I!ili iB uiiHMnrtin'^"-'-'':" :::"'' Cl*"ll,. -:¦ -'..., .... ... #'? pi-i>;if''-i. il I I '1t"!l I'" '1, !!lr:ijim..,;l....: . ^..!-. ^ilSSlii YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE SUSAN A. E. MORSE AND WILLIAM INGLIS MORSE FUND For the purchase of Canadiana CANADA AND THE CANADIANS, IN 1846. VOLUME L CANADA AND THE CANADIANS, IN 1846. BY SIR RICHARD HENRY BONNYCASTLE, Kt., LIEUTENANT- COLONEL ROYAL ENGINEERS AND MILITIA OF CANADA WEST. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. L LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1846. Frederick Shoberl, Junior, Printer to His Royal Highness Prince Albert. 51, Rupert Street, Haymarket, London. ADVERTISEMENT. Having returned to Canada, in the course of his military duties, the Author has been induced to resume his pen, in order to lay before his countrymen further information relative to this most important of our colonial possessions. If the British public only receive the present work as kindly as his former one, " Canada in 1841," the labours of a tedious Canadian winter or two will be amply repaid ; and, if one emigrant family derive useful experience from its perusal, the Author's gratification will be enhanced; for there is no class of people so grossly deceived in their notions of the New World as the English, and more particularly the Irish emigrants to Canada, R, H. B. Kingston, Canada West, March, 1846. CONTENTS OP THE EIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER I. Emigrants and Immigration . . Page 1 CHAPTER II. The Emigrant and his Prospects . . 46 CHAPTER III, A Journey to the Westward . . 90 CHAPTER IV. The French Canadian . . . 125" CHAPTER V. Penetanguishene — The Nipissang Cannibals, and a Friendly Brother in the WUderness . . 146 CHAPTER VI, Barrie and Big Trees — A new Capital of a new District — Nature's Canal — The Devil's Elbow — Macadamization and^ Mud — ^Richmond HUl without the Lass — The Rebellion and the Radicals — Blue Hill and Bricks , 172 viii CONTENTS, CHAPTER VII, Toronto and the Transit — The Ice and its innovations — Siege and Storm of a Fortalice by the Ice-king — Newark, or Niagara — ^Flags, big and little — ^Views of American and of English Institutions — Blacklegs and Races — Colonial high life — Youth very young , . 195 CHAPTER VIII, The old Canadian Coach — Jonathan and John BuU pas sengers — "That Gentleman" — Beautiful River, beautiful drive — ^Brock's Monument — Queenston — ^Bar and Pulpit — Trotting horse Railroad — Awful accident — The Falls once more — Speculation — Water PrivUege — Barbarism — Mu seum — ^Loafers — Tulip-trees — Rattlesnakes — The Burning Spring — Setting flre to Niagara — ^A charitable Woman —The Nigger's Parrot — John BuU is a Yankee — PoUtical Courtship — Lundy's Lane Heroine — WeUand Canal 217 CHAPTER IX, The Great Fresh-water Seas of Canada . 266 CANADA AND THE CANADIANS, IN 1846. CHAPTER I. Emigrants and Immigration. Very surprising it seems to assert that the Mother Country knows very little about the finest colony which she possesses — and that an enlightened people emigrate from sober, speculative England, sedate and calculating Scotland, and trusting, unreflective Ireland, absolutely and wholly ignorant of the total change of life to which they must necessarily submit in their adopted home. I recollect an old story, that an old gunner, in an old-fashioned, three-cornered cocked VOL. I. B 2 CANADA AND hat, who was my favourite playfellow as a child, used to tell, about the way in which recruits were obtained for the Royal Artil lery. The recruiting sergeant was in those days dressed much finer than any field-marshal of this degenerate, railway era ; in fact, the Horse Guards always turned out to the ser geant-major of the Royal Military Academy of Woolwich, when that functionary went periodically to the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, to receive and escort the young gentle men cadets from Marlow College, who Avere abandoning the red coat and drill of the foot- soldier to becorae neophytes in the art and mystery of great gunnery and sapping, " The way they recruited was thus," said the bombadier, '* The gallant sergeant, be dizened in copper lace from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, and with a swagger which no modern drum-major has ever pre sumed to attempt, addressed a crowd of coun try bumpkins. " ' Don't listen to those gentlemen in red; THE CANADIANS. S their sarvice is one which no man who has brains will ever think of — footing it over the univarsal world ; they have usually been called by us the flatfoots. They uses the musquet only, and have hands like feet, and feet like fireshovels. " ' Mind me, gentlemen, the royal regiment of the Royal Artillery is a sarvice which no gentleman need be ashamed of. " ' We fights with real powder and ball, the flatfoots fights with bird-shot. We knows the perry-ferry of the circumference of a round shot. Did you ever see a mortar ? Did you ever see a shell? I will answer for it you never did, except the poticary's mortar, and the shell that mortar so often renders neces sary, " ' Now, gentlemen, at the imperial city of Woolwich, in the Royal Arsenal, you may, if you join the Royal Artillery, you may see shells in earnest. Did you ever see a balloon? Yes ! Then the shells there are bigger than balloons, and are the largest hollow shot ever made — the French has nothing like them, B 2 4 CANADA AND " ' And the way we uses them I We fires them out of the mortars into the enemy's towns, and stuffs them full of red sogers. Well, they bursts, and out comes the flatfoots, opens the gates, and lets the Royal Artillery in ; and then every man fills his sack with silver, and gold, and precious stones, after a leetle scrimmaging. " ' Come along with me, my boys, and every one of you shall have a coat like mine, which was raade out of the plunder ; and you shall have a horse to ride, and a carriage behind it ; and you shall see the glorious city of Woolwich, where the streets are paved Miih penny loaves, and drink is to be had for ask ing.' " So it is with nine-tenths of the emiifrants to Canada in these enlightened days ; so it is with the emigrants from old England, and from troubled Ireland, to the free and asto nishing Union of the States of America and Texas, that conjoint luminary of the new go- ahead world of the West. Dissatisfied with horae, with visionary ideas THE CANADIANS, 5 of El Dorados, or starving amidst plenty, the poorer classes obtain no correct information. Beset generally with agents of companies, with agents of private enterprise, with reckless ad venturers, with ignorant priests, or missionaries of the lowest stamp, with political agitators, and with miserable traitors to the land of their birth and breeding, the poor emigrant starts from the interior, where his ideas have never expanded beyond the weaver's loom or factory labour, the plough or the spade, the hod, the plane, or the trowel, and hastens with his wife and children to the nearest sea port. There he finds no friend to receive and guide him, but rapacious agents ready to take every advantage of his ignorance, with an eye to his scanty purse. A host of captains, mates, and sailors, eager to make up so many heads for the voyage, pack thera aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to New York or to Quebec, just as they have been able to entice a cargo to either port. Then come the horrors of a long voyage and short 6 CANADA AND provisions, and high prices for stale salt junk and biscuit ; and, at the end, if illness has been on board, the quarantine, that most dreadful visitation of all — for hope deferred maketh the heart sick. From the first discovery of America, there has been a tendency to exaggeration about the resources and capabilities of that country — a magniloquence on its natural productions, which can be best exemplified by referring the reader to the fac-simile of the one in Sir Walter Raleigh's work on Guiana,^ now in the British Museum. Shakespeare had, no doubt, read Raleigh's fanciful description of " the men whose heads do grow beneath their ' Brevis et admiranda descriptio REGNI GVIAN.a;, AVRI abundantissimi, in AMERICA, sev novo orbe, sub linea .Slquinoctilia siti : quod nuper admodum, Annis nimi- rum 1594, 1595, et 1596 per generosum Dominum Dr, GVALTHERVM RALEGH Equitem Anglum de- tectum est : paulo post jussa ejus duobus Ubellis compre- hensa. Ex quibus JODOCVS HONDIVS TABVLAM Geographicam adornavit, addita expUcatione Belgico sermone scripta : Nunc vero in Latinum sermonem translata, et ex variis authoribus hinc inde declarata. Noribergse. Impensis LEVINI HULSn. M.D .XCIX. THE CANADIANS. 7 shoulders," &c. ; for he was thirty-four years of age when this print was published, only seventeen years before his death. So expansive a mind as Raleigh's un doubtedly was, was not free from that uni versal credulity which still reigns in the breasts of all men respecting matters with which they are not personally acquainted ; and the glowing descriptions of Columbus and his followers respecting the rich Cathay and the Spice Islands of the Indies have had so permanent a hold upon the imagination, that even the best educated amongst us have, in their youth, galloped over Pampas, in search of visionary Uspallatas. Nor is it yet quite clear that the golden city of El Dorado is wholly fabulous, the region in which it was said to exist not having yet been penetrated by Science j but it soon will be, for a steam boat is to ply up the Maranon, and Peru and Europe are to be brought in contact, although the voyage down that mighty flood has hitherto been a labour of several raonths. The poor emigrant, for we must return to 8 CANADA AND him, lands at New York. Sharks beset him in every direction, boarding-houses and grog shops open their doors, and he . is frequently obliged, from the loss of all his hard-earned money, to work out his existence either in that exclusively mercantile emporium, or to labour on any canal or railroad to which his kind new friends may think proper, or most advantageous to themselves, to send him. If he escapes all these snares for the unwary, the chances are that, fancying himself now as great a man as the Duke of Leinster, O'Con nell, the Lord Mayor of London, or the Pro vost of Edinburgh, free and unshackled, gloriously free, he becomes entangled with a host of land-jobbers, and walks off to the weary West, there to encounter a life of un remitting toil in the solitary forests, with an occasional visit from the ague, or the milk- fever, which so debilitates his frame, that, during the remainder of his wretched existence, he can expect but little enjoyment of the ma norial rights appendant to a hundred acres of wild land. THE CANADIANS, 9 Let no emigrant embark for the United States unless he has a kind friend to guide and receive hira there, and to point out to hira the good and the evil ; for the native race look upon all foreigners with a jealous eye, and particularly upon the Irish. The Germans make the best settlers in that country, perhaps because, not speaking Eng lish, they cannot be so easily imposed upon by the crimps, and also because they seldom emigrate before they have arranged with their friends in America respecting the lands which they are to occupy. A society of British philanthropists has been established at New York to direct Bri tish emigrants in their ultimate views ; but it may well be imagined that these gentlemen, who are chiefly engaged in trade, cannot de scend to understand fully, or are constant witnesses of, the low tricks which are prac tised to seduce the unwary ones. The emigrant to Canada is somewhat dif ferently situated. The Irish come out in shiploads every B 5 10 CANADA AND season, and generally very indifferently pro vided and without any definite object ; nay, to such an extent is this carried, that hun dreds of young females venture out every year by themselves, to better their condition, which betterment usually ends in their reach ing as far inland as Toronto, where, or at other ports on the lakes, they engage them selves as domestics. When we consider that nearly 25,000 emi grants leave the Mother Country every year for Canada alone, how iraportant is it that they should be informed of every particular likely to increase their comforts and to con duce to their well-being ! This kind of ser vice can be but partially rendered by the present publication, which, being intended for the general reader, cannot be given in a form likely to reach the class of emigrants who usually proceed to America otherwise than through the , advice which the reader may, whenever it is in his power, kindly bestow upon them. But it will, I am persuaded, be extensively useful in that way, and also to THE CANADIANS, 11 the settler with a sraall capital who can afford to consult it. Learned dissertations upon colonization are useful only to the politician, and so rauch venality has prevailed among those who have thrust themselves forward in the cause of Canadian settlement, that the public become a little alarmed when they hear of a work expressly designed for the emigrant. The very best informed at home, and the haute noblesse, have been repeatedly taken in. Dinnerings and lionizing have been the order of the day for persons, who, in the colony, cut a very inferior figure. But this is natural, and in the end usually does no harra. It is natural that the colonist, who is a rara avis in England, should be considered a very extra ordinary personage among men who see5 for novelty in any shape ; because those who lavish favours upon hira at one tirae and eschew his presence afterwards are usually ignorant of the very history of which he is the type. It is like the standing joke of sending out water-casks for the raen-of-war 12 CANADA AND built on the fresh-water seas of Canada, for there are plenty of rich folks at home who want only to be filled. The different sorts of people who emigrate from home to the United States or Canada, may be classed under several heads, like the travellers of Sterne, First, the inquisitive and restless, who leave a goodly inheritance or occupation behind them, because they have heard that Tom Smith or Mister Mac Grogan, very ordinary folks anywhere, have made a rapid fortune, which is indeed sometimes the case in the United States, though rather rare there for old countrymen, and is still more rare and unlikely in Canada, where large fortunes may be said to be unknown quantities. Settlers of this class usually fall to the ground very soon — if they settle in Canada, they become Radicals ; if they return from the States, they become Tories. The next class are your would-be aristo cratic settlers, younger sons of younger sons, cousins of cousins, Union Barons, nephews' THE CANADIANS. 13 nephews of a Lord Mayor, or unprovided heirs in posse. These fancy they confer a sort of honour by selecting the colony as their final resting- place, and that a governor and his ministers have nothing in the world to think about but how they can provide for such iraportant units. Hence they frequently end by placing themselves in direct opposition to the powers that be, or take very unwillingly to the la bours of a farmer's life. Many of them, when they find that pretension is laughed at, par ticularly if no talents accompany it, which is rarely or ever the case, for talent is modest and retiring in its essential nature, turn out violent Republicans or Radicals of the most furious calibre ; but the raore modest portion work heartily at their farms, and frequently succeed. Another class is your private gentlemen's sons and decent young farmers frora England, Ireland, or Scotland, who think before they leap, have connexions already established in Canada, and small capitals to commence 14 CANADA AND with, Tliese are the really valuable settlers : they go to Canada for land and living, and eschew the land and liberty system of the neighbouring nation. Wherever they settle, the country flourishes and becomes a second Britain in appearance, as may be observed in the London and western districts. It does not require a very lengthened ac quaintance with Canada to form observations upon the characters ofthe immigrants, as the Webster style of Dr, Johnson will have the word to be. The English franklin and the English peasant who come here usually weigh their allegiance a little before they make up their minds ; but, if they liave been persuaded that Queen Victoria's reign is a " baneful domina tion," they either go to the United States at once, or to those portions of Canada where sympathy with the Stars and Stripes is the order of the day,' ' That is, to those portions of the London and western district where American settlers abound, who have so ge nerously repaid the fostering care which Govemor Simcoe THE CANADIANS. 1 5 If they be Scotch Radicals, the most un compromising and the most bitter of all poli ticians, they seek Canada only with the ulti mate hope of revolutionizing it. But the latter are raore than balanced by the respectable Scotch, who emigrate occa sionally upon the sarae principles which ac tuate the respectable portion of the English eraigrants, and by the hardy Highlanders already settled in various parts of the colony, whose proverbial loyalty is proof against the arts of the deraagogue. The great raass of emigrants may however be said to come from Ireland, and to consist of mechanics of the most inferior class, and of labourers. These are all impressed with the most absurd notions of the riches of America, and on landing at Quebec often refuse high wages with contempt, to seek the Cathay of their excited imaginations westward, originally extended to them. One of those rabid folks indebted to the British government, who kept an inn, pad locked his pumps lately when a regiment was marching through Woodstock in hot dusty weather, that the soldiers might not slake their thirst. 1 6 CANADA AND If they be Orangemen, they defy the Pope and the devil as heartily in Canada as in Londonderry, and are loyal to the backbone. If they are Repealers, they corae here sure of immediate wealth, to kick up a deuce of a row, for two shillings and sixpence currency is paid for a day's labour, which two shillings and sixpence was a hopeless week's fortune in Ireland ; and yet the Catholic Irish who have been long settled in the country are by no means the worst subjects in this Trans- Atlantic realm, as I can personally testify, having had the coraraand of large bodies of them during the border troubles of 1837-8, They are all loyal and true. In the event of a war, the Catholic Irish, to a man — and what a formidable body it is in Canada and the United States ! — will be on the side of England, O'Connell has prophesied rightly there, for it is not in human nature to forget the wrongs which the Catholics have suffered for the past ten years in a country professing universal freedom and toleration. The Americans of the better classes with THE CANADIANS, 17 whom I have conversed admit this, but their dislike of the Irish is rooted and general among all the native race ; and they fear as well as mistrust them, because, in many of the largest cities, New York for one, the Irish predominate. The Americans say, and so do the Cana dians, that, for sorae years back, since the repeal agitation at horae, a few very igno rant and very turbulent priests, of the lowest grade, have found their way across the Atlantic, I have travelled all over Canada, and lived raany years in the country, and have been thrown araong all classes, from my having been connected with the militia, I never saw but one specimen of Irish hedge- priest, and therefore do not credit the asser tion; this one came out last year, and a more furious bigot or a raore republican ultra I never raet with, at the same time that he was as ignorant as could be conceived. Such has not hitherto been the case with the Catholic priesthood of the Canadas. The French Canadian clergy are a body of 1 8 CANADA AND pious, exemplary men, not perhaps shining in the galaxy of science, but unobtrusive, gentlemanly, and an honour to the soutane and chasuble. The priests from Ireland are not numerous, for the Irish chapels were, till very lately, generally presided over by Scotch mis sionaries ; and I can safely say that, whether Irish or Scotch, the Catholic priesthood of Western Canada will not yield the palm to their Franco-Canadian brethren of the cross, and that loyalty is deeply inculcated by them. I have long and personally known and admired the late Bishop Mac Donell ; a worthier or a better raan never existed. The highest and the lowest alike loved hira. I saw hira bending under the weight of years, passed in his rainistry and in the de fence of his adopted country, just before he left Canada, to lay his bones in his natal soil, preside over the cereraony of placing the first stone of the Catholic serainary, for which he had given the ground and funds to the utmost of his ability. THE CANADIANS. 