The Englishwoman in America - Isabella Lucy Bird (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

who gives a wavering adherence to every party in succession, and is often indignantly disavowed by all. The Liberals of Upper Canada are ably led by Mr. George Brown, who excels in a highly lucid, powerful, and perspicuous course of reasoning, which cannot fail to produce an effect.

Then there is the Rouge party, led by the member for Montreal, which is principally composed of very versatile and enthusiastic Frenchmen of rather indefinite opinions and aims, professing a creed which appears a curious compound of Republicanism and Rationalism. The word Latitudinarianism defines it best. There are 130 members, divided into numerous "ists" and "ites." Most of the members for Lower Canada are French, and, consequently, the Romish party is a very powerful one in the House. Taken as a whole, the members are loyal, and have proved their attachment to England by a vote of 20,000_l._ for the Patriotic Fund.

I think that all who are in the habit of reading the debates will allow that the speaking in the House will bear comparison with that in our House of Commons; and if some of the younger members in attempting the sublime occasionally attain the ridiculous, and mistake extravagance of expression for greatness of thought, these are faults which time and criticism will remedy. Canada is a great and prosperous country, and its Legislative Assembly is very creditable to so young a community. Bribery, corruption, and place-hunting are alleged against this body; but as these vices are largely developed in England, it would be bad taste to remark upon them, particularly as the most ardent correctors of abuses now reluctantly allow that they are inseparable from popular assemblies. It is needless to speak of the Upper House, which, as has been sarcastically remarked of our House of Peers, is merely a "_High Court of Registry_"--it remains to be seen whether an elective chamber would possess greater vitality and independence.

The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly is a Frenchman, and French and English are used indiscriminately in debate. Parliamentary notices and papers are also printed in both languages.

It was a cold, gloomy October morning, a cold east wind rustled the russet leaves, and a heavy, dry fog enveloped Point Diamond, when I left the bustle of Quebec for a quiet drive to Montmorenci in a light waggon with a very spirited little horse, a young lady acting as charioteer. The little animal was very impetuous, and rattled down the steep, crowded streets of Quebec at a pace which threatened to entangle our wheels with those of numerous carts driven by apathetic _habitans_, who were perfectly indifferent to the admonitions "_Prenez garde_" and "_Place aux dames_," delivered in beseeching tones. We passed down a steep street, and through Palace-gate, into the district of St. Roch, teeming with Irish and dirt, for I fear it is a fact that, wherever you have the first, you invariably have the last. Beyond this there was a space covered with mud and sawdust, where two _habitans_ were furiously quarrelling. One sprang upon the other like a hyena, knocked him down, and then attempted to bite and strangle him, amid the applause of numerous spectators.

Leaving Quebec behind, we drove for seven miles along a road in sight of the lesser branch of the St. Lawrence, which has on the other side the green and fertile island of Orleans. The houses along this road are so numerous as to present the appearance of a village the whole way. Frenchmen who arrive here in summer can scarcely believe that they are not in their own sunny land; the external characteristics of the country are so exactly similar. These dwellings are large, whitewashed, and many- windowed, and are always surrounded with balconies. The doors are reached by flights of steps, in order that they may be above the level of the snow in winter. The rooms are clean, but large and desolate-looking, and are generally ornamented with caricatures of the Virgin and uncouth representations of miracles. The women dress in the French style, and wear large straw hats out of doors, which were the source of constant disappointments to me, for I always expected to see a young, if not a pretty, face under a broad brim, and these females were remarkably ill- favoured; their complexions hardened, wrinkled, and bronzed, from the effects of hard toil, and the extremes of heat and cold. I heard the hum of spinning-wheels from many of the houses, for these industrious women spin their household linen, and the gray homespun in which the men are clothed. The furniture is antique, and made of oak, and looks as if it had been handed down from generation to generation. The men, largely assisted by the females, cultivate small plots of ground, and totally disregard all modern improvements. These French towns and villages improve but little. Popery, that great antidote to social progress, is the creed universally professed, and generally the only building of any pretensions is a large Romish church with two lofty spires of polished tin. Education is not much prized; the desires of the simple _habitans_ are limited to the attainment of a competence for life, and this their rudely-tilled farms supply them with. Few emigrants make this part of Canada even a temporary resting- place; the severity of the climate, the language, the religion, and the laws, are all against them; hence, though a professor of a purer faith may well blush to confess it, the vices which emigrants bring with them are unknown. These peasants are among the most harmless people under the sun; they are moral, sober, and contented, and zealous in the observances of their erroneous creed. Their children divide the land, and, as each prefers a piece of soil adjoining the road or river, strips of soil may occasionally be seen only a few yards in width. They strive after happiness rather than advancement, and who shall say that they are unsuccessful in their aim? As their fathers lived, so they live; each generation has the simplicity and superstition of the preceding one. In the autumn they gather in their scanty harvest, and in the long winter they spin and dance round their stove-sides. On Sundays and saints' days they assemble in crowds in their churches, dressed in the style of a hundred years since. Their wants and wishes are few, their manners are courteous and unsuspicious, they hold their faith with a blind and implicit credulity, and on summer evenings sing the songs of France as their fathers sang them in bygone days on the smiling banks of the rushing Rhone.

