I am alive, I am thankful to say; but it seems to me that I should have left my bones on the Kicking Horse Lake, which lies on the slope of the Rockies, situated in British Columbia, where the scenery becomes grander and the air balmier as it comes up laden with the soft breeze of the Pacific. You see that at once in the superior size of the trees which clothe the sides of that part of the Rockies.
As far as what the navvies call the front, I had the benefit of the temporary railway by which Mr. Ross sends his labourers. It is then the great difficulties of the work commence, as the rocks are tremendous, and one of the tunnels making will be three-quarters of a mile long.
This hot weather I can scarce imagine how the men and horses stand the work; of the former, some were digging, others cutting down the trees, others removing rocks, others filling up the swamps. Here the waggons were being laden with stores to be sent further to the front; now and then a long trail of mules sweeps by with miners and miners’ stores, and I plunge into the forest, shaded from the fierce sun by the tall firs, and as I struggle in the swamps caused by the melting snows, I can realize something of the hardships of the early travellers—hardships of which the tourist, when the rail is completed, will have no idea, though he will be a little alarmed as the mountains drop away beneath his feet for more than a hundred miles to the Columbia river, while the narrow track of rails winds along its sides. In the winter this pass, when covered with snow, is very dangerous, and many are the mules and horses dashed to pieces over the precipice.
The lake, when I reach it, is full of ice and snow, and all round the mountains rear their snow-capped heads. One of the peculiarities of this region is the abundance of water in some shape or other, and the shadows on the lakes reflect as a mirror all the surrounding scene—the dark forest at the base, the masses of slate-like rock above, the snow in all its radiant white higher up, the unclouded azure that crowns and glorifies all.
Heated and tired, I throw myself on the moss, and realize, in all its intensity, the appalling loneliness of forest life—I startle three wild ducks, that is all. Down on my left comes the rushing torrent in a series of picturesque waterfalls into the lake. I climb the mountain by the side of them. The water sends to me an ice-laden air, which revives me as I struggle upwards and onwards, watching the whirlpools and cascades as the water angrily struggles to force its way through the iron barriers by which it ishemmed in. I secure a fine specimen of petrified moss from a stream close by. But I may not linger. Already I feel weak as I plunge into the frozen snow, or sink where the sun has melted it into morass, or stumble over an old moss-grown trunk, or climb the big trunks which the axeman has already levelled, or pass the streams which intersect the plain on logs off which I expect to slip every moment. Then I come to the railway men, and avail myself of the imperfect and unconnected track which they have formed; but now the sun beats fiercely on me, and I can scarcely put one foot before another. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Fortunately, I reach the tent of a good Samaritan. I refresh myself with water from the crystal stream. I lunch on bread and cheese, with tea kindly fetched from the company’s hut, but I have to lie down three hours before I feel myself equal to urging on my wild career again.
British Columbia seems at present to be chiefly occupied by miners. No other kind of emigrants are needed there. The country is mountainous—a regular sea of mountains; but, writes an occasional correspondent ofThe Toronto Mail, ‘there are beautiful valleys, far surpassing anything you have in Ontario, and the mountains and hills furnish pasture. Considering the climate, the rich soil, and the high price paid for all farming produce, I believe there cannot be a more desirable place for the farmer. I have no hesitation in saying that a farm of fifty acres is worth more than a hundred in the East. All you have to do is to sow your land with good seed and you are sure of a bountiful return. No weevil, midge, wire-worm, potato bug, nor, in fact, any farmers’ pests, exist here. There are no scorching hot days and sultry nights; no heavy frost or deep snow to impede work; consequently you are not driven like a slave for six months and frozenin for the other six, but have steady work all the year round.’
Other writers bear a similar testimony. With all its advantages, however, the country has one drawback—the scarcity and high price of labour. It seems well looked after by the Episcopalians, who have a Bishop here and several clergymen, and, as I may suppose the other denominations are equally in earnest and equally active, it is clear settlers may enjoy the advantages of the forms of religious life with which they are familiar, and under which they have been reared.
British Columbia, which entered the Canadian Confederation in 1871, is the most westerly of the Canadian Provinces. It has a coast-line on the Pacific Ocean of about 600 miles, that is, in a straight line. If its almost innumerable indentations and bays were measured, the coast-line would extend to several thousands of miles.
The area of the Province, according to theCensus measurement, is 341,305 square miles. Its position on the American continent is one of great commercial importance, and its resources are in keeping with its position. If it were to be described from the characteristics of its climate, its mineral wealth, and its natural commercial relations, it might be said to be the Great Britain and California combined of the Dominion of Canada.
The Province is divided into two parts: the Islands, of which Vancouver is the principal, and the Mainland. Vancouver is about 300 miles long, with an average breadth of about sixty miles, containing an area of about 20,000 square miles.
British Columbia has numerous harbours and rivers, some of which are of importance, and all are remarkable for their bountiful, in fact wonderful, supplies of fish. The scenery which it possesses is magnificently beautiful.
The climate on the coast is more equable and much milder in winter than in any otherpart of Canada; but as the mountains are ascended, greater cold prevails, with more snow, and the characteristics of greater dryness of atmosphere which mark the climate of the interior of the continent are found.
