The Frenchman was, however, adapted, by his nature, to win his way, either by friendship or by force, among the warlike and untutored sons of the forest. Accommodating himself with ease to the nomadic life of the tribes; contrasting his gay and lively temperament with the solemn taciturnity and immoveable phlegm of the savage; dazzling him with the splendour of his religious ceremonies; abstemious in his diet, and coinciding in his recklessness of life; equally a warrior and equally a hunter; unmoved by the dangers of canoe navigation, for which he seemed as well adapted as the Red Man himself; the enterprising Gaul was everywhere feared and everywhere welcome.
The Briton, on the contrary, cold as the Indian, but not so cunning; accustomed to comparative luxury and ease; despising the child of the woods as an inferior caste; accompanied in his wars or wanderings by no outward and visible sign of the religion he would fain implant; unaccustomed to yield even to his equals in opinion; unprepared for alternate seasons of severe fasting or riotous plenty; and wholly without that sanguine temper which causes mirth and song to break forth spontaneously amidst the most painful toil and privations; was not the best of pioneers in the wilderness, and was, therefore, not received with open arms by the American aboriginal nations, until experience had taught the sterling value of his character, or, rather, until it became thoroughly apparent.
To this day, where, in the interminable wilderness, all trace of French influence is buried, the Indian reveres the recollections of his forefathers respecting that gallant race; and, wherever the canoe now penetrates, the solemn and silent shades of the vast West, the Bois Brulé, or mixed offspring of the Indian and the Frenchman, may be heard awakening the slumber of ages with carols derived from the olden France, as he paddles swiftly and merrily along.
Such was the Frenchman, such the French Canadian; let us therefore give due honour to their descendants, and let not any feeling of distrust or dislike enter our minds against a race of men, who, from my long acquaintance with them, are, I am fully persuaded, the most innocent, the most contented, and the most happy yeomanry and peasantry of the whole civilized world.
I have observed already, in a former work, that, as far as my experience of travelling in the wilds of Canada goes, and it is rather extensive, I should always in future journeys prefer to provide myself with the true French Canadian boatmen, or voyageurs, or, in default of them, with Indians. With either I should feel perfectly at ease; and, having crossed the mountain waves of Huron in a Canada trading birch canoe with both, should have the less hesitation in trusting myself in the trackless forest, under their sole guidance and protection.
Honneur à Jean Baptiste!C'est un si bon enfant!
Penetanguishene—The Nipissang Cannibals, and a Friendly Brother in the Wilderness.
Penetanguishene—The Nipissang Cannibals, and a Friendly Brother in the Wilderness.
Penetanguishene, pronounced by the Indians Pen-et-awn-gu-shene, "the Bay of the White Rolling Sand," is a magnificent harbour, about three miles in length, narrow and land-locked completely by hills on each side. Here is always a steam-vessel of war, of a small class, with others in ordinary, stores and appliances, a small military force, hospital and commissariat, an Indian interpreter, and a surgeon.
But the presents are no longer given out here, as in 1837 and previously, to the wild tribes; so that, to see the Indian in perfection, you must take the annual government trader, and sail to the Grand Manitoulin Island, about a hundred miles on the northern shore of Lake Huron, where, at Manitou-a-wanning, there is a large settlement of Indian people, removed thither by the government to keep them from being plundered of their presents by the Whites, who were in the habit of giving whiskey and tobacco for their blankets, rifles, clothing, axes, knives, and other useful articles, with which, by treaty, they are annually supplied.
The Great Manitoulin, or Island of the Great Spirit, is an immense island, and, being good land, it is hoped that the benevolent intentions of the government will be successful. An Indian agent, or superintendent, resides with them; and a steamboat, called the Goderich, has made one or two trips to it, and up to the head of Lake Huron, last summer.
I went to Penetanguishene with the intention of meeting this vessel and going with her, but fear that her enterprise will be a failure. She was chartered to run from Sturgeon Bay, about nineteen miles beyond the narrows of Lake Simcoe, in connection with the mail or stage from Toronto, and the Beaver steamboat, plying on Lake Simcoe.
From Sturgeon Bay she went to Penetanguishene, and then to St. Vincent Settlement, and Owen's Sound, on Lake Huron, where a vast body of emigrants are locating. From Owen's Sound, she coasted and doubled Cabot's Head, and then ran down three hundred miles of the shore of Lake Huron to Goderich, Sarnia, Fort Gratiot, Windsor, and Detroit, with an occasional pleasure-trip to Manitoulin, St. Joseph's, and St. Mary's; so that all the north shore of Lake Huron could be seen, and the passengers might take a peep at Lake Superior, by going up the rapids of St. Mary to Gros Cap. But a variety of obstacles occurred in this immense voyage, although ultimately they will no doubt be overcome.
By starting in the Toronto stage early in the morning, the traveller slept on board the Goderich at Sturgeon Bay, a good road having been formed from the Narrows, although, by some strange oversight, this road terminates in a marsh six hundred feet from the bank to the island, on which the wharf and storehouse built for the steamer are erected. This caused much inconvenience to the passengers.
The stage went, or goes, once a week, on Monday, to Holland Landing, thirty six miles, meets the Beaver, which then crosses Lake Simcoe to the Narrows, a small village, thriving very fast since it is no longer a government Indian station, fifty miles, and there lands the travellers, who proceed by stage to Sturgeon Bay, nineteen more, and sleep on board the Goderich, arriving about eight p.m. The vessel gets under weigh, and reaches Penetanguishene by six in the morning: thus the whole route from Toronto, which takes three days by the land road, is performed in twenty-four hours.
But there are drawbacks: the Georgian Bay, between Sturgeon Bay and Penetanguishene, is, as I have already observed, dangerous at night, or in a fog. At Owen's Sound, the population is not far enough advanced to build the extensive wharf requisite, or to lay in sufficient supplies of fuel, and thus great detention was experienced there. At Penetanguishene, the wharf is not taken far enough into deep water for the vessel to lie at, and thus she usually grounded in the mud, and detention again arose. Then again, after rounding Cabot's Head and getting into the open lake, the coast is very dangerous, having not one harbour, until we arrive at the artificial one of Goderich, which is a pier-harbour; for the Saugeen is a roadstead full of rocks, and cannot be approached by a large vessel.
If, therefore, any thing happens to the machinery, and a steamer has to trust to her sails, the westerly winds which prevail on Lake Huron and blow tremendously, raising a sea that must be seen to be conceived of in a fresh-water lake, she has only to keep off the shore out into the main lake, and avoid Goderich altogether, by making for the St. Clair River.
However, the vessel did perform the voyage successfully seven times; and in summer it may do, and, if it does do, will be of incalculable benefit to the Huron tract, and the new settlements of the far west of Canada.
I am, however, afraid that the railroad schemes for opening the country to the south of this tract will for some time prevent a profitable steamboat speculation, although vast quantities of very superior fish are caught and cured now on the shores of Huron, such as salmon-trout and white fish, which, when properly salted or dried, are equal to any salt sea-fish whatever.
The Canadian French, the half-breeds, and the Indians, are chiefly engaged in this trade, which promises to become one of great importance to the country, and is already much encroached upon by adventurers from the United States.
The herring, as far as I can learn, ascends the St. Lawrence no higher than the Niagara River, but Ontario abounds with them and with salmon; a smaller species of white fish also has of late years spread itself over that lake, and is now sold plentifully in the Kingston market, where it was never seen only seven years ago. It is a beautiful fish, firm and well tasted, but rather too fat.
