"Through the gorge that gives the stars at noon-day clear—Up the pass that packs the scud beneath our wheel—Round the bluff that sinks her thousand fathom sheer—Down the valley with our guttering brakes asqueal:Where the trestle groans and quivers in the snow,Where the many-shedded levels loop and twine,Hear me lead my reckless children from belowTill we sing the song of Roland to the pine.
"So we ride the iron stallions down to drink,Through the cañons to the waters of the west!"KIPLING:The Song of the Banjo.
The most important product of the Dominion of Canada is wheat. Except for a little hay and oats, the big prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are especially noted for their production of wheat, which they yield in truly enormous quantities. In point of quality Canadian wheat ranks amongst the best in the world. But the three big prairie provinces are not the only ones that produce wheat; it is also grown in Ontario, as well as, in smaller quantity, in each of the other provinces.
As soon as the snow disappears in spring, the prairie farmer gets out his ploughs, and if he owns, as many of the prairie farmers do, large tracts of land, his ploughs are worked by steam. In the North-West there are no fields and no fences, except, it may be, round the home paddock. In this case the ploughs set in and follow one another from one end of the farm to the other; and when they reach the boundary of the farm, they turn round and plough back again. Thus the furrow may be a quarter of a mile, half a mile, or even a mile long. The ploughing finished, the seed is sown. When harvest comes, the ripe corn is cut down by the reaping-machines, following one another in the same way as the ploughs. In many cases the wheat is threshed at the same time that it is cut, and the grain put, not into sacks, but loose straight into the waggons, which are built up like huge bins. The wheat is then hauled to the nearest town where there is an elevator or granary. Here it is graded, or separated into different sizes, by fine riddles or sieves driven by machinery, and the farmer is paid so much a bushel for his wheat, the price varying with the grade, or size and hardness and quality of the grain. The straw is very often burned, as the easiest way to get rid of it. If a North-West farmer has three good years in succession, he can, it is sometimes asserted, retire from business and live on a competency for the rest of his life.
After the harvest the railways of the prairie provinces are exceedingly busy carrying the wheat to the shipping ports, where it can be loaded into ships to be taken across the ocean. The greater part of this wheat is consumed in England and Scotland, and a great deal of it is put on board ship at Port Arthur and Fort William on the northern shore of Lake Superior, whence it goes all the rest of the way by water. A large portion of it is, however, ground into flour before ever it leaves Canada, and the flour is sent to make bread for boys and girls, not only in England and Scotland, but also in Australia, in China, and Japan.
In Alberta, just east of the Rocky Mountains, where the climate is milder than in the heart of the prairie provinces, a large number of cattle are reared and fed, and there a good deal of hay is cut, and sent over the mountains into British Columbia.
For many years the chief agency in opening up the North-West was the cattle-rancher. The life of the cowboy, though not so romantic as it is sometimes represented to be, has, nevertheless, its interesting side to the man who loves the free life of the open air. "The business of ranching has grown from a small beginning of the early days to be one of the great industries of the West. It began when the Mounted Police brought into Southern Alberta a couple of milch cows and a few yokes of oxen for their own use." This was about the year 1873. Three years later a member of the same force bought a small herd, but having no other way of providing for the animals, he turned them loose on the prairie to shift for themselves. There, although without shelter or provision for food, they survived the winter, escaping the wolves, predatory Indians, and prairie fires. Nowadays, cattle are generally left cut of doors on the prairies all the winter in Alberta. Here the winters are neither severe nor prolonged. "The days are bright and cloudless, and the light snowfalls are neither frequent nor lasting. They vanish before the warm Chinook winds, and are followed by days of soft weather. There are cold snaps in January and the early part of February, but the winter breaks up early in March, and before April the prairies are spangled with flowers—false indigo, shooting stars, and violets, with roses, lupines, and vetches, following after—until the prairie is all aglow with wonderful colour."
In Alberta, as well as in the provinces of Eastern Canada, a good deal of cheese and butter are made. The farmers do not make it in their own dairies, but they take it to creameries and to cheese-factories, like those which are run on the co-operative principle in Ireland, Denmark, and other countries.
The principal town of the prairie provinces is Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, which has a good deal of the appearance of a brand-new, go-ahead American city. In 1881 its population was 6,000; twenty-five years later it reached 100,000. It has a very large volume of trade.
In the provinces of Nova Scotia and Ontario large quantities of fruit are grown and exported to England. In Nova Scotia apples are the fruit most extensively raised; the valleys of Annapolis and Cornwallis in that province are especially famous for their fine red apples. In Ontario the fruit-growing region is the peninsula which projects southwards between the great lakes. There apples are not the only fruit produced in large quantity; grapes and peaches are also grown on a large scale, grapes more especially in the neighbourhood of the famous Niagara Falls. But in recent years the distant western province of British Columbia has come rapidly to the front as a producer of fruit, especially of apples, cherries, peaches, and strawberries. These last, strawberries, as well as cherries, are sold principally in the towns of the prairie provinces. The apples are rapidly taking rank as amongst the best in the world. They are of magnificent colour, free from every form of disease or blemish, and travel well for long distances.
In December, 1907, an apple-show was held at New Westminster, at the mouth of the Fraser River, in British Columbia, where prizes were given (1) for the best display of apples, (2) for the five best packed boxes of apples, and (3) for the single best packed box. Out of these three events, British Columbia apples won two first prizes and one second, although she had for competitors some of the most expert growers in the United States. And again in December of the following year, at a great apple-show held at Spokane, in the American State of Washington, undoubtedly the biggest and most important apple-show ever held in any part of the world, British Columbia covered herself with glory. The prize-money amounted to no less than £7,000, and the separate prizes amounted to as much as £100. In this great show, at which expert fruit-growers from all over the United States, from Eastern Canada, from British Columbia, from England, Germany, and Norway, were pitted one against the other, British Columbia won several of the most important of the prizes, and on the whole, considering the amount of fruit she staged, won a long way more than her proper proportion of prizes. The writer of this book was himself the proud winner of twelve prizes for apples at this great show. Altogether it is estimated that something like 400 tons of apples, all of them, of course, specially picked fruit, were shown on the tables of the Spokane apple-show. What a sight for a British schoolboy! The biggest apple in the show weighed close upon 2 pounds in weight!
The apples of Ontario and Nova Scotia are packed into light wooden barrels; those of British Columbia in oblong boxes holding 40 pounds. No matter what the size or the variety of the apples, all have to be packed in the one sized box. When well packed, with the apples all level and even, and beautifully coloured, as they nearly always are, a box of British Columbia apples is a perfectly lovely sight. And they are as good as they look. But even more appetizing and attractive is a box of Kootenay cherries, Kootenay being the name of the principal cherry-growing district of British Columbia. The boxes into which the cherries are packed are, of course, much smaller than the boxes into which the apples are packed. A cherry box holds only 8 pounds of fruit.
