Canada and the Canadians Volume I Part 11

The lower cla.s.s of negroes in Canada, for there are several cla.s.ses among even runaways, are very frequently dissolute, idle, impudent, and a.s.suming--so difficult is it for poor uneducated human nature to bear a little freedom.

The coloured people, if they get at all up in the world, a.s.sume vast airs, but there are very many well-conducted people among them. As yet neither coloured people nor negroes have made much advance in Canada.

John Bull had visited almost every portion of the Northern and Western States, was a shrewd, observing character, and had come to the conclusion, which he very plainly expressed, that the state of society in the Union was not to his taste, that he could procure lands as cheap and as good for his gold in Canada, and that to Canada he would bring his old woman and his children.

"For," said he, "in the London or Western districts of Upper Canada, the land is equal to any in the United States, the climate better, and by and by it will supply all Europe with grain. Settling there, an Englishman will not always be put in mind of the inferiority of the British to the Americans, will not always be told that kings and queens are childish humbugs, and will not have his work hindered and his mind poisoned by constant elections and everlasting grasping for office.

"While," says John to Jonathan, "I am in Canada, just as free as you are; I pay no taxes, or only such as I control myself, and which are laid out in roads, or for my benefit. I can wors.h.i.+p after the manner of my fathers, without being robbed or burnt out, and I meet no man who thinks himself a bit better than myself; but, as I shall take care to settle a good way from republican sympathizers for the sake of my poor property, I shall always find my neighbours as proud of Queen Victoria as I be myself."

Jonathan replied that he had no manner of doubt that Miss Victoria was a real lady, for every female is a lady in the States; the word being understood only as an equivalent for womankind, and that John might like petticoat government, but, for his part, he calculated it was better to be a king one's-self, which every citizen of the enlightened republic was, and no mistake.

And kings they are, for all power resides there, in the body of which he was a favourable specimen, but which does not always show its members in so fair a light.

I do not know any coach ride in British America more pleasing than that from Niagara to Queenston. You cross a broad green common, with the expanse of Lake Ontario on one side, the forest and orchard on the other; and, after pa.s.sing through a little coppice, suddenly come upon the St. Lawrence, rolling a tranquil flood towards the great lake below.

High above its waters, on the edge of the sharp precipitous bank, covered with trees--oak, birch, beech, chestnut, and maple--runs the sandy road, bordered by corn-fields, by orchards, and occasionally by little patches of woodland, looking for all the world like Old England, excepting that that unpicturesque snake fence spoils the illusion.

Now, bright and deep, rolls the giant flood onward; now it is hidden by a turn of the bank; now, glittering, it again appears between the trees.

Thus you travel until within a couple of miles or so of Queenston, when, the road leaving the bank, and the river forming a large bay-like bend, a splendid view breaks out.

You catch a distant glimpse of that narrow pa.s.s, where a wall of rock, two hundred feet high on each side, and somewhat higher on the American sh.o.r.e, vomits forth the pent-up angry Niagara. Above this wall, to the right and left, towers the mountain ridge, covered with forest to the south, and with the greenest of gra.s.s to the north, where, stately and sad, stands the pillar under whose base moulder the bones of the gallant Brock, and of Mac Donell, his aide-de-camp.

Rent from summit to base, tottering to its fall, is Brock's monument, and yet the villain who did the deed that destroyed it lives, and dares to show his face on the neighbouring sh.o.r.e.

I cannot conceive in beautiful scenery any thing more picturesque than the gorge of the Niagara river: it combines rapid water, a placid bay, a tremendous wall of rock, forest, glade, village, column, active and pa.s.sive life.

Queenston is a poor place; it has never gained an inch since the war of 1812; but, as a railroad has been established, and a wharf is building in connection with it, it will go ahead. Opposite to it is Lewiston, in the United States, less ancient and time-worn, full of gaudily-painted wooden houses, and with much more pretension. Queenston looks like an old English hamlet in decay; melancholy and miserable; Lewiston is the type of newness, all white and green, all unfinished and all uncomfortable.

The odious bar-room system of the Northern States is fast sweeping away all vestiges of English comfort. The practice of lounging, cigar in mouth, sipping juleps and alcoholic decoctions in common with smugglers and small folk, is fast unhinging society. The plan of social economy in the mercantile cities is rapidly spreading over the whole Union, and the fas.h.i.+on of ladies' drawing-rooms being absorbed into the parlour of an hotel or boarding-house has brought about a change which the next generation will lament.