A farmer on the Penetanguishene road has introduced English breeds of cattle and sheep of the best kind. He was, and perhaps still is, contractor for the troops, and his stock is well worth seeing; he lives a few miles from Barrie. Thus the garrison is constantly supplied with finer meat than any other station in Canada, although more out of the world and in the wilderness than any other; and, as fish is plentiful, the soldiers and sailors of Queen Victoria in the Bay of the White Rolling Sand live well.
I was agreeably surprised to find at this remote post that only one soldier drank anything stronger than beer or water; and of course very little of the former, owing to the expense of transport, was to be had. The soldier that did drink spirits did not drink to excess.
How did all this happen in a place where drunkenness had been proverbial? The soldiers, who were of the 82nd regiment, had been selected for the station as married men. Their young commanding officer patronized gardening, cricketing, boating, and every manly amusement, but permitted no gambling. He formed a school for the soldiers and their families, and, in short, he knew how to manage them, and to keep their minds engaged; for they worked and played, read and reasoned; and so whiskey, which is as cheap as dirt there, was not a temptation which they could not resist. In winter, he had sleighing, snowshoeing, and every exercise compatible with the severe weather and the very deep snow incident to the station.
I feel persuaded that, now government has provided such handsome garrison libraries of choice and well selected books for the soldiers, if a ball alley, or racket court, and a cricket ground were attached to every large barrack, there would not only be less drinking in the army, but that vice would ultimately be scorned, as it has been within the last twenty years by the officers. A hard-drinking officer will scarcely be tolerated in a regiment now, simply because excessive drinking is a low, mean vice, being the indulgence of self for unworthy motives, and beneath the character of a gentleman. To be brought to a court-martial for drunkenness is now as disgraceful and injurious to the reputation of an officer as it was to be tried for cowardice, and therefore seldom occurs in the British army.
The vice of Canada is, however, drink; and Temperance Societies will not mend it. Their good is very equivocal, unless combined with religion, as there is only one Father Matthew in the world, nor is it probable that there will be another.
Penetanguishene is at present theultima Thuleof the British military posts in North America. It borders on the great wilderness of the North, and on that backbone of primary rocks running from the Alleghanies, across the thousand islands of the St. Lawrence, to the unknown interior of the northern verge of Lake Superior.
Penetanguishene will not, however, be long theultima Thuleof British military posts in Western Canada, as a large and most important settlement is making at Owen's Sound, on Lake Huron, connected by a long road through the wilderness with Saugeen river, another settlement on the shores of that lake, to prevent the necessity of the difficult water-passage round Cabot's Head; and a steamboat has been put on the route by the Canada Company, to connect Saugeen with Goderich.
The government, up to the 31st of December, 1845, had sold or granted 54,056 acres of land at Owen's Sound, of which 1,168 acres had been chopped or cleared of the forest last year alone; and 1,787 acres of wheat and 1,414 acres of oats had been harvested in 1845. There were 483 oxen, 596 cows, 433 young cattle, and 26 horses; and the population was 1,950, of which 759 were males above sixteen, and 399 males under sixteen, with 395 females above, and 399 under, the same age.
In this new colony there were 1,005 Presbyterians, 195 Roman Catholics, 173 Methodists, 167 of the Church of England, 67 Baptists, 8 Quakers. The other sects or divisions were not enumerated with sufficient accuracy to detail; and Owen's Sound, being as yet buried in the Bush, cannot be visited by casual travellers, unless when an occasional steamer plies from Penetanguishene. There is yet no post-office; but 1,500 newspapers and letters were received or sent in 1845; and two flour-mills and two saw-mills are erected and in use. Three schooners of a small class ply in summer to Penetanguishene. The village is at the head of Owen's Sound, fifteen miles from Cape Croker, and is named Sydenham, containing already thirty-six houses. Government gives 50 acres free, on condition of actual settlement, and that one third is cleared and cropped in four years, when a deed is obtained: another fifty is granted by paying 8s. an acre within three years, 9s. within six years, 10s. an acre within nine years. The soil is good and climate healthy.
North-north-west and north-east of Penetanguishene, all is wood, rock, lake, river, and desert, in which, towards the French river, the Nipissang Indian, the most degraded and helpless of the Red Men, wanders, and obtains scanty food, for game is rare, although fish is more plentiful.
An exploring expedition into this country was sent by Sir John Colborne, in 1835, with a view of ascertaining its capabilities for settlement. An officer of engineers, Captain Baddely, was the astronomer and geologist; a naval officer the pilot; with surveyors and a hardy suite.
They left Lake Simcoe in the township of Rama from the Severn river, and, going a short journey eastward, struck the division line of the Home and the Newcastle districts, which commences between the townships of Whitby and Darlington, on the shore of Lake Ontario, and runs a little to the westward of north in a straight course, until it strikes the south-east borders of Lake Nipissang, embracing more than two degrees of latitude, not one half of which has ever been fully explored.
The plan adopted was to cut out this line, and diverge occasionally from it to the right and left, until a great extent of unknown land on the east, and the distance between it and Lake Huron, which contained a large portion of the Chippewa Indian hunting-grounds, was thoroughly surveyed.
In performing so very arduous a task, much privation and many obstacles occurred—forests, swamps, rivers, lakes, rocky ridges—all had to be passed.
To the eastward of the main line, and for some distance to the westward, good land appeared; and, as the agricultural probe was freely used, chance was not permitted to sway. The agricultural probe is an instrument which I first saw slung over my friend Baddely's shoulders, and of his invention. It is a sort of huge screw gimblet, or auger, which readily penetrates the ground by being worked with a long cross-handle, and brings up the subsoil in a groove to a considerable depth. Specimens of the soil and of rocks and minerals were collected, and a plan was adopted which is a useful lesson to future explorers. A small piece of linen or cotton, about four inches square, had two pieces of twine sewed on opposite corners, and the cloth was marked in printers' ink, from stamps, with figures from 1 to 500. A knapsack was provided, and the specimens were reduced to a size small enough to be carefully tied up in one of these numbered square cloths; and, as the specimens were collected, they were entered in the journal as to number and locality, strata, dip, and appearance. Thus a vast number of small specimens could be brought on a man's back, and examined at leisure.
The toils, however, of such a journey in the vast and untrodden wilderness are very severe, and the privations greater. For, in this tract, on the side next to Lake Huron, there was an absence of game which scarcely ever occurs in the forest near the great lakes. With ice forming and snow commencing, and with every prospect of being frozen in, a portion of the explorers missed their supplies, and subsisted for three whole days and nights on almost nothing; a putrid deer's liver, hanging on a bush near a recent Indian trail, was all the animal food they had found; but this even hunger could scarcely tempt them to cook. I was exploring in a more civilized country near them; but even there our Indian guide was at fault, and, from want of proper precaution, our provision failed. A small fish amongst four or five persons was one day's luxury.
The Nipissang Indians, a very degraded and wretched tribe, live in this desolate region, and, it is said, have sometimes been so reduced for want of game as to resort to cannibalism. We heard that they had recently been obliged to resort to this practice. I was directed, with my friends, to conciliate these people, and to assure them that the British government, so far from intending to injure them by an examination of their country, desired only to ameliorate their sad condition.[3]
We had a council. The astronomer royal, who was also the geologist, was a fine, portly fellow, whose bodily proportions would make three such carcases as that which I rejoice in. The nation sat in council and the Talk was held. Grim old savages, filthy and forbidding, half-starved warriors, hideous to the eye, sat in large circle, with the two great Red Fathers, as they called my friend and myself, on account of our scarlet jackets. The pipe passed from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, and many a solemn whiff ascended in curling clouds: all was solemn and sad.