19 He was a large, venerable-looking man, unwieldy from the infirmities of age and a life of toil aud trouble ; and the affecting and touching portion of the scene before us was to see him supported on his right and left by the arms of a Presbyterian colonel and a colonel of the Church of England. This is true Christianity, true charity — peace be to his soul ! — His successor was a Canadian, equally free from pretension and bigotry • and he was suc ceeded by an Irishman, whose mission is to heal the wounds of party and strife. He is living and in office ; I cannot, therefore, speak of him ; but, differing as an Englishraan so widely as I do in religious tenets from his, I can freely assert that, if clergymen of every denomina- tipn pursued the same course of brotherly love that he does, we should hear no more of the fierce and undying contention about sub jects which should be covered with the veil of benevolence and humility. You cannot force a man to think as you do, to draw him into what you conceive to be 20 CANADA AND the true path ; mildness and conciliation are rauch more likely to effect your object than the Eraperor of China's yellow stick. The days of the Inquisition, of Judge JefFeries, and of Claverhouse, are happily gone by; and the artillery of man's wrath now vents its harmless thunders much in the same way as the thunders of the Vatican, or the recent fulmination of the Archbishop of Paris against the author of the Wandering Jew ; that is to say, with a great deal of noise, but without rauch damnifying any one, as the public soon formed a true judgment of M, Sue and of the tendency of his works. On the other hand, how horrible it is, and what a fearful view of frail human nature is opened for a searching mind to observe that a man, who professes to have abandon«d the pleasures of existence, to have broken through the very first law of nature, to have separated himself from his kind, and to have assumed perfection and infallibility, the attri butes of his Creator, devoting the altar at which he serves to the wicked purposes of THE CANADIANS. 21 arraying man against man, and of embruing the hands held up before him at prayer in the blood of his fellow-mortals ! But such is the inevitable tendency of the system of " I am better than thou," whether it be practised by a Catholic priest of the hedge-school, by a fanatic bawler about new light, or by a fierce and uncompromising churchman. Faith, hope, and charity, are alike raisinterpreted and misunderstood. Faith with these consists in blind or hypo critical devotion to their peculiar opinions and dogmas ; hope is limited to the narrowest circle of ideas ; and charity. Divine charity, exists not; for even the very relics, the mouldering bones of the defunct, are not al lowed to rest side by side ; and as to those differing in the slightest degree from them, to them charity extends not, however pious, however sincere, or however excellent they may be. The people of England are very little aware how widely Roman Catholicism ex tends in the United States and in Canada. 22 CANADA AND From accurate returns, it has been ascer tained that in the United States there were last year 1,500,000, with 21 bishops, 675 churches, 592 mission stations, and 572 priests "Otherwise employed in teaching and travelling; 22 colleges or ecclesiastical esta blishraents, 23 hterary institutions, 53 female schools or convents for instruction, 84 chari table hospitals and institutions, and 220 young students, preparing for the ministry ; whilst we learn, from the Annals of the Pro paganda, that 1,130,000 fraiics were appro priated, in May 1845, to the missions of Ame rica, or about ^47,000 annually, of which the share for the United States, including Texas, was 771,164 francs, or about ^632,000 in round nurabers. Then again, the greater portion of the In dian tribes in the north-west and west, ex cepting near the Rocky Mountains or beyond them, are Roman Catholics ; and their num bers are very great, and all in deep hatred, dislike, and enmity, to the Big Knives. More than half a million of the Lower THE CANADIANS. 23 Canadians are also of the same persuasion, and their church in Upper Canada is large and increasing by every shipload from Ire land. Even in Oregon, a Catholic bishop has just been appointed. It is more than probable, that in and around the United States three millions of Roman Catholic men are ever ready to ad vance the standard of their faith; whilst Mexico, weak as it is, offers another Catholic barrier to exclusive tenets of liberty, both of conscience and of person. It is surprising how very easily the emi grants are misled, and how simply tliey fancy that, once on the shores of the New World, Fortune must smile upon them. There is a British society, as I have already stated, for mutual protection, established at New York ; and the government have agents of the first respectability at Quebec, at Montreal, and at Kingston. But the poorer classes, as well as those whose knowledge of life has been limited, are sadly defrauded and deluded. 24 CANADA AND At a recent meeting of the Welsh Society at New York, facts were stated, showing the depravity and audacity of the crimps at Liverpool and New York. The President of the Society said that, owing to the nefarious practices against eraigrants, the Germans first, then the Irish, after that the Welsh, and lastly the English residents of the city had taken the matter in hand by the forma tion of Protective Societies. The president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick observed that in Liverpool the poor eraigrants were fleeced without mercy ; and he gave as one instance a fact that, by the repre sentations of a packet agent, a large number of emigrants were induced to embark on board a packet without the necessary supply of provisions, being assured that for their passage-money they would be supplied by the captain — an arrangeraent of which the captain was wholly ignorant. The president of the Welsh Society exhi bited sixty dollars of trash in bills of the Globe Bank, that had been palmed off upon THE CANADIANS. 25 an unsuspecting Welshman by some rascal in Liverpool, in exchange for his hoarded gold, and declared that this was only one of a series of like villanies constantly occurring. The ex-president of the St. George's So ciety, Mr, Fowler, raentioned a curious cir cumstance connected with the history of New York, He said that he remembered the city when it contained only fifty thousand inha bitants, and not one paved side walk, except ing in Dock Street, Now it had a population of nearly 400,000, and had so changed, that he could no longer identify the localities of his youthful days. Who, he asked, had done this ? The emi grant ! and it was protection they needed, not charity. He should have added, that the great mass of the emigrants who have made New York the raighty city it now is, were Irish, and that the native Americans have banded themselves in another form of protec tion against their increasing influence. The republican notions which the greater portion of the lower classes emigrating from the VOL, I. C 26 CANADA AND old country have been drilled into, lead them to believe that in the United States all men are equal, and that thus they have a splendid vault to make from poverty to wealth, an easy spring from a state of dependency to one of vast importance and consideration. The simple axiom of republicanism, that a plough man is as good as a president, or a quarry- man as an emperor, is taken firm hold of in any other sense than the right one. What sensible man ever doubted that we were all created in the same mould, and after the same image ; but is there a well educated sane mind in Araerica, believing that a perfect equality in all things, in goods and chattels, in agrarian rights and in education, is, or ever will be, practicable in this naughty world ? Has nature formed all men with the same capacities, and can they be so exactly edu cated that all shall be equally fit to govern ? The converse is true. Nature raakes genius, and not genius nature. How rarely she yields a Shakespeare ! — There has been but one Homer, one Virgil, since the creation. THE CANADIANS, 27 There was never a second Moses, nor have Solomon's wisdom and glory ever again been attainable. Look at the rulers of the earth, from the patriarchs to the present day, how few have been pre-eminent ! Even in the earliest periods, when the age of man reached to ten times its present span, the wonderful sacred writ records Tubal-Cain, the first artificer, and Jubal, the lyrist, as most extraordinary men ; and with what care are ' Aholiab and Bezabel, cunning in all sorts of craft, and Hirara, the artificer of Tyre, recorded ! Hiram, the king, great as he undoubtedly was, was secondary in Solomon's eyes to the widow's son. These raen, says the holy record, were gifted expressly for their peculiar mission ; and so are all men, to whora the Inscrutable has been pleased to assign extraordinary talent. Csesar, the conqueror. Napoleon, his imi tator, and Nelson, and Wellington, are they on a par with the rabble of New York? Procul, 0, procul este profani ! c 2 28 CANADA AND Pure democracy is an utter and unattain able impossibility; nature has effectually barred against it. The only thing in the course of a life of more than half a century that has ever puzzled me about it is, that the Catholic clergy should, in so many parts of the world, have lent it a helping hand. The ministers of a creed essentially aristocratic, essentially the pillars of the divine right of kings, have they ever been in earnest about the matter ? Perhaps not ! If that giant of modern Ireland, the paci ficator citizen king, succeeded in separating the island from Great Britain, would he, on attaining the throne, or the dictatorship, or the presidency, or whatever it might be, for the nonce, desire pure democracy ? Je crois que non, because, if he did, he would reign about one clear week afterwards. Look at the United States, see how each successive president is bowed down before the Moloch altar ; he must worship the demo cratic Baal, if he desires to be elected, or re elected. It is not the intellect, or the wealth of the Union that rules. Already they seri- THE CANADIANS. 29 ously canvass iu the Empire State perfect equality in worldly substance, and the divi sion of the lands into small portions, suffi cient to afford the means of respectable existence to every citizen. It is, perhaps, fortunate that very few of the office-holders have much substance to spare under these circumstances ; but, if the President, Vice- President, and the Secretaries of State, are to live upon an acre or two of land for the rest of their lives. Spartan broth will be indeed a rich diet to theirs. When the sympathizers invaded Canada, in 1838-1839, the lands of the Canadians were thus parcelled out amongst them, as the reward of their extremely patriotic services, but in slices of one hundred, instead of one or two, acres. But, notwithstanding all this ultra-demo cracy, there is at present a sufficient counter balance in the sense of the people, to prevent any very serious consequences; and the Irish, from having had their religion trampled upon, and themselves despised, would be 30 CANADA AND very likely to run counter to native feeling. If any country in the whole civilized world exhibits the inequality of classes more forcibly than another, it is the country which has lately annexed Texas, and which aims at annexing all the New World. There is a more marked line drawn between wealth and pretension on the one hand, poverty and impertinent assumption on the other, than in the dominions of the Czar. Birth, place, power, are all duly honoured, and that sometimes to a-degree which would astonish a British nobleman, accustomed all his life to high society. I remember once travelling in a canal boat, the most abgmi- nable of all conveyances, resembling Noah's ark in more particulars than its shape, that I was accosted, in the Northern States too, and near the borders, where equality and liberty reign paramount, by a long slab-sided fellow-passenger, who, I thought, was going to ask me to pay his passage, his appearance was so shabby, with the following questions : THE CANADIANS. 31 " Where are you from ? are you a Living stone ?" I told him, for I like to converse with characters, that I was from Canada. " What's your name?" he asked. I satisfied hira. He exarained me from head to foot with attention, and, as he was an elderly man, I stood the gaze most valiantly. " Well," he said, " I thought you were a Livingstone ; you have got small ears, and small feet and hands, and that, all the world over, is the sign of gentle blood." He was afterwards very civil ; and, upon inquiring of the skipper of the boat who he was, I found that my friend was a man of large fortune, who lived somewhere near Utica, on an estate of his own. This was before the sympathy troubles, and I can back it with another story or two to amuse the reader. Some years ago, when it was the fashion in Canada for British officers always to travel in uniform, I went to Buffalo, the great city of Buffalo on lake Erie, in the Thames steamer, comraanded by my good friend. Captain Van 32 CANADA AND Alien, and the first British Canadian steam boat that ever entered that harbour. We went in gallantly, with the flag flying that " has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze." I think the raajority of the popu lation must have lined the wharfs to see us come in. They rent the welkin with wel comes, and, among other demonstrations, cast up their caps, and cried with might and main — " Long live George the Third !" — Our gra cious monarch had for years before bid this world good night, but that was nothing ; the good folks of Buffalo had not perhaps quite forgotten that they were once, long before their city was a city, subjects of King George. I and another officer in uniform were re ceived with all honours, and escorted to the Eagle hotel, where we were treated sump tuously, and had to run the gauntlet of hand shaking to great extent. A respectable gen tleman, about forty, some seven years older than rayself, stuck close to rae all the while. I thought he admired the British undress uni form, but he only wanted to ask questions, THE CANADIANS. 3S and, after sundry answers, he inquired my name, which being courteously comraunicated, he said, " Well, I am glad, that's a fact, that I have seen you, for many is the whipping I have had for your book of Algebra." Now I never was capable of committing such an unheard-of enormity as being the cause of flagellation to any man by simple or qua dratic equations ; and it must have been the binomial theorem which had tickled his catas trophe, for it was my father's treatise which had penetrated into the new world of Buffa- lonian education. It is a pity, is it not, gentle reader, that such feelings do not now exist? Nevertheless, even now, the designation of a British officer is a passport in any part of the United States. The custom-house receives it with courtesy and good-will ; society is gratified by attentions received from a British officer; and it is coupled with the feelings which the habits and conduct of a gentleraan engender throughout Christendora. At New York, I visited every place worth c 5 34 CANADA AND seeing; and, although disliking gambling, races, and debating societies, a outrance, I was determined to judge for myself of New York, of life in New York. On one occasion, I was at a meeting of the turf in an hotel after the races, where violent discussions and heavy charapagning were going on. I was then (it was in 1837) a major in the army, and was introduced to one or two prominent men in the room as a British officer who had been to see the race course ; this caused a general stir, and the champagne flew about like I am at a loss for a simile ; and the health of Queen Victoria was drunk with three times three. On board a packet returning from Eng land, we had several of the leading characters of the United States as passengers. A very silly and troublesome democrat, of the Loco- foco school, from Philadelphia, made himself conspicuous always after dinner, when we sat, according to English fashion, at a dessert, by his vituperations against monarchy and an exhibition of his excessive love for everything THE CANADIANS. 35 American. The gentlemen above alluded to, men who had travelled over Europe, whose education and manners made them that which a true gentleman is all over the world, were disgusted, and, to punish his impertinence, proposed that a weekly paper should be written by the cabin passengers, in which the occurrences of each day should be noted and commented upon, and that poetry, tales, and essays, should form part of its matter. They agreed to discuss the relative points and bearings of monarchy and deraocracy; they to depute one of their number to be the champion of monarchy ; and we to chuse the champion of democracy from amongst the English passengers. Two drawings were fixed up at each end of the table after dinner ; one, representing a crowned Plum-pudding; and the other. Liberty and Equality, by the well-known sign. The blustering animal was soon effec tually silenced; a host of first-rate talent levelled a constant battery at his rude and uncultivated mind. 36 CANADA AND I shall never forget this voyage, and I hope the talent-gifted Canadian lawyer who threw down the gauntlet of Republicanism, and who has since risen to the highest honours of his profession which the Queen can bestow, has preserved copies of the Saturday's Gazette of The Mediator Ame rican Packet-ship. The mention of this vessel puts me in mind of one more American anecdote, and I must tell it, for I have a good deal of dry work before me. Crossing the Atlantic once in an American vessel, we met another American ship, of the same size, and passed very clOse, Our cap tain displayed the stars and stripes in true ship-shape cordial greeting. Brother Jona than took no notice of this sea civility, and passed on ; upon which the skipper, after taking a long look at him with his spy-glass, broke out in a passion, " What !" said he, " you won't show your b^d bunting, your old stripy rag? Now, I guess, if he had been a Britisher, instead of a d — d Yankee, THE CANADIANS, 37 he would not have been ashamed of his flag ; he would have acted like a gentleman. Phew !" and he whistled, and then chewed his cigar viciously, quite unconscious that I was enjoying the scene. But, if it be possible that one peculiar por tion of the old countrymen are more disliked or despised than another in any country under the sun, connected by such ties as the United States are with Britain, there can be no doubt that the condition of the Jews under King John, as far as hatred and unexpressed contumelious feeling goes, was preferable to the feeling whicli native Ame ricans, of the ultra Loco-foco or ultra-federal breed, entertain towards the labouring Catholic Irish, and would, if they could with safety, vent upon them in dreadful visitation. They would exterminate thera, if they dared. To account for such a feeling, it raust be observed that a large portion of these igno rant and misguided men have brought much of this animosity upon themselves ; for, con tinuing in the New World that barbarous 38 CANADA AND tendency to demolish all systems and all laws opposed to their limited notions of right and wrong, and, whilst their senseless feuds among themselves harass society, they eagerly seek occasions for that restless poli tical excitement to which they are accus tomed in their own unhappy and regretted country. A body of these hewers of wood and drawers of water, who, when not excited, are the most innocent and harmless people in the world — easily led, but never to be driven — - get employed on a canal or great public work ; and, no sooner do they settle down upon wages which must appear like a dream to them, than some old feud between Cork and Connaught, some ancient quarrel of the Capiilets and Montagues of low life, is recol lected, or a chant of the Boyne water is heard, and to it they go pell-mell, cracking one another's heads and disturbing a peaceful neighbourhood with their insane broils. Or, should a devil, in the shape of an ad viser, appear among them, and persuade these THE CANADIANS. 39 excitable folks that they raay obtain higher wages by forcing their own terms, bludgeons and bullets are resorted to, in order to com pel corapliance, and incendiarism and murder follow, until a military force is called out to quell the riots. The scenes of this kind in Canada, where vast suras are annually expended on the public works, have been frightful ; and such has been the terror which these lawless hordes have inspired, that timid people have quitted their properties and fled out of the reach of the moral pestilence ; nay, it has been carried so far, that a Scotch regiment has been marked on account of its having been accidentally on duty in putting down a canal riot ; and, wherever its station has afterwards been cast, the vengeance of these people has followed it. At Montreal, the elections have been dis graced -by bodies of these canallers having been employed to intimidate and overawe voters ; and, were it not that a large military force is always at hand there, no election 40 C.iNADA AND could be made of a member, whose seat would be the unbiassed and free choice of his constituents. It is, however, very fortunate for Canada that these canallers are not usually inclined to settle, but wander about frora work to work, and generally, in the end, go to the United States. The Irish who settle are for tunately a different people ; and, as they go chiefly into the backwoods, lead a peaceful and industrious life. But it is, nevertheless, very amusing, and affords much insight into the workings of frail huraan nature to observe the conduct of that portion of the Irish emigrants who find that they have neither the means of obtaining land, nor of quitting some large town at which they may arrive. Their first notion then is to go out to service, which they had left Ireland to avoid altogether. The father usually becomes a day-labourer, the sons farm-servants or household servants in the towns, the daughters cooks, nursery-raaids, &c. When they come (o the mistress of a family THE CANADIANS. 