We know what a good swell in mid-Atlantic means at last. We were pitching when I went to bed, finding it hard to get on with my penmanship. Off I went as fast as usual, and never woke except for one moment to grunt and turn round, or rather, try to turn round, in my tray on top of the drawers at something which sounded like a crash. In the morning we were swinging and bowing and jerking, so that I had to wait for a favourable moment to bolt out of bed for fear of coming a cropper if I didn’t mind.
As soon as I was out I saw what the crash had been in the night. My big portmanteau, which had been set on its end the night before, had had a jumping match with my water-jug in the night. Both of them had thrown a somersault across the cabin against the door, but the jug being brittle (jugs shouldn’t jump against portmanteaus), and coming down undermost, had gone all into little bits, and the water, all that wasn’t in my shoes at least, had soaked my carpet at the door end. But it was a glorious bright morning and the dancing hills of water and the bounding ship sent me up dancing on the deck. My high spirits were a little subdued after breakfast, for I had scarcely got on deck when parson H——— came to me to say the emigrants wanted me to give them an address. Well, I couldn’t refuse, as my heart is full of them, poor dear folk, so down I went to get my ideas straight, and put down the heads on paper. I thought I wouldn’t miss the air, though, so set open my porthole window, which as I told you is about a foot across, and set to work—as I write, this blessed porthole is about a yard away from my right ear, and perhaps two feet above my head. Well, I was just getting into swing with my work, when suddenly a great pitch, and kerswash! in comes all of a wave that could squeeze through my porthole, right on to my ear and shoulder, over my desk, drenching all my papers, lucifer-match boxes, hair-brushes, wideawake, tobacco-pouch and other chattels, and flooding all of my floor which my water-jug had left dry. I bolted to the porthole and closed him up before another curious wave could come prying in, and soon rubbed everything dry again with the help of the Captain’s cabin-boy, and no harm is done except that I have to sit with my feet up on my portmanteau while I write. This sheet was dowsed in my shower-bath this morning, but I laid it on my bed, and it seems all right now and doesn’t even blot; I shall however envelope it now with another sheet for safety, as I’m not going to keep my porthole shut notwithstanding the warning, and I don’t want my letters to you floated again.
Since I put my last sheet into No. 1 envelope, everything in the good shipPeruvianhas been dancing. The long tables in the saloon, at which we are always eating and drinking, have been covered with a small framework, over which the cloth is laid, and which has the effect of dividing them into three compartments; a sort of trough down each side in which are the dishes. Notwithstanding these precautions there are constant catastrophes in the shape of spoons, forks, tumblers, and sometimes plates, jumping the partitions suddenly as the ship heels over. The story of the Yankee skipper saying to the lady on his left, “I’ll trouble you, marm, for that ’ere turkey—” the bird in question having fled from the table into her lap as he was beginning to serve it—becomes quite commonplace. How the steward’s men get about with plates and dishes, goodness knows; but though there is a constant clatter and smash going on all over the ship I haven’t seen them drop anything. I am almost the only passenger who hasn’t even had a twinge of squeamishness, but we muster pretty well considering all things. The Captain is one of the cheeriest fellows alive, and keeps up the spirits of all the women. If he sees any one of them who is still about looking peeky, he whisks her off under his arm and walks her up and down the deck, where they stagger along together, and the fresh breeze soon revives the damsel. He is a sort of temporary father to all the girls, and constantly has, it seems, three or four entrusted to him to take over or bring back.
Of course there is a great deal of discomfort on board, but I have visited the steerage and am delighted with the arrangements for feeding, ventilation, etc. To poor seasick people, however, it must be very trying. This morning I carried off to my cabin a poor forlorn young married couple, whom I had noticed on shore at Moville, and afterwards on board. I am sure they hadn’t been married a week, and they were evidently ready to eat one another. When I saw them settling down on a large bench in a covered place amidships where were twenty or thirty folk, mostly ill, and several men smoking, she with her poor head tied up tidily in a red handkerchief nestling on to his shoulder, I couldn’t stand it, and took them off to my cabin, where they could nurse one another for a few hours’ in peace. We have had a birth too on board, and mother and child, I am glad to say, are doing well. She is a very nice woman, I am told by one of the ladies who visits her, the wife of a school teacher. The baby is to have Peruvian for one of its names. I have really enjoyed the rough weather much; it has never been more than half a gale, I believe, though several men have been thrown from the sofas to the cabin floor, and more or less bruised. The cheery Captain has comforted us all by announcing that we shall be through the storm before midnight.
Up the St. Lawrence they say we shall want light summer clothing. If the weather settles down we are to have an amateur concert on board, which will be, I take it, very lame on the musical side, but amusing in other ways.