One of the most beautiful of all the beautiful sights on a fruit-ranch is the blossoming of the cherry-trees in May. The waxy white blossoms not only cover—literally and truly cover—the branches from end to end, but they also stick to the trunk and main limbs of the trees, much as the feathers muffle the legs of certain kinds of pullets.
OTTAWA. PAGE 80. T. Mower Martin, R.C.A.OTTAWA.PAGE 80.T. Mower Martin, R.C.A.
The fruit-ranches in Kootenay, and many of those in the even more famous Valley of Okanagan, occupy some of the most beautiful situations in the world, being strung along the feet of lofty rocky mountains, with a lake washing their lower margin. And how magnificently beautiful are these mountains and the deep, tranquil lakes which nestle in their arms!
The largest share of the natural wealth of Canada is derived from her unlimited acres and square miles of wheat-lands. Next in importance to her wheat is her timber. Considerably more than one-third of the total area of the Dominion is covered with forests. With the exception of the province of Prince Edward Island, all the older provinces are rich in valuable trees. British Columbia is said to have "the greatest compact reserve of timber in the world." The vast prairies of the North-West have never, since the white man set foot on the American continent, been at all well wooded, although to the north of the settled wheat-lands there is a forest region nearly fifty times as big as England, stretching from Labrador on the east to Yukon on the west.
Wood is consequently of vast importance to almost every man in Canada. In one way or another it figures in the daily life of almost every inhabitant of the Dominion. The strange words, "M^3 Shiplap and Rustic," are familiar to the eye and ear of every builder of a house; and who is there in Canada who does not at some time or other build a house, or help to build one? "M^3" means "cubic feet." "Shiplap" and "rustic" are special cuts and pieces of timber used in house-building. Logs and lumber are therefore household words to the Canadian. As Dr. Fernow, head of the Forestry Department of the University of Toronto, puts it: "Our civilization is built on wood. From the cradle to the coffin in some shape or other it surrounds us as a conveyance or a necessity.... We are rocked in wooden cradles, play with wooden toys, sit on wooden chairs, ... are entertained by music from wooden instruments, enlightened by information printed on wooden paper with black ink made from wood." More than one-half the people of Canada live in wooden houses; more than two-thirds use wood as fuel. Thousands of miles of railway rest on wooden ties, or sleepers. The waters of the Canadian lakes are daily churned by the wooden paddles of wooden steamboats; fleets of wooden vessels ply up and down the coasts. More than 300 years ago the French, who were the first settlers in Canada, began to cut in her forests spars and masts for the royal navy, and later the practice was followed by the British.
The long droning whine of the saw-mill is to-day one of the most familiar sounds beside the lakes and rivers of Canada. Down at the water's edge you may see the woodman "poying" the big logs to the foot of the upward incline that feeds the saw-tables, skilfully guiding them so that the iron teeth of the endless gliding chain which runs up and down the incline may seize hold upon them and carry them up to the edge of the huge, whizzing, groaning, whining circular saw above. At the other end of the mill, or somewhere beside it, you will see the sawn wood stacked up in squares—planks of various widths and thicknesses.
If you turn away from the sawmill and wander alongside the river, you will see a perfect multitude of logs, thousands of them, held together inside a boom of logs, chained or ironed together, like a huge flock of sheep penned within a sheepfold. These immense masses of timber are floated down the streams in spring, when the snows, melting, flood the rivers with swift, eddying, and often turbulent freshets. Occasionally it happens that the stream grows so swift and violent that it causes the logs to burst the boom or log-linked enclosure within which they are confined. Then away career the logs down the bosom of the rebellious torrent, and the owner may esteem himself remarkably lucky if he recovers even a small proportion of them. The breaking of a boom in this way may therefore represent a loss of hundreds, and even thousands, of pounds. In some cases, where these lumber-rafts have to travel long distances, the men in charge of them live on the raft throughout the whole of their journey, which may last some weeks. If you want to read a fascinating story about the men who engage in this work, read "The Man from Glengarry," by the Canadian novelist, Ralph Connor.
If you travel up the stream until you reach one of its higher tributaries, and turn up beside the latter, you may eventually find yourself at one of the lumber-camps which feed the far-off saw-mill in the valley below. In a picturesque clearing in the forest you will see the low but comfortable log cabin and log stable; you will see the timber-slide, with a rill of water flowing down it to make the logs slide more easily as they are shot down into the tributary stream; you will hear the crack of the teamster's whip and his cheery cry as he urges on his horses—four, six, eight, or ten of them—straining at a rough sleigh on which rest the ends of one, two, three, four, or five big logs; you may hear the swish of the big, two-handled cross-cut saw, as the woodmen cut through the trunk of gigantic fir, cedar, or spruce, or the slow, resonant crash as the forest giant totters, falls, smashes prone to the earth; you may hear the ring of the woodmen's axes as they lop away its branches and strip off its bark.
The men who guide these big timber-booms down the broad, swift rivers of the Canadian forest-lands, and pilot them over the boiling rapids, are marvellously clever in keeping their balance on the unsteady, ever-rolling logs. A favourite pastime with them is log-rolling. Wearing boots for the purpose—boots shod with sharp steel spikes—they walk out, each man on a broad log, and set it rolling. Once the log is started, it begins to roll at an increasing speed. Faster and faster go the feet of the raftsman; faster and faster spins the log. With arms outstretched and every muscle tense, the raftsman preserves his balance long after an ordinary landsman would have gone over—souse!—into the stream. That is indeed the fate which overtakes all of the competitors except one, and he—the man who preserves his balance the longest—is, of course, the winner of the game, the envied of his companions, the admired of all the lumber-jacks and their numerous friends. The cleverest men at this sport are the French-Canadians.
Nevertheless, all is not always peace and contentment in a Canadian forest. To say nothing of the wild beasts—e.g., bear, lynx, mountain lion—which live in them, the actual trees of the forest are themselves a source of menace and danger to men. During the hot, dry days of summer an unheeded spark from a woodman's pipe, a red-hot cinder from a passing train, a neglected camp-fire—the ashes left unextinguished—are each enough to ignite the highly inflammable undergrowths of the forest; and once set alight, the moss which carpets the floor of the forest, the broken sticks which litter the ground from many a winter storm, the bushes, the dead trees, all catch up the flame, and after smouldering, it may be for weeks, the whole forest suddenly bursts into flame. If this happens when a strong wind is blowing, nothing hardly can save the town or settlement, the ranch or saw-mill, that may chance to lie on the side of the fire towards which the wind is blowing. And it is indeed not only a grand but also a terrible sight to stand and watch a large "bush"-fire raging over, say, a square mile or two on a mountain-side. You see the red flames towering up like so many gigantic pillars of fire, now leaping up, now sinking down. As the fire appears to die down in one quarter, you see it break out with great and sudden fury in another, and then ere long it takes a fresh lease of life in the direction in which it first died down. A forest fire such as this advances with terrible swiftness, and woe to the houses which lie in its path! In the summer of 1908 the town of Fernie, a place of 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants, situated in the Crow's Nest Pass of the Rocky Mountains, was almost completely blotted out and extinguished in the course of a few hours; and so sudden was the onset or the fire that the people had literally to flee for their very lives, leaving everything they possessed behind them, and even in some cases in their hurry and confusion losing touch with those who were near and dear to them. A bush-fire is an awful visitation. It also means a very serious loss of valuable timber, no matter where it occurs.