The speech was made and answered with an acuteness which we were not prepared for. But our explanation and mission were at length received, and the pledge of peace, the wampum-belts, were accepted and worn by the aged chiefs. My friend jogged my elbow once or twice, and thought they were eyeing him suspiciously, for he was to proceed into their country. He looked so fat and so healthy, that he thought their greasy mouths watered for a roasted slice of so fine a subject!
But the wampum pledge is never broken, and we had smoked the calumet of friendship. Thus, although he luxuriated, after a total abstinence of three days, on the sight of a decayed deer's liver, which he could not be prevailed upon to partake of, yet the Nipissang, starving as he must also have been, never fried my friend, nor feasted on his fatness.
This is not the only good story to be told of Penetanguishene; for the American press of the frontier, with its accustomed adherence to truth, discovered a mare's nest there lately, and stated that the British government kept enormous supplies of naval stores, several steam-vessels, a depôt of coal, and everything necessary for the equipment of a large war fleet on Lake Huron, at this little outpost of the West, and that a tremendous force of mounted cavaliers were always ready to embark on board of it at all times.
There are now certainly a good many horses at the village, whereas, in 1837, perhaps one might have found out a dozen by great research there: as for cavalry, unless Brother Jonathan can manufacture it as cheaply and as lucratively as he does wooden clocks or nutmegs, it would be somewhat difficult toraiseit at Penetanguishene.
The village is a small, rambling place, with a little Roman Catholic church and a storehouse or general shop or two, about which, in summer, you always see idle Indians playing at some game or other, or else smoking with as idle villagers.
The garrison is three miles from the village, and is always called "The Establishment;" and in the forest between the two places is a new church, built of wood, very small, but sufficient for the Established Church, as it is sometimes called, of that portion of Canada. A clergyman is constantly stationed here for the army, navy, and civilians, and near the church is a collection of log huts, which I placed there some years ago by order of Lord Seaton, with small plots of ground attached to each as a refuge for destitute soldiers who had commuted their pensions.
This Chelsea in miniature flourished for a time, and drained the streets of the large towns of Canada of the miserable objects; but, such was the improvidence of most of these settlers and such their broken constitutions, that, on my present visit, I found but one old serjeant left, and he was on the point of moving.
The commutation of pensions was an experiment of the most benevolent intention. It was thought that the married pensioner would purchase stock for a small farm, and set himself down to provide for his children with a sum of money in hand which he could never have obtained in any other way. Many did so, and are now independent; but the majority, helpless in their habits, and giving way to drink, soon got cheated of their dollars and became beggars; so that the government was actually obliged at length to restore a small portion of the pension to keep them from starvation. They died out, would not work at the Penetanguishene settlement, and have vanished from the things that be. Poor fellows! many a tale have they told me of flood and field, of being sabred by the cuirassiers at Waterloo, of being impaled on a Polish lance, and of their wanderings and sufferings.
The military settlement, however, of the Penetanguishene road is a different affair. It was effected by pensioned non-commissioned officers and soldiers, who had grants of a hundred acres and sometimes more; and it will please the benevolent founder, should these pages meet his eye, to know that many of them are now prosperous, and almost all well to do in the world.
But we must retrace our steps, and waggon back again by their doors to Barrie.
I left the village at half-past six in the morning, raining still, with the wind in the south-east, and very cold. We arrived at the Widow Marlow's, nineteen miles, at mid-day; the weather having changed to fine and blowing hard—certainly not pleasant in the forest-road, on account of the danger of falling trees, to which this pass is so liable that a party of axemen have sometimes to go ahead to cut out a way for the horses.
We passed through the twelve mile woods by a new road, which reduces the extent of actual forest to five, and avoids altogether the Trees of the Two Brothers, noted in Penetanguishene history for the fatal accident, narrated in a former volume, by which one soldier died, and his brother was, it is supposed, frightened to death, in the solemn depths of the primeval and then endless woods.
Near the end of the five mile Bush, about a mile from the first clearance, Jeffrey, the landlord of the inn at the village, has built a small cottage for the refreshment of the traveller, and in it he intends to place his son. In the mean time, until quite completed, for money is scarce and things not to be done at railroad pace so near the North Pole, he has located here an old well known black gentleman, called Mr. Davenport, who was once better to do in the world, and kept a tavern himself.
Having had the honour of his acquaintance for many years, I stopped to see how my old friend was getting on, particularly as I heard that he was now very old, and that his white consort had left him alone in the narrow world of the house in the woods. He received me with grinning delight, and told me that he had just left the new jail at Barrie for selling liquor without a license, which, I opine, is rather hard law against a poor old nigger, who had literally no other means of support, and was most usefully stationed, like the monks of St. Bernard, in a dangerous pass.
But the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and the woolly head of old Davenport had matter of satisfaction in it from a source that he never dreamed of.
Alone—far away from the whole human world, in the depth of a hideous forest, with a road nearly impassable one half of the year,—he found an unexpected friend.
For fear of the visits of two-footed and four-footed brutes during the long nights of his Robinson Crusoe solitude, old Davenport always shut up his log castle early, and retired to rest as soon as daylight departed; for it did so very early in the evening there, as the solemn pines, with their gray trunks and far-spreading moss-grown arms and dismal evergreen foliage, if it can be called foliage, stood close to his dwelling—nay, brushed with the breath of the wind his very roof.
Recollect, reader, that this lonely dweller in the Bush resided near the spot where the two soldier brothers perished; and you may imagine his thoughts, after his castle was closed at night by the lone warder. No one could come to his assistance, if he had the bugle that roused the echoes of Fontarabia.
He had retired to rest early one night in the young spring-time, when he heard a singular noise on the outside of his house, like somebody moaning, and rubbing forcibly under his window, which was close to the head of his pallet-bed. Quivering with fear, he lay, with these sounds continuing at short intervals, through the whole night, and did not rise until the sun was well up. He then peeped cautiously about, but neither heard nor saw any thing; and, axe in hand and gun loaded, he went forth, but could not perceive aught more than that the ground had been slightly disturbed. This went on for some time, until at last, one fine moonlight night, the old man ventured to open a part of his narrow window; and there he saw rubbing himself, very composedly, a fine large he bear, who looked up very affectionately at him, and whined in a decent melancholy growl.
Davenport had, it seems, thrown some useless article of food out of this window; and Bruin supposed, no doubt, that Blackey did it out of compassionate feeling for a fellow denizen of the forest, and repeated his visits to obtain something more substantial, rubbing himself, to get rid of the mosquitoes, as it was his custom of an afternoon, against the rough logs of the dwelling. He had, moreover, become a little impatient at not being noticed, and scratched like a dog to make the lord of the mansion aware of his presence. This usually occurred about nine o'clock.
Davenport, at last, threw some salt pork to Bruin, which was most gratefully received; and every night after that, for the whole summer and autumn, at nine o'clock or thereabouts, the bear came to receive bread, meat, milk, or potatoes, or whatever could be spared from the larder, which was left on the ground under the window for him. In fact, they soon came to be upon very friendly terms, and spent many hours in each other's company, with a stout log-wall between Davenport and his brother, as he always calls the bear.
When the snows of winter, the long, severe winter of these northern woods, at last came, Bruin ceased his nocturnal visitations, and has never been seen since, the old man thinking that he has been shot or trapped by the Indian hunters.