R——— was entrusted by the Captain with the task of getting it up, and before we got into rough weather had booked some six or seven volunteers. I daresay he will be well enough to-morrow morning to go on with it. My address is of course postponed for the present.
The Captain was quite right—we sailed clear out of the storm before midnight yesterday, and though to-day some swell is left, it is so calm that the saloon tables have quite filled up again at meal-times. I was of course nailed by the parson for my address in the afternoon, and placed on one of the flat skylights amidships, as no other equally convenient and fixed stump could be found. As I know you would sooner get rubbish of mine than poetry of any one else, I give the outline. “I was there,” I said, “at their parson’s request, to talk, but it seemed to me that in the grand scene we were in, the great waves, the bright sky, the free breezes, could talk to them more eloquently than human lips. We were wont to use proverbs all our lives without realising their meaning. ‘We’re all in the same boat’ had never impressed me till now. Our week’s experience showed us before all things that the first duty of those in the same boat was to help, comfort, and amuse the rest. If I could do either I should be glad. What were we to talk about? (Shouts of ‘Canada.’) Well we would come to Canada, but first a word or two of the old country they were leaving. Love of our birthplace, otherwise called patriotism, is one of the strongest and noblest passions God has planted in man’s heart. You have a great birthright as Englishmen, are members, however humble, of the nation which has spread free speech and free thought round the world, which was the first to declare that her flag never should fly over a slave. Fellow-countrymen of Wycliffe, Shakespeare, Milton. Wherever you go cherish these memories, be loyal to the old country, keep a soft place in your heart for the land of your birth. You are now making the passage from the old world to the new, enjoying one of those rare resting-places which God gives us in our lives. It is time for bracing up the whole man for new effort, for casting off old, bad habits. One strong resolution made at such times often is the turning-point in men’s lives. As to the land you are going to, Remember you are getting a fresh start in life and all will depend on yourselves. In the old land there is often not enough work for strong and willing hands; in the new there are a hundred openings, and in all more work than hands. One thing wanted is honest, hard work. Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might, and you are sure of comfort and independence. Your new home is England’s eldest child and has a great destiny to work out. Be loyal therefore and true to your birthplace, keeping old memories alive and giving her a share of your love; be loyal to your new home, giving her your best work; above all, be loyal and true to yourselves and you shall not be false to any man or any land.” This, spread over half an hour, was my talk.
When I had finished I called on the Captain, who warned them against drink in a straightforward sailor’s speech. Then a grizzled old boy, who had been calling out “That’s true” whenever I spoke of hard work, scrambled up on the skylight and told them that he had come out thirty years ago from England with nine shillings in his pocket and seven children. He had given each of his daughters fifteen hundred dollars on their marriage, and helped each of his sons into a farm, and had a farm of his own, which he was going back to after visiting his old home in Cornwall. All this he had done by hard work. He was a blacksmith, but would turn his hand to anything. Times were just as good now as then, and every one of them might do the same. This was a splendid clencher to the nail I had tried to drive in. The parson wound up with more advice as to liquor, and an account of how well the sixteen hundred he had already sent out had done. The whole was a great success, and we all went off to dinner in the cabin in high spirits. If the fair weather lasts we shall see land to-morrow afternoon. To-morrow night we are to have our concert. My young couple have turned up trumps: he plays the old piano in the saloon famously, being an excellent musician, and she sings, they say, nicely when not sea-sick. The Canadians on board assure him he will be caught up as an organist directly to help out his other means of livelihood. Then for Friday we are to have “Box and Cox” in the cabin, played by the Captain and R———, who knows the part of
Cox perfectly already, having played it at Cambridge. Mrs. Bouncer has not yet been fixed on, but a nice little Canadian girl will, I think, play it.
We had a fog this morning which lost us a couple of hours, seeing however, as compensation, a fog rainbow—a colourless arch, which as you looked over the side seemed to spring from the two ends of the ship. As the fog cleared away and we went ahead we saw an iceberg to the north, which soon looked like a great white lion lying on the horizon. During the day, which has been wonderfully bright and cold, we have seen several more icebergs and a lot of whales, one of which came quite close to the ship. We sighted land about seven, and in six miles more we should have passed into the Bay of St. Lawrence, when a rascally fog came on and forced us to lay-to. The Captain can’t leave the deck, so we didn’t have our concert, and we are all going to bed anxious to hear the screw at work again.