The maple, whose leaf in conjunction with the beaver is the national emblem of Canada, yields in the spring a very sweet sap, which is boiled down to produce a syrup or sugar of a very delicious flavour. Doubtless its qualities were learned from the Indians, and the earlier settlers in the woods depended on it altogether for sugar. Now it is prepared as a luxury. "Sugar-making weather," bright, clear days, with frosty nights, come in March. To the great delight of the children the trees are tapped by boring a small hole in the trunk, and affixing a small iron spout, which leads the sap to a pail. The rate at which it drops varies, but as much as two gallons may be collected from a tree in a day. This is boiled in iron pots, hung over a fire in the woods, or in the up-to-date way in a large flat pan, till it thickens to syrup.
In the old days sugaring off was a great occasion; all the neighbouring boys and girls were asked in, and amid much jollification around the bright fire at night in the forest, the hot sugar was poured off on the snow, forming a delicious taffy, and all "dug in" at the cost of burnt fingers and tongue. Songs were sung, ghost-stories told, the girls were frightened by bears behind the trees, and this unique gathering broke up in groups of two or three, finding their way home in the moonlight through the maple wood.
The Canadian youth has many opportunities for a life in the wilds which all boys enjoy. In order to prevent the occurrence of the destructive forest-fires, fire-rangers are appointed throughout the whole of Northern Ontario, whose duty it is to patrol a certain part of the woods and see that no careless camper has left his fire smouldering when he strikes camp. The young men appointed for this duty are usually students from the colleges who are on their holidays; they work in pairs, and live in a tent pitched at some portage; they see no one but passing tourists or prospectors, and each day they walk over the trail and return—a certain stated distance. The rest of their time they have for fishing and other pleasures of life in the forest. They return in the autumn brown as Indians, and strong and healthy after the most enjoyable and useful of holidays.
The history of gold and silver has always been romantic and exciting, and Canada has furnished her full share of adventure and fortune, riches won in a day and lost in a night. All known minerals are found scattered here and there over the thousands of miles of north land. Besides the precious metals, the most important are coal, iron, nickel, and asbestos, and the deposits of the last two are much the most important in the world. Gold was first found by the Indians, who made ornaments of it; they found it in the sands of the rivers, and from there prospectors followed it to where it was hidden in ore in the mountains. The most famous deposits are in the Yukon, and no mining camp had a more exciting history than this, where working men staked claims that brought them a fortune and lost it in cards and dice overnight. But the Government saw that rights were respected, and soon banks were opened to keep the "dust," and the miner everywhere admits that he gets a "square deal" in Canada. At Cobalt it is said that the silver deposits were first found when a horse, pawing the rock with his iron shoe, uncovered the "cobalt bloom," the colour that there is the sign of silver. Another story is that a man picked up a stone to throw at a squirrel and found it so heavy that he examined it, to find it solid silver. If you went there you would be shown the famous "silver sidewalk" (pavement), 18 inches wide, and running for several hundred yards, of solid silver. It sounds like a tale from the "Arabian Nights."
MAIN STREET, WINNIPEG. PAGE 50.MAIN STREET, WINNIPEG. PAGE 50.
Every night in the year for the last seventeen years, halfway up the side of a lofty mountain overhanging a beautiful lake in Western Canada, and opposite to one of the most progressive towns of the interior of the Dominion, a solitary light might be seen burning. The stranger naturally wonders what the light can mean in such a spot. The mountain-side consists entirely of bare rock, with a few trees growing out of the crevices. There is not a blade of grass, not a sign of any single thing that could be of the slightest use to any human being. What does that light mean, then, up on the steep and lonely mountain-side? It does not move. It is always stationary, always visible, in exactly the same place, and always burning in exactly the same way. What does it mean?
If you address your inquiry to one of the older residents in the town opposite, he will tell you: "Oh, that's Coal-Oil Johnnie's light."
"But who is Coal-Oil Johnnie?" you at once ask again.
"Coal-Oil Johnnie's a half-crazy miner, who lives up there and works a mine."
"What sort of a mine?"
"A gold-mine."
"But is it really a gold-mine? And is he working up there all by himself?"
"Sure," replies your informant, in the word that is sterling Canadian for "Yes, certainly."
"And does he never come down? Does he always live by himself?"
Then you will be told all that is known about Coal-Oil Johnnie—namely, that he is slightly affected in his mind, that for seventeen years he has with unwavering perseverance worked away at a gold-bearing vein, worked in solitude, doggedly, perseveringly, drilling, cutting, and blasting a tunnel to wealth and fortune, which he implicitly believes is locked fast in the granite heart of the mountain.
Then will come your next question: "But why do you call himCoal-OilJohnnie?"
"Oh, that's because, when he wants money to buy himself bread or more dynamite for blasting, he comes down into the town, and peddles round coal-oil to people's houses."
"Coal-oil! That's what they call petroleum in England, isn't it?"
"Sure."
Now, Coal-Oil Johnnie has not yet found his fortune, but who knows how soon he may do so? Scores of other men have worked away with the same faith and the same hope, and have reaped the rewards they have toiled for in a much shorter time than Coal-Oil Johnnie has devoted to the one great object ofhislife. And yet others have laboured longer, and are still living on the faith, hope, and perseverance that is in them.
An ordinary Italian labourer, who came out to Canada and found employment in a gold-mine, worked on there until the mine was given up as being exhausted. But Pietro Lavoro was of a different opinion. After a while he went to the owners and asked them to grant him a lease of the mine. They agreed. Shouldering his pick, therefore, and lashing his tent and axe, his rock-drills, his miner's hammer, and some sticks of dynamite, as well as a bag of flour and a case or two of tinned meat, upon a small hand-sleigh—the whole of his fortune, in fact—Pietro set off to trudge up the mountain-side, and for several hours toiled along the steep trail leading to the Auro Rosso mine. At the end of two years Pietro Lavoro was a wealthy man. He had a big mining camp up at the Auro Rosso, and over forty men were employed in getting out the ore. At the bank down in the town below there was a sum of $50,000 standing to his credit, and packed in bags, close to the entrance to the gallery that pierced the mountain, was sufficient ore to yield him another $50,000. Pietro is only waiting for the snow to come to "raw-hide" the ore down to the lake, that he may get it transported to the smelter, where the gold will be separated for him from the stone.