It is the restless rage for politics, the ever present desire for dollars, which has brought about this state of things; the young husband seeks the bar-room as a merchant does the Change; and thus, except in the wealthy cla.s.s, or among the contemplative and retired, there is no such thing as private life in the northern cities and towns. Huge taverns, real wooden gin palaces, tower over the tops of all other buildings, in every border village, town, and city; and a good bar is a better business than any other. Thus in Lewiston, in Buffalo, in short, in every American border town, the best building is the tavern, and the next best the meeting-house; both are fas.h.i.+onable, and both are anything but what they should be; for he who keeps the best liquors, and he who preaches most pointedly to the prevailing taste, makes the most of his trade. The voluntary system is a capital speculation to the publican as well as to the parson; but, unfortunately, it is more general with the former than with the latter.

The Niagara frontier is a rich and a fertile portion of Canada, surrounded almost by water, and intersected by rivers, and the Welland Ca.n.a.l, with an undulating surface in the interior. It grows wheat, Indian corn, and all the cereal gramina to perfection, whilst Pomona lavishes favours on it; nor are its woods less prolific and luxuriant.

Here the chestnut, with its deep green foliage and its white flowers, forms a pleasing variety to the sylvan scenery of Canada.

It would be, from its healthiness alone, the pleasantest part of Canada to live in, but it is too near the borders where sympathizers, more keen and infinitely more barbarous than those on the ancient Tweed, render property and life rather precarious; and, therefore, in war or in rebellion, the Niagara frontier is not an enviable abode for the peaceable farmer or the timid female.

The ascent to the plateau above Queenston is grand, and the view from the summit very extensive and magnificent; embracing such a stretch of cultivated land, of forest, of the habitations of men, and of the apparently boundless Ontario, the Beautiful Lake, that it can scarcely be rivalled.

The railroad has, however, spoiled a good deal of this; it runs from the summit of the mountain, along its side or flank, inland to Chippewa, beyond the Falls; and you are whirled along, not by steam, but by three trotting horses, at a rapid rate, through a wood road, until you reach the Falls, where you obtain just a glimpse and no more of the Cataract.

On the top of the mountain, as a hill four or five hundred feet above the river is called, is a place which was the scene of an awful accident. The precipice wall of the gorge of the Niagara is very close to the road, but hidden from it by stunted firs and bushes. Colonel Nichols, an officer well known and distinguished in the last American war, was returning one winter's night, when the fresh snow rendered all tracks on the road imperceptible, in his sleigh with a gallant horse.

Merrily on they went; the night was dark, and the road makes a sudden turn just at the brink, to descend by a circuitous sweep the face of the hill into Queenston. Either the driver or the horse mistook the path, and, instead of turning to the left, went on edging to the right.

The next day search was made: the marks of struggling were observed on the snow; the horse had evidently observed his danger; he had floundered and dashed wildly about; but horse, sleigh, and driver, went down, down, down, at least two hundred feet into the abyss below; and sufficient only remained to bear witness to the terrific result.

The railroad (three horse power) takes you to the Falls or to Chippewa.

If you intend visiting the former, and desire to go to the Clifton House, the best hotel there, you are dropped at Mr. Lanty Mac Gilly's, where the four roads meet, one going to the Ferry, one to Drummondville, a village at Lundy's Lane, now cut off from the main road; the other you came by, and the continuation of which goes to Chippewa, where a steamer, called the Emerald, is ready to take you to the city of Buffalo in the United States. As I shall return by way of Buffalo from the extreme west of Canada, we will say not a word about any thing further on this route at present than the Falls, and perhaps the reader may think the less that is said about them the better.

But, gentle reader, although it be a well-worn tale, I had not seen the Falls for five years, and I wish to tell you whether they are altered or improved; and most likely you will take some little interest in so old a friend as the Falls of Niagara; for you must have read about those before you read Robinson Crusoe, and have had them thrust under your notice by every tourist, from Trollope to d.i.c.kens. They say, _on dit_, I mean, which is not translatable into English, that this is the age of Materialism and Utilitarianism. By George, you would think so indeed, if you had the chance of seeing the Falls of Niagara twice in ten years.