We lay-to all last night, the jolly Captain up on the bridge, to watch for any lifting of the fog, so that he might go ahead at once; but the fog wouldn’t lift, and so we lay until eight this morning. Just before breakfast it cleared, and away we went, and soon entered the strait between Newfoundland and Labrador. By the time we had done breakfast we were running close by a huge iceberg, like a great irregular wedding cake, except near the water, where the colour changed from sugary white into the most delicious green. There were nine other icebergs in sight to the north, and a number of others round us, just showing above the water, one like a great ichthyosaurus creeping along the waves, or a white bear with a very long neck. Had we gone on last night it would have been a perilous adventure. Soon afterwards we sighted theNorth American, a companion ship belonging to the same Company, running some miles in front of us to the north. We had a most exciting race, coming abreast of her about twelve, and communicating by signals. Then we drew ahead, and shall be in Quebec nearly a day before her. Then we played shovel-board on deck, the air getting more balmy every minute as we drew out of the ice region. We had a grand gathering of emigrants amidships, and sung hymns, “Jesus, lover of my soul,” and others, with a few words from G———, the busy parson, who has recovered from his long sea-sickness at last, and is a famous fellow. The concert of the Peruvians came off with a greateclatafter dinner. They put me in the chair, and I introduced the performers with a slight discourse about the Smith family (the Captain’s name is Smith), and at the end they voted thanks to me, imparting the great success of the voyage to my remarkable talent for making folk agree and pull together—very flattering, but scarcely accurate. Then somebody discovered that it was a glorious moonlight, so up we all went, and very soon there was a fiddler and a dance on deck, which is only just over. We are well in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all going as well as possible.
Iam much pleased with the specimens of Canadians whom we have on board. There are some twenty of them, with their wives, daughters, and small boys. They are a quiet, well-informed, pleasant set of men, and ready and pleased to talk of their country and her prospects. My conversation runs to a great extent, as you may suppose, on the chances of farming in Canada West, which is the part of the colony with the greatest future, and I am much pleased with what I hear. Any man with a capital of from £2000 to £3000 may do very well, and make money quite as fast as is good for him, if he will only keep steady and work; and the life is exceedingly fascinating for youngsters.
There is a very nice fellow on board, a gentleman in the conventional sense, who is returning from a run to Gloucestershire to see his friends. He has been out for seven years only, two of which he spent as an apprentice with a farmer, learning his trade. He is quite independent now, and I would not wish to meet a better specimen of a man.
I doubt whether you, being so orderly a party, would quite appreciate what appears to be the favourite form of pleasuring amongst the up-country farmers, but I own that it would have suited my natural man down to the ground. Half a dozen of them, in the bright, still wintertime, will agree that they haven’t seen Jones for some weeks, so will give him “a surprise.” Accordingly they all start from their own houses so as to meet at his farm about 9.30 or 10 o’clock—the time he would be going to bed.
They drive over in sledges, each taking his wife, sister, or sweetheart, a good hamper of provisions and plenty of buffalo robes. Jones finds his yard full of neighing horses and sledges as he is going to bed. If he has already gone they knock him up. They then take possession of his house and premises. The men litter down their horses, the women light his fire and lay the supper, the only absolute rule being, that Jones and his family and servants do nothing at all.
They all sit down to supper and then dance till they are tired, and then the women go to bed; and the men, if there are no beds for them, as generally happens, roll themselves in their buffalo robes and go to sleep. In the morning they breakfast, and then start away home again over the snow in their sledges, after the men have cut up firewood enough to keep Jones warm for a week.
There is magnificent trout and salmon fishing, and deer, wolf, and bear shooting, for those who like to seek it in the backwoods, and plenty of time for sport when the farm work is over, or in the winter. At the big towns, such as Montreal and Toronto, there is plenty of society, and evidently cultivated society, though young Guardsmen may speak shudderingly of colonists.
Box and Cox, by the way, went off very well considering that the Captain, who played Box, had been up on the bridge almost the whole of the two previous nights, and consequently did not quite know his part.
Last night we danced on deck till nearly eleven under the most lovely soft moon I have ever seen. This morning we are running up the St. Lawrence along the southern bank, the northern being dim in the extreme distance. There is a long continuous range of hills covered entirely with forest, except just along the water’s edge, where it has been cleared by the French-Canadian settlers. They live along the shore, too close, I should say, to the water line for comfort; but as their chief occupation is fishing, I have no doubt they have good reasons for their selection. There is scarcely a quarter of a mile for the last twenty or thirty miles, I should say, in which there is not a cottage, but the villages are far between. The people are a simple, quiet folk, living just as their fathers lived, happy, clean, contented, and stationary. This last quality provokes the English of Upper Canada dreadfully, who complain that the French make everything they require at home, and buy nothing whatever which contributes to the revenue of the Dominion except a little cheap tea. However, there is much to be said for the Frenchmen, and I am very glad that our English people have constantly before them the example of such a self-sufficing and unambitious life. In two or three hours, probably before our morning service is over, the pilot will be on board with papers, and we shall know what has been doing in the great outside world. I was thinking of telegraphing to you, but as the Company telegraph, and publish our arrival “all well” in the English papers, it seems scarcely worth while.