The population of British Columbia, by the Census of 1881, did not exceed 49,459, of which 25,661 were Indians. This comparatively sparse population is due to the hitherto isolated position of the Province; but now that railway communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Dominion of Canada is being rapidly pushed forward to completion by a route which offers the easiest gradients and the most important natural commercial advantages of any possible line across the continent of America, the inducements the Province offers to settlers are beginning to attract the attention, as well of the emigrating classes of the Old World, as of the migrating classes of this continent; and population is already beginning to flowrapidly in. It is beyond doubt that the percentage of increase which will be shown at the next decennial Census will be a statistical fact to excite men’s wonder. Its fisheries, its forests, its mineral resources, will provide work for thousands who are starving at home. And it will be easily reached when the Canadian Pacific Railway is completed.
I have now reached the end of my journey, and I sum up my emigration experiences. The emigrant, if strong and industrious, and ready to take advantage of opportunities, and not averse to roughing it, will be sure to find work; but he must be shy, if he has cash, of land schemers, and I would advise him, if he thinks of settling, not to be in a hurry about it, but to take time to look around. I have seen as fine farming country as anywhere in the world. I have seen other parts where no one can get a living. Amongst the emigrants I see many who must succeed anywhere,and many who will go to the wall wherever they may be.
Let me give you another illustration of the bursting of an emigration scheme. The London dailies often have advertisements offering for a certain bonus to provide young men with homes where farming in all its branches is taught. The London (Ont.) papers tell how a number of young fellows have been taken in in this way. They paid the advertisers sums from thirty pounds upwards, in addition to their passage money, the consideration being that on their arrival in Ontario they were to be placed on farms and kept there at the agent’s expense. Of course, when they reached their journey’s end, no farmers were to be found. If a young Englishman wishes to try farming in Canada, he cannot do better than hire himself to a farmer for a year or two and keep his money in his pocket for the purchase of a farm.
But even then he must not buy a farm till he knows something about it, and he cannot be long out here before he will find out where the good land is. A Canadian whom I met at Calgary, told me that he knew a farm near Toronto which was regularly in the market every year. It is safe to be bought by an Englishman, who tries it for a time, gives it up in despair, and then it comes into the market again.
‘Are there any stones on the farm?’ asked an Englishman, after he had purchased his farm.
‘I only saw one,’ was the encouraging reply: and it was a truthful one. There was but one stone, but then it embraced the surface of the whole farm.
The English purchaser must have his wits about him. Here he is by many regarded as a stranger, and they take him in. The poet tells us where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise. Ignorance is not bliss inCanada, emigrants really must have their wits about them or they will suffer much.
Near Moosomin there is some fine country where many English have settled. Only last week an Englishman selected a farm in that locality for a homestead. He at once proceeded there, having at considerable expense hired a conveyance for his wife and four children. When he got there he found the land already occupied. To add to his troubles, when he returned to Moosomin one of his children died; the result is that the wife has grown home-sick, the poor man disheartened; he wants to return to England, but he has already exhausted his means. This want of harmony between the land office and the guides, according toThe Manitoba Free Press, is said to be of frequent occurrence. The Dominion Government ought to see to this. They are eager to promote emigration, but many such cases will make English farmers naturally a little reluctant to come out.
DANGERS OF THE ROCKIES.—PRAIRIE FIRES.—THE RETURN.—PORT ARTHUR.—MIGRANTS.
There is a great deal of snow in the Rockies. In June that snow begins to melt. The result is, a violent body of water rushes down, which makes the railway people very uncomfortable.
On Sunday I met the engine-driver of the train by which I was to travel east next morning. At Holt City it seems no one knows from what particular spot the train will start.
‘You won’t start without me?’ I said.
‘No; I will look to see whether you are on board.’
‘But,’ said I, ‘you must leave at five, whether I am on board or not.’
‘Oh! as to that,’ he said, ‘no one can make me start before I am ready. But,’ said he, ‘perhaps we may not get away at all. I don’t like the look of the bridge, and there is a deal of water about.’
I smiled incredulously. Had not I seen, only an hour before, with my own eyes, a special train arrive from the west filled with labourers and freight? If that could cross in safety, surely our lighter train could do the same.
Thus reasoning, I lay down with a light heart in my caboose, having invoked, not the saints, but every decent Christian I could find, to take care that I might be aroused at four p.m., in order that I might have a good wash before I started on my little run of 1,500 miles, as far as Port Arthur.
Just as I was falling into the arms of Morpheus, to speak poetically—a habit towhich I was much given in my earlier days—a fellow-traveller came rushing into the caboose, saying timidly:
‘You’d better get on board at once. The bridge has given way, and they may go across at once,’ and so saying, he left me in the dark.
However, I managed to jump out of my bed, collect my luggage, and scramble down the plank, the only and somewhat perilous means of access to my caboose, and stumble along the confusing lines of railway by which Holt City is adorned, and climb up into a car, wondering much all the while why we should start at all, when the bridge had partly given way, or whether I had come all that distance merely to find a watery grave. In the car I found a company as grotesque and rough as any I had yet seen anywhere, discussing the situation with more or less earnestness.
