsburgh in good time. Here we parted with our vessel, and her worthy commander; and though we neither gave him a piece of plate nor voted him an accomplished gentleman, we left him with such wishes as, if they have been fulfilled, have long since removed him from the helm of his sloop, and the waters of Lake Champlain, to a snug little cot at Burlington, and the company of any number of rosy little Green-Mountain boys and their interesting mother.
Plattsburgh is situated on the western bank of the lake, just where the crescent shore of a bold peninsula begins to curve round a broad semicircular bay, several miles in circumference, and of liberal depth. Here the American squadron, under Commodore Macdonough, was anchored on the 11th of September 1814, in order to assist the land forces under General Macomb, in repelling an expected attack from the British troops under Sir George Prevost. The English flotilla had been ordered up from the Isle-aux-Noix to engage Macdonough, and divert his fire from the shore; and accordingly, at about eight o’clock in the morning, was seen off the peninsula of Cumberland Head, and hailed by both armies with vociferous acclamations. The cannonade instantly began from the ships and on the land, and for two hours and twenty minutes the naval engagement was continued with the most stubborn resolution on both sides. Though the battle on shore was sorely contested, the action between the squadrons was anxiously watched by both armies, and by thousands of deeply interested spectators, who surveyed the field and the fleets from the neighbouring heights. Macdonough’s flag-ship, the Saratoga, was twice on fire; and though Downie had fallen in the first moment of the conflict, the Confiance had succeeded in dismantling all the starboard guns of her antagonist, when the bower-cable of the Saratoga was cut, and a stern-anchor dropped, on which she rounded to, and presented a fresh broadside. The Confiance was unable to imitate this manœuvre, and she was obliged to strike, the remainder of the flotilla soon following her example. A few of the British galleys escaped, but as there was not another mast standing in either fleet, they could neither be followed by friends or by foes. The decision of the contest was vociferously cheered from the shore; and Sir George, perceiving the fate of his fleet, commenced a retreat, having suffered the loss of nearly a thousand men. This brilliant action in Cumberland Bay has made the name of Macdonough the pride and glory of Lake Champlain; and deservedly so, for his professional merit appears to have been no greater than his private worth. The brave but unfortunate Downie, who, with a squadron wanting a full third of being as strong as that of his antagonist, maintained this gallant contest, sleeps in a quiet grave at Plattsburgh, under a simple monument erected by the affection of a sister. He is always mentioned with respectful regret; but Macdonough is, of course, the hero of every panegyric. An anecdote which we heard at Whitehall gives me a higher opinion of the latter, however, than all that has been justly said of his merits as an officer. A few minutes before the action commenced, he caused his chaplain to offer the appropriate prayers in the presence of all his fleet—the men standing reverently uncovered, and the commander himself kneeling upon the deck. An officer of the Confiance is said to have observed this becoming, but somewhat extraordinary, devotion through his glass, and to have reported it to Captain Downie, who seemed to be immediately struck with a foreboding of the result. The sailors on our little sloop told us another story of the action with great expressions of delight. It seems the hen-coop of the Saratoga was struck in the beginning of the action, and a cock becoming released flew into the rigging, and, flapping his wings, crowed lustily through the fire and smoke. The gunners gave chanticleer a hearty cheer, and taking the incident as an omen of victory, stood to their guns with fresh spirit and enthusiasm. Smaller things than this have turned the tide of battles far greater, and more important to nations and the world.
We spent a day at Plattsburgh surveying the field and the fort, and picking up stories of the fight. Relics of the battle were every where visible; and grape-shot and cannon-balls were lying here and there in the ditches. The evening was fair, and we drove out to an Indian encampment on the peninsula, the first thing of the kind I ever beheld. Entering one of the wigwams, or huts, I found the squaws engaged in weaving small baskets of delicate withes of elm, dyed and stained with brilliant vegetable-colours. An infant strapped to a flat board, and set like a cane or umbrella against the stakes of the hut, was looking on with truly Indian stoicism. The mother said her child never cried; but whether it runs in the blood, or is the effect of discipline, is more than I could learn. On the beach were canoes of bark, which had been newly constructed by the men. A squaw, who desired us to purchase, lifted one of them with her hand; yet it could have carried six or seven men with safety on the lake. We observed that males and females alike wore crucifixes, and were evidently Christians, however degraded and ignorant. They spoke French, so as to be easily understood, and some English. These poor and feeble creatures were the last of the Iroquois.