They are materially injured by the Utilitarian mania. The Yankees put an ugly shot tower on the brink of the Horseshoe at the beginning of that era, and they are about to consummate the barbarism, by throwing a wire bridge, if the British government is consenting, over the river, just below the American Fall. But Niagara is a splendid "Water Privilege,"

and so thought the Company of the City of the Falls--a most enlightened body of British subjects, who first disfigured the Table Rock, by putting a water-mill on it, and now are adding the horror of gin-palaces, with sundry ornamental booths for the sale of juleps and sling, all along the venerable edge of the precipice, so that trees of unequalled beauty on the bank above, trees which grow no where else in Canada, are daily falling before the monster of gain.

What they will do next in their freaks it is difficult to surmise; but it requires very little more to show that patriotism, taste, and self-esteem, are not the leading features in the character of the inhabitants of this part of the world.

If the Colossus of Rhodes could be remodelled and brought to the Falls, one leg standing in Canada, and the other in the United States, there would be a company immediately formed for hydraulic purposes, to convey a waste pipe from the tips of the fingers as far as Buffalo; and another to light the paltry village of Manchester, all mills and mint-juleps, with the natural gas which would be made to feed the lamp. A grogshop would be set up in his head; telescopes would be poked out of his eyes, and philosophers would seat themselves on his toes, to calculate whether the waters of the British Fall could not be dammed out, so as to turn a few cotton mills more in Manchester, as it is called, which scheme some Canadian worthy would upset, by resorting to Mr. Lyell's proof that the whole river might once have flowed, and may again be made to flow, down to St. David's--thus, by expending a few millions, cutting off Jonathan's chance.

But it is of no use to joke on this subject; Niagara is, both to the United States and to England, but especially to Canada, a public property. It is the greatest wonder of the visible world here below, and should be protected from the rapacity of private speculations, and not made a Greenwich fair of; where pedlars and thimble-riggers, n.i.g.g.e.rs and barkers, the lowest trulls and the vilest sc.u.m of society, congregate to disgust and annoy the visitors from all parts of the world, plundering and pestering them without control.

The only really pretty thing on the British side is the Museum, the result of the indefatigable labours of Mr. Barnett, a person who, by his own una.s.sisted industry, has gathered together a most interesting collection of animals, sh.e.l.ls, coins, &c., and has added a garden, in which all the choicest plants and flowers of North America and of Britain grow, watered by the incessant spray of the Great Fall. In this garden I saw, for the first time in Canada, the English holly, the box, the heath, and the ivy; and there is a willow from the St. Helena stock.

It requires unremitting watchfulness, however, to keep all this together, for _loafers_ are rife in these parts. He had gathered a very choice collection of coins, which was placed in a gla.s.s case in the Museum. A loafer cast his eye upon them, visited the Museum frequently, until he fully comprehended the whereabouts, and then, by the help of a comrade or two, broke a window-pane, pa.s.sed through a glazed division of stuffed snakes, &c., and bore off his prize in the dead of the night. By advertising in time, and by dint of much exertion, the greater part was recovered, but the proprietor has not dared publicly to exhibit them since.

He is now forming a menagerie, and also has a collection of fossils and minerals from the neighbourhood, with a camera obscura. He is, in short, a specimen of what untiring industry can accomplish, even when una.s.sisted.

There are some tulip-trees near the Falls, but this plant does not grow to any size so far north; and, although native to the soil, it is, perhaps, the extreme limit of its range. The snake-wood, a sort of slender bush, is found here, with very many other rare Canadian plants, which are no doubt fostered by the continual humidity of the place; and, if you wish to sup full of horrors,[4] Mr. Barnett has plenty of live rattlesnakes.

[Footnote 4: This puts me in mind of the vulgar received opinion that my G.o.dfather Fuseli supped on pork-steaks, to have horrid dreams.

Originally said in joke, this absurd story has been repeated even by persons affecting respectability as writers. His Greek learning alone should have saved his memory from this.]

To wind up all, the Americans are going to put up another immense gin-palace on the opposite sh.o.r.e; and, as a climax to the excellent taste of the vicinage, they are about to place a huge steamboat to cross the rapids at the foot of the Manchester Falls. The next speculation, as I hinted above, must be to turn the Niagara into the Erie, or into the Welland Ca.n.a.l, and make it carry flour, grind wheat, and do the duty which the political economists of this thriving place consider all rivers as alone created for.