The pilot has just come on board and brought us Canadian papers with copies of telegrams, and general vague rumours of terrible reverses for France. I always looked for them, as you know. This frightful reign of eighteen years, begun in perjury and bloodshed, and continued by constant pandering to the worst tendencies of France, must have taken the power and heart out of any nation. I pity the poor Canadians who still hold themselves more French than anything else, as indeed they are. They gather on deck and tell one another that the news is German, that it is all mere rumour. They will find it too true in another day or two. I am very glad to hear that the Orleans princes are now to go back. They are a family of very gallant and able gentlemen, and ought to be with France at this moment. Wrong as I think her, I hope she may soon be able to rally, shake off the charlatans whom she has allowed to misrule her, and conclude an honourable peace. The pilot-boat went back at once, and when she lands our safe arrival will be telegraphed at once, so that I hope you may see it before to-morrow evening—if you only know where to look in the newspaper. I often think how very different those short announcements at the head of the Shipping news will seem to me in the future.
“Allan Line. ThePeruvianarrived off Father Point yesterday. All well.”
Events have been crowding us during the last thirty-six hours—bless me, I mean the last sixty hours—I had positively written Tuesday instead of Wednesday at the top of this. I let my watch run down on thePeruvian, as it was too provoking to have to put it back thirty-five minutes every morning. Since then time has gone all whiz! however, I shall pick up the time now and get to my bearings, at least I shall try. Well, all Sunday afternoon we ran up the glorious St. Lawrence, past the mouths of what we should call big rivers, past the Canadian watering-places, past one long straggling village except where the hills are too steep or the soil absolutely barren. The view is not unlike many Scotch ones, substituting scrub or stunted forest for heather. This of course is a great disadvantage in a picturesque point of view, but it is more than compensated by the great river. I am very glad I came to the new world up the St. Lawrence. Nothing could have brought the startling contrast of the old and new world so vividly home to me as this steaming literally day after day up the stream, and finding it still at 700 miles from the mouth two miles broad, with anchorage for the largest ships that float. We went the round of the ship with the Captain after dinner, to see the wonderful detail of the storerooms, and the huge fire-system which goes glowing on through all the voyage. The sight of the twenty-five great furnaces glowing, and consuming fifty-two tons of coal a day, quite scared several of the ladies, who seemed to think that the Peruvian was flying, I should say sailing, presumptuously in the face of Providence not to have caught fire during the voyage. Luckily we were within a few hours of port, so their anxiety was not of long duration. I went to bed for the last time in my crib on the top of the drawers, leaving word for the quartermaster to call me when we were getting near Quebec. Accordingly I was roused at about three from one of the sleeps without a turn even (by reason that there is no room to turn) which one gets on board ship, and scuffled up on deck in my trousers and fur coat to find myself in the most perfect moonlight rounding the last point below Quebec. Then up went three rockets, and as we slacked our speed at the side of the wharf right opposite the citadel, two guns were fired and the voyage of the Peruvian was over. My packing was all done, so while the vessel was being unladen I went quietly to bed again and slept for another two or three hours amid all the din. Between six and seven I turned out again and had a good breakfast on board, after which came leave-takings, and then those of us who were not going on by train and were ready to start, went on board a little tug ferry-boat and were paddled across to Quebec. I have sent a small map to show you how the land lies. Our ferry-boat took us over from Port Levi to the quay just under the Citadel along the line I have dotted, and we at once chartered two carriages to visit the falls of Montmorency, to which you will see a line drawn on the map and which is about six miles from Quebec. Oh, the air! You know what it is when we land at Dieppe, or at Brussels, or Aix. Well, all that air is fog, depressing wet blanket compared to this Canadian nectar. I really doubt whether it would not be almost worth while to emigrate merely for the exquisite pleasure of the act of living in this country.