41 to hire, they generally sit down on the nearest chair to the door in the room, and assume a manner of perfect familiarity, assuring the lady of the house that they never expected to go out to service in Araerica, but that some family misfortune has rendered such a step necessary. The lady then, of course, asks thera what branch of household service they can undertake ; to which the invariable reply is, anything — cook or housemaid, child's- maid or housekeeper, and that indeed they lived in better places at home than they ex pect to get in America, such as Lord So-and- so's, or Squire So-and-so's. The end of this is obvious ; and a lady told me, the other day, she hired a professed cook, who was very shortly put to the test by a dinner-party occurring a day or two after she joined the household. Her mistress ordered dinner ; and one joint, or piece de resistance, was a fine fillet of veal. The professed cook, it appeared, laboured under a little manque d'usage on two delicate points, for she very unexpectedly burst into her lady's boudoir 42 CANADA AND just as she was dressing for dinner, and ex claimed, " Mistress, dear, what'U I do with the vail?"— "The veil?" said the dame, in horror; "what veil?" — "Why, the vail in the pot, marm ; I biled it, and it swelled out so, the divil a get it out can I git it," So with the farm-servants, they can all do everything ; and an Irish gentleman told me that he lately hired a young man, an emi grant, to plough for him ; and, on asking hira if he understood ploughing, the good-natured Paddy answered, offhand, " Ploughing, is it ? I'm the boy for ploughing," — " Very well, I'm glad of it," said the gentleman, " for you are a fine, likely young fellow, so I shall hire you." He hired him accordingly at high wages — ten dollars a month and provisions and lodging found. The first day he was to work, my friend told him to go and yoke the oxen. Paddy stared with all his eyes, but said nothing, and went aAvay. He staid some time, and then returned with a pair of oxen, which he was driving before him. " Here's the oxen, master !" — " Where are THE CANADIANS. 43 the yokes, Paddy ?"— " The yokes ! by the powers, is that what they call beef in Canady ?" Poor Paddy had been a weaver all his live-long days. The Irish are almost exclusively the ser vants in most parts of the northern states and throughout Canada, excepting the French Canadians, and very attached, faithful ser vants they frequently are ; but notions of liberty and equality get possession of their phrenological developments, and they are almost always on the move to better their condition, which rarely happens as they desire. Then another crying evil in Canada and in the States is the rage for dress. An Irish girl no sooner gets a modicum of wages than all her thoughts are to go to chapel or church as fine or finer than her mistress. Nearly every servant-girl in the large towns has a ridicule (that raust be the proper way of spelling it), a bustle, a parasol, an ex pensive shawl, and a silk gown, and fine bonnet, gloves, and a white pocket-handker- 44 CANADA AND chief. The men are not so aspiring, and usually don on Sundays a blue coat and brass buttons, white pantaloons, white gloves, and a good fur cap in winter, or a neat straw hat or brilliant beaver in sumraer. The waistcoat is nondescript, but the boots are irreproachable. A cigar has nearly replaced the pipe in the streets. I will defy a short-sighted person to dis tinguish her nursery-maid from her own sister at a little distance ; and, being somewhat afflicted that way rayself, I frequently nod to a well-dressed soubrette, thinking she is at least a leading raember of the aristocracy of the town ; and this is the more amusing, as in all colonial towns and in the haute societe of the Republic very considerable magnifi cence is affected, and a rage for rank and pseudo-importance is not a little the order of the day. " Nothing," says a distinguished writer upon that most frivolous of all thread bare subjects, etiquette, " nothing is raore decidedly the sign of a vulgar-born or a vulgar-bred person than to be ready to prac- THE CANADIANS. 45 tise the art of cutting." I therefore bow to the well-dressed grisettes, upon the principle of avoiding to be thought vulgar in mixed society by cutting a lady of tremendous rank ; as I would rather take a cook for a Countess, or a chambermaid for an Honourable, than be guilty of so much rudeness. You must not smile, gentle reader, and say cooks are often handsomer than Countesses, or charaberraaids prettier than Honourables ; I am like the old man of the Bubbles of Brunnen, insensible to anything but the beauties of nature. Neither must you think we have no Countesses nor Honourables in Canada. The former are in truth rarce aves, but the latter — -why, every change of ministry creates a batch of them. 46 CANADA AND CHAPTER IL The Emigrant and his Prospects. Those who really wish Canada well desire it to becorae a second Britain, and not a mere second Texas. Those who wish it evil, and these comprise the restless, unprovided race of politicians under whose incessant agitation Canada has so long groaned, desire its Texian annexation to the already overgrown States in its vicinity. That it may becorae a second Britain and hold the balance of power on the continent of Araerica is my prayer, and the prayer too of one who entertains no enmity towards the people of the United States, but who ad mires their unceasing exertions in behalf of their country, who would admire their insti tutions,, based as they are upon those of Eng- THE CANADIANS. 47 land, if the grand design of Washington had been carried out, and perfect freedom of thought and of action had been secured to the people, instead of a slavish awe of the mob, an absolute dread of the uneducated masses, a sovereign conterapt of the opinion of the world in accomplishing auy design for the aggrandizement of the Union, the most despotic and degrading oppression of all who presume to hold religious opinions at variance with those of the masses, and the chained bondsman in a land of liberty ! To guard the respectable settler, who has a character at stake, and a family with some little capital to lay out to better advantage than he can at home, against the grievous and often fatal errors which have been propagated for sinister motives by needy adventurers who have written about Canada, or who are or have been agents for the sake only of the remuneration which it brings, caring but little for the misery they have entailed, I have un dertaken to continue an account of this fine province, where nothing is provided by Nature 48 CANADA AND except fertile soil and a healthy climate ; the rest she leaves to unremitting labour and to the exercise of judgment by the settler. As I have already inferred, this work will contain nothing vituperative of the United States, of that people who are the grandchil dren of Britannia, and whose well-being is so essential to the peace and security of Christ endora, I shall endeavour to render it as plain and unpretending as possible, and shall not confine myself to studied rules or endeavours to make a book, taking up my subject as suits my own leisure, which is not very ample, and resuming or interrupting it at pleasure or convenience. It will be necessary to enter more at large than in my preceding volumes into the re sources of Canada, and, for this end, Geology and other scientific subjects must be intro duced; but, as I dislike exceedingly that heavy and gaudy veil of learning, that em broidered science, with which modern taste conceals those secrets of Nature which have been so partially unfolded, I shall not have THE CANADIANS. 49 frequent recourse to absurd Greek derivations, which are very commonly borrowed for the occasion frora technical dictionaries, or lent by a classical friend ; but, whenever they raust occur, the dictionary shall explain them, for I really think it beneath the dignity of the lights of modern Geology to talk as they do about the Placoids and the Ganoids, as the first created fishlike beings, and ofthe Cnetoids and the Cycloids as the more recent finners. It always puts me in mind of Shakespeare's raag- niloquence concerning " the Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, of antres vast and deserts idle," when he exhibited his learning in language which no one, however, can imitate, and which he makes the lady seriously incline and listen to, simply because she did not understand a word that was said. So it is with the over done and continual changing of terms that now constantly occurs ; insomuch that the terms of plain science, instead of being sim plified and brought within the reach of ordi nary capacities, is made as uncouth and as VOL. I. D 50 CANADA AND unintelligible as possible, and totally beyond the reach of those who have no collegiate education to boast of, and no good technical dictionary at hand to refer to. The present age is most prone to this false estimate of learning and to public scientific display. If science, true science, yields to it, learning will very soon vanish from the face of the earth again, and nothing but monkish lore and the dark ages return. There is a vast field open for research in Canada : it is yet a virgin soil, both as re spects its moral and its physical cultivation. Therefore, plain facts are the best,, and those made as level to the eye as possible ; for the amusing mistakes which a would-be learned man makes, after a cursory perusal of any thing scipntifie, only subject him to silent derision. A very old casual acquaintance of mine, a sort of man holding a rather elevated rank, but originally from the great unwashed, who had risen by mere chance, aided by a little borough influence, was talking to me one day. THE CANADIANS. 51 about some property of his in Western Canada, which he fancied had rich minerals upon it. Accordingly, he had taken a preliminary Treatise on Mineralogy in hand, and puzzled his brains in order to converse learnedly. " My land," quoth he, " is Silesia, and has a great bed of sulphuret of pyrites." The poor gentleman, who had a vast opinion of himself and always contradicted everybody about everything, raeant that his soil con tained a deal of silica, and that iron pyrites was abundant in it. The importance of the annual migration from Britain is best evidenced by the re presentation of the chief emigrant agent at Quebec, subjoined. In all the great sea-ports of England, Ire land, and Scotland, there are emigrant agents appointed by the government, to whora application should always be made for infor mation, by every emigrant who has not the advantage of friends in Canada to receive and guide him ; and these gentlemen prevent the trouble, expense, loss of time, and fraud, n 2 52 CANADA AND to which the poor settlers are subjected by the crimps and agents, with whom every sea-port abounds. On their arrival in Canada, if ignorant of their way, they should apply at Quebec to the government principal agent, who is sta tioned there for the lower or eastern part of Canada, and he will give them either advice or passage, according to the nature of the case. It is a pity that a rage exists for going as far west as possible at flrst, for this rage causes distress, and ends frequently by their being kidnapped into settling in the United States, If, however, they are determined to go on to Western Canada, their course is either to pay their own way, or to obtain assistance from the government to send them on to Kingston, where another government agent for Western Canada is stationed ; and, as this gentleman has now acted in that capacity for many years, he possesses a perfect knowledge of the country and its resources, and of the wants and objects of the settlers. THE CANADIANS. 53 There is excellent land, and plenty of it to be obtained from the British Araerican Land Company in Lower Canada, in that portion called " The Townships," which adjoin the states of Vermont and New York ; and, ex cepting that the winters are longer, the climate raore severe, it is as desirable as any other part of the province, and, in point of health, perhaps more so, as it is sufficiently far from the great river and lakes to raake it less subject to ague ; which, however, more or less, all new countries in the temperate zone, well forested and watered, are invariably the seat of, and which is increased in power and frequency in proportion to the neighbour hood of fresh water in large bodies, and the use of whiskey as a preventive, Frora a statement of the number of emi grants to this colony for the last sixteen years, compiled by A, C, Buchanan, Esq., chief emigrant agent, it appears that, in the five years subsequently to 1829, the emigra tion frora the British Isles was 165,793. From other sources, in the three years, frora 54 CANADA AND 1829 to 1832, the emigration exceeded that of the previous ten years — the numbers being re spectively, 125,063 and 121,170. In 1832, the emigrants arrived reached the high number of 51,746 ; but the cholera of that year was of so fatal a character on the St, Lawrence, that the numbers in 1833 fell 22,062. This epidemic, coupled with the rebellions of '37 and '38, materially checked the increased emigration commenced in 1836. In 1838, the number was only 3,266, and in 1839, 7,500. But, since 1840, emigration has again recovered, and, during the period of navigation of 1845, it amounted to 27,354, of whom 2,612 arrived via the United States. The United States, however, received by far the largest proportion of the eraigration from Britain. At the port of New York alone, from 1st Noveraber, 1844, to 3Ist October, 1845, there arrived — From England and Scotland . . 10,653 From Ireland .... 38,300 Total at New York ... 48 953 THE CANADIANS. 55 The nuraber of emigrants landed at the port of Quebec, in 1845, was 25,375. NUMBER OF EMIGRANTS SINCE 1829. England . Ireland Scotland . Bntish Ame- ricanProv.&c. •29 to '33 '34 to '38 '39 to '43 '44 to '45 Total. 43,386 102,264 20,143 1,904 28,624 64,898 10,998 1,831 30,318 74,981 16,289 1,777 16,531 24,201 4,408 377 119,354 256,344 51,838 5,589 167,697 96,351 123,860 45,517 433,425 Upper Canada would seem to have received the largest share of the influx of population. The increase in the number of its inha bitants, between 1827 and 1843, is stated at 230,000. The local government has for some few years past encouraged, although rather scan tily, as Mr. Logan can, I dare say, testify, an exploration of the natural resources of the Canadas, as far as geology and mineralogy are concerned. Its medical statistics, its botany and zoology, will follow ; and agricul ture, that primary and most noble of all applications of the mind to matter, is 56 CANADA AND making rapid strides, by the formation of district and local societies, which will do in finitely more good than any system of govern ment patronage for the advancement of the welfare of the people could devise. The public works have also, for the first time, been placed under the' control of the executive and legislative bodies by the forma tion of a board, which is itself also subject to the supervision of the government. But much reraains to be done on this im- ' portant head. A melancholy error was com mitted in making the President, and conse quently all the officers and employes, of the Board of Works, partizans of the rainistry of the day; thus paralyzing the efforts of a zealous man, on the one hand, by the fear of dismissal upon any change of the popu lar will, and neutralizing his effi>rts whilst in office, by rendering his measures mere jobs. This has been amended under Lord Met calfe's administration ; and it is to be hoped that the office of President of the Board of THE CANADIANS. 57 Works will hereafter be one subjected to se vere but not to vexatious scrutiny, and at the same time carefully guarded against political influence, and only rendered tenable with honour by the capacity of the person selected to fill it and of his subordinates. Canada is, as I have written two forraer voluraes to prove, a magnificent country. I doubt very rauch if Nature has created a finer Country on the whole earth. The soil is generally good, as that made by the decay of forests for thousands of years upon substrata, chiefly formed of alluvion or diluvion, the deposit from waters, must be. It is, moreover, frora Quebec to the Falls of St. Mary, alraost a flat surface, intersected and interlaced by numberless strearas, and studded with sraall lakes, whilst its littorale is a river unparalleled in the world, expanding into enormous fresh water seas, abounding with fish. If the tropical luxuries are absent, if its winters are long and excessively severe, yet it yields all the European fruits abundantly, D 5 58 CANADA AND and even some of the tropical ones, owing to the richness of its soil and the great heat of the sumraer. Maize, or Indian corn, flou rishes, and is more wholesome and better than that produced in the warm South, The crops of potato, that apple of the earth, as the French so justly term it, are equal, if not superior, to those of any other climate ; whilst all the vegetables of the temperate regions of the old world grow with greater luxuriance than in their original fields, I have successively and successfully cultivated the tomato, the melon, and the capsicum, in the open air, for several seasons, at Kingston and Toronto, which are not the richest or the best parts of Western Canada, as far as vegetation is con cerned. Tobacco grows well in the western district, and where is finer wheat harvested than in Western Canada ? — whilst hay, and that beauty of a landscape, the rich green sod, the velvet carpet of the earth, are abundant and luxuriant. If the majesty of vegetation is called in question, and intertropical plants brouo-ht THE CANADIANS, 59 forward in contrast, even the woods and trackless forests of Guiana, where the rankest of luxuriance prevails, will not do more than compete with the glory of the primeval woods of Canada, I know of nothing in this world capable of exciting emotions of wonder and adoration raore directly, than to travel alone through its forests. Pines, lift ing their hoary tops beyond man's vision, unless he inclines his head so far backwards as to be painful to his organization, with trunks which require fathoms of line to span thera ; oaks, of the raost gigantic form ; the immense and graceful weeping elm ; enormous poplars, whose raagnitude raust be seen to be conceived ; lindens, equally vast ; walnut trees of iraraense size ; the beautiful birch, and the wild cherry, large enough to make tables and furniture of. Oh, the gloom and the glory of these forests, and the deep reflection that, since they were first created by the Divine fiat, civilized raan has never desecrated thera with his unsparing devastations; that a peculiar 60 CANADA AND race, born for these solitudes, once dwelt- araidst their shades, living as Nature's wood land children, until a more subtile being than the serpent of Eden crept amongst them,, and, with his glittering novelties and dangerous beauty, caused their total annihilation ! I see, in spirit, the red hunter, lofty, fearless, and stern, stalking in his painted nudity, and displaying a form which Apollo might have envied, amidst the everlasting and silent Avoods ; I see, in spirit, the bearded stranger from the rising sun, with his deadly arras and his raore deadly fire-water, conversing with his savage fellow, and displaying the envied wealth of gorgeous beads and of gaudy clothing. The scene changes, the proud Indian is at the feet of his ensnarer ; disease has relaxed his iron sinews ; drunkenness has debased his mind ; and the myriad crimes and vices of civilized Europe have combined to sweep the aborigines of the soil from the face of the forest earth. The forest groans beneath the axe ; but, after a few years, the scene ao-ain THE CANADIANS. 