The ore from which the gold is extracted is packed into bags each about a foot long, and weighing two or three hundredweight. The way these heavy bags are taken down the steep mountain-side, where it is utterly impossible for a vehicle on wheels to move, is to pack them into a bullock's raw hide spread out on the ground. The corners are then gathered up and tied together. After that the hide, harnessed to horses, is dragged down over the frozen snow. In that way a horse is able to take down a much larger quantity of ore than it could possibly carry on its back, and with much greater safety to itself. This is called "raw-hiding."
An even greater degree of faith and hope and perseverance was shown by the man who laboured for nine years at the opening up and development of another mine, working, not with his own hands, but in directing the systematic construction of galleries, the erection of stamp-mills, and the building of all the other appurtenances of a scientifically-equipped and up-to-date mine. This man risked very much more than the other—than Pietro Lavoro—namely, a large amount of capital. But at the end of nine years he, too, reaped his reward, for he sold his mine as a going concern to a party of American capitalists for a goodly sum.
All the three mines thus far spoken of are mines cut into the solid rock, and the hard stone has to be crushed in powerful stamping-mills and roasted in smelters before the precious metal can be extracted. There are mines of this description in both the east and the west of Canada. But gold is also obtained from a different source—namely, from the sands of rivers, out of which it is got by a process of washing the sand, or "dirt" as the miners call it. In the course of the washing, the gold, which is heavier than the sand, sinks to the bottom of the wooden trough, or rocker, or other receptacle, in which the gold-bearing sands are sluiced.
Two rivers of Western Canada have been especially famous for yielding gold in this way. One is the Fraser and the other is the Yukon. The discovery of gold in the sands of the former led to a wild miners' rush in 1858, and that was followed, three years later, by an equally mad rush into the neighbouring district of Caribou, in British Columbia; but in both cases the fever abated in the course of a year or two, after the gold-bearing sands had all been worked over. The rush to the Yukon was, perhaps, even greater than either of these, notwithstanding that the hardships which had to be encountered were immeasurably greater. The gold-fields of the Yukon, known as Klondyke, are situated near the Arctic Circle, many hundreds of miles from the settled abodes of civilization, and in a part of the world where the winter cold is of appalling severity. Except for a limited amount of garden produce, food, and indeed every kind of supplies, have to be transported many hundreds of miles.
Gold is not, however, the only mineral of value that is obtained from the bowels of the earth in Canada. Very many of the other metals which are prized by man are also extracted, such as silver, lead, zinc, copper, coal, and iron. The Cobalt silver-mines in Northern Ontario and those of the Slocan district of British Columbia are equally famous. Coal is yielded at Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, at Fernie, Michel, and other places in the Crow's Nest Pass of the Rocky Mountains, and in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
At the fairs and annual festivals, which are a prominent institution of both American and Canadian towns and cities of the West, a good deal of interest centres round the competition known as rock-drilling. This is carried on by sets of two men, both expert miners. The task the two men set themselves is to drive their rock-drills as far as ever they can into a solid piece of rock in the course of fifteen minutes. One man holds the rock-drill, whilst the other smites it with a big miner's hammer. At the end of each minute the two men change places, so that the man who held the drill the first minute wields the hammer in the second, and his mate, who wielded the hammer during the first minute, gets a rest during the second, whilst he is in his turn holding the drill. And terribly hard work it is, for the hammerman smites with all his might, and his blows fall like lightning. At the end of the contest both men are generally dripping with perspiration. And no wonder! when in the space of fifteen minutes two men such as these will drive their drills, as they really do, no less than 1 yard deep into a solid block of granite, or at the rate of over 2 inches in each minute. A marvellous exhibition, not merely of muscular strength, but also of skill and quickness! And truly it is a wonderful sight to see with what rapidity the men change places again and again, without appearing to miss a single stroke of the ponderous hammer.
"You often hear tall stories of the way the salmon swarm in the Fraser River," remarked an old frontiersman one day to a "new chum" recently arrived in Canada from England. "Those stories are often dished up to suit a palate that is just waiting to be tickled with cayenne, but they are not altogether fiction."
The new chum, having still "tender feet," hesitated about putting his foot in, and merely looked the inquiry which he was unable to conceal.
"Well, you may believe me or not, sir, but it is God's truth that I once saw a man standing on the bank of the river at ——," and he named a village near New Westminster in the delta of the Fraser, "and he was flinging the salmon out on the bank with an ordinary hay-fork, and he was working so that the sweat rolled off him."
"But what did he want so many fish for as that? Surely he could not eat them all?"
"No, sir; his meadow was in want of fertilization, and fish manure, even when it consists of the carcasses of salmon, is not to be despised."
Other stories about the enormous numbers of salmon in the Fraser River of British Columbia tell how the fish are so crowded together that it is impossible for a man to thrust his hand in between them, and how they form such a solid mass that it almost looks as if you could walk across the big broad river on their backs, and could reach the opposite bank dryshod.
The tinned salmon that is such a familiar object in grocers' shops is captured, killed, cooked, and sealed down in those tins in big factories called "canneries," which stand pretty thick beside the river in certain parts of the lower course of the Fraser.
BIG FOREST TREES, BRITISH COLUMBIA. CHAPTER 11.BIG FOREST TREES, BRITISH COLUMBIA.CHAPTER 11.
On the eastern side of Canada, again, off the coasts of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland (which, by the way, is an independent colony, and does not yet form part of the Dominion of Canada), Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island, there is a large population of hardy fisher-folk, who for generations have fished for cod on the inexhaustible "banks of Newfoundland." And even before their ancestors settled on American soil the hardy fishermen from Brittany, in France, and from the Basque country on the borders of France and Spain, used to dare the perils of the stormy Atlantic that they might go and reap the silvery harvest of the sea in the same fish-teeming waters. And for over 300 years great fleets of fishing-boats from both Europe and the maritime provinces of Canada have continued to brave the terrors and perils of the deep in pursuit of cod, mackerel, lobsters, herring, and haddock.
The earliest Europeans, or white men, to penetrate into the wilds of the Canadian backwoods were thecoureurs de bois—that is, hunters and trappers of French, or mixed French and Indian, descent, who collected furs to sell to the trading companies of the French. These bodies had factories along the Lower St. Lawrence. In the early days—that is to say, for a couple of hundred years after the French settled colonists in Canada—the principal fair for the trade in furs was Montreal. There every spring a crowd of trappers and hunters brought the bales of furs which they had stripped off beaver, bear, or fox, musk-rat or racoon, and handed them over in barter to the agents of the autocratic fur-trading company; and at the same time large fleets of canoes came paddling down the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa rivers, bringing whole boatloads of furs which the Indians had collected all along the Great Lakes, and even from the distant Ohio River, and the great plains of the West.
Who does not know the haunting melody of the "Canadian Boat-Song"?—
"Faintly as tolls the evening chime,Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.Soon as the woods on the shores grow dim,We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.Row, brothers, row! The stream runs fast;The rapids are near, and the daylight's past."