I asked Davenport if he ever ventured out to look for his brother, but he shook his head and replied, "My brudder might have hugged me too hard, perhaps." The poor old fellow is very cheerful, and regrets his brother's absence daily. The bailiffs most likely would not have put him in jail for selling whiskey to a tired traveller, but would have avoided the castle in the woods, if they thought there was any chance of meeting Bruin.
Barrie and Big Trees—A new Capital of a new District—Nature's Canal—The Devil's Elbow—Macadamization and Mud—Richmond Hill without the Lass—The Rebellion and the Radicals—Blue Hill and Bricks.
Barrie and Big Trees—A new Capital of a new District—Nature's Canal—The Devil's Elbow—Macadamization and Mud—Richmond Hill without the Lass—The Rebellion and the Radicals—Blue Hill and Bricks.
We reached Barrie safely that night, and slept at the Queen's Arms. Next morning, I had an excellent opportunity of seeing this thriving village.
It is very well situated on the shore of Kempenfeldt Bay, on ground rising gradually to a considerable height, and is neatly laid out, containing already about five hundred people.
On the high ground overlooking the place are a church, a court-house, and a jail, all standing at a small distance from each other, nearly on a line, and adding very much indeed to the appearance of the place. The deep woods now form a background, but are gradually disappearing. I went about a mile into them, and saw several new clearances, with some nice houses building or built; and particularly one by Bingham, our landlord, a very comfortable, English-looking, large cottage, with outhouses and an immense barn, round which the rascally ground squirrels were playing at hide-and-seek very fearlessly.
The Court House contains the district school, which appears very respectable, and is conducted by a young Irishman; it also contains all the district offices, and is two stories high, massively and well built, the lower story being of stone and the upper of brick, both from materials on the spot.
The church is of wood, plain and neat. The jail is worth a visit, and shows what may be done in the forest and in a brand-new district, as the district of Simcoe is, although I believe about half the money it cost would have been better employed on the roads; for it has never been used, except as a place of confinement for an unfortunate lunatic.
It is formed in the castellated style, of a handsome octagonal tower, of very white, shelly limestone, with a square turreted stone enclosure, on the top of which is an ironchevaux de frize, and which enclosure is subdivided into separate day-yards for prisoners. The entrance is under a Gothic archway; and in the centre of the tower is an internal space, open from top to bottom, and preventing all access to the stairs from the cells, which are very neat, clean, and commodious, with a good supply of water, and excellent ventilation. It is, in short, as pretty a toy penitentiary as you could see anywhere, and looks more like an Isle of Wight gentleman's fortress, copied after the most approved Wyattville pattern of baronial mansion, with a little touch of the card-house. In short, it is as fine as you can conceive, and sets off the village wonderfully well.
The red pine, near Barrie and through all the Penetanguishene country, grows to an enormous size. I measured one near Barrie no less than twenty-six feet in girth, and this was merely a chance one by the path-side. Its height, I think, must have been at least two hundred feet, and it was vigorously healthy. What was its age? It would have made a plank eight feet broad, after the bark was stripped off.
But the woods generally disappoint travellers, as they never penetrate them; and the lumberers have cut down all available pines and oaks within reach of the settlements, excepting where they were not worth the expence of transport. The pines, moreover, take no deep root; and, as soon as the underbrush or thicket is cleared, they fall before the storm. Provident settlers, therefore, rarely leave large and lofty trees near their dwellings for fear of accident.
The pine, in the Penetanguishene country, has a strange fancy to start out of the earth in three, five, or more trunks, all joined at the base, and each trunk an enormous tree. I have an idea that this has arisen from the stony, loose soil they grow in, which has caused this strange freak of Nature, by making it difficult for the young plant to rear its head out of the ground. Whatever is the reason, however, all the masts of some "great Amiral" might be truly provided out of a single pine-tree.
But we must leave Barrie, after just mentioning Kempenfeldt, about a mile or so distant, which was the original village; and, although at the actual terminus of the land road, has never flourished, and still consists of some half dozen houses. The newer Admiral superseded the more ancient one; for Barrie did deeds of renown, which it suited the Canadians to commemorate much more than the unfortunate Kempenfeldt and his melancholy end.
If ever there was an infamous road between two villages so close together, it is the road between these two places; I hope it will be mended, for it is both dark and dangerous.
I always wondered not a little how it happened that Bingham of Barrie kept such a good table, where fresh meat was as plentiful as at Toronto. I looked for the market-place of the capital of Simcoe: there was none. But the mystery was solved the moment I put my foot on board the Beaver steamer to go back by the water road.
What will the reader think of Leadenhall Market being condensed and floating? Such, however, was the case; there was a regular travelling butcher's-shop, for the supply of the settlers around Lake Simcoe; and meat, clean and enticing as at the finest stall in the market aforesaid, where upon regular hooks were regularly displayed the fine roasting and boiling joints of the season. And a very fair speculation no doubt it is, this pedlar butchery.
On the 3rd of July, at half-past twelve, I left the capital of the Simcoe district, and am particular as to dates and seasons, because it tells the traveller for pleasure what are the times and the tides he should choose.
We embarked on board the good ship Beaver, a large steam-vessel, for the Holland Landing, distant twenty-eight miles—twenty-one of them by the lake, and seven by the river. The vessel stops by the way at several settlements, where half-pay officers generally have pitched their tents; and twice a week she makes the grand tour of the whole lake, at an altitude of upwards of seven hundred and fifty feet above Lake Ontario, and not forty miles from it.
This navigation of the Holland river is very well worth seeing, as it is a natural canal flowing through a vast marsh, and very narrow, with most serpentine convolutions, often doubling upon itself.—Conceive the difficulty of steering a large steamboat in such a course; yet it is done every day in summer and autumn, by means of long poles, slackening the steam, backing, &c., though very rarely without running a little way into the soft mud of the swamp. The motion of the paddles has, however, in the course of years, widened the channel and prevented the growth of flags and weeds.
There is one place called the Devil's Elbow, a common name in Canada for a difficult river pass, where the sluggish water fairly makes a double, and great care is necessary. Here the enterprising owner and master of the vessel tried to cut a channel; but, after getting a straight course through the mud for two-thirds of the way, he found it too expensive to proceed, but declares that he will persevere. Why does not the Board of Works, which has literally the expenditure of more than a million, take the business in hand, and complete it? One or two hundred pounds would finish the affair. But perhaps it is too trifling, and, like the cut at the Long Point, Lake Erie, to which we shall come presently, is overlooked in the magnitude of greater things.
Of all the unformed, unfinished public establishments in Canada, it has always appeared to me that the Crown Lands department, and the Board of Works, are pre-eminent. One costs more to manage the funds it raises than the funds amount to; and the other was for several years a mere political job. No very eminent civil engineer could have afforded to devote his time and talents to it, as he must have been constantly exposed to be turned out of office by caprice or cupidity. I do not know how it is now managed, but the political jobbing is, I believe, at an end, as the same person presides over the office who held it when it was in very bad odour. This gentleman must, however, be quite adequate to the office, as some of the public works are magnificent; but I cannot go so far as to say that one must approve of all. The St. Lawrence Canal has cost the best part of a million, is useless in time of war, and a mere foil at all times to the Rideau navigation, which the British government constructed free of any provincial funds. The timber slides on the Trent are so much money put into the timber-merchants' pockets, to the extreme detriment of the neighbouring settlers, whose lands have been swept of every available stick by the lawless hordes of woodcutters engaged to furnish this work; and who, living in the forest, were beyond the reach of justice or of reason, destroying more trees than they could carry away, and defying, gun and axe in hand, the peaceable proprietors.