61 changes ; fertile fields, orchards and gardens, delight the eye ; the city, and the town, and the village spires rise, and where two solitary wigwaras of the red hunter were once alone occasionally observed, twenty thousand white Canadians now worship the sarae Great Author of the existence of all raankind. And to increase these fields, these orchards, these gardens, these villages, these towns, and these cities, year after year, thirty thou sand of the children of Britain cross the broad Atlantic : and what seeks this mass of human beings, braving the perils of the ocean and the perils of the land? Competence and wealth! The forraer, by prudence, is soon attainable ; the acquisition of the latter un certain and fickle. No free grants of land are now given, but the settler raay obtain them upon easy terms from the governraent, or the Canada and British American companies. The settler with a sraall capital cannot do better than purchase out and out. Instal ments are a bad mode of purchasing ; for, if 62 CANADA AND all should not turn out right, instalments are sometimes difficult to meet; and the very best land, in the best locations, as we shall hereafter see, is to be had from ts. 6d., if in the deep Bush, as the forest is called ; to 1 Os,, if nearer a raarket; or 15s. and 20*,, if very eligibly situated. Thus for two hundred pounds a settler can buy two hundred acres of good land, can build an excellent house for two hundred and fifty more, and stock his farm with another fi,fty, as a beginning ; or, in other words, he can commence Canadian life for five hundred pounds sterling, with every prospect before him, if he has a family, of leaving them prosperous and happy. But he and they must work, work, work. He and all his sons must avoid whiskey, that bane of the backwoods, as they would avoid the rattlesnake, which sometimes comes across their path. Whiskey and wet feet destroy more proraising youno- men in Canada than ague and fever, that scourge of all well watered woody countries ; for the ague and fever seldom kill but with the assistance of the dram and of exposure. THE CANADIANS, 63 Men nurtured in luxury or competence at home, as soon as the unfailing ennui arising from want of society in the backwoods begins to succeed the excitement of settling, too frequently drink, and in many cases drink frora their waking hour until they sink at night into sottish sleep. This is peculiarly the case where there is no village nor town within a day's journey ; and thus raany otherwise estimable young men becorae habitual drunk ards, and sink frora the caste of gentlemen gradually into the dregs of society, whilst their wives and families suffer proportionably. In Lower Canada, this vice does not pre vail to the same extent as in the upper por tion of the province. The French Canadians are not addicted to the vice of drinking ardent spirits as a people, although the lumberers and voyageurs shorten their lives very con siderably by the use of whiskey. The lumber ers, who are the cutters and conveyers of tiraber, pass a short and excited existence. In the winter, buried in the eternal forest, far, far away from the haunts of man, they 64 CANADA AND chop and. hew; in the summer, they form the timber, boards, staves, &c,, into rafts, which are conveyed down the great lakes and the rivers St, Lawrence and Ottawa to Quebec — on these rafts they live and have their summer being. - Hard fare in plenty, such as salt pork and dough cakes ; fat and unleavened bread, with whiskey, is their diet. Tea and- sugar form an occasional luxury. Up to their waists in snow in winter, and up to their waists in sumraer and autumn in water, with all the moving accidents by flood and field ; the occasional breaking-up of the raft in a rapid, the difficulty of the winter and spring trans port of the heavy logs of squared tiraber out of the deep and trackless woods, combine to form a portion of the hard and reckless life of a lumberer, whose morale is not much better than his physicale. Picture to yourself, child of luxury, sitting on a cushioned sofa, in a room where the velvet carpet renders a footfall noiseless, where art is exhausted to afford comfort, and where even the hurricane cannot disturb your peru- THE CANADIANS, 65 sal of this work, a wood reaching without limit, excepting the oceans either of salt or fresh water which surround Canada, and where to lose the track is hopeless starvation and death ; figure the giant pines towering to the clouds, gloomy and Titan-like, throwing their vast arms to the skyey influences, and making a twilight of raid-day, at whose enormous feet a thicket of bushes, alraost as high as your head, prevents your progress without the pioneer axe ; or a deep and black swamp for railes together renders it necessary to crawl frora one fallen monarch ofthe wood onwards to the decaying and prostrate bole of another, with an occasional plunge into the mud and water, which they bridge; eternal silence reigning, disturbed only by your feeble efforts to advance ; and you raay form sorae idea of a red pine land, rocky and uneven, or a cedar swamp, black as night, dark, dismal, and dantyerous. Here, after you have hewed or crept your toiling way, you see, some yards or sorae hun dred yards, as the forest is close or open, 66 CANADA AND before you, a light blue curling smoke amongst the dank and lugubrious scene ; you hear a dull, distant, heavy, sudden blow, frequent and deadened, followed at long intervals by a tremendous rending, crashing, overwhelming rush ; then all is silent, till the voice of the guardian of man is heard growling, snarling, or barking outright, as you advance towards the blue smoke, which has now, by an eddy of the wind, filled a large space between the trees. You stand before the fire, made under three or four sticks set up tenwise, to which a large cauldron is hung, bubbling and seething, with a very strong odour of fat pork ; a boy, dirty and ill-favoured, with a sharp glittering axe, looks very suspiciously at you, but calls off his wolfish dog, who sneaks away, A moraent shows you a long hut, forraed of logs of wood, with a roof of branches, covered by birch-bark, and by its side, or near the fire, several nondescript sties or pens, apparently for keeping pigs in, forraed of branches close to the ground, either like a THE CANADIANS. 67 boat turned upside down, or literally as a pig sty is formed, as to shape. In the large hut, which is occasionally more luxurious and made of slabs of wood or of rough boards, if a saw-mill is within reason able distance, and there is a passable wood road, or creek, or rivulet, navigable by canoes, you see some barrel or two of pork, and of flour, or biscuit, or whiskey, sorae tools, and sorae old blankets or skins. Here you are in the lumberer's winter horae — I cannot call him woodman, it would disgrace the ancient and ballad-sung craft ; for the lumberer is not a gentle woodman, and you need not sing sweetly to hira to " spare that tree." The larger dwelling is the hall, the common hall, and the pig-sties the sleeping-places. I presume that such a circumstance as pulling off habiliments or ablution seldom occurs ; they roll themselves in a blanket or skin, if they have one, and, as to water, they are so frequently in it during the summer, that I suppose they wash half the year uninten tionally. Fat pork, the fattest of the fat, is 68 CANADA AND the luraberer's luxury; and, as he has the universal rifle or fowling-piece, he kills a partridge, a bear, or a deer, now and then. I was exploring last year sorae woods in a newly settled township, the township of Seyraour West, in the Newcastle district of Upper Canada, with a view to see the nakedness of the land, which had been repre sented to me as flowing with milk and honey, as all new settlements of course are said to do. I wandered into the lonely but beauti ful forest, with a companion who owned the soil, and who had told me that the lumberers were robbing hira and every settler around of their best pine timber. After some toiling and tracing the sound of the axes, few and far between, felling in the distance, we came upon the unvarying boy at cookery, the axe, and the dog. My conductor at once saw the extent of the raischief going on, and, finding that the gang, although distant frora the camp-fire, was numerous, advised that we should retrace our steps. We however interrogated the boy. THE CANADIANS. 69 who would scarcely answer, and pretended to know nothing. The dog began to be inqui sitive too, and one of the dogs we had with us venturing a little too near a savoury piece of pork, the nature of the young half-bred ruffian suddenly blazed out, and the axe was uplifted to kill poor Dash. I happened to have a good stick, and interfered to prevent dog-murder, upon which the wood-demon ejaculated that he would as soon let out my guts as the dog's, and therefore my corapa nion had to shovv his gun ; for showing his teeth would have been of little avail with the young savage. The settlers are afraid of the luraberers ; and thus all the finest land, near rivers, creeks, or transport of any kind, is swept of the tiraber to such an extent that you must go now far, far back frora the Lakes, the St, Lawrence, or the Ottawa, before you can see the forest in its primeval grandeur. This robbery has been carried on in so barefaced and extensive a raanner, that the chief adventurer, usually a raerchant or trader. 70 CANADA AND who supplies the axe and canoemen with pay in his shop goods, cent, per cent, above their value, becomes enriched. The lumberer's life is truly an unhappy one, for, when he reaches the end of the raft's voy age, whatever money he raay have made goes to the fiddle, the female, or the fire-water; and he starts again as poor as at first, living perhaps by a rare chance to the advanced age, for a lumberer, of forty years. And a curious sight is a raft, joined toge ther not with ropes but with the limbs and thews of the swamp or blue beech, which is the natural cordage of Canada and is used for scaffolding and packing. A raft a quarter of a mile long — I hope I do not exaggerate, for it may be half a mile, never having measured one but by the eye — with its little huts of boards, its apo logies for flags and streamers, its numerous little masts and sails, its cooking caboose, and its contrivances for anchoring and catching the wind by slanting boards, with the men who appear on its surface as if they were THE CANADIANS, 71 walking on the lake, is curious enough ; but to see it in drams, or detached portions, sent down foaming and darting along the timber slides of the Ottawa or the restless and rapid Trent, is still more so ; and fearful it is to observe its conducteur, who looks in the rapid by no means so much at his ease as the func tionary of that name to whom the Paris dili gence is entrusted, Nuraberless accidents happen ; the drams are torn to pieces by the violence of the stream ; the rafts are broken by storm and tempest ; the men get drunk and fall over ; and altogether it appears extraordinary that a raft put together at the Trent village for its final voyage to Quebec should ever reach its de stination, the transport being at least four hun dred and fifty miles, and raany go rauch farther, through an open and ever agitated fresh water sea, and araongst the intricate channels of The Thousand Islands, and down the tremen dous rapids of the Longue Sault, the Gallope, the Cedars, the Cascades, &c. But a new trade has lately commenced on 72 CANADA AND Lake Ontario, which will break up some of the hardships of the rafting. Old steamboats of very large size, when no longer serviceable in their vocation, are now cut down, and per haps lengthened, masted, and rigged as barques or ships, and treated in every respect like the Atlantic timber-vessels. Into these three-masters, these Leviathans of Lake On tario, the timber, boards, staves, handspikes, &c,, frora the interior are now shipped, and the timber carried to the head of the St, Lawrence navigation. One step more, and they will, as soon as the canals are widened, proceed from Lake Superior to London without a raft being ever made. That this will soon occur is very evident ; for a large vessel of this kind, as big as a frigate, and named the Goliath, is at the moment that I am writing preparing at To ronto, near the head of Lake Ontario, a thousand miles frora the open sea, for a voy age direct to the West Indies and back again. Success to her ! What with the railroad from THE CANADIANS. 73 Halifax to Lake Huron, frora the Atlantic Ocean to the great fresh ocean of the West — what with the electric telegraph now in ope ration on the banks of the Niagara by the Araericans — what with the lighting of vil lages on the shores of Lake Erie with natural gas, as Fredonia is lit, and as the city of the Falls of Niagara, if ever it is built, will also be, there is no telling what will happen : at all events, the poor luraberer must benefit in the next generation, for the worst portion of his toils will be done away with for ever. Settler, never become a lumberer, if you can avoid it. But, as we have in this favourite hobby horse style of ours, which causes description to start up as recollections occur, accom panied the lumberer on his voyage to that lumberer's Paradise, Quebec, whither he has conducted his charge to The Coves, for the culler to cull, the marker to mark, the skipper to ship, and the lumber-raer- chant to get the best market he can for it, so we shall return for a short time to VOL, I, E 74 CANADA AND Lower Canada, to talk a little about settle ment there. As I hinted before, Lower Canada is too much decried as a country to re-commence the world in ; but the Anglo-Saxon and Mi lesian populace are nevertheless beginning to discover its value, and are very rapidly increa sing both in numbers and importance. The French Canadian yeoman, or small farmer, has an alacrity at standing still ; it is only le notaire and le medecin that advance ; so that, if emi gration goes on at the rate it has done since the rebellion, the old country folks will, before fifty more years pass over, outnumber and out vote, by ten times, Jean Baptiste, which is a pity, for a better soul than that merry mixture of bonhomie and phlegm, the French Canadian is, the wide world's surface does not produce. Visionary notions of la gloire de la nation Ca nadienne, instilled into him by restless men, who panted for distinction and cared not for distraction, misled the bonnet rouge awhile : but he has superadded the thinking cap since ; and, although he may not readily forget the THE CANADIANS, 75 sad lesson he received, yet he has no more idea of being annexed to the United States than I have of being Grand Lama, In fact, I really believe that the merciful policy which has been shown, and the wise measure of making Montreal the seat of government, and thus practically demonstrating the ad vantage of the institutions of England by daily lessons in the heart of their dear coun try, has done more to recall the Canadians to a sense of the real value of the connexion with Great Britain than all the protocols of diplomatists, or all the powder that ever saltpetre generated, could have achieved. Pursue a perfectly impartial course, as you ought and must do, towards the Canadians, and show them that they are as rauch British citizens as the people of Toronto are, and you raay count upon their loyalty and devo tion without fear. They know they never can be an independent nation ; that folly has been drearaed out, and the fumes of the vision are evaporating. They now know and feel that annexation E 2 76 CANADA AND to the great Republic in their neighbourhood will swamp their nationality more effectively than the red or the blue coats of England can ever do, will desecrate their altars, will por tion out their lands, will nullify their present importance, and render them an isolated race, forgotten and unsought for, as the Iroquois of the last century, who, from being the children and owners of the land, the true enfans du sol, are now — where ? The soil, had it voice, could alone reply, for on its surface they are not. We must never in England form a false estimate of the French Canadian, because a few briefless lawyers or saddle-bag medical men urged them into rebellion. Their feel ings and spirit are not of the sarae genre as the feelings and spirit which aniraated the hideous soul of the poissardes and canaille of Paris in 1792. There is very little or no poverty in Lower Canada ; every man who will work there, can work ; and it is a nation rather of small farmers than of classes, with the ideas of independence which property. THE CANADIANS, 77 however small, invariably generates in the human breast ; but with that other idea also which urges it to preserve ancient landmarks. It is chiefly in the large towns and in their neighbourhood that the desire for exclusive nationality still exists, fostered by a rabid appetite for distinction in some ardent and reckless adventurers from the British ranks, who care little what is undermost so long as they are uppermost. The hostility of the British settlers to the French is by no means so great as is so care fully and constantly described, and would altogether cease, if not kept continually alive by Upper Canadian demonstration, and that desire to rule exclusively which has so long been the bane of this fine colony. It rerainds one always of the raorbid hatred of France, which existed thirty years ago in England, when Napoleon was believed, by the lower classes — ay, and by some of the higher too — to be ApoUyon in earnest, I remember an old lord of the old school, whose family honours were not of a hundred 78 CANADA AND years, and whose ancestors had been re spectable traders, saying to me, a short time before he died, that Republican notions had spread so much from our peace with infidel France, that he should yet live to see those who possessed talent or energy enough among the middle class, take those honours which he was so proud of, and with the titles also, the estates. Look, said he, at the absurd decoration showered on the savans of France, Baron Cuvier, for instance ; and he fell into a pas sion, and, being a French scholar, sang forth, in a paroxysm of gout, this refrain : — " Travaillez, travaillez, bon tonneUer, Kacommodez, racommodez, ton Cuvier." And yet he was by no means an ignorant man — was at heart a true John Bull, and had travelled and seen the world. He was blinded by an unquenchable hatred of France, a hatred which has now ceased in England in consequence of the facility of intercourse, but which is revived in France against Eng- THE CANADIANS. 79 land by those who think la gloire preferable to peace and honour. The miserable feudal system in Lower Canada has kept the French population in abeyance ; that population is literally dor mant, and the resources of the country unused ; a Seigneur, now often anything but a Frenchman, holds an immense tract, par celled out into little slips araongst a pea santry, whose ideas are as limited as their lands. Generation after generation has tilled these patches, until they are exhausted ; and thus the few proprietors who have been able to emancipate themselves from the Seignoral thraldom sell as fast as they can obtain pur chasers ; and the Seignories lapse, by failure of descent or by cutting off the entail, as it may be termed, under the dominion of foreigners, to the people. It is surprising that British capitalists do not turn their attention more to Lower Canada, where land is thus to be bought very cheap, and which only requires manuring, a treatment that it rarely receives from a 80 CANADA AND Canadian, to bring it into heart again, and where the vast extent of the British town ships, held in free and common soccage, opens snch a field for the agriculturist. These townships are rapidly opening up and improving, and the sales of the Bri tish Araerican Land Company may in round numbers be said to average ^20,000 a year, or raore than 40,000 acres, averaging ten shillings an acre. The day's wages for a labourer on a farm in Lower Canada may be stated at two shil lings currency, about one shilling and eight- pence sterling, with food and lodging ; but, excepting in the towns and in the eastern townships, the labourers are Canadians, else where chiefly Irish, In the large towns also they are Irish, and two shillings and sixpence is the usual price of a day's work at Mont real. There is a great demand for English or Scotch labourers in the townships where pro visions are reasonable, and the materials for building, either lime, stone, brick, or wood, THE CANADIANS. 81 also very moderate in price from their abun dance. Cultivated, or rather cleared, farras may be purchased now near the settleraents for about six pounds per acre, with very often dwelling and farras on them, and a clear title may be readily obtained, after inquiry at the registry office of the county, to see whether any mortgage or other encumbrance exist — a course always to be adopted, both in Upper and Lower Canada. A settler must take the precaution of tracing the original grant, and that the land, if he buys from an individual, is neither Crown nor Clergy reserve, nor set apart for school or any other public pur poses. Never buy, moreover, of a squatter, or land on which a squatter is located, for the law is very favourable to these gentry, A squatter is a man who, axe in hand, with his gun, dog, and baggage, sets himself down in the deep forest, to clear and improve ; and this he very frequently does, both upon public and private property ; and the Government is lenient, so that, if he makes well of it, he E 5 82 CANADA AND generally has a right of pre-emption, or per haps pays up only instalments, and then sells and goes deeper into the bush. Every way there is difficulty about squatted land, and very often the squatter will significantly enough hint that there is such a thing as a rifle in his log castle. Squatters are usually Americans, of the very lowest grade, or the most ignorant of the Irish, who really believe they have a right to the soil they occupy. I do not profess to give an account of the Eastern Townships ; the prospectus of the British American Land Company will do that ; and, as I have never been through them entirely, so I could only advance assertion ; but I believe that they are admirably adapted for English and Scotch settlers, and that, bounded as they are by the French Canadians on one side, and by the United States on the other, with every facility for roads, canals, and railways, they raust become one of the richest most and important portions of Canada be fore half a century has passed over ; but it will take that time, notwithstanding railways and THE CAN.\DIANS. 