You can easily hear the swing of the oars, and catch the slight melancholy of the memory-haunting lilt as the singers keep time to the swaying of their bodies! And you can see the round rosy face of the big, burly, boyish-lookingcoureur de bois, or "runner of the woods," suddenly blanch, whilst his big black eyes grow bigger than ever, as he imagines he sees the weird flying canoe of some reckless woodsman who has sold his soul to the Evil One in return for the power of being able to make his fragile birch-bark canoe rise, as it were, on invisible wings into the air, and so speed along without paddle or punting-pole.
Now, whilst the French collected furs through the country of the Great Lakes, and from the wide regions to the west and south of them, the English, through the Hudson Bay Company, claimed a similar monopoly of the profitable fur trade farther north. And not only did they claim and maintain their supremacy as the sole fur-trading company in the North-West, they eventually grew so powerful that they carried on a regular system of government, administering the laws and punishing offenders.
Throughout all the north and west, in the towns and often in far isolated districts, we find the stores or trading-posts of the Hudson's Bay Company. This is the last of the great proprietary corporations, which at one time were so lavishly treated by European Sovereigns to privileges of unknown extent and value. The company was formed in 1670 by Prince Rupert, a cousin of Charles II., and certain associates, with proprietorship, sovereignty, and permission to trade in what was called "Rupert's Land," or all within Hudson Strait. For two centuries and a half they have carried on business, and the volume of trade at present is greater than ever before. They buy furs almost entirely, but sell everything that man desires.
One of the most remarkable features of Canada is the great number of lakes and rivers of all sizes, which interlace the land from east to west and north to south. Generally speaking, the country is divided into three great basins, the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, the Prairie, and the Pacific Slope.
The great lakes, five in number, form a chain of connected fresh-water seas leading to the Atlantic through the St. Lawrence River, and into them empty a great number of rivers and streams. The greatest of the lakes and farthest west is Superior, 380 miles long. It empties into Lake Huron by the St. Mary's River, where is situated the famous Sault Sainte Marie Rapids, and the town commonly known as the "Soo." Here the river is harnessed, and made to turn the wheels for large pulp and paper mills, while the vessels pass through canals, one on the Canadian and one on the American side.
Lake Michigan is wholly in the United States, and after passing Lake Huron, which is 250 miles long, we traverse the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the smallest of the series, and the Detroit River, which brings us into Lake Erie, a large but rather shallow lake, with many important towns and cities on its shores. It is drained into Lake Ontario by the Niagara River, that broad and swift-flowing stream which, after careering down a long course of rapids, plunges over the world-famed Falls, 160 feet, to the rocks below, while the rainbow-tinted spray rises to a height from which it is seen for many miles. The white water hurries along, and rushes headlong through a narrow gorge of rock in a tempestuous rapid, then sweeps round the great basin of the whirlpool to hurry along to Lake Ontario, gradually calming itself as it flows. Famous as is the great cataract, the river has another claim to our interest, for here mankind has laid his heaviest burdens on Nature's shoulder, and day and night the angry river turns the wheels which produce 400,000 horse-power, and light the towns and draw the streetcars for a radius of a hundred miles. Navigation goes on between the two lakes by the Welland Canal, which has twenty-seven locks.
Lake Ontario empties the water of all this great chain by the St. Lawrence River; at its beginning are the Thousand Islands, a summer resort of wondrous beauty, which wealthy citizens from Canada and the United States have made into a fairyland. The mighty St. Lawrence, in its course to the sea, has several rapids, where canals have been built; but passenger vessels "shoot" the rapids on their way to Montreal, where is the head of ocean navigation. This waterway, 2,200 miles in length, is unparalleled in the world, and provides the natural highway for the commerce of the Continent. An endless procession of great iron vessels, in tows of three or four, drawn by one large steam barge, passes down the lakes laden with wheat, iron, coal, or timber. Beautifully equipped passenger vessels ply between the ports, offering trips from two hours to a week in duration, while the white sails of the fleets of many a yacht club are to be seen through the summer months.
The central, or prairie, basin has a large number of rivers, of which the best known are the Saskatchewan and the Assiniboine, running east to empty through the Nelson River into Hudson Bay, and the Peace, and the Mackenzie, which drain a number of large lakes to the Arctic Ocean. On the Pacific Slope are the Fraser and the Columbia, noted for the great salmon fisheries, and the gold found among their sands. When the salmon are running—that is, coming up the river—one sees the whole river bright with the gleam of their scales, and in shallow places even the flow of the water is impeded. Ten million fish are canned each year.
Curiously enough, all these water basins are connected, and in the early days, before the railway was dreamed of, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, a famous explorer, from whom the great Mackenzie River takes its name, traced out the water-route from the head of Lake Superior via the Saskatchewan and the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean. When we trace up the Saskatchewan, we find it beginning in the Rockies in one branch of a little stream; the other branch runs west to the Pacific by the Columbia River. With the hand, one can direct the water now to the setting, now to the rising, sun. The drops beginning together reach the ocean thousands of miles apart. This is known as the "Great Divide." Though the coming of the steam-engine has made this route of little value, still the hunter or tourist may trace his sinuous path for weeks or months over this silver network.
The earliest white inhabitants of Canada, who have remained and helped to build up the Canadian nation, were settlers from France. There were, indeed, earlier arrivals from Europe, but they did not make anything like a permanent settlement. These were certain adventurous Norsemen who sailed out from Iceland in the year 1000, or even a little earlier, and returned with tales of a fertile country which they had discovered somewhere across the Western sea, and to which they gave the name of Vinland (which means the "Land of Wine"), but a country inhabited by Skraellings, which may be interpreted as meaning "Wicked Men." This Land of Wine is supposed to have been what is now Nova Scotia, or the country to the south-west of it, and the Wicked Men are believed to have been American Indians, who gave the hardy Icelanders a hostile reception, so that they did not obtain any real footing in the country.
The intrepid leaders of the earliest adventurers from France who attempted to establish themselves permanently in what is now Canada were a Breton sailor named Jacques Cartier, who set sail from St. Malo in April, 1534, and Samuel de Champlain, who, towards the close of the same century, and well on into the next, spent nearly forty years in devoted labour for the planting of a French colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence, founding the city of Quebec, exploring the rivers and lakes which help to make the great river the magnificent stream it is, assisting the Huron Indians to fight their inveterate foes, the intrepid and brave Iroquois, and striving to convert the Indians to the faith of Christ by sending French Catholic missionaries in amongst them.
For many a long year, however, the new colony, weak and scattered, had to wage a harassing war against the fierce red men—to wit, the Five Nations of the Iroquois. The stirring history of this frontier warfare is braided with many a tale of bravery, many an heroic episode. But of all the great deeds of this long, persistent struggle none shines with a more radiant glory than the self-sacrifice of Adam Dollard, or Daulac, the lord of the Manor of Des Ormeaux, and commander of the garrison of Montreal.