It was intended, before the rebellion broke out, to render the river Trent navigable by a splendid canal, which would have opened the finest lands in Canada for hundreds of miles, and eventually to have connected Lake Huron with Lake Ontario. A large sum of money was expended on it before the Board of Works was constituted, and an experienced clerk of works, fresh from the Rideau Canal, was chosen to superintend; but the troubles commenced, and the money was wanted elsewhere.
When money became again plentiful, and the country so loudly demanded the Trent Canal, why was it not finished? I shall give by and by an account of a recent excursion to the Trent, and then we shall perhaps learn more about it, and why perishing timber slides were substituted for a magnificent canal.
But the Devil's Elbow should be straightened by the Board of Works at all events, otherwise it may stick in the mud, and then nobody can help it; for the marsh is very extensive, and there would be no Jupiter to cry out to.
Well, however, in spite of all obstacles, Captain Laughton piloted us safe to Ague and Fever Landing, where, depend upon it, we did not stay a moment longer than sufficed to jump into a coloured gentleman's waggon, which was in waiting, and in which we were driven off as a coloured gentleman always drives, that is to say, in a hand-gallop, to Winch's tavern, our old accustomed inn at St. Alban's, where we arrived in due time, and there hired another Jehu, who was an American Irishman (a sad compound), to take us as far towards Yonge Street as practicable. We reached Richmond Hill, seventeen miles from the Landing, at about eight o'clock, having made a better day's journey than is usually accomplished on a road which will be macadamized some fine day; for the Board of Works have a Polish engineer hard at work surveying it—of course no Canadian was to be found equal to this intricate piece of engineering—and I saw a variety of sticks stuck up, but what they meant I cannot guess at. I suppose they were going togradeit, which is the favourite American term—a term, by the by, by no manner or method meaning gradus ad Parnassum, or even laying it out in steps and stairs, like the Scotch military road near Loch Ness; but which, as far as my limited information in Webster's Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon tongue goes, signifies levelling. I may, however, be mistaken; and this puts me in mind of another tale to beguile the way.
A character set out from England to try his fortune in Canada. He was conversing about prospects in that country, on board the vessel, with a person who knew him, but whom he knew not. "I have not quite made up my mind," said the character, "as to what pursuit I shall follow in Canada; but that which brings most grist to the mill will answer best; and I hear a man may turn his hand to anything there, without the folly of an apprenticeship being necessary; for, if he has only brains, bread will come—now, what do you think would be the best business for my market?"
"Why," said the gentleman, after pondering a little, "I should advise you to try civil engineering; for they are getting up a Board of Works there, and want that branch of industry very much, for they won't take natives; nothing but foreigners or strangers will go down."
"What is a civil engineer?" said the character.
"A man always measuring and calculating," responded his adviser, "and that will just suit you."
"So it will," rejoined Character; and a civil engineer he became accordingly, and a very good one into the bargain; for he had brains, and had used a yard measure all his lifetime.
I was told this story by a person of veracity, who heard the conversation, but it is by no means a wonderful one; for such is the versatility of talent which the climate of Northern America engenders, that I knew a leading member of parliament provincial, who was a preacher, a shopkeeper, a doctor, a lawyer, a banker, a militia colonel, and who undertook to build a suspension bridge across the cataracted river Niagara, to connect the United States with Canada for £8,000, lawful money of the colony; an undertaking which Rennie would perchance have valued at about £100,000; butn'importe, the bill was passed, and a banking shop set up instead of a bridge, which answered every purpose, for the notes passed freely on both sides until they were worn out.
Behold us, however, at Richmond Hill, having safely passed the Slough of Despond, which the vaunted Yonge Street mud road presents, between the celebrated hamlet of St. Alban's and the aforesaid hill, one of the greatest curiosities of which road, near St. Alban's, is the vicinity of a sort of Mormon establishment, where a fellow of the name of David Wilson, commonly called David, has set up a Temple of the Davidites, with Virgins of the Sun, dressed in white, and all the tomfooleries of a long beard and exclusive sanctity. But America is a fine country for such knavery. Another curiosity is less pitiable and more natural. It is Bond Lake, a large narrow sheet of water, on the summit between Lake Simcoe and Lake Ontario, which has no visible outlet or inlet, and is therefore, like David Wilson, mysterious, although common sense soon lays the mystery in both cases bare; one is a freak of Nature concealing the source and exitus, the other a fraud of man.
The oak ridges, and the stair-like descents of plateau after plateau to Ontario, are also remarkable enough, showing even to the most thoughtless that here ancient shores of ancient seas once bounded the forest, gradually becoming lower and lower as the water subsided. Lyell visited these with the late Mr. Roy, a person little appreciated and less understood by the great ones of the earth at Toronto, who made an excellent geological survey of this part of the province, and whose widow had infinite difficulty in obtaining a paltry recompense for his labours in developing the resources of the country. The honey which this industrious bee manufactured was sucked by drones, and no one has done him even a shadow of justice, but Mr. Lyell, who, having no colonial dependence, had no fears in so doing.
But of Richmond Hill, why so called I never could discover, for it is neither very highly picturesque, nor very highly poetical, although Dolby's Tavern is a most comfortable resting-place for a wearied traveller, at which prose writer or poetaster may find a haven. Attention, good fare, and neatness prevail. It is English.
I have observed two things in journeying through Upper Canada. If you find neatness at an hostel, it is kept by old-country people. If you meet with indifference and greasy meats, they are Americans. If you see the best parlour hung round with bad prints of presidents, looking like Mormon preachers, they are radicals of the worst leaven. If prints from the New York Albion, neatly framed and glazed, hang on each side of a wooden clock, over a sideboard in the centre of the room, opposite to the windows, the said prints representing Queen Victoria, Lord Nelson, Windsor Castle, or the New Houses of Parliament, be assured that loyalty and John Bullism reign there; and, although you meet with no servility, you will not be disgusted with vulgar assumption, such as cocking up dirty legs in dirty boots on a dirty stove, wearing the hat, and not deigning to answer a civil question.
Personally, no man cares less for the mode of reception, when I take mine ease at mine inn, than I do, for old soldiers are not very fastidious, and old travellers still less so; but give me sturdy John Bull, with his blunt plainness and true independence, before the silly insolence of a fellow, who thinks he shows his equality, by lowering the character of a man to that of a brute, in coarse exhibitions of assumed importance, which his vocation of extracting money from his unwilling guests renders only more hateful.
We departed from Richmond Hill at half-past five, and waggoned on to Finch's Inn, seven miles, where we breakfasted. This is another excellent resting-place, and the country between the two is thickly settled. I forgot to mention that we have now been travelling through scenes celebrated in the rebellion of Mackenzie. About five miles from Holland Landing is the Blacksmith's Shop, which was the head-quarters of Lount, the smith, who, like Jack Cade, set himself up to reform abuses, and suffered the penalty of the outraged laws.
Lount was a misled person, who, imbued with strong republican feelings, and forgetting the favours of the government he lived under, which had made him what he was, took up arms at Mackenzie's instigation, and thought he had a call—a call to be a great general. He passed to his account, so 'requiescas in pace,' Lount! for many a villain yet lives, to whose vile advices you owed your untimely end, and who ought to have met with your fate instead of you. Lount had the mind of an honest man in some things, for it is well known that his counsels curbed the bloody and incendiary spirit of Mackenzie in many instances. The government has not sequestered his property, although his sons were equally guilty with himself.