Next day, in post-coaches, we came into Canada. At St John’s, where we dined, Freke boisterously drank to his Majesty. So deep were the loyal feelings of our friend, however, that he continued his bumpers to “all the royal family,” which, though not quite so great an achievement then as it would be now, was quite sufficient to consign him to the attentions of our host, where we left him without an adieu. We were much amused by the novelties of our road, so decidedly Frenchified, and unlike any thing in the States. Women, in the costume of French peasants, were at work in the fields; and we saw one engaged in bricklaying at the bottom of a ditch or cellar. The men in caps, smock-frocks, and almost always with pipes in their mouths, drove by in lightcharettes, or waggons with rails at the sides, drawn by stout little ponies of a plump yet delicate build, and for cart-horses remarkably fleet. For the first time in my life I observed also dogs harnessed in the Esquimaux manner, and drawing miniaturecharettes, laden with bark or faggots. Every thing reminded us that we were not in England or America, but only in Acadie.
We were jaunting merrily along, when vociferous halloos behind us caused our whip to pull up with a jerk. A Yorkshire man, in terror of footpads, began to bellowDrive on!and our heads were thrust forth in farcical preparation for a stand-and-deliver assault, when a waggon was discovered approaching us, in which were two men, one without a hat, his hair streaming like a meteor, and both bawlingStop, stop!like the post-boy at the heels of John Gilpin. In a moment we recognised Freke. With any thing but a volley of compliments, he assailed the driver for carrying off his luggage, which sure enough was found in the boot, with his splendid initials inscribed in a constellation of brass nails. His hat had been blown off in the pursuit; but after adorning himself with a turban, he was again admitted to our company, though not without some reluctance expressed or understood. The fumes of his dinner had not entirely subsided; and I am sorry to say, that his enthusiasm for his king and country was about in inverse proportion to the honour he did them by his extraordinary appearance. I wish it had exhausted itself in song and sentiment; but it was evident that a strong desire to fight the whole universe was fast superseding the exhilaration of reunion with his friends. Unfortunately a poor Canadian, in passing with hischarette, struck the wheels of our coach; and though he alone was the sufferer, being knocked into a ditch instantaneously, Freke was upon him in a second, inflicting such a drubbing as reminded me forcibly of a similar incident in Horace’s route to Brundusium. It was with difficulty that we succeeded in reducing our hero to a sense of propriety, and compelling him to console the astounded provincial with damages. The sufferer, who thanked him in French for the not over generous remuneration, seemed altogether at a loss to know for what he had been beaten; and I am happy to say that the politeness of the peasant seemed to restore our military friend to consciousness, and a fear that he had behaved like a brute. At the next stage he provided himself with a Canadian cap, and on resuming his seat overwhelmed us with apologies; so that we were compelled to forgive the aberration, which was doubtless, as he said, attributable solely to his loyal concern for the health of his Majesty, and to an overflow of spirits at finding himself once more in the pale of the British empire.
It was late in the afternoon when we arrived at Laprairie, that little old Canadian town on the St Lawrence, where passengers take the steamer to Montreal. Here was celebrating some kind of fête which had brought a procession of nuns into the street, around whom were congregated groups of smiling children in their holiday dresses. I entered a church, which I found nearly deserted. A few of the poorer sort of persons were at prayer, saying theiravesandpatersby the rosary—not, as is sometimes supposed, through voluntary devotion, but in performance of appointed penances, which they make haste to get through. Some funeral ceremony seemed to be in preparation; for the church was dark, and acatafalquenear the entrance gave me a startling sensation of awe. All that Laprairie could show us was soon beheld; but our usual fortune had attended us to the last, and we were again too late for the steamer. It would not cross again till the morrow; yet there was the city of Montreal distinctly visible before our eyes. From the quay we could discern, down the river, the tin roof of the convent of Grayfriars, glittering brightly in the descending sun. In fact, the whole city was glittering, for every where its spires and roofs shone with a sheeting of the Cornish material, which somehow or other, in this climate, seems to resist oxidisation. In other respects, the scene was not remarkable, except that there was the river—the broad, free, and magnificent St Lawrence, with its rapids and its isles. Nuns’ Isle was above us, and abreast of the city, with its fortress, was the green St Helen’s,said to bemusical with the notes of birds, and fragrant with its flowers and verdure.