For more than twenty years the Iroquois had waged unrelenting war upon the colonists. These last were few in number, and were only able to hold their ground at all in the vicinity of the three fortified posts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. Outside their stockades and away from these three fortified posts there was no certainty of safety. Everywhere lurked the Iroquois. Mercy they had none; fiendish they were in their cruelty, and never for an instant did they grant the sorely harassed settlers the least rest or freedom from attack. In fact, they were become a veritable scourge, and a sort of universal panic seized the people. At last intelligence was brought by a friendly Indian of the tribe of the Hurons that a force of 1,200 Iroquois were setting out to swoop down upon Montreal and Quebec with the object of destroying the forts and utterly wiping out the French settlements. When the tidings came to the ears of Dollard, the young commandant of the garrison of Montreal, he was instantly fired with the Crusader's enthusiasm. He conceived the idea of dedicating himself, as Leonidas, the King of ancient Sparta, did, for the good of his country. He called for volunteers to go out with him and waylay the Iroquois on the Ottawa River, and there fight them to the bitter death.
Sixteen of the young men of Montreal caught Dollard's enthusiasm. They sought and obtained the Governor's consent, made their wills, solemnly dedicated themselves in the cathedral to the sacrifice they were willing to make of their lives, received the Sacrament, and bound themselves by oath to fight the Iroquois to the death, and to accept no quarter.
Having said adieu to their friends, they embarked in their canoes, and paddled downstream until they came to the mouth of the Ottawa. Turning into this river, they came, about May 1, 1660, to the formidable rapids called the Long Sault, where their further advance was stopped. Here they resolved to await the foe, more especially as among the bushes that stretched down to the shore was a palisade fort, which had been made the autumn before by a band of friendly Algonquin Indians. The palisade was, however, in ruins. The first task of the young Frenchmen was therefore to repair it. Whilst they were engaged upon this task, they were joined by forty Huron Indians and four Algonquins. During the second afternoon after their landing, their scouts brought in the intelligence that two Iroquois canoes were shooting the Sault. As soon as the Iroquois reached the foot of the rapids they were received with a volley, which killed some of them. But one or two escaped, and hastened to report the disaster to the vanguard of the Iroquois braves—namely, a band of 200 who were paddling along the upper reaches of the river above the rapids.
THE IROQUOIS ATTACKING DOLLARD'S STOCKADE.THE IROQUOIS ATTACKING DOLLARD'S STOCKADE.
Very soon Dollard and his companions saw a large fleet of the enemy's canoes racing down the rapids, and filled with savage Iroquois all thirsting for revenge. The first attack of the Indians was easily beaten back. They had looked for an easy conquest, and attacked in only a half-hearted manner. Then they set to work to build a rude fort for themselves. This gave the little garrison further time in which to strengthen their own defences. This work was still uncompleted when the Iroquois advanced to the attack a second time. They had seized the canoes of the allied French, Hurons, and Algonquins, and having broken them to pieces and set them on fire, now rushed forward and piled the blazing slabs of birch bark against the palisade. But they were met by such a withering volley from the sixty rifles that they were staggered, and glad to retreat.
A third time they made the attempt to rush Dollard's palisaded enclosure, but a third time they were driven back, leaving a large number of slain, and amongst them one of their most important chiefs. This daunted their spirits, and they hastily sent off for reinforcements.
In the meantime, until the reinforcements came up, which they did on the fifth day, the first band of Iroquois kept up an unceasing fire and constant menace of attack. In this way they gradually wore out the little garrison, who dare not sleep, who were unable to get water from the river, and were at last even in want of food.
Now, among the Iroquois were several Hurons, renegades from their own tribe. These men now tried to win over the Hurons who were fighting with Dollard, and at last hunger and thirst so told upon the latter that they all slipped away and deserted the young Frenchman except one man, their chief. He and the four Algonquins stood firm and loyal.
On the fifth day the yells of the fierce Iroquois and the firing of muskets told the doomed defenders of the palisade that the expected reinforcements had arrived. The Iroquois, having learnt from the Huron deserters how small in numbers the little garrison was, now made sure of an easy victory. Ostentatiously they advanced to the attack, but the result was the same as before. They were forced to fall back before the persistent and well-directed fire of the defenders.
Three days more were spent in this way, the Iroquois attacking from time to time, but always falling back before the steady fire of the heroic colonists. Dollard and his companions fought and prayed by turns, and hungered, thirsted, and snatched fragments of broken sleep, and were wellnigh utterly worn out by fatigue and exhaustion. At last the spirit of the Iroquois began to quail. Some talked of abandoning the attack, but others grew all the fiercer in their desire for revenge, while their pride revolted at the thought of so many warriors being beaten by so few of the hated palefaces. In the conflicting councils the authority of the latter party prevailed. It was resolved that, before finally abandoning the attack, they should make a general assault, and volunteers were called for to lead the attack. To protect themselves against the deadly fire of the little garrison they made large wooden shields 4 or 5 feet high, and capable of covering each three or four men. Under cover of these shields the volunteers were able to rush close up to the palisades, which they immediately began to hack to pieces with their hatchets.
Now, in anticipation of some such eventuality as this, Dollard had filled a large, wide-mouthed blunderbuss with gunpowder and plugged up the muzzle. Igniting the fuse which he had inserted into this home-made "hand-grenade," Dollard tried to throw it over the palisade amongst the Iroquois. But it was too heavy for him, and catching on the top of one of the pointed palisades, it fell back among his own friends, and killed or wounded several of them and nearly blinded others. In the confusion arising out of this mishap the Iroquois succeeded in effecting a breach in the palisade. Dollard and his followers rushed to meet the inpouring foe, and slashing, striking, stabbing at them with the energy of despair, succeeded in holding them momentarily in check. But the Iroquois broke through at a second place, and poured a volley into the devoted band of Frenchmen, and Dollard fell; broke through a third breach, broke through a fourth, and—all was soon over. The young French heroes, refusing to cease fighting, refusing to accept quarter, bleeding, staggering, half demented with exhaustion, weakness, and hopeless despair, were shot down to a man. Not one was left on his feet.
This brave and stubborn fight proved to be the salvation of the French settlements strung along the St. Lawrence. The Iroquois, although they were the victors, were so thoroughly disheartened that they turned their canoes about and paddled back by the way they had come, and for many a day the white men had rest from their attacks.
Thirty-two years later, in the autumn, when the woods were beginning to shed their leaves, and the men were gathering in the last lingering remnants of their harvest, another heroic deed was done, which still lives fresh and green in Canadian song and story. Twenty miles from Montreal, on the south bank of the River St. Lawrence, was the blockhouse of Verchères, enclosed within a palisade of palings. The lord of the manor was absent from home, and within the blockhouse the only persons were Madeline, the daughter of the lord of the manor, a girl of fourteen, her two little brothers, one of them twelve years of age, the other younger, and two old men-servants. The rest of the men were at work in the fields, outside the stockade, and at some distance from it.