83 locomotives, to raake Jean Baptiste a useful agriculturist ; and the fly must be eradicated from the wheat before Lower Canada can ever come within a great distance of com petition in the flour market with the upper province. Take a steam-boat voyage from Quebec to Montreal, and you pass through French Canada; for, although there are very ex tensive settlements of the race below Quebec till they are lost in the rugged mountains of Gaspesia, yet the raain body of habitants rest upon the low and tranquil shores of the St, Lawrence, for one , hundred and eighty miles between the Castle of St, Lewis and the Cathedral of Montreal, The farra-houses, neat, and invariably whitewashed, line the river, particularly on the left bank, like a cantonraent, and go back to the north for, at the utmost, ten or twelve miles into the then boundless wilderness. The cultivated ground is in narrow slips, fenced by the custoraary snake fence, which is nothing raore than slabs of trees split coarsely 84 CANADA AND into rails, and set up lengthways in a zig zag form to give them stability, with struts, or riders, at the angles, to bind them. These farms are about nine hundred feet in width, and four or five miles in depth, being the concessions or allotments made originally by the seigneurs to the censitaires, or tillers of the soil. Every here and there, a long road is left, with cross ones, to obtain access to the farms, much in the same way, but not near so conveniently, or well done, as the concession lines in Upper Canada, which embrace large spaces of a hundred acre or two hundred acre lots, including many of these lots, and giving a sixty-six feet or a forty foot road, as the case may be, and thus dividing the country into a series of large parallelograms, and making every farm ac cessible. Each Lower French Canadian farmer is an independent yeoman, excepting as bound to the soil, and to certain seignorial dues and privileges, which are, however, trifling, and far from burthensome. Taxes are unknown. THE CANADIANS. 85 and they cheerfully support their priest hood. It is not generally known in England that the feudal tenure — although very laughable and absurd at this time of day, and from which sorae seigneurs, but never those of unraixed French blood, are disposed to claira titles equivalent to the baronage of England, with incomes of about a thousand a year, or at most two, and manorial houses, resembling very much a substantial Bucking hamshire grazier's chateau — was originally established by the French monarchs for wise, highly useful, and benevolent purposes. These seigneuries were parcelled out in very large tracts of forest along the banks of the St, Lawrence, or the rivers and bays of Lower Canada, on the condition that they should be again parcelled out among those who would engage to cultivate them in the strips above-mentioned. Thus re-granted, the seigneur could not eject the habitant, but was allowed to receive a nominal or feudal rent frora the vassal, and the usual droits. 86 CANADA AND These droits are, first, the barbarous " Iods et ventes" or one thirteenth of the money upon every transfer which the habitant makes by sale only ; but the original rent can never be raised, whatever value the land may have attained. The rights of the mill, that old European appanage of the lord of the soil, were also reserved to the seigneur, who alone can build mills within his domain, or use the waters within his boundaries for mechanical purposes ; but he must erect them at conve nient distances, and must make and repair roads. The miller, therefore, takes toll of the grist, which is another source of seignorial revenue, although not a very great one, for the toll is, excepting the miller's thumb rights, not very large. The crown of England is the lord para raount or suzerain, and demands a tax of one fifth of the purchase-money of each seignory sold or transferred by the lord of the manor. By law, the lands cannot be subdivided, and if a seigneurie is sold it cannot be sold in parts, nor can any compromise with the THE CANADIANS, 87 habitants for rent, or any other claim or in cumbrance, be raade. An institution like this paralyzes the resi dent, paralyzes the settler, and destroys that aristocracy for whose benefit it was created ; for it prevents the lord of the raanor from ever becoming rich, or taking rauch interest in the iraprovement of his domain ; and thus every thing continues as it was a hundred years ago. The British eraigrant pauses ere he buys land thus enthralled ; and almost all the old French farailies, who dated from Charlemagne, Clovis, or Pepin, from the Merovingian or Carlovingian raonarchies, have disappeared and dwindled away, and their places have been supplied by the more enterprising, or the nouveau riche men of the old world, or by restless, acute lawyers, and metaphysical body-curers. It was no wonder, therefore, that, upon the removal of the seat of governraent from Toronto, and the appointraent of a governor- general untraramelled by the lieutenant gover norship of Western Canada, over which he had 88 CANADA AND had before no control, that it should be consi dered desirable by degrees to introduce the English land system throughout Canada, and that parliamentary inquiry should be raade into the necessity of abolishing all feudal tax ation. In Montreal this has been done, and, as the seignoral rights of succession lapse, it will soon be done every where, for the recent enactments have emancipated many already. But no sensible or feeling mind will desire to see the French Canadian driven to break up all at once habits formed by ages of contentment ; and, as it does not press upon thera beyond their ready endurance, why should we, to please a few rich capitalists or merchants, suddenly force a British popula tion into the heart of French Canada ? Jean Baptiste is too good a fellow to desire this. On our part, we should not forget his truly amiable character ; we should not forget the services he rendered to us, when our children fought to drive us from our last hold on the North Ainerican continent ; we should THE CANADIANS, 89 not forget his worthy and excellent priest hood ; nor should we ever lose sight of the fact, that he is contented under the old sys tem. Above all, we should never forget that he fought our battles when his Gallic sires joined our revolted children. I feel persuaded that, if an unhappy war raust take place between the United States and England, the French Canadians will prove, as they did before on a sirailar occa sion, loyal to a raan. All aniraosity, all heart-burning, will be forgotten, and the old French glory will shine again, as it did under De Salaberry. Ma foi, nous ne soraraes pas perdus, encore; and some hero of the war has only to rouse himself and cry, as Roland did, Suivez, mon panage eclatant, Francais ainsi que ma banniere ; Qu'il soit point du ralliement, Vous savez tous quel prix attend Le brave, qui dans la carriere, Marche sur le pas de Koland. Mourons pour notre patrie C'est le sort le plus beau et le plus digne d'envie. 90 CANADA AND CHAPTER III. A journey to the Westward. We must leave Roncesvalles and La Gloire awhile, and, instead of riding a war horse, canter along upon the hobby, or a good ser viceable Canadian pony, the best of all hob bies for seeing the Canadian world, and on which mettlesome charger we can much better instruct the emigrant than by long prosings about political economy and systematic colo nisation. So, en avant ! I am going to relate the incidents of a journey last summer to the Westward, and to give all the substance of my observations on men and things made therein. I left Kingston on the 26th of June, in the Princess Royai mail steamer, at 8 p. m., the THE CANADIANS. 91 usual hour of starting being seven, for To ronto ; the weather unusually cold. This fine boat constitutes, with two others, the City of Toronto and the Sovereign, the royal raail line between Kingston and Toronto. All are built nearly alike, are first class sea- boats, and low pressure ; they corabine, with the Highlander, the Canada, and the GilderS- leave, also splendid vessels, to form a mail route to Montreal — the latter boats taking the mail as far as Coteau du Lac, forty-five miles from Montreal, on which route a smaller vessel, the Chieftain, plies, wherein you sleep, at anchor, or rather moored, till daylight, if going down, or going upwards, on board the mail boat. Passengers go from Montreal to Kingston by the mail route in twenty-four hours, a dis tance of 180 miles; a sraall portion, between the Cascades Rapids and the Coteau being traversed in a coach, on a planked road as smooth as a billiard-table. From Kingston to Toronto, or nearly the whole length of Lake Ontario, takes sixteen 92 CANADA AND hours, the boat leaving at seven, and arriving about or before noon next day; performing the passage at the rate of eleven miles an hour, exclusively of stoppages. The transit between Montreal and Kingston is at the rate, including stoppage for daylight, the river being dangerous, of eight miles an hour ; thus, in forty hours, the passenger passes frora the seat of government to the largest city of Western Canada most comfort ably, a journey which twenty years ago it al ways took a fortnight, and often a raonth, to accomplish, in the most precarious and uncom fortable manner — on board small, roasting steamers, crowded like a cattle-pen — in lumbering leathern conveniences, miscalled coaches, over roads which enter not into the drearas of Britons — by canoes — by bateaux^ (a sort of coal barges,) — ^by schooners, where the cabin could never permit you to display either your length, your breadth, or your thickness, and thus reducing you to a point in creation, according to Euclid and his com mentators. THE CANADIANS. 93 Your compagnons de voyage, on board a bateau or Durhara boat, which was a monstre bateau, were French Canadian voyageurs, al ways drunk and always gay, who poled you along up the rapids, or rushed down thera with what will be will be. These happy people had a knack of ex- araiuing your goods and chattels, which they were conveying in the most admirable man ner, and with the utmost sang-froid ; but still they were above stealing — they only tapped the rum cask or the whiskey barrel, and appro priated any cordage wherewith you bound your chests and packages. I never had a chest, box, or bale sent up by bateau or Dur hara boat that escaped this rope mail. By the by, the Durhara boat, a long decked barge, square ahead, and square astern, has vanished ; Ericson's screw-propellers have crushed it. It was neither invented by nor named after Lord Durham, but was as ancient as Lambton House itself. The way the conductors of these boats found out vinous liquors was, as brother Jon athan so playfully observes, a caution. 94 CANADA AND I have known au instance of a cask of wine, which, for security frora cliraate, had an outer case or cask strongly secured over it, with au interior space for neutralizing frost or heat, bored so carefully that you could never dis cover how it had been effected, and a very considerable quantura of beverage extracted. I once had a sraall barrel, perhaps twenty gallons of coraraissariat West India ration rum, the best of all rum for liqueurs, sucked dry. Of course, it had leaked, but I never could discover the leak, and it held any liquid very well afterwards, I know the reader likes a story, and as this is not by any raeans an historical or scientific work, excepting always the geological portion thereof, I will tell hira or her, as the case may be, a story about ration rum. There was a funny fellow, an Irish auc tioneer at Kingston, some years ago, called Paddy Moran, whora all the world, priest and parson, rainister and raethodist, soldier and sailor, tinker and tailor, went to hear when he mounted his rostrum. THE CANADIANS, 95 He was selling the goods of a quarter master-general who was leaving the place. At last he came to the cellar and the rum. "Now, gintlemin," says Moran, "I advise you to buy this rura, 7s. 6d. a gallon ! going, going ! Gintlemin, I was once a sojer — don't laugh, you officers there, for I was — and a sirjeant into the bargain. It wasn't in the Irish militia — bad luck to you, liftenant, for laughing that way, it will spoil the rum ! I was the tip-top of the sirjeants of the regi ment — long life to it ! Yes, I was quarter- master-sirjeant, and hadn't I the sarving out of the rations ; and didn't I know what good ration rura was ; and didn't I help raeself to the prime of it ! Well, then, gintlemin and ladies — I mane. Lord save yees, ladies and gintlemin — if a quarter-master-sirjeant in the army had good rum, what the devil do you think a quarter-master-general gets ?" The rura rose to fifteen shillings per gallon at the next bid. You can have every convenience on board a Lake Ontario mail-packet, which is about as 96 CANADA AND large as a small frigate, and has the usual sea equipment of masts, sails, and iron rigging. The fare is five dollars in the cabin, or about £l sterling ; and two dollars in the steerage. In the former you have tea and breakfast, in the latter nothing but what is bought at the bar. By paying a dollar extra you may have a state-room on deck, or rather on the half-deck, where you find a good bed, a large looking-glass, washing-stand and towels, and a night-lamp, if required. The captains are generally part owners, and are kind, obliging, and communicative, sitting at the head of their table, where places for females and fa milies are always reserved. The stewards and waiters are coloured people, clean, neat, and active ; and you may give sevenpence- halfpenny or a quarter-dollar to the man who cleans your boots, or an attentive waiter, if you like ; if not, you can keep it, as they are well paid. The ladies' cabin has generally a large cheval glass and a piano, with a white lady to wait, who is always decked out in flounces THE CANADIANS, 97 and furbelows, and usually good-looking. All you have got to do on embarking or on disem barking is to see personally to your luggage ; for leaving it to a servant unacquainted with the country will not do. At Kingston, mat ters are pretty well arranged, and the carters are not so very impudent, and so ready to push you over the wharf; but at Toronto they are very so so, and want regulating by the police ; and in the States, at Buffalo parti cularly, the porters and carters are the most presuming and insolent serviles I ever raet with ; they rush in a body on board the boat, and respect neither persons nor things, I knew an American family composed chiefly of females, travelling to the Falls ; and these ladies had their baggage taken to a train going inland, whilst they were embarking on board the British boat which was to convey them to Chippewa in Canada, The comfort of some of these boats, as they call them, but which ought to be called ships, is very great. There is a regular drawing- room on board one called the Chief Justice VOL, I, F 98 CANADA AND where I saw, just after the horticultural show at Toronto, pots of the most rare and beauti ful flowers, arranged very tastefully, with a piano, highly-coloured nautical paintings and portraits, and a tout ensemble, which, when the lamps were lit, and conversation going on between the ladies and gentlemen then and there assembled, made one quite forget we were at sea on Lake Ontario, the " Beautiful Lake," which, like other beautiful creations, can be very angry if vexed. The Americans have very fine steam vessels on their side of the lake, but they are flimsily constructed, painted glaringly, white, and; green, and yellow, without comfort or good attendance, and with a devil-may-care sort of captain, who seems really scarcely to know or to care whether he has passengers or has not, a scrambling hurried meal, and divers other unmentionables. The American gentry always prefer the British boats, for two good reasons ; they see Queen Victoria's people, and they meet with. the utmost civility, attention, and comfort. THE CANADIANS, 99 They sit down to dinner, or breakfast, or tea, like Christian men and women, where there is no railway eating and drinking ; where due time is spent in refreshing the body and spirits ; and where people help each other, or the waiters help thera, at table, without a scramble, like hogs, for the best and the most — a custom which all travelled Araeri cans detest and abominate as rauch as the most fastidious Englishraan, It is not unusual at hotel dinners, or on board steamers, to see a man, I cannot call him a gentleman, sitting next a female, totally neglect her, and heap his plate with fish, with flesh, with pie, with pudding, with potato, with cranberry jam, with pickles, with salad, with all and every thing then within his reach, swallow in a trice all this jumble of edibles, jump up and vanish. Can such a being have a stomach, or a digestion, and must he not necessarily, about thirty-five years of age, be yellow, spare, and parchment-skinned, with angular projections, and a prodigious tendency to tobacco ? F 2 100 CANADA AND An American gentleman — mind, I lay a stress upon the second word — never bolts his victuals, never picks his teeth at table, never spits upon the carpet, or guesses ; he knows not gin-sling, and he eschews mint-julep ; but he does, I am ashamed to say, admire a sherry cobbler, par ticularly if he does not get a second-hand piece of vermicelli to suck it through. Reader, do you know what a sherry cobbler is ? I will enlighten you. Let the sun shine at about 80° Fahrenheit, Then take a lump of iee ; fix it at the edge of a board ; rasp it with a tool made like a drawing knife or carpen ter's plane, set face upwards. Collect the raspings, the fine raspings, raind, in a capacious tumbler; pour thereon two glasses of good sherry, and a good spoonful of powdered white sugar, with a few small bits, not slices, but bits of lemon, about as big as a gooseberry. Stir with a wooden macerator. Drink through a tube of macaroni or vermicelli, Oest Veau benite, as the English lord said to the gar f on at the Milles Colonnes, when he first tasted real parfait amour.^Cest beaucoup mieux, THE CANADIANS, 101 Milor, answered the waiter with a profound reverence. Gin-sling, cock-tail, raint-julep, are about as vulgar as blue ruin and old tom at home ; but sherry cobbler is an affair of consideration — only never pound your ice, always rasp it. It is a custom on board the Canadian steamers for gentleraen to call for a pint of wine at dinner, or for a bottle, according to the strength of the party ; but it is a custora more honoured in the breach than the ob servance ; for sherry and port are the usual stock, both fiery as brandy, and costing the moderate price of seven shillings and sixpence a bottle, the steward having laid the sarae in at about one shilling and eight pence, or at most two shillings. Why this imposition, the only one you meet with in travelling in Canada at hotels or steamboats, is perpetrated and perpetuated, I could never learn. Many American gentlemen, however, en courage it, and have told me that they do so because they get no good port in the States, Ale and porter are charged two shillings and 102 CANADA AND sixpence a bottle, which is double their worth. Be careful also not to drink freely of the iced water, which is always supplied adlibitum. Few Europeans escape the effects of water-drink ing when they land at Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, &c. There is soraething peculiar, which has never yet been satisfac torily explained by medical men, in the sudden attack upon the system produced by the waters of Canada : this is sometimes slight, but more often lasts several days, and reduces the strength a good deal. Iced water is worse, and produces country cholera. The Ameri cans use ice profusely, and drink such draughts of iced water, that I have been astonished at the irapunity with which they did so. Perhaps the change from a moist sea atmosphere to the dry and desiccating air of Canada, where iron does not rust, may be one cause of the malady alluded to, and another, in addition to the water, the difference of cookery ; for here, at public tables and on board the boats generally, where black cooks prevail, all is butter and grease. THE CANADIANS. 103 But the change of climate is undoubtedly great. I had been long an inhabitant of Upper Canada, and fancied myself seasoned ; but, having returned to England, and spending afterwards two or three years in the exces sively humid air of the sea-coast of New foundland at St. Johns, where I became some what stout, on my return to Upper Canada, for want of a little preparatory caution in medicine, although naturally of a spare habit, I was seized with a violent bleeding at the nose, which baffled all remedies for several months, until artificial mineral water and a copious use of solutions of iron stopped it. No doubt this prevented the fever of the lakes, and was owing to the dryness of the air. I mention this to caution all new-comers, young and old, to take timely advice and medicine. There is another complaint in Upper Cana da, which attacks the settler very soon after his arrival, especially if young, and that is worms ; a disorder very prevalent at all times in Canada, particularly among the poorer classes, and probably owing to food. 104 CANADA AND These, with ague and colic, or country cholera, are the chief evils of the clime ; few are, however, fatal, excepting the lake fever, and that principally araong children. The sportsraan should recollect, in so marshy and woody a country, subject as it is to the raost surprising alternations of tera- perature, that instead of minding that cele brated rule, " Keep your powder dry," he should read, " Keep your feet dry." Dry feet and the avoidance of sitting in wet or damp clothes, or drinking iced water when hot, or of cooling yourself in a delicious draught of air when in a perspiration, are the best precautions against ague, fever, colic, or cholera — in a country where the therraoraeter reaches 90° in the shade, and soraetimes 1 10°, as it did last summer, and 27° below zero in the winter, with rapid alternations embracing such a range of the scale as is unknown elsewhere. In the country places, in travelling, you will invariably find that windows are very little attended to, and that the head of your THE CANADIANS. 