We were regretting the premature departure of the steamer, when one of our party came to announce that some Canadian boatmen were willing to take us over in a batteau, if we would embark without delay. It was nine miles, and the rapids were high; but we were informed that our ferrymen were born to the oar, and might confidently be trusted with our lives. We therefore lost no time in stowing ourselves, and part of our luggage, into a mere shell of a boat, manned by half-a-dozen Canadians, who pulled us into deep water with an air and a motion peculiarly their own. Once fairly embarked, there was something not unpleasant in finding ourselves upon the St Lawrence in a legitimate manner; for steamers were yet a novelty in those waters, and were regarded by the watermen with the same kind of contempt which an old English mail-coachman feels, in the bottom of his soul, for stokers and railways. Finding ourselves, by a lucky accident, thus agreeably launched, we naturally desired to hear a genuine Canadian boat-song, and were not long in making the oarsmen understand that an augmentation of their pay would be cheerfully afforded, if they would but favour us with music. Every one has heard the beautiful words of Tom Moore, inspired by a similar adventure. He says of the familiar air to which they are set, that though critics may think it trifling, it is for him rich with that charm which is given by association to every little memorial of by-gone scenes and feelings. I cannot say that the air of ourvoyageurswas the same; yet I am quite inclined to think that the words which he gives as the burden of the Canadian boat-song which he heard so often, were those to which we were treated. Barbarous, indeed, was their dialect if they attempted to give us any thing so definite as the chanson,
“Dans mon chemin j’ai rencontréDeux cavaliers, trés-bien montés;”
“Dans mon chemin j’ai rencontréDeux cavaliers, trés-bien montés;”
“Dans mon chemin j’ai rencontréDeux cavaliers, trés-bien montés;”
“Dans mon chemin j’ai rencontré
Deux cavaliers, trés-bien montés;”
but there was a perpetually recurringrefrainwhich sounded likedo—daw—donny-day, and which I suppose to be a sort of Frenchfol-de-rol, but which I can easily conceive to have been, as our English Anacreon reports it—
“A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais jouer,A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais danser.”
“A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais jouer,A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais danser.”
“A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais jouer,A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais danser.”
“A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais jouer,
A l’ombre d’un bois je m’en vais danser.”
Rude as was the verse and the music, however, I must own that, in its place on that majestic river, as we were approaching the rapids whose white caps were already leaping about our frail bark, with the meditative light of sunset throwing a mellow radiance over all, there was something that appealed very strongly to the imagination in that simple Canadian air. I am not musical, and cannot recall it; yet even now it will sometimes ring in my ears, when I go back in fancy to that bright season of my life when I too was avoyageur; and I have often been happy that accident thus gave me the pleasure of hearing what I shall never hear again, and what travellers on the St Lawrence are every year less and less likely to hear repeated. Indeed, I am almost able to adopt every word which Moore has so poetically appended to his song. “I remember,” says he, “when we entered at sunset upon one of those beautiful lakes into which the St Lawrence so grandly and so unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest conceptions of the finest masters have never given me; and now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip of our oars in the St Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the rapids, and all the new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting voyage.”
But our trip was not all poetry and song. When we were fairly upon those bright-looking rapids, we found our little nutshell quite too heavily loaded, and were forced to feel our evident danger with somewhat of alarm. The billows whirled and tossed us about, till our Canadians themselves became frightened, and foolishly throwing up their oars, began to cross themselves and to call on the Virgin and all the saints. The tutelar of the St Lawrence is said to inhabit hard by, at St Anne’s,—but such was our want of confidence in his power to interfere, that we met this outbreak of Romish devotion with a protest so vehement that it would have surprised the celebrated diet of Spires. Certain it is that, on resuming their oars, the fellows did much more for us than their aspirations had accomplished, when unaided by efforts. We soon began to enjoy the dancing of our batteau, which gradually became less violent, and was rather inspiring. Still, as no one but a coward would sport in safety with dangers which were once sufficient to appal, let me confess that I believe I should be thankful that my journey and my mortal life were not ended together in those dangerous waters. I trust it was not without some inward gratitude to Him who numbers the very hairs of our head, that we found ourselves again in smooth tides, and were soon landed in safety on the quay at Montreal.