We also pass, in going to Toronto, two other remarkable places. Finch's Tavern, where we breakfasted at seven o'clock, was formerly the Old Stand, as it was so called, of the notorious Montgomery, another general, a tavern general of Mackenzie's, who moved to a place about four miles from the city, where the rebels were attacked in 1837 by Sir Francis Head, and near which the battle of Gallows Hill was fought.
Montgomery was taken prisoner, sent to Kingston, and escaped by connivance, with several others, from the fortress there on a dark night, fell into a ditch, broke his leg, and afterwards was hauled by his comrades over a high wall, and got across the St. Lawrence into the United States, where he was run over afterwards by a waggon and much injured. His tavern was burnt to the ground by the militia during the action, on account of the barbarous murder there of Colonel Moodie, a very old retired officer, who was killed by Mackenzie's orders in cold blood. It is now rebuilt on a very extensive scale; and he is again there, having been permitted to return, and his property, which was confiscated, has been restored to his creditors.
Such were Mackenzie's intended government and the tools he was to govern by! Such is the British government! The Upper Canadians wisely preferred the latter.
Next to Richmond Hill is Thornhill, all on the macadamized portion of the road to Toronto. Thornhill is a very pretty place, with a neat church and a dell, in which a river must formerly have meandered, but where now a streamlet runs to join Lake Ontario. Here are extensive mills, owned by Mr. Thorne, a wealthy merchant, who exports flour largely, the Yonge Street settlement being a grain country of vast extent, which not only supplies his mills, but the Red Mills, near Holland Landing, and many others.
From Montgomery's Tavern to Toronto is almost a continued series for four miles of gentlemen's seats and cottages, and, being a straight road, you see the great lake for miles before its shores are reached. Large sums have been expended on this road, which is carried through a brick-clay soil, in which the Don has cut deep ravines, so that immense embankments and deep excavations for the level have been requisite.
Near Toronto, at Blue Hill, large brick yards are in operation, and here white brick is now made, of which a handsome specimen of church architecture has been lately erected in the west end of the city. Tiles, elsewhere not seen in Canada, are also manufactured near Blue Hill; but they are not extensively used, the snow and high winds being unfavourable to their adoption, shingles or split wood being cheaper, and tinned iron plates more durable and less liable to accident.
In most parts of Upper Canada, near the shores of the great lakes, you can build a house either of stone or brick, as it suits your fancy, for both these materials are plentiful, particularly clay; but at Toronto there is no suitable building-stone; plenty of clay, however, is found, for there you may build your house out of the very excavations for your cellars; and I confess that I prefer a brick house in Canada to one of limestone, for the latter material imbibes moisture; and if a brick house has a good projecting roof, it lasts very long, and is always warm.
It is surprising to observe the effects of the climate on buildings in this country. A good stone house, not ten years old, carefully built, and pointed between the joints of the masonry with the best cement, requires a total repair after that period, and often before. The window-sills and lintels of limestone break and crack, and the chimneys soon become disjointed and unsafe. Although it may seem paradoxical, yet it is true that the woodwork of a house lasts good much longer than the stone, or rather the cement, which joins the stone; but wood decays also very rapidly. A bridge becomes rotten in ten years, and a shingled roof lasts only fifteen; but then wood is never seasoned in America; it would not pay.
Toronto and the Transit—The ice and its innovations—Siege and storm of a Fortalice by the Ice-king—Newark, or Niagara—Flags, big and little—Views of American and of English institutions—Blacklegs and Races—Colonial high life—Youth very young.
Toronto and the Transit—The ice and its innovations—Siege and storm of a Fortalice by the Ice-king—Newark, or Niagara—Flags, big and little—Views of American and of English institutions—Blacklegs and Races—Colonial high life—Youth very young.
Behold us again in Toronto at Macdonald's Hotel; and, as we shall have to visit this rising city frequently, we shall say very little more about it at present, but embark as speedily as possible on board the Transit, and steam over to Niagara.
The Transit, a celebrated packet, now getting old, and commanded by a son of its well-known owner, Captain Richardson, starts always in summer at eight a.m. punctually, and makes her voyage by half-past eleven, at which hour, on the 5th day of July, we once more touched the shore of Newark, or Niagara Town, at the Dock Company's wharf, which we found had been greatly damaged in the spring of the year by a most extraordinary ice phenomenon.
At the breaking-up of the frost, the ice in the river Niagara, which came down the river, packed near its mouth, and dammed it up so high at Queenston, seven miles above and close to the narrows, that the upper surface of the fields of ice was thirty feet above the level of the river, there a quarter of a mile broad or more. The consequence was, that every wharf and every building under this level was destroyed and crushed. Every edifice on the banks, and among others a strong stone barrack, full of soldiers, was stormed by the frost-king, during the darkness of an awful night, and the front wall fairly breached and borne down by the advancing masses of ice. The soldiers had barely time to escape from the crashing and rending walls; and their cooking-house, a detached building, some yards from the barrack and higher up the bank, was turned over, as if it had been a small boat.
In the memory of man, such a scene had never occurred before, and probably never will again; and I have been told, by those who beheld it, that a more solemn display of natural power and irresistible might has seldom been witnessed than that of the gradual grinding, heaving passage of one great floe, or field, of thick-ribbed ice over the other, until that summit was gained which could not be exceeded.
Then came the disruption, the roar, the rush, the fury, the foam, the groaning thunder, and the river flood; the plunge and the struggle between the solid and the liquid waters.
Truly, the thundering water was well named by the Indian of old—NE AW GAR AWis very Greek sounding.
Newark, or, as it is now called, Niagara, but, as it should be named, Simcoe, is still a pretty, well laid-out town; and, although it has scarcely had a new house built in it for many years past, is on the whole a very respectable place, and the capital of the district of Niagara, celebrated for its apple, peach, and cherry orchards.
It has a good-looking church, and the living is a rectory. A Roman Catholic church stands close to the English, and a handsome Scots church is at the other end of the town. There is an ugly jail and Court-House about a mile in the country, and an excellent market, where every thing is cheap and good.
Barracks for the Royal Canadian Rifle regiment stand on a large plain. Old Fort George, the scene of former battling, is in total ruin; and Fort Mississagua, with its square tower, looks frowningly at Fort Niagara, on the American side of the estuary of the Great River. I never see these rival batteries, for it is too magniloquent to style them fortresses, but they picture to my mind England and the United States.
Mississagua looks careless and confident, with a little bit of a flag—the flag, however, of a thousand years, displayed, only on Sundays and holidays, on a staff which looks something like that which the king-making Warwick tied his heraldic bear to.
The antiquity and warlike renown of England sit equally and visibly impressed on the crest of the miserable Mississagua as on that of Gibraltar.
Fort Niagara, an old French Indian stockade, modernized by the American engineers from time to time, half-lighthouse, half-fortification, glaring with whitewashed walls, that may be seen almost at Toronto, with a flag-staff towering to the skies, and a flag which would cover the deck of a first-rate, displayed from morn to night, speaks of the new nation, whose pretensions must ever be put in plain view, and constantly tell the tale that America is a second edition of the best work of English industry and of British valour—a second edition interwoven, however, with foreign matter, with Frenchfiertéwithout Frenchpolitesse, with German mysticism without German learning, with the restless and rabid democracy of the whole world without the salutary check of venerable laws, and with that strange mixture of freedom and slavery, of tolerance and intolerance, which distinguishes America of the nineteenth century.
But it is, nevertheless, a most extraordinary spectacle, to contemplate the rise and progress of the union in so short a period since the declaration of independence.