105 ^ed, or the side of it, is placed against a loosely-fitting broken sash. The night-fogs and damps are highly dangerous to new comers ; so act accordingly. Fleas and bugs, and " such small deer," you must expect in every inn you stop at, even in the cities ; for it appears — and in deed I did not know the fact until this year — that bugs are indigenous, native to the soil, and breed in the bark of old trees ; so that if you build a new house, you bring the enemy into your camp. Nothing but clean liness and frequent whitewash, colouring, paint, and soft soap, will get rid of thera. If it were not for the strong sraell of red cedar and its extrerae brittleness, I would have my bedstead of that material ; for even the iron bedsteads, in the soldiers' barracks, become infested with them if not painted often. Red cedar they happily eschew. Travellers may talk as they please of mos quitoes being the scourge of new countries ; the bugs in Canada are worse, and the black fly and sand-fly superlatively superior in an- F 5 106 CANADA AND noyance. The black fly exists in the neigh bourhood of rivers or swamps, and attacks you behind the ear, drawing a pretty copious supply of blood at each bite. The sand-fly, as its name imports, exists in sandy soil, and is so small that it cannot be seen without close inspection ; its bite is sharp and fiery. Then the farmer has the wheat-fly and the turnip-fly to contend against ; the forraer has actually devoured Lower Canada, and the latter has obliged me in a garden to sow several successive crops. The melon-bug is another nuisance ; it is a small winged aniraal, of a bright yellow colour, striped with black bars, and takes up its abode in the flower of the melon and pumpkin, breeding fast, and destroying wherever it settles, for young plants are literally eaten up by it. The grub, living under ground in the day time, and sallying forth at night, is a fero cious enemy to cabbage-plants, lettuce, and most of the young, tender vegetables; but, by taking a lantern and a pan after dark, the gentlemen can be collected whilst on their THE CANADIANS. 107 tour, and poultry are very fond of them. Last year, the potato crop failed throughout Canada. What a singular dispensation ! — for it alike suffered in Europe, and no doubt the malady was atmospheric. The hay crop, too, suffered severely ; but still, by a merciful Providence, the wheat and corn harvest was ample, and gathered in a month before the customary time. By the word corn I raean oats, rye, and barley ; but in the Canadas and in the United States that word raeans maize or Indian-corn only, which in Canada, last summer, was not, I should think, even an average crop. It is extensively used here for food, as well as buckwheat, and for feeding poultry. But to our journey westward, I arrived at Toronto on the 27th of June, and found the weather had changed to variable and fine. On steaming up the harbour, I was greatly surprised and very much pleased to see such an alteration as Toronto has undergone for the better since 1837- Then, although a flourishing village, be-citied, to be sure, it 1 08 CANADA AND was not one third of its present size. Now it is a city in earnest, with upwards of twenty thousand inhabitants — gas-lit, with good plank side-walks and macadamized streets, and with vast sewers, and fine houses, of brick or stone. The main street, King Street, is two miles and more in length, and would not do shame to any town, and has a much raore English look than most Canadian places have, Toronto is still the seat of the Courts of Law for Western Canada, of the University of King's College, of the Bishopric of Toronto, and of the Indian Office, Kingston has re tained the militia head-quarter office, and the Principal Emigrant Agency, with the Naval and MiHtary grand dep6ts ; so that the re moval of the seat of Government to Montreal has done no injury to Toronto, and will do very little to Kingston : in fact, I believe firmly that, instead of being injurious, it will be very beneficial. The presence of Govern ment at Kingston gave an unnatural stimulus to speculation araong a population very far from wealthy; and buildings of the most THE CANADIANS, 109 frail construction were run up in hundreds, for the sake of the rent which they yielded temporarily. The plan upon which these houses were erected was that of mortgage; thus almost all are now in possession of one person who becarae suddenly possessed of the requi site raeans by the sale of a large tract re quired for railitary purposes. But this species of property seldora does the owner good in his lifetime ; and, if he does reclaim it, there is no tenant to be had now ; so that the building decays, and in a very short time becomes an incumbrance. Mortgages only thrive where the demand is superior and certain to the investment ; and then, if all goes smoothly, mortgager and mortgagee may benefit; but where a mechanic or a storekeeper, with little or no capital, under takes to run up an extensive range of houses to meet an equivocal demand, the result is obvious. If the houses he builds are of stone or brick, and well finished, the man who loans the money is the gainer ; if they are of 110 CANADA AND wood, indifferently constructed and of green materials, both must suffer. So it is a spe culation, and, like all speculations, a good deal of repudiation mixes up with it. There are two good houses of entertain ment for the gentleman traveller in Toronto ; the Club House in Chewett's Buildings and Macdonald's Hotel. In the former, a bache lor will find hiraself quite at horae ; in the latter, a family man will have no reason to regret his stay. But servants at Toronto — by which I mean attendants — are about on a par with the same race all over Canada. The coloured people are the best, but never make yourself de pendent on either ; for, if you are to start by the stage or the steamer, depend on your watch, instead of upon your boots being cleaned or your shaving-water being ready. In the latter case, shave with cold water by the light of your candle, lit by your own lucifer match. They are civil, however, and attentive, as far as the very free and easy style of their acquirements will permit them ; THE CANADIANS, 111 for a cook will leave at a moment's notice, if she can better herself; and any trivial oc currence will call off the waiter and the boots. The only punctual people are the porters ; and, as they wear glazed hats, with the narae of the hotel emblazoned thereon, frigate-fashion, you can always find them. An excellent arrangement is the omnibus attached to the hotels in Canada West, which conveys you cost-free to and frora the steam boat, and a very comfortable wooden con venience it is, resembling very much the vans which, in days of yore, plied near London, My first start from Toronto was to Ultima Thule, Penetanguishene, a locality scarcely to be found in the maps, and yet one of much importance, situate and being north-north west of the city some hundred and eight miles, on Lake Huron, The route is per coach to St. Alban's, thirty and three miles, along Yonge Street, of which about one-third is macadamized frora granite boulders ; the rest mud and etceteras, too numerous to mention. Yonge Street is a continuous settlement, with an occasional 1 1 2 CANADA AND sprinkling of the original forest. The land on each side is fertile, and supplies Toronto market.' It rises gradually by those singular steps, or ridges, formerly banks or shores of ante diluvian oceans, till it reaches the vicinity of the Holland river, a tortuous, sluggish, marshy, natural canal, flowing or lazily creeping into Lake Simcoe, at an elevation of upwards of seven hundred and fifty feet above Lake Ontario, and emptying itself into Lake Huron by a series of rapids, called the Matchedash or Severn River. The first quarter of the route to St. Alban's is a series of country-houses, gentle men's seats, half-pay officers' farms, prettily fenced, and pleasant to the sight : the next third embraces Thornhill, a nice village in a hollow ; Richmond Hill, with a beautiful prospect and detached settlements : the ulti mate third is a rich, undulating country, inhabited by well-to-do Quakers, with New market on their right, and looking for all the world very like " dear home," with orchards, and as rich corn-fields and pastures as may be THfi CANADIANS. 113 seen any where, backed, however, by the eternal forest. It is peculiarly and particu larly beautiful. A short distance before reaching St. Al ban's, which is quite a new village, the road descends rapidly, and the ground is broken into hummocks. But I raust not forget Bond's Lake, a most singular feature of this part of the road, which, perhaps, I shall treat of in returning frora Penetanguishene, as I ara now in a hurry to get to St. Alban's. Here, where all was scrub forest in 1837, are a little street, a house of sorae pretension occupied by Mr. Laughton, the enterprising owner of the Beaver stearaboat, plying on Lake Simcoe, and two inns. I stopped for the night, for Yonge Street is still a tiresome journey, although only a stage of thirty three miles, at Winch's Tavern. This is a very good road-side house, and the landlord and landlady are civil and attentive. Before you go to roost, for stop ping by the way-side is pretty much like 114 CANADA AND roosting, as you must be up with Chanticleer, you can just look over Mr. Laughton's paling, and you will see as pretty a florist's display as raay be iraagined. The owner is fond of flowers, and he has lots of thera, and, when you raake his acquaintance afterwards in the Beaver, you will find that he has lots of information also. But I did not go in the Beaver, which ship " wharfs" some two or three miles further ahead, at Holland River Landing, commonly called " the Landing," par excellence. Here flies, mosquitoes, ague, and other plagues, are so rife, that all attempts at settlement are vanity and vexa tion of spirit. So, being willing to see what had happened in Gwillimbury since 1837, I took a waggon and the land road, and went off as day broke, or rather before it broke, about four a.m., in a deep gray mist. The waggon should be described, as it is the best voiture in Wes tern Canada. Four wheels, of a narrow tire, are attached without any springs to a long body, formed THE CANADIANS. 115 of straight boards, like a piano-case, only raore clumsy ; in which, resting ou inside rims or battens, are two seats, with or with out backs, generally without, on which, perhaps, a hay-cushion, or a buffalo-skin, or both, are placed. Two horses, good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may be, the positive and comparative degrees being the common est, drag you along with a clever driver, who can turn his hand to chopping, carpentering, wheelwright's work, playing the fiddle, drink ing, or any other sort of thing, and is usually an Irishman or an Irishman's son. For two dollars and a half a day he will drive you to Melville Island, or Parry's Sound, if you will only stick by him ; and he jogs along, smoking his dudeen, over corduroy roads, through rand holes that would astonish a cockney, and over sand and swarap, rocks and rough places enough to dislocate every joint in your body, all his own being anchylosed or used to it, which is the sarae thing, in the dictionary. He will keep you au courant, at the same 116 Canada and " time, tell the name of every settler and settle ment, and some good stories to boot. He is a capital fellow, is " Paddy the driver," ge nerally a small farraer, and always has a contract with the commissariat. The first place of any note we came to, as day broke out of the blue fog which rose frora the swampy forest, was Holland River Bridge, an extraordinary structure, half bridge, half road, over a swarap created by that river in times long gone by ; a level tract of marsh and wild rice as far as the eye can reach, full of ducks and deer, with the Holland River in the midst, winding about like a serpentine canal, and looking as if it had been fast asleep since its last shake of the ague. Crossing this bridge-road, now in good order, but in 1837 requiring great dexterity and agility to pass, you corae to a slight ele vation of the land, and a little village in West Gwillirabury, which, I should think, is a capital place to catch lake-fever in. The road to it is good, but, after passing THE CANADIANS, 117 it and turning northwards, is but little im proved, being very primitive through the township of Innisfil. However, we jogged along in mist and rain, on the 29th of June, and saw the smoke, ay, and smelt it too, of numerous clearings or forest burnings, indi cating settleraent, till we reached Wilson's Tavern, where, every body having the ague, it was soraewhat difficult to get breakfast. This is thirteen railes from St, Alban's, Having refreshed, however, with such as it was, we visited Mr. Wilson's stable, and saw a splendid stud horse which he was rearing, and as handsome a thorough-bred black as you could wish to see in the backwoods. Proceeding in rain, we drove, by what in England would be called an execrable road, through the townships of Innisfil and Vespra to Barrie, the capital hamlet of the district of Simcoe. On emerging frora the woods three or four miles from Barrie, Kempenfeldt Bay suddenly appears before you, and if the road was better, a more beautiful ride there is not 118 CANADA AND in all broad Canada, Fancy, however, that, without any Hibernicism, the best road is in the water of the lake. This is owing to the swampy nature of the land, and to the cir cumstance that a belt of hard sand lines the edge of the bay ; so Paddy drove smack into the water of Kempenfeldt, and, as he said, sure we were travelling by water every way, for we had a deluge of rain above, and Lake Simcoe under us. But natheless we arrived at Barrie by midday, a very fair journey of twenty-eight miles in eight hours, over roads, as the French say, inconcevable ; and alighted like river gods at the Queen's Arms, J, Bingham, Barrie. Barrie, naraed after the late commodore, Sir Robert Barrie, is no coraraon village, nor is the Queen's Arras a common hostel. It is a good, substantial, stone edifice, fitted up and kept in a style which neither Toronto nor Kingston, nay, nor Montreal can rival, as far as its extent goes. I do assure you, it is a perfect paradise after the road from St. THE CANADIANS. 119 Alban's ; and, as the culinary department is unexceptionable, and the beds free from bugs, and all neatness and no noise, I will award Mrs. Bingham a place in these pages, which must of course immortalize her. They are English people; and, when I last visited their house, in 1837, had only a log-hut : now they are well to do, and have built theraselves a neat country-house. When I first saw Barrie, or rather before Barrie was, as I passed over its present site, in 1831, there was but one building and a little clearance. In 1846, it is fast approach ing to be a town, and will be a city, as it is adrairably placed at the bottora of an immense inlet of Lake Simcoe, with every capability of opening a coraraunication with the new settleraents of Owen Sound and St. Vincent, and the south shore of Lake Huron, It has been objected, to this opinion respect ing Barrie, that the Narrows of Lake Simcoe is the proper site for " The City of the North," as the communication by land, in stead of being thirty-six miles to Penetangui- 120 CANADA AND shene, the best harbour ou Lake Huron, is only fourteen, or at most nineteen miles, the former taking to Cold Water Creek, and the latter to Sturgeon Bay ; but then there is a long and somewhat dangerous transit in the shallowest part of the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron to Penetanguishene, If a railroad was established between Barrie and the naval station, this would be not only the shortest but the safest route to Lake Huron ; for, if Sturgeon Bay is chosen, in war-time the transit trade and the despatch of stores for the government would be sub jected to continual hindrance and depreda tion from the multitude of islands and hiding- places between Sturgeon Bay and Penetan guishene ; whilst, on the other hand, no saga cious enemy would penetrate the country from Sturgeon Bay and leave such a stronghold as Penetanguishene in his rear, whereby all his vessels and supplies might be suddenly cut off, and his return rendered impracticable, Barrie is, therefore, well chosen, both as a transit town and as the site of naval opera- THE CANADIANS, 121 tions on Lake Simcoe, whenever they may be necessary. For this reason, governraent coraraenced tbe railitary road between Barrie and Penet anguishene, and settled it with pensioned soldiers, and also settled naval and military retired or half-pay officers all round Lake Simcoe, But, as we shall have to talk a good deal about this part of the country, and I raust return by the road, let us hasten on to our night's lodging at the Ordnance Arras, kept by the ancient widow of J, Bruce, an old artillery raan. Since 1837, the road, then impassable for anything but horses or very sraall light wag gons, has been much improved, and Paddy drove us on, afterdinner atBingham's, through the heavy rain d merveille ! When I passed this road before, what a road it was ! or, in the words of the eulogist of the great Highland road-raaker, General Wade, " Had you seen this road, before it was made, You would have lift up your eyes and blessed" General somebody. VOL. I, G 122 CANADA AND It was necessary, as late as 1837, to take a horse; and, placing your valise on another, mount the second with a guide. My guide was always a French Canadian named Fran- 9ois; and many an adventure in the inter minable forest have we experienced together ; for if Francois had lost his way, we should have perhaps reached the Copper-mine River, or the Northern Frozen Ocean, and have solved the question of the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or else we should have had a certain convocation of politic wolves or bears, busy in rendering us and our horses invisible ; for, after all, they have the true receipt of fern seed, and you can walk about, after having suffered transmigration into their substance, without its ever being suspected that you were either an officer of engineers or a Franco-Canadian guide. An old and respected officer, once travelling this bridle road with Fran9ois and myself, and mounted on a better horse than either of ours, which was lent to him by the Assistant Commissary-General stationed at Penetan- THE CANADIANS, 123 guishene, got ahead of us considerably, and, by sorae accident, wandered into the glooray pine forest. Missing him for a quarter of an hour, I rode as fast as my horse, which was not encumbered with baggage, would go ahead, and, observing fresh tracks of a horse's shoes inthe raud, followed them until I heard in the depths of the endless and solemn woods faint shouts, which, as I carae nearer to thera, resolved theraselves into the syllables of my narae, I found ray chief, and begged him never again, as he had never been there before, to think of leaving us. Had he gone out of sound, his fate would have been sealed, unless the horse, used as it was to the path, had wandered into it again ; but horses and cattle are frequently lost in these solitudes, and, perhaps being frightened by the smell of the wild beasts, or, as raan always does when lost, they wander in a circle, and thus fre quently come near the place from which they started, but not sufficiently so to hit the alraost invisible path. But although the road, excepting in the G 2 124 CANADA AND middle of summer, is still indifferent, it is perfectly safe, and a lady may now go to Penetanguishene comparatively comfortably, Bruce's tavern is a respectable log-house, twelve miles from Barrie; and here you can get the usual fare of ham, eggs, and chickens, with occasionally fresh raeat frora Barrie, and perhaps as good a bed as can be had in Canada, We started from Barrie at half-past two, and arrived at half-past five. Whiskey, be it known, with very atrocious brandy, is the only beverage, excepting water, along the country roads of Canada, From Bruce's we drove to Dawson's, also kept by the widow of an old soldier, where every thing is equally clean, respectable, and comfortable. It is seven miles distant. Beyond this is NicoU's, near a corduroy swamp road ; and three miles further (which place eschew), seven years ago, I heard the landlady's voice chiding a little girl, who had been sent a quarter of a raile for a jug of water. I heard the same voice again in action, and for the sfl,rne cause, and a very THE CANADIANS. 