The bridge, I heard, was being repaired;that was a comfort. But still no one knew when we should start. Now and then we moved a few feet forward, or a few feet backward; but, in reality, I believe we remained in the same position all night, and started at the usual hour next morning. But the horror of that night was something inexpressible. Sleep was quite out of the question. You can’t sleep in an American railway-car unless you are a navvy or a contractor—who can sleep anywhere. In England, even in a third-class carriage, the chances are you can lie down at your full length and sleep. In Canada you can’t do that, as the seats are too short. So there I sat, bolt upright, all through that tedious night, watching for the light of day, while my companions sat smoking and talking and expectorating. In a playful moment one of them suggested that they should all take off their boots. Fortunately the proposition did not meet with universal approval, and I was saved that horror.
In the Rockies life is not all beer and ’baccy. One day there was an alarm of fire. It seems the woods are on fire all day long, and week after week. In this way much valuable timber is destroyed, and no one knows who does the mischief, or how it will terminate. Daily we saw the smoke of a forest fire; one day the flames came so close to Holt City that everyone was alarmed. If a spark or two reached the place where the explosives were stored, Holt City and all its inhabitants might have been blown to atoms. Down in the prairies fire does a vast amount of mischief to the settler, who awakes in the night to find his tent or house reduced to ashes, and all his worldly goods destroyed. Such cases are of frequent occurrence, especially at this season of the year, when the settler sets fire to the prairie before ploughing, or to insure a better crop of grass. One dark night, in particular, I remember the prairie fire lent quite a mournful grandeur tothe scene. Then there came a day I shall never forget as long as I live. A Canadian summer may have its peculiar charms, but I candidly own, not being a salamander, it is far too hot for me. On that particular day the heat was intense. It affected everyone. Those who dared drank gallons of iced water, others pulled off their coats and collars and lay down on the cushions with which the sleeping-car is plentifully provided, and went off to sleep. It was in vain one tried to pass away the time in smoking—it was too hot for that. Newspapers and cheap novels were all neglected—conversation was out of the question. Everyone seemed on the point of giving up the ghost. Even the blackie, who invariably acts as conductor to the sleeping-car—and who is about the only civil official (with the exception of the steamboat attendants, who are models of good behaviour) one meets in Canadian travel, seemed, thinly clad as he was, quite overcome.The sun took all the colour out of his cheeks, and he became quite pale—almost white.
In the course of our return journey we stopped at Moose Jaw for supper, and then I witnessed a new development of prairie life in the shape of a thunder-storm, which seemed to me unusually vivid and protracted. The lightning was grand as it swept over the wide sea of grass, making everything as bright as noon-day, and then all was dark again. It brought us a rain that had really healing in its wings. While the heat lasted I was a martyr to prickly heat. It seemed to me that I was going to have small-pox or measles. I had little pimples all over me, and as to my wrists, they were really painful, and I could not keep from scratching with a vivacity which a Scotchman might have envied. Was it that vulgar disease to which, it is said, the gallant Scot is peculiarly liable? I could not say. I had shaken hands withso many filthy Indians, and it might be that, as I learn they are much afflicted in that way. Happily the thunder-storm cooled the air, and I felt all the better for it. When I got as far as Port Arthur, and inhaled the cool air of Lake Superior, I suffered no more from unpleasant irritation of the skin. It was with joy I embarked on the C.P.R.’s fine steamer, theAlberta, for Owen Sound. But even travelling on Lake Superior has its disadvantages. The water of the Lake is intensely cold, and when the sun beats fiercely on it there is sure to be a fog. Such happened to be the case on my return, and we ploughed slowly along for a while, seeing hardly anything of the beauty of the scene, while every few minutes we were cheered by the dismal notes of the fog-horn. Fortunately the fog lifted, and then what a display we had of islands, green as emerald, on the tranquil sea! I must add, also, I had good company everywhere, with the exception ofthe great Sir John M’Neill, who had his meals apart from us at a table all to himself, and an English clergyman from Staffordshire, whom a Canadian gentleman described to me as ‘a regular crank,’ whatever that may mean. The parson is going to write a book, so he tells the people; but he shuns me, which is a pity, as I met a friend at Calgary who told me they had great fun with the parson on their way up from Winnipeg, telling him all sorts of cock-and-bull stories, which he greedily entered in his note-book.
I must give you one more sketch of a Canadian town as an illustration of the enterprise and pluck which are the main characteristics of the Canadian of to-day. If you look at the map, you will see Port Arthur is situated in Thunder Bay, and Thunder Bay, when you pass the rocky barrier by which it is encircled, opens out into Lake Superior.
Thunder Bay is a sheet of water some 13 by 19 miles in area, sheltered from the wildstorms which sweep over the northern lakes by the Pie and Welcome Islands and the Thunder Cape on one side, and by the terraced bluffs of ever-green forest on the other; forming thus an unsurpassed harbour for extent and accommodation, and having claim to be what its admirers say it is, the prettiest of all the American Lakes.