It was a beautiful morning, and Madeline, attended by one of the old men, started out for the river. But before she had advanced very far her quick young eyes caught sight of a band of painted savages approaching the farm. She at once started to run back to the stockade, at the same time shouting a warning to the harvesters in the fields. And she had barely time to get within the shelter of the palisade and close the gates when the Iroquois were upon it. Both the men-servants were old soldiers, and as soon as the gate of the stockade was closed one of them went straight to the powder-magazine, intending to blow up himself and all who were inside the stockade, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the ruthless red men. Death by their own hands would, he was convinced, be preferable to torture and a horrible death at the hands of the savages. But Madeline Verchères thought there was a third alternative, and she checked the old man, and prevented him from blowing up the magazine.
Being herself animated by the loftiest and stanchest courage, she made her little garrison promise to obey her, and then proceeded to give to each a fixed and definite duty to perform. The fort possessed one cannon. This Madeline bade one of the old soldiers discharge at the enemy. The report alarmed them, but did not drive them away.
Almost immediately after this the beleaguered garrison saw a canoe approaching on the river. Madeline at once guessed that the occupants were women friends of her own. As there was no one else to go down to the water's edge to meet them, Madeline determined to go herself, for the two old men could not be spared from the defence of the stockade. The Indians, seeing the young girl going down to the river alone, were afraid to attack her, for they suspected a trap or stratagem of war. Madeline was therefore able to get her friends safely within the stockade.
But though there was no stratagem in this act, there was stratagem in the method of defence which Madeline adopted. She took care to have a relay of sentinels, challenging each other at stated intervals and at stated places; she made signals, which the Indians were able to see, as though issuing orders to a full garrison; she practised every device she could think of to deceive the enemy into the belief that the defenders were a numerous and undaunted band. And for a whole week this brave-hearted girl, with two old men, two little boys, and three or four women, kept a whole band of fierce and remorseless Iroquois successfully at bay. At the end of that time help, summoned by the escaped harvesters of the manor, arrived from Montreal, and the little beleaguered garrison was relieved.
The earliest white settlers on the shores of the St. Lawrence came from France, and the country of their adoption was known as New France. To this very day, not only the language, but the manner of life and most of the social institutions of the province of Quebec, are still emphatically French. And yet the French-Canadians, despite their passionate devotion to their race and their language, their religious creed (Roman Catholicism), and the customs and manners of their ancestors, manifest an irreproachable loyalty to the British Crown. When, soon after the middle of the seventeenth century, the new country was first settled, the land was granted by the King of France to French gentlemen, who became known as seigneurs, or lords of the manor. In return for these grants the seigneurs paid homage to the French King, and bound themselves by an oath to fight for him in time of need. They were also bound to have their land cleared of trees within a given time, otherwise the seigneury was to be taken away from them again. The seigneur in his turn granted slices of his lands to humbler arrivals from France—emigrants, as we should call them nowadays, though they called themselves, and are known to history as, "habitants." Their relation to their seigneur was something like that of medieval vassals to their feudal lord.
Now, in the early days these habitants, or emigrants, were mostly single young men, and naturally, when they settled down on the farms, which they rented from this or the other seigneur, they soon found that they required each a wife to help them in their work, and to cook and stitch for them; but young women were scarce in the colony. Accordingly, the French King, with the view of meeting this want, used every year to send out one or two shiploads of young girls as wives for the habitants. About the time the "bride ships" were expected the young men of the settlements, dressed in their Sunday best, used to repair to Quebec, where the ships landed. There, entering the great hall of the convent of the Ursuline nuns, where the girls were gathered, they each picked out a bride, led her straightway before the priest, and were married without an instant's delay.
The habitant of the present day is, as a rule, happy and contented with his lot, with a great reverence for the customs and habits of his forefathers, and an unwavering devotion to his church. He is fond of society, and loves the dance and the song. His leaning is manifested in the arrangement of the farms in his part of the country. As you steam down the great River St. Lawrence, you cannot help noticing how the farms in what was once New France are laid out in long narrow strips, nearly a mile in length, and all coming down to the river shore. Along these stand the houses, all near the river and pretty close one to another. Here the people grow tobacco, vegetables, and fruit, especially the famous Snow-apple, also known as "Fameuse," with a bright red skin and snow-white flesh. French Canada is also noted for its breed of horses.
The present Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, one of the ablest and most eloquent men in the whole of the British Empire, is a native of French Canada. He has governed the destinies of the Dominion for fully twelve years without a break, for it was in 1896 that he first became Prime Minister of Canada.
MONTREAL AND THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE. PAGE 79.MONTREAL AND THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.PAGE 79.
High above the great St. Lawrence stands the city of Quebec, which was founded by the French explorer and colonial leader, Champlain, in 1608, over 300 years ago. The city is built partly at the edge of the river and partly on the summit and slope of a bold cliff overhanging the stream. On this higher ground is the citadel, occupying the site of the early fort, which was one of the principal defences of the first settlers during the whole of the stormy period of the Iroquois wars. It was here, too, that the heroic Wolfe, the British General of George III.'s day, defeated the no less heroic French leader Montcalm. Quebec is the seat of Laval University, the most famous centre of Roman Catholic learning in Canada.
Higher up the river, too, is Montreal, the largest city in the whole of the Dominion. In early days it was the chief centre of the fur trade, and, like Quebec, a bulwark against the invading tides of the Iroquois. To-day it is the principal commercial city of Canada and the seat of varied manufactures. Here, again, is a large and famous University, a seat of Protestant learning—namely, McGill University. Montreal has also won fame for herself by her magnificent and merry winter carnival and her great palace built of ice.
The capital of Canada is, however, neither Quebec nor Montreal, nor is it Toronto, the second largest city in the Dominion and capital of the province of Ontario, as well as the seat of several affiliated Universities, and an important manufacturing centre. The place where the Parliament of Canada meets, and, consequently, the capital of the country, is Ottawa, on the river of the same name 116 miles by rail west of Montreal. As a city it is famous for its beautiful and imposing public buildings, the most stately of them all being the Houses of Parliament.
One day in the year 1755 consternation and dismay invaded every heart in what is now Nova Scotia, the large peninsula on the east of Canada that fronts the fierce Atlantic gales, and bears the full brunt of their fury without murmur or groan. At that time the inhabitants were nearly all, like those of Quebec and the St. Lawrence shore, descendants of people who came from France, more especially from Brittany and Normandy. Originally the country was called Acadia. It was James I. of England who changed that name to Nova Scotia, which is Latin, and means "New Scotland." But though the name of the country was changed, the people had not changed. They, like the habitants of the St. Lawrence shore, clung tenaciously to the customs and habits of their forefathers, and grew up in each successive generation with a passionate devotion for their mother-tongue, and a no less deep love for the land of their birth,Acadie.