Imust get on with my journal or shall fall altogether astern—you have no idea how hard it is even to find time to write a few lines home; however if I can only make up the time to-day I hope to keep down the arrears more regularly hereafter. We had a long day of sightseeing in and about Quebec. First we drove down to the Montmorency Falls, 220 feet high and very beautiful, then back to the Citadel, which rises some 600 or 700 feet right above the river—a regular little Gibraltar; then we went off to the Heights of Abraham, at the back of the Citadel, where Wolfe fought his battle and was killed after scaling the cliffs in the early morning. Then we drove down into the town, and had lunch at a restaurant, and walked about to see the place. Well worth seeing it is; a quaint, old, thoroughly French town of the last century dropped down into the middle of the new world. In the evening we went on board the great river steamer, and came away all night up the St. Lawrence to Montreal. There were 1000 passengers on board, every one of whom had an excellent berth—mine was broader and lighter than that on thePeruvian.We were not the least crowded in the splendid saloon (some 150 feet long), and the open galleries running all round the ship in two tiers. I preferred the latter, though there was music, Yankee and Canadian, in the saloon, and spent my evening till bedtime out in the stern gallery looking at the most superb moonlight on the smooth water you can conceive. We had a small English party there, and there were half a dozen constantly changing groups round us. The girls have evidently much more freedom than at home, at least more than they had in our day—two or three would come out with as many young men, and sit round in a ring. The men lighted cigars, and then they would all set to work singing glees, songs, or what not, and chaffing and laughing away for half an hour perhaps, after which they would disappear into the saloon. There was a regular bar on board at which all manner of cool drinks were sold. We tried several, which I thought, I must say, very nasty, especially brandy-smash. After a most comfortable night I awoke between five and six as we were nearing Montreal. The city is very fine, the river still two miles broad, and ocean steamer drawing twenty feet and more of water able to lie right up against the quay. S———, a friend of Sir J. Rose’s, a great manufacturer here, whom I had taken to the “Cosmopolitan,” was in waiting on the landing-place, and took us at once up to his charming house on the hill (the mountain they call it) at the back of the city. He is a man of forty-three or forty-four; his wife, a very pleasant woman a little younger, and adopted daughter, Alice (a very sweet girl of nineteen, just home from an English school), form the whole family. I can’t tell you how kind they are and how perfectly at home they have made us. After breakfast we went down to see the city, got photographed with the rest of the above-named Peruvians, had a delicious lunch of fried oysters at a luncheon shop kept by a Yankee, washed it down with a drink called John Collins, a pleasant, cold, weak, scented kind of gin and water. Sir Geo. Carter and Sir Fras. Hinks, two of the present Government, both of whom I had met in England, came to dinner, also Holton the leading senator of the Opposition, and the two young Roses, one bringing his pretty young wife, and we had a long and very interesting political talk afterwards. Nothing could have suited me better, as there are many points of Canadian politics I am very anxious to get views on. We didn’t get to bed till 12.30, so I had no time to write. On Wednesday we saw more of the city which I shan’t attempt to describe till I can sit by you with photographs and explain, lunched at the Club, of which we have been made honorary members, with a large party of merchants and other big folk, and then at three were picked up by Mrs. S.—-, who drove us up the river to a place called Lachine, past the rapids (see Canadian boat-song), “The rapids are near and the daylight’s past.” Lachine gets its queer name from the first French Missionaries who started up the St. Lawrence to get to China, and for some unaccountable reason thought they had reached the flowery land when they got to this place, so settled down and called it China. The air was still charming, but the sky was beginning to get less bright, and Mrs. S—— and A———agreed that there must be a forest burning somewhere. And so it proved, for in a few hours the whole sky was covered with a smoke-cloud, light but not depressing, like our fogs, but still so dense that we could scarcely see across the river. We got back in time for dinner, to which came Colonel Buller, now commanding the Rifles here; Hugh Allan, the head of the great firm of ship-owners to whom thePeruvianand all the rest of the Allan line packets belong; and several young Canadians. It was very pleasant again, and again I got a heap of information on Canadian subjects from Allan, who is a longheaded able old Scotchman, the founder of the immense prosperity of himself and all his family. He has his private steam yacht and a great place on a lake near here, wherein is a private telegraph, so that he can wire all over the world from his own hall. Prince Arthur went to stay with him when he was out here in the late autumn and spring, and the Queen wired him every day while he was there. Early next morning S———,
Miss A———, I, and R——— were off by rail to a station ten or twelve miles up the river, where we waited till the Montreal market-boat came down and picked us up to shoot the rapids. We had a very pleasant run to Quebec, and the shooting the rapids is very interesting, but neither dangerous nor even exciting. The river widens out perhaps to two and a half miles in width, and for some mile or mile and a half breaks into these rapids, which boil and rush along at a great pace, and in quite a little boat would no doubt keep the steerer and oarsmen on the stretch. The approach to Montreal under the great Victoria Bridge, two miles long, is very noble. We got back to breakfast at ten, and afterwards went up the mountain at the back of the town, but the haze from the burning forest quite spoiled the view. The carriage is announced, so I must close.