It is not an agricultural district that surrounds Port Arthur, though it is a fact that there are vast stretches of rich lands within its borders, including the Kamanistique and other valleys, on which at least 3,000 families could settle and get a good living by agriculture.
The timber resources of the surrounding country, which must find its centre and point of collection in the quiet waters of the bay, comprise thousands of square miles of spruce and other trees; while iron, copper, zinc, and silver are to be found in the neighbouringrocks. Gold also is said to be hidden in the bowels of the earth; though not yet discovered in paying quantities. However this may be, one thing is clear, that from Thunder Bay the whole agricultural exports of the countless fertile acres of the Canadian North-West must find an outlet. Truly did the Marquis of Lorne, when here, describe it as ‘The Silver Gate.’
Port Arthur—as it was termed when Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived here on his way to suppress the Riel revolt in the North-West, out of compliment to the Duke of Connaught—is in reality one of the few places in Canada that have a history. As early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, some of the French settlers had formed an idea that the great Lake Superior was a highway to the vast fur-producing countries of the North-West, although not till 1641 did any white man venture upon its waters. In 1678 a Frenchman built himself a house in the vicinity ofPort Arthur, and commenced trading with the surrounding Indians for their furs.
In 1857 the attention of the Canadian Government was called to the spot, and they sent out commissioners to explore, who, in 1859, published a report which created quite a sensation all over Canada. In due time the C.P.R., which is the great mainspring of all the North-West, took up Port Arthur, had all their stores and men carted there, and now Port Arthur has a grand future before it, of which it is impossible to predict the whole extent. I have great faith in Port Arthur. It must in time be another Montreal or Toronto. Moose Jaw is going down. It will be long before Calgary will be much of a place. The Silver City is half deserted; and at Winnipeg the boom has burst and bankruptcy prevails; but Port Arthur is bound to go ahead.
I spent there a night on my return, and saw a marvellous change—even since my visitthere a fortnight previously. Then people were hard at work putting up wooden shops; now those shops are fitted up with glass fronts, and already filled with merchandise from all quarters of the earth, though in many cases the upper parts of the building are in an incomplete state. Every day ships arrive from the American side; thus, within a couple of days previous to my arrival, 20,000 tons of coal had been landed. There are steamers of all sorts and sizes in the harbour, constantly coming in or going out. On one side a new elevator has been erected, on the other side is a great store of lumber and a saw-mill.
Yesterday Port Arthur was a township, now it is incorporated as a city, and rejoices in a mayor. The place is full of hotels, which charge high prices, give very little for the money, and do a roaring trade. A very handsome English church is being erected; just by, the Presbyterians are building one equally handsome, only a little smaller. TheRoman Catholics make quite a grand show with their brick church and convent and schools, while the Methodists have a very plain and ugly imitation of an English church, with its steeple all in wood and painted white, which attests, at any rate, if not their taste, their influence and wealth. I visited the school-room, which was filled with bright and well-fed boys and girls, where the children are taught free, as they are all over Canada—where they have, by-the-bye, a compulsory law, which is never enforced, as it is impossible to do so. And then I made my way to the best-looking building in the town—the emigrants’ shed—where already 3,600 emigrants have this season been lodged gratis by the Dominion Government previous to their passing onwards to the North-West.
People tell me there is no room for mechanics in Canada. In Port Arthur I see them in constant demand. At one shop window I see a notice to the effect that 10 carpenters arerequired, at another a demand for painters, while a third shop window seeks to secure good tinsmiths. At the chief draper’s shop there is a notice stating four good assistants are required. What a pity the discontented men whom I left at Montreal, because work was not offered them immediately they landed, did not come thus far! As to rockmen and labourers, they are wanted by the hundred. Surely, Port Arthur must be a good place for the working man and the working girl. Even at Calgary they were paying the female helps at the hotel—as sour a set as I ever saw—and who were constantly quarrelling with John Smith, the Chinaman cook—as much as 40 dollars a month. But even out here a man must have brains.
‘I came out here seven years ago,’ said a gentleman to me as we sat on one of the rocks which line Port Arthur, ‘and could find nothing to do. I was brought up in a foundry, and had saved 1,100 dollars. I went all round;no one could give me a job. Then I began buying a few hides; this brought me into contact with a great fur merchant at Chicago—he employed me as his agent at 80 dollars a month. Then I gave that up and turned miller, and the year before last I traded to the extent of a quarter of a million dollars. Last year I was too eager, and lost a lot of money; but this year I hope to get it all back again.’
Why cannot an English emigrant be equally successful? Is it because we do not send out the right sort of men?
‘There is not one man in a hundred that comes out here from London who is of any use,’ said an old Toronto trader—himself an Englishman—to me. ‘I never call myself an Englishman,’ said he. ‘When I go to London I always say I am a Canadian. I am ashamed of the name of Englishman. What would Sir Garnet Wolseley have done when he was here had it not have been for the Canadian Volunteers?’