One traveller of the Utilitarian school has recorded, in the traveller's alb.u.m at the Falls, the number of gallons of water running over to waste per minute; and another writes, "What an almighty splas.h.!.+"

I went once more to see the Burning Spring, and have no doubt whatever that the City of the Falls, that great pre-eminent humbug, if it had been built, might have easily been lit by natural gas, as it abounds every where in the neighbourhood, the rock under the superior Silurian limestone being a shale containing it, as may be evidenced by those visitors, who are persuaded to go under "the Sheet of Water," as the place is called where the Table Rock projects, and part of the cataract slides over it; for, on reaching the angle next to the spiral stair, a strong smell is plainly perceptible, something between rotten eggs and sulphur; and there you find a little trickling spring oozing out of the precipice tasting of those delectable compounds.

A Yankee, with the soaring imagination of that imaginative race, proposes to set fire to the Horseshoe Fall, and thus get up a grand nocturnal exhibition, to which the Surrey Zoological pyrotechny would bear the same ratio as a sky-rocket to Vesuvius.

There is no great impossibility in this fact, if it was "not a fact"

that the rush of the Fall disturbs the superinc.u.mbent gases too much to permit it; for there can be but little doubt that there is plenty of _materiel_ at hand, and, some day or other, a lighthouse will be lit with it to guide sleepy loons and other negligent water-fowl over the Falls. I wonder they do not get up a Carburetted Hydrogen Gas Company there, with a suitable engineer and railway, so that visitors might cross over to Goat Island on an atmospheric line. There are plenty of railway stags on both sh.o.r.es, if you will only buy their stock to establish it; and, at all events, it would improve the City of the Falls, which now exhibits the deplorable aspect of three stuccoed cottages turned seedy, and a bare common, in place of a magnificent grove of chestnut trees, which formerly almost rivalled Greenwich Park.

But the crowning glory of "the City" is the Reflecting PaG.o.da, a thing perched over Table Rock bank; very like a huge pile engine, with a ten-s.h.i.+lling mirror, where the monkey should be. Blessings on Time!

though he is a very thoughtless rogue, he has touched this grand effort of human genius in the wooden line slightly, and it will soon follow the horrid water-mill which stood on that most singular and indescribable freak of Nature, the Table Rock. I would have forgiven Lett, the sympathizer, if, instead of a.s.sa.s.sination and the blowing-up of Brock's Monument, he had confined his attentions to a little serious Guy Fauxing at the Mill and the Reflecting PaG.o.da.

Niagara--Ne-aw-gaw-rah, thou thundering water! thy glories are departing; the abominable Railway Times has driven along thy borders; and, if I should live to see thee again ten years hence, verily I should not be astounded to find thee locked-up, and a station-house staring me in the visage, from that emerald bower, in thy most mysterious recess, where the vapour is rose-coloured, and the bright rainbow alone now forms the bridge from the Iris Rock!

I was so disgusted to see the spirit of pelf, that concentration of self, hovering over one of the last of the wonders of the world, that I rushed to the Three Horse Railway, and soon forgot all my misery in scrambling for a place; for there was no alternative. There were only three carriages and one open cart on the rail; the three aristocratic conveniences were full; and the coal-box--for it looked very like one--was full also, of loafers and luggage; so I despaired of quitting the Falls almost as much, by way of balance, as I rejoiced when they once again met my ken.

But women are women all the world over; a black lady nursed Mungo Park, when he was abandoned by the world; and a charitable she-Samaritan crowded to make room for a disconsolate wayfarer.

I felt very much as the n.i.g.g.e.r's parrot at New York did.

Blacky was selling a parrot, and a gentleman asked him what the bird could do. Could he speak well? "No, ma.s.sa; no peaky at all." "Can he sing?"--"No, ma.s.sa; no peaky, no singy." "Why, what can he do, then, that you ask twenty dollars for him?" "Oh! ma.s.sa, golly, he thinky dreadful much." So, when the daughter of Eve made way for me in the rail-car, why I thinky very much, that, wherever a stranger meets unexpected kindness, it is sure to be a woman that offers it.

There were the usual host of American travellers in the cars; and as one generally gets a fund of anecdote and amus.e.m.e.nt on these occasions, from their habits of communicativeness, I shall put the English reader in possession of the meaning of words he often sees in the perusal of American newspapers and novels which I gathered.

New York is the Empire State, and with the following comprises Yankee land, which word Yankee is most properly a corruption of Yengeese, the old Indian word for English; so that, by parity of reasoning, John Bull is, after all, a Yankee.