Ihurried up my letters yesterday, so as to bring my journal down to the day I was writing on, fearing lest otherwise I should never catch the thread again. I doubt whether I told you anything about this very fine city, in the suburbs of which we are stopping, and which we leave to-day. Well, I scarcely know how to begin to give you an idea of it. It isn’t the least like an English or indeed any European town, the reason being, I take it, that it has been built with the necessity of meeting extremes of heat and cold, which we never get. Except in the heart of the city, where the great business streets are, there are trees along the sides of all the thoroughfares—maples, which give real shade, and are in many places indeed too thick, and too near the houses for comfort I should say—as near as the plane-tree was to our drawing-room window at 33. This arrangement makes walking about very pleasant to me, even when the thermometer stands at 90° in the shade as it did yesterday. Then instead of a stone foot-pavement you have almost everywhere boards, timber being the most plentiful production of the country. Walking along the boards in the morning you see at every door a great lump of ice, twenty pounds weight or so, lying there for the maid to take in when she comes out to clean. This is supplied by the ice merchants for a few shillings a year. The houses are square, built generally of a fine limestone found all over the island (Montreal is an island thirty-six miles long by nine wide), and have all green open shutter-blinds, which they keep constantly shut all day, as in Greece, to keep out the heat, and double windows to keep out the cold. The roofs are generally covered with tin instead of tiles or slates, and all the church steeples, of which there are a very large number, are tinned, as you remember we saw them in parts of Austria and Hungary. There are magnificent stores of dry goods, groceries, etc., but scarcely any shops in our sense. No butcher, milkman, greengrocer, etc., calls at the door, and the ladies have all to go down to the market or send there. Nothing can be better than the living, but Mrs. S——— complains that it is very hard work forhausfraus, and I have heard Lady K——— say the same thing. This house is in one of the shaded avenues on the slopes of the mountain, two miles I should say from the market. Mrs. S———- drives down every marketday and buys provisions, market-days being twice a week, but the stalls are open on other days also, so that if a flood of company comes in on the intermediate days, the anxious housewife need not be absolutely done for. The living is as good as can be, not aspiring to first-rate French cookery, but equal to anything you find in good English houses. Prices are very reasonable except for fancy articles of clothing, etc. Furs, which you would expect to find cheap, are at least as high as in London, and R———made an investment in gloves for which he paid six shillings a pair. The city is the quietest and best-behaved I ever was in. We dined at the mess of the 60th Rifles last night, and walked home through the heart of the city at 10.30. Every one had gone to bed, apparently, for there wasn’t a light in fifty houses and we literally met no one—not half a dozen people certainly in the whole distance. Altogether I am very much impressed with the healthiness of the life, morally and physically, and can scarcely imagine any country I would sooner start in were I beginning life again.
Well, to continue, on Saturday we broke up from Montreal, having I think seen very thoroughly all the persons and things best worth seeing in the place. Our host had arranged that we should go and spend Sunday with Mr. Hugh Allan, the head of the family which has established the line of mail steamers to Liverpool and Glasgow. He has been forty years out here, and when he came Montreal had only 17,000 inhabitants, now it has 150,000; there was scarcely water for a 200 ton ship to lie at the wharf, now you can see steamers of 2000 tons and upwards always there. Hugh Allan is evidently a very rich man now. He has a big house on the mountain behind Montreal, and this place where I am now writing from, on Memphremagog Lake, which if you have a good map, you will find half in Canada and half in the New England state of Vermont. It is a lovely inland sea, about thirty-five miles long and varying from one to three miles broad. Mr. Allan’s house, where he entertained Prince Arthur in the spring, stands on the top of a high well-wooded promontory, about half-way up. It is a good, commodious, gentleman’s house, with deep verandahs, thoroughly comfortable, but without pretence or show of any kind. There is a large wooden out-building called the Hermitage, about one hundred yards off, divided entirely into bedrooms, so that there is room for lots of guests besides the family, seven or eight of whom are here. In another building there is an American bowling-alley, and an excellent croquet ground before the house. Mr. Allan keeps a nice steam yacht, which runs about the lake daily with any one who likes to go, and there are half a dozen rowing boats, so time need not hang heavily on the most restless hands. I accepted the invitation, as a few days at Memphremagog is evidently considered the thing to do by all Canadians, and the last twenty miles or so of the railway to Newport (Vermont), the place at the foot of the lake at which you embark, has only just been finished, right through the forest, so that it was a good chance of seeing the beginnings of colonial life in the bush. And I am very glad that I did come, for certainly if the journey (120 miles altogether) had been planned for the purpose, it couldn’t have been more interesting. After leaving Montreal we travelled I should say for from thirty to forty miles through reclaimed country, dotted with French villages and the homesteads of well-to-do