The road along which the dwellings of these small farmers lie is macadamised, and occasionally a cross stands by the roadside, at which devotees may be seen to prostrate themselves. There is a quiet, lethargic, old-world air about the country, contrasting strangely with the bustling, hurrying, restless progress of Upper Canada. Though the condition of the _habitans_ is extremely unprofitable to themselves, it affords a short rest to the thinking and observing faculties of the stranger, overstrained as they are with taking in and contemplating the railroad progress of things in the New World.

While we admire and wonder at the vast material progress of Western Canada and the North-western States of the Union, considerations fraught with alarm will force themselves upon us. We think that great progress is being made in England, but, without having travelled in America, it is scarcely possible to believe what the Anglo-Saxon race is performing upon a new soil. In America we do not meet with factory operatives, seamstresses, or clerks overworked and underpaid, toiling their lives away in order to keep body and soul together; but we have people of all classes who could obtain competence and often affluence by moderate exertions, working harder than slaves--sacrificing home enjoyments, pleasure, and health itself to the one desire of the acquisition of wealth. Daring speculations fail; the struggle in unnatural competition with men of large capital, or dishonourable dealings, wears out at last the overtasked frame--life is spent in a whirl--death summons them, and finds them unprepared. Everybody who has any settled business is overworked. Voices of men crying for relaxation are heard from every quarter, yet none dare to pause in this race which they so madly run, in which happiness and mental and bodily health are among the least of their considerations. All are spurred on by the real or imaginary necessities of their position, driven along their headlong course by avarice, ambition, or eager competition.

The Falls of Montmorenci, which we reached after a drive of eight miles, are beautiful in the extreme, and, as the day was too cold for picnic parties, we had them all to ourselves. There is no great body of water, but the river takes an unbroken leap of 280 feet from a black narrow gorge. The scathed black cliffs descend in one sweep to the St. Lawrence, in fine contrast to the snowy whiteness of the fall. Montmorenci gave me greater sensations of pleasure than Niagara. There are no mills, museums, guides, or curiosity-shops. Whatever there is of beauty bears the fair impress of its Creator's hand; and if these Falls are beautiful on a late October day, when a chill east wind was howling through leafless trees looming through a cold, grey fog, what must they be in the burst of spring or the glowing luxuriance of summer?

We drove back for some distance, and entered a small _cabaret_, where some women were diligently engaged in spinning, and some men were superintending with intense interest the preparation of some _soupe maigre_. Their _patois_ was scarcely intelligible, and a boy whom we took as our guide spoke no English. After encountering some high fences and swampy ground, we came to a narrow rocky pathway in a wood, with bright green, moss-covered trees, stones, and earth. On descending a rocky bank we came to the "natural staircase," where the rapid Montmorenci forces its way through a bed of limestone, the broken but extremely regular appearance of the layers being very much like wide steps. The scene at this place is wildly beautiful. The river, frequently only a few feet in width, sometimes foams furiously along between precipices covered with trees, and bearing the marks of years of attrition; then buries itself in dark gulfs, or rests quiescent for a moment in still black pools, before it reaches its final leap.

The day before I left Quebec I went to the romantic falls of Lorette, about thirteen miles from the city. It was a beauteous day. I should have called it oppressively warm, but that the air was fanned by a cool west wind. The Indian summer had come at last; "the Sagamores of the tribes had lighted their council-fires" on the western prairies. What would we not give for such a season! It is the rekindling of summer, but without its heat--it is autumn in its glories, but without its gloom. The air is soft like the breath of May; everything is veiled in a soft pure haze, and the sky is of a faint and misty blue.

A mysterious fascination seemed to bind us to St. Roch, for we kept missing our way and getting into "streams as black as Styx." But at length the city of Quebec, with its green glacis and frowning battlements, was left behind, and we drove through flat country abounding in old stone dwelling-houses, old farms, and large fields of stubble. We neared the blue hills, and put up our horses in the Indian village of Lorette. Beautiful Lorette! I _must_ not describe, for I _cannot_, how its river escapes from under the romantic bridge in a broad sheet of milk-white foam, and then, contracted between sullen barriers of rock, seeks the deep shade of the pine-clad precipices, and hastens to lose itself there. It