I am glad to hear, however, that he had nothing but praise for the Scotch settlers Lady Cathcart was sending out. She advances them money, and they pay her back a good rate of interest. Why cannot other people do the same? Another question, also, may be asked: Why cannot certain Canadian land companies, who really offer purchasers a fair bargain, put up a few houses on their separate farms? The settler has to build his house under every disadvantage. I am sure they could build the houses by contract at half the expense; and they could have a mortgage on the farm, which would ensure them in every case against loss, and which might add materially to their profits as well.
If the crops this year turn out well in the North-West, and, according to present prospects, there is every reason to suppose they will, the farmers will pour into the country in a way which they have never done before, and the prosperity of the North-West will beplaced on a solid basis. Be that as it may, there are bright days in store for Port Arthur.
On the green forest, rising up above the town and overlooking Thunder Bay, it is intended to build a first-class summer hotel for the comfort of holiday makers and health seekers. There the visitor will enjoy fine cool air in the sultry heat of summer, while bathing in the lake will invigorate his enfeebled frame. The waters abound with fish. Islands and lakes and rivers tempt the yachtsman. If the workmen who squander their hard-earned wages in reckless drunkenness would but learn to be sober, few places on the Canadian lakes would be more enjoyable than Port Arthur.
Thunder Bay, Lake Superior
I cannot leave Canada without speaking of its Grand Trunk Railway, which meets the emigrant at Port Levi when he lands at Quebec, and which he will undoubtedly often patronise if he tarries long in the land. It has built the Victoria Bridge at Montreal, oneof the wonders of Canada—a tubular structure of magnificent proportions, which spans the St. Lawrence, and gives uninterrupted communication to the western traffic with that of the United States. Including the abutments, the bridge is 9,084 feet in length. The tubes rest on twenty-four piers, the main tubes being sixty feet above the level of the river. It may well be called the Grand Trunk Railway, as it operates under one management over six thousand miles of first-class railway road. Having close connection at Port Huron, Detroit and Chicago with the principal Western American lines, it offers great advantages to emigrants to all parts of the compass. At Montreal I had the pleasure of a long chat with Mr. Joseph Hickson, the general manager, who takes a deep interest in the subject of emigration, and Mr. W. Wainwright, the assistant-manager, to whom I am indebted and grateful for many acts of kindness, especially welcome to thestranger in a strange land. It is the Grand Trunk that takes the traveller over Niagara Falls—on the International Suspension Bridge connecting the Canadian Railways with those of the States. This structure, which is 250 feet above the water, commands a fine view up to the Falls. It is to be feared that as long as Canada and the United States have separate tariffs there will be not a little smuggling along this bridge. When I was there I heard of a Canadian judge, who with his family had been stopping at one or other of the hotels on the Canadian side. One fine morning some of the ladies of the party walked off to the American side, and returned laden with bargains which had paid no duty. In their innocence they boasted of the little transaction to the judge. ‘How can I,’ said he indignantly, ‘punish people for smuggling, if I find my own family do it?’ and the ladies had to pay the duty, so the story goes, after all.
BACK TO ENGLAND.—CANADIAN HOSPITALITY.—THE ASSYRIAN MONARCH.—HOME.
My time was up, and I had to be off, after we got a look at pleasant London in the wood, as my Canadian friends who have been to England call it. I came back from Chicago to New York, and had again to encounter the horrors of nights in a Pullman sleeping-car. Why cannot the railway authorities separate the part of the car devoted to the gentlemen from that part inhabited by the ladies? The way in which the sexes are mixed up at night is, to say the least, unpleasant. I shall never forget my last experience in a Pullman sleeping-car. Anancient dame with blue spectacles, myvis-à-vis, as the shades of evening came on, gave me the horrors. In my despair I began undressing, thinking that the outraged female would rush away in disgust. Alas! she had stronger nerves than I calculated, and there she sat gazing serenely with her tinted orbs till I plunged myself behind my curtained berth, to encounter, early in the morning, once more those eyes.
New York and Boston are full of fairy forms. Why don’t they travel? The change would be pleasant for sore eyes like mine.
No wonder I sat all that night thinking of the great kindness I had received in Canada, and regretting especially that I had refused an invitation to dine that evening at the home of one of the leading barristers of Toronto, to meet some clergymen there who were familiar with my name, and who wished to meet me.
Surely I did wrong to leave Toronto, withall its friendly faces and kindly hearts. It will be long ere I cease to remember how the Canadians made me at home, as I met them on the rail, or on the boat, or in the hotel.
Said a London Evangelist to me: ‘You will find the Canadians a cold people, who will show you no hospitality. While I was there not one of them invited me to have a cup of tea.’
All I can say is, I found the Canadians quite the reverse. But then my friend went on a mission, and is a man of very serious views, while I travelled merely to see a land of whose wonders I had heard much, to talk to sinners as well as saints, and to learn from them what I could.
I was a great reformer once myself, and had glorious visions which never came to pass. In youth we have all such dreams. Now, as the days darken round me and the years, I seek to put up with the shortcomings of my brother-man, trusting that he in hisChristian charity may extend a similar forbearance to my own.