farmers. Then we gradually slipped into half-cleared woods, and then into virgin forest. Presently we came across a great block of the forest on fire, but in broad daylight the sight is not the least grand, though unpleasant from the smoke, and melancholy from the waste and mischief which the fires do. I think I told you in my last that the forests about Ottawa, the capital of the Dominion, were on fire last week. The fire became so serious that great fears were entertained for the town, the militia and volunteers were called out, and a special train with fire-engines was sent up from Montreal. Scores of poor settlers were in the streets, having with difficulty escaped with their lives, and last of all several wretched bears trotted out of the burning woods into the town. The fire we passed through was not at all on this scale, and didn’t seem likely to get ahead. There were the marks of fires of former years on all sides in these forests. Tall stems by hundreds, standing up charred and gaunt out of the middle of the bright green maple underwood, which is fast growing up round them, and in a very short time makes the tangle as thick as ever. Before long we came to small clearings of from three to four acres, on each of which was a rough wooden shanty, with half a dozen wild, brown, healthy-looking children rolling and scrambling about it, and standing up in their single garments to cheer the train. On these plots the trees had all been felled about two feet from the ground, and the brushwood cleared away, and there were crops of Indian corn, oats, or buckwheat growing all round the stumps. Then we came to plots which had been occupied longer, where the shanty had grown into a nice-sized cottage, with a good-sized outhouse near. Here all the stumps had been cleared, and the plot divided by fences, and three or four cows would be poking about. Then we came to a fine river and ran along the bank, passing here and there sawmills of huge size, and stopping at one or two large primitive villages, gathered round a manufactory. In short, in the day’s run we saw Canadian life in all its phases, ending with a delicious twelve miles’ run up the lake in Mr. Allan’s steam yacht, with the whole sky flickering with Northern lights, which shot and played about for our special delight. Our railway party were Mr.
Allan; Mr. and Mrs. S———, and Miss B———, their adopted daughter; General Lindsay, whom I knew well in England and like very much; Colonel Eyre, his military secretary, and ourselves. Then there are eight children here. “We had a most luxurious car, with a little sitting-room in which we each had an easy chair, and there were two most enticing-looking little bedrooms, everything as clean and neat as you could have it, and we could walk out on to a platform at either end to look at the view. There was a boy also in attendance in a little sort of spare room where the luggage went, who ministered any amount of iced water to any one who called. This is decidedly the most luxurious travelling I ever had, but then the car was the private one of the manager of the Grand Trunk Railway; and the democratic cars in which every one else went, and in which indeed we had to travel for the last few miles, were very different affairs. Fancy my intense delight on Sunday morning, as I walked from the Hermitage up to the house to breakfast through some flower-beds, to see two humming-birds, poising themselves before flower after flower while probing and trying the blooms with their long bills, and then springing back with a stroke of their lovely little tails, and whisking off to the next bloom. They were green and brown, not so lovely in colour as many you have seen in collections, but exquisite as eye need ask to look at. The humming-birds have been certainly my greatest natural history treat as yet, not excepting the whales. I had seen a whale before, a small one, in the Hebrides, and I had never seen a hummingbird except stuffed; moreover I expected to see whales, but not humming-birds. We saw a fine great bald-headed eagle to-day, too, sailing over the lake, but his flight was not anything like so fine as those we saw soaring over the Iron Gates as we went spinning down the Danube nine years ago. We have a very charming visit here steaming about the lake, driving along the banks, playing croquet and bowls and billiards, and laughing, chaffing, and loafing to any extent. The family are very nice, and I hope he will soon be made a baronet and one of the first grandees of the Dominion. To-morrow morning at five we start for Boston in the steam yacht, which takes us down to Newport at the end of the lake. So by the evening I shall perhaps get a letter from you. How I do thirst for home news after three weeks’ absence.
Iforget just where I left off, whether I had brought my journal up to our leaving Memphremagog or not. The last day there was as pleasant as the rest. The young folks played croquet and American bowls all the morning, while I lay on the grass watching for humming-birds and talking occasional politics to any one who would join me. At about twelve a retired judge, Day by name, who lives four or five miles off, drove over with a member of the Government (I forget his name) who was to start from the pier below the house in the lake steamer. Mr. Allan owns this steamer, which stops at his pier whenever he runs up a flag; so you see the privileged classes are not extinct by any means in the British dominion in the new world. Now the Judge, having a seat in his light sort of phaeton, proposed to drive me over to the post-office, about four miles off, where he was going, and to bring me back to luncheon. So I embarked behind his two strong little trotting nags and had a most interesting drive. The roads were not worse than many Devonshire lanes, and where the pitches were steepest, the stout little nags made nothing of them.