125 dirty urchin again brought sorae very dirty water. In fact, whiskey was too plentiful and water too scarce. From NicoU's to Jeffs Corner is ten Ions: and weary miles, five or six of which are through the forest. Jeff's is not a tavern, so that you must go to bait the horses to Des Horaraes, about two railes further, where there is no inducement to stay, it being kept by an old French Canadian, who has a large family of half-breeds. Therefore, on to the village of Penetanguishene, which is twenty miles from Bruce's, or some say twenty-four. We started frora Bruce's at half-past three in the morning, and reached " The Village," as it is always called, at half-past twelve, on the 30th of June, and the rain still continuing ever since we left Toronto, Thus, with great expedition, it took the best portion of three days for a transit of only 108 miles. This has been donein twenty-four hours by another route, as I shall explain on my return. Penetanguishene is a small village which has not progressed in the same ratio as the 126 CANADA AND military road to it has done. It is peopled by French Canadians, Indians, and half-breeds, and is very prettily situated at the bottom of the harbour. Lieutenant-Colonel Phillpotts, of the Boyal Engineers, selected this site after the peace of 1815, when Drummond's Island on Lake Huron was resigned to the Americans, for an asylum for such of the Ca nadian French settled there as would not transfer their allegiance. They migrated in a body. This is the nearest point of Western Canada at which the traveller from Europe can ob serve the unmixed Indian, the real wild man of the woods, with medals hanging in his ears, as large as the bottom of a silver saucepan, rings in his nose, the single tuft of hair on the scalp, eagle's plumes, a row of human scalps about his neck, and the other amiable etceteras of a painted and greased sauvage. Here also you first see the half-breed, the offspring of the white and red, who has all the bad qualities of both with very few of the good of either, except in rare instances. THE CANADIANS, 127 CHAPTER IV, The French Canadian. At Penetanguishene you see the original pioneer of the West, that unmistakeable French Canadian, a goodnatured, indolent raan, who is never active but in his canoe singing, or d la chasse, a true voyageur, of which type of human society the marks are wearing out fast, and the imprint will ere long be illegible. It raakes me serious, in deed, to contemplate the Canadian of the old dominant race, aud I shall enter a little into his history. Res ardua vetustis novitatem dare ; and never could an author impose upon hiraself a greater task than that of endeavouring suc cinctly to trace such a history, in this age of railroads and steara-vessels, or to bring before 1 28 CANADA AND the mind's eye events which have long slum bered in oblivion, but which it behoves think ing minds not to lose sight of. Man is now a locoraotive animal, both as regards the faculties of mind and of motion ; unless in the schools, in the cabinet, or in amusing fictions founded on fact, he rarely finds leisure to think about a forgotten people. Canada and Canadian affairs have, how ever, succeeded in interesting the public of America and the public of Europe — the " go-ahead " English reader in the New World — because Canada would be a very desirable addition to the already overgrown Republic founded by the Pilgrim Fathers and Europeans; because French interest looks with a somewhat wistful eye to the race which at one time peopled and governed so large a portion of the Colurabian continent. Regrets, mingling with desires, are power ful stiraulants. An unconquerable and natural jealousy exists in France that England should have succeeded in laying the founda- THE CANADIANS. 129 tions of an empire, which bids fair to per petuate the glories of the Anglo-Saxon race in its Transatlantic dominion ; whilst the true Briton, on the other hand, regards Ca nada as the apple of his eye, and sees with pleasure and with pride that his beloved country, forewarned by the grand error com mitted at Boston, and so prophetically de nounced by Chatham, has obtained a fairer and more fertile field for British legitimate ambition. Tocqueville, a sensible and somewhat im partial writer, is the only political foreign reasoner who has done justice to Canada; but it is par parenthese only ; and even his powers of mind and of reasoning, nurtured as they have been in republicanism, fail to con vince fearless hearts that deraocracy is a human necessity. That the Araerican nation will endeavour to put a wet blanket over the nascent fires of Spanish ambition in the miserable new States of the Northern Continent, and to absorb them in the stars of Colurabia, there can be G 5 130 CANADA AND no doubt, California, the most distant of the old American settlements of Spain, has felt already the bald eagle's clSw ; Texas is annexed ; and unless European interests pre vent it, which they must do, Mexico, Guate mala, Yucatan, and all the petty priest-ridden republics of the Isthmus, must follow, and that too very soon. But what do the people of the - United States, (for the government is not a particeps, save by force,) pretend to effect by their enormous sovereignty ? The control pro bably of the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards is the grand object, and, to effect this, Canada and Nova Scotia stand in the way, and Canada and Nova Scotia are therefore marked down as other Stars in the American galaxy. The Russian empire is cited, as a case in point, for immense extension being no obstacle to central coercion, or government, if the term be more pleasing. We forget that each individual State of the present Union repudiates centralizaition, and acts independently. Little Maine wanted to THE CANADIANS, 131 go to war with raighty England on its own bottora ; and there was a rebellion in Lesser Rhode Island, which puzzled all the diplo matists very considerably. Now let us sketch a military picture, and bring out the lights and shades boldly. Suppose that the United States determines upon a war with Great Britain, let us look to the consequences. Firstly, an immense re action has taken place in Canada, and a mass of growlers, who two years ago would perhaps have been neutral, would readily take arms now in favour of British institutions, simply because " impartiality " has been evinced in Dfoverning them. Next, the French Canadians have no idea of surrendering their homes, their laws, their language, their altars, to the restless and de structive people whose motto is " Liberty !" but whose mind is " Subraission," without reservation of creed or colour. Then, on the boundless West, innumerable Indians, disgusted by the unceremonious manner in which the Big Knife has driven 132 CANADA AND them out, are ready, at the call of another Tecumseh, to hoist the red-cross flag. In the South, the negro, already taught very carefully by the North a lesson of eman cipation, only waits the hour to commence a servile and horrible war, worse than that exercised by the poor Cherokees and Creeks in Florida, which, miserable as were the num bers, scanty the resources, and indomitable the courage, defied the united means and skill of the American armies to quell. A person who ponders on these matters deplores the infatuation of the mob, or of the western backwoodsmen, who advocate war to the knife with England ; for, should it un happily occur and continue, war to the knife it must be. American orators have asserted that Eng:- land, base as she is, dare not, in this enlight ened age, let loose the blacks. I fear that, self-defence being the first law of Nature, rather than lose Canada, and rather than not gain it, both England and the United States will have recourse to every expedient THE CANADIANS, 133 likely to bring the raatter to an issue, and will abide by that Machiavelian axiom — the end sanctifies the means. An aborainable outcry was raised during the last war against the employraent of the savage Indians with our armies ; but the loudest in this vituperation forgot that the Americans did the same, as far as their scanty control over the Red Man perraitted, and that, where it failed, the barbarous back- woodsraan completed the tragedy. Making razor-strops of Tecunisehs' skin was not a very Chri^itian employment, in retalia tion for a scalp found wrapped up in paper in the writing-desk of a clerk, when the public offices were sacked at Little York. The poor man most likely thought it a very great curiosity ; and I dare say there are some in the British Museum, as well as preserved heads of the South Sea islanders. A war between England and the United States is a calaraity affecting the whole world, and, excepting for political interest, or that devouring fire burning in the breasts of so 134 CANADA AND many for change, I am persuaded that the intelligence of the Union is opposed to it, America cannot sweep England from the seas, or blot out its escutcheon from The Temple of Fame, It is child's play even to dream of it, England is as vitally essential to the prosperity of Araerica as America is to the prosperity of England ; and, although Ame rican feelings are gaining ground in England, by which I do not raean that the President of the United States will ever govern our island, but independent notions and axioms sirailar to those practised in the Union ; yet the tirae has not, nor ever will, arrive, that Britain will succurab to the United States, either frora policy or fear, any more than that her grandchildren, on this side of the Atlantic, could pull down the Stars and Stripes, and run the meteor flag up to the mast-head again. The United States is a wonderful confede ration, and Nature seeras, in creating that people, to have given them constitutions re sembling the suramers of the northern portion THE CANADIANS, 135 of the New World, where she makes things grow ten times as fast as elsewhere, A grain of wheat takes a decent time to ripen in Eng land, and requires the sweat of the brow and the labour of the hands to bring it to per fection ; but in North Araerica it becoraes flour and food alraost before it is in ear in the old country. Nature marches quick in America, but is soon exhausted ; so her people there think and act ten times as fast as elsewhere, and die before they are aged. The women are old at thirty, and boys of fifteen are men ; and so they ripe and ripe, and so they rot and rot. Everything in the States goes at a railroad pace ; every carter or teamster is a Solon, in his own idea ; and every citizen is a king de facto, for he rules the powers that be. They think in America too fast for genius to expand to purpose ; and as their digestion is impaired by a Napoleonic style of eating, so very powerful and very highly cultivated minds are comparatively rare in the Union, There is no time for study, and they take a democratic road to learning. 1 36 CAN.ADA AND And yet, ceteris paribus, the Union pro duces great men and great minds ; and if any thing but dollars was paid attention to, the literature of America would soon be upon a par with that of the Old World ; as it is, it pays better to reprint French and English authors than to tax the brains of the natives. For this reason, the agricultural popula tion of the States are more reasonable, more amiable, and raore original than those engaged in incessant trade. I have seen an Araerican farraer in my travels this year, who was the perfect image of the English franklin, before his daughters wore parasols and thrummed the piano. Oh, railways, ye have much to answer for ! for, although the prosperity of the mass may be increased by you, the happiness and contentment of the million is deteriorating every day, I am not about to write a history of Canada at present, for that is already done, as far as its military annals are concerned, during the three years since I last addressed the public ; but it shall yet slumber awhile in its box of pine wood, until the time is ripe THE CANADIANS. 137 for development : I merely intend here to put together some reminiscences which strike me as to the part the French Canadian has played, and to show that we should neither forget nor neglect him. Canada, as it is well known, was French, both by claim of discovery and by the more powerful right of possession. . Stimulated by the fame of Cabot, and am bitious to be pilots of the Meta Incognita, that visionary channel which was to conduct European valour to the golden Cathay and to the rich Spice Islands of the East, French adventurers eagerly sought the coveted honours which such a voyage could not fail to yield them, and to combine overflowing wealth with chivalric renown, France, Eng land, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, sent forth those daring spirits whose hopes were uni formly crushed, either by encountering the unbroken line of continental coast, or dashed to pieces amidst the terrors of that truly Cimmerian region, where ice and fog, cold and darkness, contend for empire. 138 CANADA AND Of all those heroic navigators, who would have rivalled Columbus under happier cir cumstances, none were successful, even in a limited sense, in attempting to reach China by the northern Atlantic, excepting the French alone, who may fairly be allowed the merit of having traversed nearly one half of the broadest portion of the New World in the discovery of the St, Lawrence and its con necting streams, and in having afterwards reached Mexico by the Mississipi, Even in our own days, nearly four cen turies after the Columbian era, the idea of reaching China by the North Pole has not been abandoned, and is actively pursuing by the most enlightened naval government in the world, and, very possibly, will be achieved ; and, as coal exists on the northern frozen coasts, we shall have ports estabhshed, where the British ensign will fly, in the realms of eternal frost — nay, more, we shall yet place an iron belt from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a railroad frora Halifax to Nootka Sound, and thus reach China iu a pleasure voyage. THE CANADIANS. 139 I recollect that, about twelve years ago, a person of very strong mind, who edited the " Patriot," a newspaper published at Toronto, Mr. Thomas Dalton, was looked upon as a raere enthusiast, because one of his favourite ideas, frequently expressed, was, that rauch tirae would not elapse before the teas and silks of China would be transported direct frora the shores of the Pacific to Toronto, by canal, by river, by railroad, and by steara. Twelve years have scarcely passed since he first broached such an apparently prepos terous notion, as people of liraited views uni versally esteeraed it ; and yet he nearly lived to see an uninterrupted stearaboat communi cation from England to Lake Superior — a consumraation which those who laughed at hira then never even drearat of — and now a railroad all the way to the Pacific is in pro gress of discussion. Mac Taggart, a lively Scotch civil engineer, who wrote, in 1829, an amusing work, enti tled " Three Years in Canada," was even 140 CANADA AND more sanguine on this subject ; and, as he was a clerk of works on the Rideau Canal, naturally turned his attention to the practi cability of opening a road by water, by the lakes and riA'ers, to Nootka Sound. Two thousand miles of water road by the Ottawa, the St. Lawrence, and the Welland, has been opened in 1845, and a future gene ration will see the white and bearded stranger toiling over the rocky barriers that alone re main to repel his advances between the great Superior and the Pacific. A New Simplon and a peaceful Napoleonic mind will accom plish this. The China trade will receive an impulse ; and, as the arms of England have overcome those of the Celestial Empire, and we are colonizing the outer Barbarian, so shall we colonize the shores of the Pacific, south of Russian Araerica, in order to retain the supre macy of British influence both in India and in China. The vast and splendid forests north of the Colurabia River will, ere long, furnish THE CANADIANS. 141 the dockyards of the Pacific coast with the inexhaustible means of extending our com mercial and our railitary marine. And who were the pioneers ? who cleared the Avay for this enterprise? Frenchmen! The hardy, the enduring, the chivalrous Gaul, penetrated from the Atlantic, in frail vessels, as far as these frail barks could carry him ; and where their service ceased, with ready courage adopted the still more fragile trans port afforded by the canoe of the Indian, in which, singing merrily, he traversed the greater part of the northern continent, and actually discovered all that we now know, and much more, since lapsed into oblivion. But his genius was that of conquest, and not of permanent colonization ; and, tram melled by feudal laws and observances, al though he extended the national domain and the glory of P' ranee beyond his raost ardent desire, yet he took no steps to insure its dura tion, and thus left the Saxon and the Anglo- Norman to consolidate the structure of which he had merely laid the extensive foundation. 1 42 CANADA AND But, even now, amidst all the enlightenment of the Christian nations, the descendants of the French in Canada shake off the dust of feudality with painful difficulty ; and, instead of quietly yielding to a better order of things, prefer to dwell, from sire to son, the willing slaves of customs derived from the obsolete decrees of a despotic raonarchy. Whether they individually are gainers or losers by thus adhering to the rules which guided their ancestors, is another question, too difficult for discussion to grapple with here. As far as worldly happiness and siraple contentment are concerned, I beheve they would lose by the change, which, however, must take place. The restless and enter prising American is too close a neighbour tO let thera sluraber long in contented ignorance. The Frenchman was, however, adapted, by his nature, to win his way, either by friend ship or by force, among the warlike and un tutored sons of the forest. Accoraraodating himself with ease to the nomadic life of the tribes; contrasting his gay and lively tem- THE CANADIANS. 143 perament with the solemn taciturnity and im moveable phlegra of the savage ; dazzling him with the splendour of his religious ceremonies ; abstemious in his diet, and coinciding in his recklessness of life; equally a warrior and equally a hunter ; unmoved by the dangers of canoe navigation, for which he seemed as well adapted as the Red Man himself ; the enter prising Gaul was everywhere feared and every where welcome. The Briton, on the contrary, cold as the Indian, but not so cunning; accustomed to comparative luxury and ease ; despising the child of the woods as an inferior caste ; ac companied in his wars or wanderings by no outward and visible sign of the religion he would fain implant; unaccustomed to yield even to his equals in opinion ; unprepared for alternate seasons of severe fasting or riotous plenty ; and wholly without that sanguine temper which causes mirth and song to break forth spontaneously amidst the raost painful toil and privations ; was not the best of pio neers in the wilderness, and was, therefore, 144 CANADA AND not received with open arms by the American aboriginal nations, until experience had taught the sterling value of his character, or, rather, until it becarae thoroughly apparent. To this day, where, in the interminable wilderness, all trace of French influence is buried, the Indian reveres the recollections of his forefathers respecting that gallant race ; and, wherever the canoe now penetrates, the solemn and silent shades of the vast West, the Bois Brule, or mixed offspring of the Indian and the Frenchman, may be heard. awakening the slumber of ages with carols derived from the olden France, as he paddles swiftly and merrily along-. Such was the Frenchman, such the French Canadian ; let us therefore give due honour to their descendants, and let not any feeling of distrust or dislike enter our rainds against a race of men, who, from my long acquaint ance with them, are, I ara fully persuaded, the most innocent, the most contented, and the raost happy yeomanry and peasantry of the whole civilized world. THE CANADIANS. 145 I have observed already, in a forraer work, hat, as far as my experience of travelling in the wilds of Canada goes, and it is rather extensive, I should always in future journeys prefer to provide myself with the true French Canadian boatmen, or voyageurs, or, in default of thera, with Indians. With either I should feel perfectly at ease ; and, having crossed the raountain waves of Huron in a Canada trading birch canoe with both, should have the less hesitation in trusting myself in the trackless forest, under their sole guidance and protection. Honneur a Jean Baptiste ! C'est un si bon enfant ! VOL. I. 146 CANADA AND CHAPTER V. Penetanguishene — The Nipissang Cannibals, and a Friendly Brother in the Wilderness. Penetanguishene, pronounced by the In dians Pen-et-awn-gu-shene, " the Bay of the White Rolling Sand," is a magnificent har bour, about three railes in length, narrow and land-locked completely by hills on each side. Here is always a steam-vessel of war, of a small class, with others in ordinary, stores and appliances, a sraall military force, hos pital and commissariat, an Indian inter preter, and a surgeon. But the presents are no longer given out here, as in 1837 and previously, to the wild tribes ; so that, to see the Indian in perfec tion, you must take the annual government trader, and sail to the Grand Manitoulin Island, about a hundred miles on the northern THE CANADIANS. 