I came back in theAssyrian Monarch. I was glad I did so. That fine ship has a distinguished record. It has carried no end of theatricals to New York; it did the same kind office for Jumbo: it carried troops and horses to Egypt; and when we English undertook to punish Arabi, it was a home for the refugees for a while.
Perhaps we have no ship more noticeable than theAssyrian Monarch, belonging to the Monarch Line, which runs weekly, I fancy, between New York and London.
It is a great treat in the fine weather to take that route. You are a little longer at sea—you glide along the south coast till you reach the Scilly Isles, and the ships of the company are all that can be desired.
It is a great deal of trouble and expense to some to go with all their goods and chattels to Liverpool, then unpack them, and get themdown to the landing-stage, and then repack them in one or other of the far-famed steamers of that busy spot, and all this you save if you patronize the ships of the Monarch Line, which carry chiefly cargo, with a few saloon passengers as well.
We had a very heavy cargo on board theAssyrian Monarchas we came back from New York. We carried 260 bullocks, besides cheese and grain, to make glad the heart and fill the stomach, and thus one felt that if the screw were to fail or the fog to hinder a rapid transit, there was corn in Egypt, and that there was something to fall back on. Happily, we were not driven to that alternative. We fared well in the saloon of theAssyrian Monarch; so well, indeed, that a poor elderly lady, who seemed at death’s door when we started, became quite vigorous, comparatively speaking, by the time we ended our voyage.
We had more freedom in the way of sittingup late and having lights than is possible in a crowded passenger ship, and we came more into contact with the captain of the ship and his merry men.
In the case of theAssyrian Monarchthis was a great advantage, as Captain Harrison is a good companion as well as an able navigator, and I felt myself safe in his hands, that is, as far as anyone can be safe at sea.
Further, I felt that the chances were in my favour. TheAssyrian Monarchhad carried over the Atlantic, in stormy weather, the highly-respected and ever-to-be-regretted by Londoners Jumbo; surely it could be trusted to perform the same kind office for myself in the summer season, when the air is still and the seas are calm; and so it did, though every now and then we encountered that greatest of all dangers at sea, fog, more or less dense, especially on the Banks of Newfoundland, where the ice-laden waters of the Arctic come in contact with the warmer waves of the GulfStream. As our course was very fortunately much to the south, we had a good deal of the latter.
That Gulf Stream was a revelation to me. When I took my morning bath it seemed as if I were in warm water, and the new forms of life it fostered and developed were particularly pleasant to a casual observer like myself. There one could see the nautilus, or the Portugeuse man-of-war, as it is familiarly termed, in the language of the poet,
‘Put out a tier of oars on either side,Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,’
‘Put out a tier of oars on either side,Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,’
and cruel, big-headed sharks, which, indeed, followed us almost all the way to England (the fact is that now, when so many cattle are thrown overboard, the Atlantic abounds with sharks), and lovely flying-fish like streaks of silver flashing along the deep and boundless blue ocean. Of these latter one flew on board. It met with a cruel fate. It waseaten by the first officer of theAssyrian Monarchfor breakfast. It ought to have choked him. It did nothing of the kind; he, hardened sinner that he was, enjoyed it greatly, and said that it was as good as a whiting.
In the Gulf Stream we found the usual number of whales and porpoises. The latter would play around the bow or race along the side of the ship in considerable quantities of all sorts of sizes. There were other fish of which I know not the names to be seen occasionally leaping out of the water as high and repeatedly as possible, as if a shark were in their midst seeking whom he might devour.
One sight I shall never forget in the Gulf Stream. It was that of a tortoise. I was leaning over the ship’s side, when something big and round seemed to be coming to the surface. I could not make out what it was; then all at once the truth flashed upon me ashe wobbled along, paddling with his fins, his head erect, his little eyes peering at the ship as if he wondered what the dickens it was, and what business it had there. He seemed to be treading the water.
‘I saw him but a moment,But methinks I see him now.’
‘I saw him but a moment,But methinks I see him now.’
The sight gave me quite an appetite, though my friend Sir Henry Thompson will insist upon it that turtle soup is made of conger-eel, but in the wide Atlantic one has time to think of such things; day by day passes and you see nothing but the ocean—not even a distant sail, or the smoke of a passing steamer.
People complain of the uneventfulness of life on board a ship. That, however, is a matter of great thankfulness. A collision or a shipwreck are exciting, but they are disagreeable, nevertheless. It seems the homeward voyage is always the pleasantest as faras the sea is concerned, the wind being more frequently in the west than in any other quarter. Perhaps that is one reason why the Americans are so ready to cross the Atlantic. When I left New York, Cook’s office, in the Broadway, was full of tourists, including Mrs. Langtry and other distinguished personages. Mr. John Cook seems as popular in New York as he is elsewhere. Indeed, I was confidentially informed that he was engaged in organizing a personally-conducted tour for the relief of Gordon and the capture of the Mahdi, and I hear from Egypt that he has a chance of being made Khedive, a position which I am certain he would fill with credit to himself and advantage to the people. Of course, there is a little exaggeration in this, but the American tourist has good reason to revere the name of Cook, and so have we all. As much as anyone he has promoted travel between the Old World and the New, and has made us better friends. It is tobe hoped that every steamer that crosses the Atlantic does something similar.