The views of the lake were exquisite, and the Judge one of the pleasantest of men. He had been employed in 1865 on a mission to Washington, and gave me very graphic accounts of his interviews with Lincoln and the other leading men there, and confirmed many of my own views as to the comparative chances of the two great sections of our race in the new world in the future. He is less apprehensive of Canada joining the United States than most men of his standing, and I think has good reason for his confidence. Material interest will perhaps for a time (or rather, after a time, for at present it is very doubtful on which side they weigh) sway in the direction of annexation to the United States, but the ablest and most energetic of the younger men of the cultivated classes are so strongly bent on developing a distinct national life, that I expect to see them carry their country for independence rather than annexation, when the time comes, if it ever should, of a final cutting of the ropes which bind them to us. After luncheon we went off in the steam yacht to a bay in the lake, and then in row boats four or five miles up the bay into the heart of the hills, where we saw bald-headed eagles, and black and white king-fishers five times the size of ours, and after a very interesting and pleasant excursion got back to dinner, finishing the evening with dancing. At five next morning we heard the steamer’s whistle calling us. The young ladies were up to give us a cup of coffee and parting good words, and then we-steamed down for Newport, where we were to take the rail through the Connecticut valley to Boston. On the Newport wharf which joins the station we said good-bye to Allan and Stephen, and shall carry away most charming memories of our stay in Canada. General Lindsay and Eyre went with us, and their companionship made the journey very agreeable, though it was as hot as the Lower Danube, and the dust more uncomfortable and dirtying than any we have at home. Most part of the way the soil is as light and sandy as that about Dorking, and the trains seem to raise greater clouds of it.
The greater part of the journey was along the banks of the Merrimac, a fine river with as much water as the Thames at Richmond, I should say, but spread over a bed generally twice as broad. We saw the White Mountains at a distance on our left, and passed through a number of flourishing towns. The thing that struck me most was the apparent fusion into one class of the whole community. As you know, every one goes into the same long carriages, holding from sixty to eighty people. Of these there were four or often five on our train, and I often passed through them (as you may do, up the middle, without disturbing the passengers, who sit in pairs with their faces to the engine on each side of the passage), as there was a great deal of local traffic, seventy people often getting out at a station, I thus saw really a very considerable number of people on this first day in the States, and certainly should have been exceedingly puzzled to sort them in the broadest way, either into rich and poor, gentlemen or ladies (in the conventional sense) and common people, or any other radical division. I certainly saw at some stations children running about without shoes, and workmen in as dirty blouses as those of Europe; but in the trains they were all well dressed, quiet, self-respecting people, without any pretence to polish, or any approach to vulgarity. The bad taste in women’s dress, which I am told to expect elsewhere, does not certainly prevail in New England. All the women wore neat short dresses, with moderate trimmings according to taste; but I did not see an extravagant garment or, I am bound to add, a really pretty one along the whole line. On the whole I thought the women as good looking as any I have ever travelled amongst, but paler and sadder, or at any rate quieter, than a like number of Englishwomen. Once or twice men in stove-pipe hats (the ordinary tile of so-called civilisation), and wearing perhaps better cloth and whiter linen than the average, got in, but not one whom you would have picked out as a person bred and brought up in a different way, and occupying a station above or apart from the rest, as you see in every train in England. It may have been chance, but certainly it was startling. Then another surprise. They are certainly the least demonstrative people so far as strangers are concerned that I have ever been amongst. I had the prevailing idea that a Yankee was a note of interrogation walking about the world, and besides craving for all sorts of information about you, was always ready to impart to you the particulars of his own birth, parentage, and education, and his opinion on everything, “from Adam’s fall to Huldy’s bonnet.” Well, I left our party purposely several times on the journey to try the experiment of sitting on one of the small seats carrying two only with a Yankee. In not one single case did either of those I sat by say a single word to me, and when I commenced they just answered my question very civilly and relapsed into total silence. I may add that this first experience has been confirmed since, both in street and railway cars.
We got to Boston at about seven, and then had our first experience of the price of things here. It is only four miles out to Lowell’s, who lives on the other side of Cambridge, but we were obliged to pay five dollars for a carriage to get out there. We could get nothing but a great handsome family coach with two horses, and in that, accordingly, out we lumbered. Cambridge is a very pretty suburb of Boston, the centre point of it being Harvard College, consisting of four or five large blocks of red brick building and a stone chapel, standing in the midst of some fine trees. Elmwood Avenue in which Lowell lives is about half a mile beyond the College—a broad road shaded on both sides by tows of trees planted as in the Boulevards, as indeed is done along all the roads. The Professor’s house is a good, roomy, wooden one standing in the midst of some thirty acres of his own land, on which stand many good trees, and especially some pre-revolutionary English elms of which he is very proud. He was sitting on the piazza of the house with his wife and Holmes’ brother, taking a pipe and not the least expecting us. The Irish maid told us to “sit right down” while she went to fetch him. In a minute he and his wife came and put us at our ease, explaining that no letter had ever come since we had landed. Mabel was away at the sea for a few days.