An Irish gentleman, apparently a clergyman, last year favoured the public with the result of an extensive tour in Canada and the United States, in "Letters from America."
He starts in his preface with these remarkable expressions, which must be well considered and analyzed, because they are the deliberate convictions of an observant and well-informed man, who had, moreover, singular opportunities of reflecting upon the people he had so long travelled amongst.
He says that "In energy, perseverance, enterprise, sagacity, activity, and varied resources" the Americans infinitely surpass the British; that he never met with "a stupid American." That our "American children" surpass us not only in our good, but "in our evil peculiarities." This I cannot understand; for, surely, if we havepeculiarities, which there is no denying, they must by all the rules of logic be limited to ourselves.
But the writer observes, in a paragraph too long for quotation, that they exceed us in materialism and in utilitarianism; that we, a nation of shopkeepers, as Napoleon styled the English, were outdone in the worship of Mammon by them; that we have rejected too much the higher branches of art and science, and the cultivation of the æsthetic faculty—what an abominable word æsthetic is! it always puts me in mind of asthmatic, for it is broken-winded learning.
"Is it not common," says he, "in modern England to reject authorities both in Church and State, to look with contempt on the humbler and more peculiarly christian virtues of contentment and submission, and to cultivate the intellectual at the expense of the moral part of our nature? If these and other dangerous tendencies of a similar nature are at work among ourselves, as they undoubtedly are, it is useful and interesting to observe them in fuller operation and more unchecked luxuriance in America."
Now, it is very satisfactory, that the Americans, a race of yesterday, who have had no opportunity as yet of coping with the deep research and master-minds of Europe, should in half a century have leaped into such a position in the civilized world as to have exceeded the Englishman in all the most useful relations of life, as well as in all its darker and more dangerous features; very satisfactory indeed that the mixed race peopling the United States should be better and worse than that nation to which the world, by universal consent, has yielded the palm of superiority in all the arts and in all the sciences of modern acquirement.
Wherein do the Americans exceed the sons of Britain? In history, in policy, in poetry, in mathematics, in music, in painting, or in any of the gifts of the Muses? Are they more renowned in the dreadful art of war? or in the mild virtues of peace? Is the fame of America a wonder and a terror to the four quarters of the globe?—We may fearlessly reply in the negative. The outer barbarian knows the American but as another kind of Englishman. It will yet take him some centuries to distinguish between the original and the offspring.
It is, in short, as untenable as an axiom in policy or history, that the American exceeds the Briton in the development of mind, as it is that the American exceeds the Briton in the development of the baser qualities of our nature.
When the insatiate thirst for dollars, dollars, dollars, has subsided, then the American may justly rear his head as an aspirant for historic fame. His land has never yet produced a Shakespeare, a Johnson, a Milton, a Spenser, a Newton, a Bacon, a Locke, a Coke, or a Rennie. The utmost America has yet achieved is a very faint imitation of the least renowned of our great writers, Walter Scott.
In diplomacy I deny also the palm. For although India is a case in point, like as Texas, yet even there we have never first planted a population with the express purpose of ejecting the lawful government, but have conquered where conquest was not only hailed by the enslaved people but was a positive benefit, by the introduction of mild and equitable laws instead of brutal and bloody despotisms. We have not snatched from a weak republic, whose principles had been expressly formed on our own model, that which poverty alone obliged it to relinquish. If the writer, who appears to be an excellent man and a good christian, had lived for several years on the borders of the eagerly desired Canada, I very much doubt whether he would have seen such acouleur de rosein the transactions of the mighty commonwealth, where the rulers are the ruled, and where education, intellect, integrity, innocence, and wealth must all alike bow before the Juggernaut of an unattainable perfection of equality.
If Bill Johnson, the mail robber and smuggler, is as good as William Pitt or any other William of superior mind, why then the sooner the millennium of democracy arrives the better. It is unfortunate for the present generation—what it will be for the next no man can pretend to say—that this debasing principle is gaining ground not only in Canada but in England. A reflecting mind has no objection to the creed that all men were created equal; but history, sacred and profane, plainly shows that mind as well as matter is afterwards, for the wisest of purposes, very differently developed.
Does the meanest white American, the sweeper of Broadway, if there be such a citizen, believe in this perfection of equality amongst men as a fundamental axiom of the rights of man? Place a black sweeper of crossings in juxtaposition, and the question will very soon solve itself. Why, the free and enlightened citizens will not even permit their black or coloured brethren to worship their common Creator in the same pew with themselves—it is horror, it is degradation! And yet there is a universal outcry about sacred liberty and equality all over the Union. The angels weep to witness the tricks of men placed in a little brief authority. Can such a state of things last as that, where the Irish labourer is treated as an inferior being in the scale of creation, and the Negro, or the offspring of the Negro and the white, is branded with the stigma of servile? It cannot—it will not. Either let democracy assume its true and legitimate features, or let it cease—for the re-action will be a fearful one, as dread and as horribly diabolical as that which the folly of the aristocracy of old France brought on that devoted land.
I have said, and I repeat it, that a residence on the borders of Canada and the United States for some time will cure a reflecting mind of many long cherished notions concerning the relative merits of a limited monarchy and of a crude democracy.
The man who views the border people of the United States with calm observation will soon come to the conclusion that a state of government, if it may be so called, where the commonest ruffian asserts privileges which the most educated and refined mind never dreams of, is not an enviable order of things.
In the first fury of a war with England, who were the promoters? the mob on the borders. Who hoped for a new sympathy demonstration, in order to annex Canada? the people of the Western States, who, far removed from the possibility of invasion, valiantly resolve to carry fire and sword among their unoffending brethren.
The intelligence and the wealth of the United States are passive; they are physically weak, and therefore succumb to the dictation of the rude masses. And what keeps up this singular action, but the constantly-recurring elections, the incessant balloting and voting, the necessity which every man feels hourly of saving his substance or his life from the devouring rapacity of those who think that all should be equal!
If the government, acutely sensible that war is an evil which must cripple its resources, is unwilling to engage in it, both from principle and from patriotism, it must yield if the mob wills it, or forfeit the sweets of office and of power. Hence, few men enter upon the cares of public life in the States now-a-days who are of that frame of mind which considers personal expediency as worthy of deep reflection. What would Washington have said to such a system?
The batteries or fortalices of Niagara and of Mississagua have led to a digression quite unintentional and unforeseen, which must terminate for the present with a different view from that of the author of the Letters above-mentioned: and let us hope fervently that the New World has not yet arrived at such a consummation as that of surpassing the vices and crimes of the Old, as we are certain it has not yet achieved such a moral victory as that of outrunning it in the race of scientific or mechanic fame. England is no more in her dotage than America is in her nonage. The former, without vanity or want of verity be it spoken, is as pre-eminent as the latter is honestly and creditably aspiring.
The writer above quoted says their ships sail better, and are manned with fewer hands. We grant that no nation excels the United States in ship-building, and that they build vessels expressly for sailing; but for one English ship lost on the ocean, there are three of the venturous Americans; for one steam-vessel that explodes, and hurls its hundreds to destruction, in England or Canada, there are twenty Americans.
In England, the cautious, the slow and the sure plan prevails; in America, the go-ahead, reckless, dollar-making principle prevails; and so it is through every other concern of life. A hundred ways of worshipping the Creator, after the christian form, exist in America, where half a dozen suffice in England.