The cause of the intense sorrow, rage, and despair which seized the inhabitants of this happy and prosperous community on the day mentioned was a proclamation of the British Governor. The countries of France and England had long been at war together, and for many years hostilities had waged with more or less bitterness between the colonists of the two countries settled in America. The Acadians were accused of having lent assistance in provisions and ammunition to the French at the siege of Beauséjour. It was resolved to punish them for their disloyal conduct, for they were at that time subjects of the King of England. Accordingly, all the men were suddenly seized and put into prison, and the women and children were ordered to gather, with their household effects, on the seashore. Then, despite their weeping and their grief, they were put on board the vessels of war, and taken away to the other British colonies in America all the way from the New England States to Jamaica. It is the fate of certain villagers of Grand Pré, who were taken away from their homes at this time, that Longfellow tells us about in his beautiful poem of "Evangeline."
"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas,Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-PréLay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward,Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number.Dikes, that the hands of the farmer had raised with labour incessant,Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gatesOpened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows.West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards, and cornfields,Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northwardBlomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountainsSea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty AtlanticLooked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station descended.There, in the midst of its farm, reposed the Acadian village.Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of chestnut.Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries.Thatched were the roofs, with dormer windows; and gables projectingOver the basement below protected and shaded the door-way.There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sunsetLighted the village street, and gilded the vanes on the chimneys,Matrons and maids sat in snow-white caps and in kirtlesScarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the goldenFlax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doorsMingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songsof the maidens.Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the childrenPaused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them.Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens,Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome.Then came the labourers home from the field, and serenely the sun sankDown to his rest, and twilight prevailed. Anon from the belfrySoftly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the villageColumns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending,Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment.Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers—Dwelt in the love of God and of man."
No wonder, then, there was lamentation and weeping and woe when these poor people were torn so cruelly away from the homes where they had been so happy! Where, indeed, can you find a more beautiful picture of human happiness, peace, and contentment than this Acadian village of Grand-Pré?
A few years later the places of these unfortunate Acadians were taken by strangers from the British colonies farther south and from the Motherland.
One day two gentlemen were driving by the side of a small but beautiful inland lake, when they met a little, shrivelled old man, with a forward tilt of the body, a lurching, shuffling gait, and a parchment-like wrinkled skin. Met! Yes, but when the odd-looking little man caught sight of the rig or vehicle approaching, he hastily turned off the road, and passed the conveyance at a good distance away. Yet as he passed he never once lifted his head.
This behaviour excited the curiosity of one of the gentlemen, a stranger, and he asked his companion: "Who's that odd-looking figure?"
"Ah! I don't wonder at your asking that? He's an old Indian. For years he has haunted the shores of this lake. Every summer he has attacks of fever or some such illness, and when he feels them coming on he goes away from the reserve in which his own people live and makes himself a hut of the branches of trees beside the lake, in a lonely spot where nobody can see him, and there he remains until he recovers, and never speaks to a single individual all the time he is here."
Now, this poor old Indian is typical of his race. The Indian, the glorified Redskin of Fenimore Cooper as well as the fierce Indian of the Western Plains, whom Mayne Reid has made familiar to English readers, is rapidly dying out. As a race, the North American Indian is as decrepit, as sad, and as dejected a creature as the poor old man who sought healing beside the lake. In Canada the Indians are fairly numerous in certain parts; but they are very little seen in the cities and towns of the white man. You may catch a fleeting glimpse of one or two at some wayside station, come to offer moccasins, gloves, purses, deer's horns, or other curios for sale to the passing traveller; but it is not until the Indian is spoken to that the traveller hears the sound of his voice, and even then the native may not open his lips, but will content himself with using the language of signs.
The Indians nearly all live in "reserves"—that is, tracts of land which the Government gives to them, and off which it keeps all white men. The reserve is meant for the Indian alone, and he is allowed to till it and do what he pleases with it. The Government also gives him help in providing him with food. The Indians do, however, make a little by hunting, earning bounties on the slaying of harmful wild beasts, or selling venison and deer's horns to white settlers. Then, again, in certain districts they help to gather strawberries in the middle of the summer, and in other districts pick hops towards the autumn, or fall, as the Canadians call that season. The full phrase—which, however, is never used—would be "the season of the fall of the leaf."
A missionary who laboured in the Far North of Canada once astonished, and yet deeply interested, a small company of listeners by describing his own strange wedding.
"After we came out of church," he said, "we both got ready for our honeymoon journey. When we were dressed, you could hardly have told the bride from the bridegroom. We were both wrapped up in furs from top to toe, so that the only part of our persons which could be seen was just round the eyes, and over the eyes we both wore large coloured goggles, to protect them against the dazzling snows.
"Well, we got into our sleigh, wrapped our fur aprons and rugs well round us, said good-bye to our nearest white neighbours, and after I had gathered up the reins and cracked my long whip over our team of fourteen dogs, off we started on our 200 mile drive!"
The people this devoted couple were going to live and work amongst were the Eskimo, a people who live all the year round amongst the Arctic snow and ice. These folk are another, though not a very numerous, element in the population of Canada.
Besides these two races—the Redskins and the Eskimo—there are two, or rather three, other races now dwelling in Canada who have not white skins. These are Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese. They are found chiefly in the West, in the province of British Columbia. The people of that province object strongly to the presence of all three races, and if only they were able to do it, they would sweep every man Jack of them into the ocean.
At first the Chinese came into the province without restriction, and they began to arrive in such large numbers that the Government of the province grew alarmed. With the view of checking them, the authorities imposed a head-tax on every Chinaman who landed, and went on increasing the amount until it reached no less a sum than £100 per head. This large tax is paid for the Chinese immigrants by wealthy fellow-countrymen already settled in the country, and known astyees. These men determine the wages at which the immigrants shall work, and then they themselves pocket a certain proportion of each man's wages! The slang names for a Chinaman are Chink and Celestial.
Again, both the Japanese and the Hindus began to arrive in much larger numbers than the white men of the province liked, and in some large towns the dislike to them culminated in riots and fierce attacks upon them, especially upon the Japanese in Vancouver.
At last the Government of Canada succeeded in securing a promise from the Government of Japan that not more than a certain number of Japs should be permitted to land in Canada every year. The Hindus the provincial authorities were not able to prevent from coming, or even to restrict their numbers. They, too, were British subjects, and consequently free to come and go in any and all parts of the British Empire.
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By JOHN FINNEMORETHE STORY OF ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRY MEN8 full-page Illustrations in Colour byALLAN STEWART
By ASCOTT R. HOPEBEASTS OF BUSINESS8 full-page Illustrations in Colour byG. VERNON STOKES and ALAN WRIGHT
By FREDERIC W. FARRAR
ERIC; or, Little by Little8 full-page Illustrations in Colour byG. D. ROWLANDSON, and 78 in Black and White byGORDON BROWNE
ST. WINIFRED'S; or, The World of School8 full-page Illustrations in Colourby DUDLEY TENNANT, and 152 in Black and Whiteby GORDON BROWNE
JULIAN HOME A Tale of College Life8 full-page Illustrations in Colour byPATTEN WILSON
By Lieut. Col. A. F. MOCKLER-FERRYMANTHE GOLDEN GIRDLE8 full-page Illustrations in Colour byALLAN STEWART