I must own, however, that the nearer I approached England the more I felt ashamed of my native land. The weather was villainous. It rained every day, and the worst of it was, I had had the audacity to assure the Americans on board that we had dry weather in England, that occasionally we saw the sun, and that we were not a web-footed race. Fortunately, at the time of writing this I have not yet encountered any of my American friends, or I should feel, as they say, uncommonly mean. However, the weather was fine enough to admit of a good look at Bishop’s Rock, the name of the lighthouse at the Scilly Isles, where we got our first sight of land; you can imagine how we all rushed on deck to see that. In fine weather, I say, by all means return from America in one of the fine, steady, well-built ships of the Monarch Line. The scenery isfar finer than that offered by Queenstown and Liverpool. You have the Scilly Isles to look at, and the Land’s End, and the Lizards. At Portland Bill we laid off till a pilot came on board, and we had a good look at the establishment where so many smart men are sent for a season, and Weymouth heading the distant bay; and then what a fine sweep you have up the Channel—crowded with craft of all kinds, from the eight thousand ton steamer to the frail and awkward fishing lugger—and round the Nore; whilst old towns and castles, speaking not alone of the living present, but of the dead and buried past, are to be seen. Even Americans, fond as they are of modern life, feel the charm of that; whilst to the returning traveller the landscape speaks of ‘home, sweet home.’
COLONIZATION IN CANADA.
I was glad to see, the other day, Mr. Morley’s letter advocating the propriety of taking up land and settling on it some of the too numerous class who drift into our great cities, finding no work to do in the country, there to lead indifferent lives and come to an untimely end.
It is a step I have repeatedly advocated. Land is cheap enough now; there is no occasion to wait for an Act of Parliament. It is as easy to buy an estate, and to split it up into small portions, of which each shareholder will become in time the proprietor, as to form a building society, and thus enable any manto become his own landlord. But there are certain drawbacks. There is the parson to be dealt with, who will be sure to claim his higher tithes; there are burdens on property, of which the working man, who is told by Mr. Chamberlain that he is more heavily taxed than any other class of the community (is not the reverse of this the case?), has no idea; and last, and not least, there is the unfitness for peasant proprietorship of the average English workman, who has no idea of living on the scant fare of the peasant proprietor of Belgium or France, or, I fear, of working as hard. Granting, however, that he does, the great fact remains, that peasant proprietorship is no remedy for all the ills of life, and that France has its surplus population quite as badly off, and a great deal more difficult to deal with than our own.
What is to be done to relieve the distress, the existence of which all must own and deplore? I answer, Emigrate.
Emigration is the natural means of relieving the poverty of a nation. Every man is an emigrant. No one lives and dies in the village in which he was born. He finds his way to the neighbouring town in search of work; then to the great metropolis; then across the water to one or other of our colonies.
Greece and Rome realized the fact that under no conditions could a certain tract of territory maintain more than a certain number of people, and had their settled plans of emigration. In England, at any rate since the days of the Pilgrim Fathers, we have too much left the matter to chance, and an ordinary emigrant, with the ordinary want of backbone, it seems to me, is just as likely to go to the dogs in New York, or Toronto, or Melbourne, as in London. What we want is what is now being attempted by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the leading members of which have establisheda Church Colonization Land Society. Its object is to assist, in a practicable, businesslike manner, on a remunerative basis, the great and pressing work of emigration to the British colonies in connection with the Church of England.
This society, I learn from a proof of a circular just placed in my hands, issued by Canon Prothero, the chairman, will, under proper safeguards, render temporary pecuniary aid in such cases as approve themselves to the council, take charge of the emigrants on the journey to the colony, provide for their settlement on lands selected, from those acquired by the society, provide temporary dwellings until the emigrants can put together their own (the materials for which may be bought ready to hand, or the society itself can erect dwellings for them), will break up the land if desired, and secure for the emigrant religious services similar to those enjoyed at home.
The society have secured land in Manitoba, near the railway, which land has been selected by a practical farmer, a Yorkshireman, who is to act as local manager. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge have laid particular stress in looking after the spiritual welfare of emigrants in all our colonies; and in Liverpool, as some of my readers may be aware, the society have placed the Rev. J. Bridger, of St. Nicholas Church, as emigrants’ chaplain; chaplains have also been appointed at several other ports, such as Plymouth, Glasgow, Cork, and Londonderry; but, as is manifest, the great centre of emigration is Liverpool, and there Mr. Bridger finds his hands full.
No pains are spared to show every attention to emigrants going from or arriving at Liverpool, and occasionally Mr. Bridger sails with the first party of emigrants to their new homes. It seems to me that the idea of the Church Colonization Society is the rightone; but that it might be further extended by sending out at the same time the schoolmaster, and the doctor, and the storekeeper, and the shoemaker, and tailor, and baker, and butcher, and thus forming a village community.