Time is money in America; the meals are hurried over, relaxations necessary to the enjoyment of existence forbidden—and what for? to make money. To what end? to spend it faster than it is made, and then to begin again. You have only a faint shadow of the immense wealth realized in England by that of the merchant or the shopkeeper in the States. Capital there is constantly in a rapid consumption; and as the people engaged in the feverish excitement of acquiring it are in the latter country, from their habits, shortlived, so the opposite fact exhibits itself in England. There are no Rothschilds, no railway kings in America. Time and the man will not admit of it. John Jacob Astor is an exception to this fact.
On landing at Niagara, the difference of climate between it and Toronto is at once perceived. Here you are on sandy, there on clayey soil. Here all is heat, there moisture. I tried hard for several seasons to bring the peach to perfection at Toronto, only thirty-six miles from Niagara, without success; at Niagara it grows freely, and almost spontaneously, as well as the quince. The fields and the gardens of Niagara are a fortnight or more in advance of those of Toronto. Strange that the passage of the westerly winds across Ontario should make such a difference!
Niagara is a grand racing-stand, where all the loafers of the neighbouring republic congregate in the autumn; I was unfortunately present at the last races, and never desire to repeat my visit at that season. Blacklegs and whitelegs prevail; and the next morning the course was strewed with the bodies of drunken vagabonds. It appears to me very strange that the gentry of the neighbourhood suffer a very small modicum of ephemeral newspaper notoriety to get the better of their good sense. The patronage of such a racecourse as that of Niagara, so far from being an honour, is the reverse. It is too near the frontier to be even decently respectable; nor is the course itself a good one, for the sand is too deep. Many a young gentleman of Toronto, who thinks that he copies the aristocracy of England by patronizing the turf, finds out to his own loss and sorrow that it would have been much better to have had his racing qualifications exhibited nearer his own door; and there cannot possibly be a greater colonial mistake committed than to fancy that grooms, stable-boys, and blacklegs, are now the advisers and companions of our juvenile nobility.—That day has passed!
It is very unfortunate that very false ideas exist in some of the colonies of the manners and customs of high life in England. The grown-up people often fancy that cold reserve, and an assumption of great state, indicate high birth and breeding. The younger branches seem frequently to think that there is no such thing at home as the period of adolescence; consequently, you often see a pert young master deliver his unasked opinion and behave before his seniors and superiors as though he wanted to intimate that he was wiser in his generation than they.
In crossing to Niagara, we had a specimen of the precocious colonist of 1845. The table of the captain of the boat, like that of his respected father, was good and decorously conducted, and there were several ladies and some most respectable travelled Americans at dinner. A very young gentleman, who boasted how much he had lost at the races, how much they had gambled, and how much they drank of champagne the night before—champagne, by the by, is thought a very aristocratic drink among psuedo-great men, although it is common as ditch-water in the United States—engrossed the whole conversation of the dinner-table, picked his teeth, took up the room of two, called the waiter fifty times, and ended by ordering the cheese to be placed on the table before the pies and puddings were removed. The company present rose before the dessert appeared, thoroughly disgusted; and I afterwards saw this would-be man peeping into the windows of the ladies'-cabin, and performing a thousand other antic tricks, cigar in mouth, for which he would in England have met with his deserts.
The precociousness of Transatlantic children is not confined to the United States—it is equally and unpleasantly visible in Canada.
The Americans who travel, I can safely say, are not guilty of these monstrous absurdities. I have crossed the Atlantic more than once with boys of from seventeen to twenty, who have left college to make the grand tour, without ever observing any thing to find fault with. The American youth is observant, and soon discovers that attempting to do the character of men before his time in the society of English strangers invariably lowers instead of raising an interest.
There is a good caricature of this in an American book, I forget its title, written some time ago, to show the simplicity, gullibility, and vindictivness of our Trollopean travellers. It is a boy of sixteen, or thereabouts, cigar in the corner of his mouth, hat cocked on three curls, and all the modern etceteras of a complete youth, saying to his father, "Here, take my boots, old fellow, and clean them." The father looks a little amazed, upon which the manikin ejaculates, "Why don't you take them? what's the use of having a father?"
There will be a railway smash in this, as well as in the locomotive mania. Republicanism towards elders and parents is unnatural; the child and the man were not born equal.
I remember reading in a voluminous account of the terrors of the French revolution a remarkable passage:—servants denounced masters, debtors denounced creditors, women denounced husbands, children denounced parents, youth denounced protecting age; gratitude was unknown; a favour conferred led to the guillotine: but never, never in that awful period, in that reign of the vilest passions of our nature over reason, was there one instance, one single instance, of a parent denouncing its child.
It is not a good sign when extreme youth pretends to have discovered the true laws of the universe, when the son is wiser than the father, or when immature reason usurps the functions of the ripened faculties.
I have put this together because I hear hourly parents deprecating the system of education in the greatest city of Western Canada; because I hear and see children of fourteen swaggering about the streets with all the consequence of unfledged men, smoking cigars, frequenting tavern-bars and billiard-rooms, and no doubt led by such unbridled license into deeper mysteries and excesses; because I hear clergymen lament that boys of that age lose their health by excesses too difficult of belief to fancy true. Surely a salutary check in time may be applied to such an evil.
But liberty and equality, as I said before, are extending on both sides of the Atlantic: and in their train come these evils, simply because liberty and equality are as much misunderstood as real republicanism and limited monarchy are.
The old Canadian Coach—Jonathan and John Bull passengers—"That Gentleman"—Beautiful River, beautiful drive—Brock's Monument—Queenston—Bar and Pulpit—Trotting horse Railroad—Awful accident—The Falls once more—Speculation—Water privilege—Barbarism—Museum—Loafers—Tulip-trees—Rattlesnakes—The Burning Spring—Setting fire to Niagara—A charitable Woman—The Nigger's Parrot—John Bull is a Yankee—Political Courtship—Lundy's Lane—Heroine—Welland Canal.
The old Canadian Coach—Jonathan and John Bull passengers—"That Gentleman"—Beautiful River, beautiful drive—Brock's Monument—Queenston—Bar and Pulpit—Trotting horse Railroad—Awful accident—The Falls once more—Speculation—Water privilege—Barbarism—Museum—Loafers—Tulip-trees—Rattlesnakes—The Burning Spring—Setting fire to Niagara—A charitable Woman—The Nigger's Parrot—John Bull is a Yankee—Political Courtship—Lundy's Lane—Heroine—Welland Canal.
I can make no stay at Niagara for the present; but, after resting awhile at Howard's Inn, which is the most respectable one in the town, proceed in his coach to Queenston.
The old Canadian coach has not yet quite vanished before modern improvement. It is a mighty heavy, clumsy conveniency, hung on leather springs, and looking for all the world as if elephants alone could move it along; and, if it should upset, like Falstaff, it may ask for levers to lift it up again.
We had on board the coach an American, of the species Yankee, a thorough bluff, rosy, herculean, Yorkshire-farmer, and several highly respectable females.
I will not say Jonathan did not spit before them, for he is to the manner born; but, although of inferior grade, if there can be such a thing mentioned respecting a citizen of the United States, and particularly of "the Empire State," of which he was, to his credit be it said, he treated the females with that courtesy, rough as it is, which seems innate with all Americans.
A stormy discussion arose on the part of John Bull, who hated slavery, disliked spitting, got angry about Brock's monument, and, in short, looked down with no small share of contempt upon the man of yesterday, whose ideas of right and wrong were so diametrically opposed to his own, and who very sententiously expressed them.
John told him that the only thing he had never heard in his travels through the Northern and Western States—where he had been to look at the land with a view to purchase, either there or in Canada, as might be most advisable—the only thing he had never heard was that all the citizens of the United States were all "gentlemen."