147 shore of Lake Huron, where, at Manitou-a- wanning, there is a large settlement of Indian .people, removed thither by the government to keep them frora being plundered of their presents by the Whites, who were in the habit of giving whiskey and tobacco for their blankets, rifles, clothing, axes, knives, and other useful articles, with which, by treaty, they are annually supplied. The Great Manitoulin, or Island of the Great Spirit, is an immense island, and, being good land, it is hoped that the benevo lent intentions of the government will be successful. An Indian agent, or superinten dent, resides with them; and a stearaboat, called the Goderich, has made one or two trips to it, and up to the head of Lake Huron, last summer. I went to Penetanguishene with the in tention of meeting this vessel and going with her, but fear that her enterprise will be a failure. She was chartered to run from Sturgeon Bay, about nineteen miles beyond the narrows of Lake Simcoe, in connection b2 148 CANADA AND with the mail or stage from Toronto, and the Beaver steamboat, plying on Lake Simcoe. From Sturgeon Bay she went to Penetan guishene, and then to St. Vincent Settle ment, and Owen's Sound, on Lake Huron, where a vast body of eraigrants are locating. Frora Owen's Sound, she coasted and doubled Cabot's Head, and then ran down three hun dred railes of the shore of Lake Huron to Goderich, Samia, Fort Gratiot, Windsor, and Detroit, with an occasional pleasure-trip to Manitoulin, St. Joseph's, and St. Mary's ; so that all the north shore of Lake Huron could be seen, and the passengers might take a peep at Lake Superior, by going up the rapids of St. Mary to Gros Cap. But a variety of obstacles occurred in this immense voyage, although ultiraately they will no doubt be overcome. By starting in the Toronto stage early in the morning, the traveller slept on board the Goderich at Sturgeon Bay, a good road having been forraed from the Narrows, al though, by some strange oversight, this road THE CANADIANS. 149 terminates in a marsh six hundred feet from the bank to the island, on which the wharf and storehouse built for the stearaer are erected. This caused rauch inconvenience to the passengers. The stage went, or goes, once a week, on Monday, to Holland Landing, thirty six railes, meets the Beaver, which then crosses Lake Simcoe to the Narrows, a small village, thriving very fast since it is no longer a government Indian station, fifty miles, and there lands the travellers, who proceed by stage to Sturgeon Bay, nineteen more, and sleep on board the Goderich, arriving about eight p.ra. The vessel gets under weigh, and reaches Penetanguishene by six in the morning: thus the whole route frora Toronto, which takes three days by the land road, is perforraed in twenty-four hours. But there are drawbacks : the Georgian Bay, between Sturgeon Bay and Penetan guishene, is, as I have already observed, dan gerous at night, or in a fog. At Owen's Sound, the population is not far enough 150 CANADA AND advanced to build the extensive wharf requi site, or to lay in sufficient supplies of fuel, and thus great detention was experienced there. At Penetanguishene, the wharf is not taken far enough into deep water for the vessel to lie at, and thus she usually grounded in the raud, and detention again arose. Then again, after rounding Cabot's Head and getting into the open lake, the coast is very dangerous, having not one harbour, until we arrive at the artificial one of Goderich, which is a pier-harbour ; for the Saugeen is a roadstead full of rocks, and cannot be approached by a large vessel. If, therefore, any thing happens to the machinery, and a steamer has to trust to her sails, the westerly winds which prevail on Lake Huron and blow tremendously, raising a sea that must be seen to be conceived of in a fresh- water lake, she has only to keep off the shore out into the raain lake, and avoid Goderich altogether, by raaking for the St. Clair River, However, the vessel did perform the voyage THE CANADIANS. 151 successfully seven times ; and in summer it may do, and, if it does do, will be of incalcu lable benefit to the Huron tract, and the new settlements of the far west of Canada, I am, however, afraid that the railroad schemes for opening the country to the south of this tract will for some time prevent a profitable steamboat speculation, although vast quantities of very superior fish are caught and cured now on the shores of Huron, such as salmon-trout and white fish, which, when properly salted or dried, are equal to any salt sea-fish whatever. The Canadian French, the half-breeds, and the Indians, are chiefly engaged in this trade, which promises to become one of great im portance to the country, and is already much encroached upon by adventurers frora the United States. The herring, as far as I can learn, ascends the St. Lawrence no higher than the Niagara River, but Ontario abounds with them and with salmon ; a smaller species of white fish also has of late years spread itself over that 152 CANADA AND lake, and is now sold plentifully in the Kingston market, where it was never seen only seven years ago. It is a beautiful fish, firm and well tasted, but rather too fat. A farmer on the Penetanguishene road has introduced English breeds of cattle and sheep of the best kind. He was, and per haps still is, contractor for the troops, and his stock is well worth seeing ; he lives a few miles from Barrie. Thus the garrison is constantly supplied with finer meat than any other station in Canada, although more out of the world and in the wilderness than any other ; and, as fish is plentiful, the soldiers and sailors of Queen Victoria in the Bay of the White Rolling Sand hve well. I was agreeably surprised to find at this remote post that only one soldier drank any thing stronger than beer or water ; and of course very little of the former, owing to the expense of transport, was to be had. The soldier that did drink spirits did not drink to excess. THE CANADIANS. 153 ' How did all this happen in a place where drunkenness had been proverbial? The sol diers, who were ofthe 82nd regiment, had been selected for the station as married raen. Their young coramanding officer patronized garden ing, cricketing, boating, and every raanly amuse ment, but permitted no gambling. He formed a school for the soldiers and their families, and, in short, he knew how to raanage them, and to keep their minds engaged ; for they worked and played, read and reasoned ; and so whiskey, which is as cheap as dirt there, was not a temptation which they could not resist. In winter, he had sleighing, snow- shoeing, and every exercise compatible with the severe weather and the very deep snow incident to the station. I feel persuaded that, now government has provided such handsorae garrison libraries of choice and well selected books for the sol diers, if a ball alley, or racket court, and a cricket ground were attached to every large barrack, there would not only be less drink ing in the army, but that vice would ulti- H 5 154 CANADA AND mately be scOrned, as it has been within the last twenty years by the officers. A hard- drinking officer will scarcely be tolerated in a regiment now, simply because excessive drink ing is a low, mean vice, being the indulgence of self for unworthy motives, and beneath the character of a gentleman. To be brought to a court-martial for drunkenness is now as dis graceful and injurious to the reputation of an officer as it was tO be tried for cowardice, and therefore seldom occurs in the British army. The vice of Canada is, however, drink ; and Temperance Societies will not mend it. Their good is very equivocal, unless combined with religion, as there is only one Father Matthew in the world, nor is it probable that there will be another. Penetanguishene is at present the ultima Thule of the British military posts in North America, It borders on the great wilderness of the North, and on that backbone of primary rocks running from the AUeghanies, across the thousand islands of the St, Lawrence, to the THE CANADIANS. 155 unknown interior of the northern verge of Lake Superior. Penetanguishene will not, however, be long the ultima Thule of British military posts in Western Canada, as a large and most im portant settlement is making at Owen's Sound, on Lake Huron, connected by a long road through the wilderness with Saugeen river, another settlement on the shores of that lake, to prevent the necessity of the difficult water- passage round Cabot's Head ; and a steara boat has been put on the route y the Canada Company, to connect Saugeen with Goderich. The government, up to the 31st of Decem ber, 1845, had sold or granted 54,056 acres of land at Owen's Sound, of which 1,168 acres had been chopped or cleared of the forest last year alone; and 1,787 acres of wheat and 1,414 acres of oats had been harvested in 1845. There were 483 oxen, 596 cows, 433 young cattle, and 26 horses; and the popula tion was 1,950, of which 759 were males above sixteen, and 399 males under sixteen. 156 .CANADA AND With 395 females above, and 399 under, the sarae age. In this new colony there were 1,005 Pres byterians, 195 Roraan CathoHcs, 173 Me thodists, 167 of the Church of England, 67 Baptists, 8 Quakers, The other sects or divi sions were not enumerated with sufficient accu racy to detail ; and Owen's Sound, being as yet buried in the Bush, cannot be visited by casual travellers, unless when an occasional steamer plies from Penetanguishene, There is yet no post-office; but 1,500 newspapers and letters were received or sent in 1845; and two flour-raills and two saw-raills are erected and in use. Three schooners of a small class ply in summer to Penetanguishene, The village is at the head of Owen's Sound, fifteen railes frora Cape Croker, and is naraed Sydenham, containing already thirty-six houses. Govern ment gives 50 acres free, on condition of ac tual settleraent, and that one third is cleared and cropped in four years, when a deed is ob tained : another fifty is granted by paying 8.s, an acre within three years, 9s. within six THE CANADIANS. 157: years, 10*, an acre within nine years. The soil is good and climate healthy, . North-north-west and north-east of Penet anguishene, all is wood, rock, lake, river, and desert, in which, towards the French river, the Nipissang Indian, the most degraded and help less of the Red Men, wanders, and obtains scanty food, for game is rare, although fish is raore plentiful. An exploring expedition into this country was sent by Sir John Colborne, in 1835, with a view of ascertaining its capabilities for set tleraent. An officer of engineers, Captain Baddely, was the astronomer and geologist ; a naval officer the pilot; with surveyors and a hardy suite, . They left Lake Simcoe in the township of Rama frora the Severn river, and, going a short journey eastward, struck the division line of the Home and the Newcastle districts, which commences between the townships of Whitby and Darlington, on the shore of Lake Ontario, and runs a little to the westward of north in a straight course, until it strikes the 158 CANADA AND south-east borders of Lake Nipissang, embra cing more than two degrees of latitude, not one half of which has ever been fully ex plored. The plan adopted was to cut out this line, and diverge occasionally from it to the right and left, until a great extent of unknown land on the east, and the distance between it and Lake Huron, which contained a large portion of the Chippewa Indian hunting-grounds, was thoroughly surveyed. In performing so very arduous a task, much privation and many obstacles occurred — fo rests, swamps, rivers, lakes, rocky ridges — all had to be passed. To the eastward of the raain line, and for sorae distance to the westward, good land ap peared ; and, as the agricultural probe was freely used, chance was not permitted to sway. The agricultural probe is an instrument which I first saw slung over my friend Bad- dely's shoulders, aud of his invention. It is a sort of huge screw gimblet, or auger, which readily penetrates the ground by being worked THE CANADIANS. 159 with a long cross-handle, and brings up the subsoil in a groove to a considerable depth. Specimens of the soil and of rocks and minerals were collected, and a plan was adopted which is a useful lesson to future explorers, A sraall piece of linen or cotton, about four inches square, had two pieces of twine sewed on op posite corners, and the cloth was marked in printers' ink, from stamps, with figures from 1 to 500, A knapsack was provided, and the specimens were reduced cO a size small enough to be carefully tied up in one of these num bered square cloths ; and, as the specimens were collected, they were entered in the jour nal as to nuraber and locality, strata, dip, and appearance. Thus a vast nuraber of small specimens could be brought on a man's back, and exarained at leisure. The toils, however, of such a journey in the vast and. untrodden wilderness are very severe, and the privations greater. For, in this tract, on the side next to Lake Huron, there was an absence of game which scarcely ever occurs in the forest near the great lakes. With 160_ CANADA AND ice forming and snow comraencing, and with every prospect of being frozen in, a portion of the explorers raissed their supplies, and subsisted for three whole days and nights on almost nothing ; a putrid deer's liver, hanging on a bush near a recent Indian trail, was all the aniraal food they had found ; but this even hunger could scarcely tempt them to cook. I was exploring in a more civilized country near them ; but even there our Indian guide was at fault, and, from want of proper pre caution, our provision failed. A small fish amongst four or five persons was one day's luxury. The Nipissang Indians, a very degraded and wretched tribe, live in this desolate region, and, it is said, have sometimes been so reduced for want of game as to resort to cannibalism. We heard that they had recently been obliged to resort to this practice. I was directed, with my friends, to conciliate these people, and to assure them that the British govern raent, so far from intending to injure them by THE CANADIANS. 161 an examination of their country, desired only to ameliorate their sad condition.^ We had a council. The astronomer royal, who was also the geologist, was a fine, portly fellow, whose bodily proportions would make three such carcases as that which I rejoice in. The nation sat in council and the Talk was held, Grira old savages, filthy and forbidding, half-starved warriors, hideous to the eye, sat in large circle, with the two great Red Fathers, as they called my friend and myself, on account of our scarlet jackets. The pipe passed frora hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, and many a solemn whiff ascended in curling clouds : all was solemn and sad, ' Some time afterwards, during the period in which Lord Glenelg held the Colonial Office, I was appointed to report upon the state and condition of the Indians of Ca nada, by his lordship, without my knowledge or solicitation ; this was never communicated to me by the then Lieut. - Governor of Upper Canada, and I only knew of it last year, by accidentally reading a report on the subject made by order of the House of Assembly, after I left Canada. I do not know if his lordship will ever read this work, or the gentleman to whom I believe I was indebted for the intended kindness ; and, if either should, I beg to tender my thanks thus publicly. 162 CANADA AND The speech was made and answered with an acuteness which we were not prepared for. But our explanation and mission were at length received, and the pledge of peace, the wampura-belts, were accepted and worn by the aged chiefs. My friend jogged ray elbow once or twice, and thought they were eyeing hira suspiciously, for he was to proceed into their country. He looked so fat and so healthy, that he thought their greasy mouths watered for a roasted slice of so fine a subject ! But the wampura pledge is never broken, and we had smoked the calumet of friend ship. Thus, although he luxuriated, after a total abstinence of three days, on the sight of a decayed deer's liver, which he could not be prevailed upon to partake of, yet the Ni pissang, starving as he must also have been, never fried my friend, nor feasted on his fat ness. This is not the only good story to be told of Penetanguishene ; for the American press of the frontier, with its accustomed adherence THE CANADIANS. 163 to truth, discovered a raare's nest there lately, and stated that the British government kept enorraous supplies of naval stores, several steara-vessels, a depot of coal, and everything necessary for the equipment of a large war fleet on Lake Huron, at this little outpost of the West, and that a tremendous force of mounted cavaliers were always ready to em bark on board of it at all tiraes. There are now certainly a good many horses at the village, whereas, in 1837, per haps one might have found out a dozen by great research there : as for cavalry, unless Brother Jonathan can manufacture it as cheaply and as lucratively as he does wooden clocks or nutmegs, it would be somewhat difficult to raise it at Penetanguishene, The village is a small, rambling place, with a little Roman Catholic church and a store house or general shop or two, about which, in summer, you always see idle Indians playing at some game or other, or else sraoking with as idle villagers. The garrison is three miles from the village. 164 CANADA AND and is always called " The Establishment ;" and in the forest between the two places is a new church, built of wood, very small, but sufficient for the Established Church, as it is sometimes called, of that portion of Canada. A clergyman is constantly stationed here for the army, navy, and civilians, and near the church is a collection of log huts, which I placed there sorae years ago by order of Lord Seaton, with small plots of ground attached to each as a refuge for destitute soldiers who had corarauted their pensions. This Chelsea in miniature flourished for a time, and drained the streets ofthe large towns of Canada of the miserable objects ; but, such was the improvidence of most of these settlers and such their broken constitutions, that, on my present visit, I found but one old serjeant left, and he was on the point of moving. The commutation of pensions was an expe riment of the raost benevolent intention. It was thought that the married pensioner would purchase stock for a small farm, and set him self down to provide for his children with a THE CANADIANS. 165 sum of raoney in hand which he could never have obtained in any other way. Many did so, and are now independent; but the majority, helpless in their habits, and giving way to drink, soon got cheated of their dollars and became beggars ; so that the governraent was actually obliged at length to restore a small portion of the pension to keep them from starvation. They died out, would not work at the Penetanguishene settlement, and have vanished frora the things that be. Poor fel lows ! raany a tale have they told rae of flood and field, of being sabred by the cuirassiers at Waterloo, of being impaled on a Polish lance, and of their wanderings and sufferings. The military settlement, however, of the Penetanguishene road is a different affair. It was effected by pensioned non-commissioned officers and soldiers, who had grants of a hun dred acres and sometimes more ; and it will please the benevolent founder, should these pages meet his eye, to know that raany of thera are now prosperous, and almost all well to do in the world. 166 CANADA AND But we must retrace our steps, and waggon back again by their doora to Barrie. I left the village at half-past six in the .morning, raining still, with the wind in the south-east, and very cold. We arrived at the Widow Marlow's, nineteen miles, at raid-day ; the weather having changed to fine and blow ing hard — certainly not pleasant in the forest- road, on account of the danger of falling trees, to which this pass is so liable that a party of axemen have sometimes to go ahead to cut out a way for the horses. We passed through the twelve mile woods by a new road, which reduces the extent of actual forest to five, and avoids altogether the Trees of the Two Brothers, noted in Penet anguishene history for the fatal accident, narrated in a former volurae, by which one soldier died, and his brother was, it is sup posed, frightened to death, in the solemn depths of the primeval and then endless woods. Near the end of the five mile Bush, about a mile from the first clearance, Jeffrey, the THE CANADIANS. 167 landlord of the inn at the village, has built a sraall cottage for the refreshment of the traveller, and in it he intends to plaCe his son. In the mean time, until quite com- j)leted, for money is scarce and things not to be done at railroad pace so near the North Pole, he has located here an old well known black gentleman, called Mr, Davenport, who was once better to do in the world, and kept a tavern hiraself. Having had the honour of his acquaintance for raany years, I stopped to see how ray old friend was getting on, particularly as I heard that he was now very old, and that his white consort had left hira alone in the narrow world of the house in the woods. He received me with grinning delight, and told rae that he had just left the new jail at Barrie for selling liquor without a license, which, I opine, is rather hard law against a poor old nigger, who had literally no other means of .support, and was most usefully stationed, like the monks of St, Bernard, in a dangerous pass. 168 CANADA AND But the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and the woolly head of old Davenport had matter of satisfaction in it from a source that he never drearaed of. Alone — far away from the whole human world, in the depth of a hideous forest, with a road nearly impassable one half of the year, — ^he found an unexpected friend. For fear of the visits of two-footed and four-footed brutes during the long nights of his Robinson Crusoe solitude, old Davenport always shut up his log castle early, and re tired to rest as soon as daylight departed ; for it did so very early in the evening there, as the soleran pines, with their gray trunks and far-spreading moss-grown arms and dismal evergreen fohage, if it can be called foliage, stood close to his dwelling — nay, brushed with the breath of the wind his very roof. Recollect, reader, that this lonely dweller in the Bush resided near the spot where the two soldier brothers perished ; and you may imagine his thoughts, after his castle was THE CANADIANS. 169 close