It is at home impossible to realize the solitariness of the settler’s life, far away from friends and the civilizing and elevating influences of home. I met men in the North-West who seemed to have almost lost the power of speech, so long had they been left on their homesteads alone. Emigration in communities would do away with this state of things. At present it is a serious sacrifice for a man with a family to emigrate into a new country. It is not good for man to be alone. As a rule, he degenerates on the prairie; civilization is the gift of towns to humanity. A man does not live on bread alone. He needs that his heart and head be stimulated by contact with his fellow-men;not, as in the old country, in consequence of the extensive competition, by rivalry for the crust of bread, but by mutual aid and companionship in the great work of subduing the wilderness and making it to rejoice and blossom as the rose.
In a month or two the emigration season will have commenced, and there is no time to spare. Why cannot other denominations do what the Church of England is now preparing to do? Canada can feed and fatten millions, who in England will have to live as a burden on the community. There is many a man who does ill here who would do well there. We are all more or less the creatures of circumstances. In England the beershop has degraded the community, and many a man finds it hard to get away from its foul companionship: here, he declines into a criminal or a sot; there, not only will he be neither the one nor the other, but he will develop all the bettertendencies of his character, and become a man. Make him a peasant-proprietor at home, and the chances are the old Adam in him will be too strong. Plant him in a colony, he feels in a new world, with a new aim. Here, he is looked down on: there, he is hailed as a man and a brother. We who are old must stop at home; but there is no reason why our sons should do so. Why should a young man be a drudge because his father was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, when in a colony there are many ways of becoming well-off to a man who has good muscles and brains, has the sense to avail himself of opportunity when it occurs, and to keep his money in his pocket? I say Canada, because Canada is easy to get at, and is yet almost in a virgin state. It is only recently that it has been opened up by the Canadian Government and the Canadian Pacific Railway. I say Canada, because Canada is English, and I am an Englishman;because the Canadian Government does all it can to help the emigrant; and because the Canadians are mostly healthy, honest men. Englishmen thrive there better, at any rate, than they do in the United States, or in South Africa. Arrangements for a colony can easily be made. In London, the Canadian Pacific Railway have a fine office in Cannon Street, where you can see for yourself what are the results of farming in the North-West, and where you will find its courteous and intelligent representative, Mr. Alexander Begg, whose only fault is that he will persist in maintaining that the English climate is killing him, and that he enjoys much better health in that frosty Canada, the cold of which is a bugbear that has kept too many away. Go to him, and he will tell you where to plant your colony. The money which is now squandered in keeping paupers at home surely might be better spent in forming village communities in the boundlessplains of the North-West. Let Dissenters imitate the Church. Let them have their communities as the Church of England seek to have theirs. Some people say the Salvationists are a nuisance in our crowded cities: let General Booth betake himself to Manitoba; he will find few people to complain of his processions there.
But this is no subject to trifle about; day by day the poor are becoming poorer, and the middle-classes and the rich also. The leaders of the coming democracy seem unwilling to recognise that fact, and are angry when I tell them it is better to emigrate than to agitate in the old country for the ruin of the capitalist, the destruction of our trade, the abolition of the landlord, the advent of the working man’s candidate, and the rights of man. Are they the friends of the poor who bid him stay where he is to cheapen the labour market, already overstocked; to crowd the cities with an unwholesome pauperism;to see his sons ripen into thieves, and his daughters cast on the streets; and to look forward to the workhouse as the refuge of his old age? Even if we had a revolution as complete as that of France, what then? Over-population will breed sorrow and sickness and want and despair all the same. In Canada, the man who cares to work is sure of his reward; he has a future before him and his.
I am glad to find, since the above was written, there has been formed by the Congregational Union a special emigration scheme, of which the Rev. Andrew Mearns, of the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, is Secretary, and that they have already sent out over a hundred qualified emigrants. The outfit and passage money of each man costs £7, and it is proposed to give each £2 when he arrives in Canada. The men to be selected are drawn from the ranks of the unemployed who are brought together at the various MissionHalls. The case of each applicant is fully examined, and the men themselves are thoroughly tested as to their honest desire and ability to work. The men having been approved and their record found satisfactory, they are sent to the emigration agent of the colony, who also examines into the cases of the various applicants. This acceptance having been notified, the next and, perhaps, the greatest difficulty is to provide a temporary home for them in the colony to which they are to be sent. As the result of much labour, each man will be sent to the care of some gentleman in the colony, who will see that he is properly provided for, and started in a fair way to obtain work. They are thus going to various towns in the Dominion, such as Kingston, Ontario, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Toronto, St. Thomas’s, Bellville, and Guelph. Among those to whom introduction has been given are directors of railways, officers of Christian Associations,gardeners, farmers, merchants, and various ministers of influence. It is almost unnecessary to add that the spiritual needs of the men have not been forgotten, and in the kit of each one have been packed a Bible, supplied by the kindness of the Bible Society—who have intimated their willingness to make a similar presentation to every man the Union sends out—and an assortment of suitable and practical religious literature.
Thus far have I told the story of my Canadian experiences. Those who wish to fully pursue the subject will do well to get ‘Picturesque Canada,’ now being published by Messrs. Cassell and Co.