Canada and the Canadians Volume I Part 2

To account for such a feeling, it must be observed that a large portion of these ignorant and misguided men have brought much of this animosity upon themselves; for, continuing in the New World that barbarous tendency to demolish all systems and all laws opposed to their limited notions of right and wrong, and, whilst their senseless feuds among themselves hara.s.s society, they eagerly seek occasions for that restless political excitement to which they are accustomed 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 ca.n.a.l 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 Capulets and Montagues of low life, is recollected, 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 adviser, appear among them, and persuade these excitable folks that they may obtain higher wages by forcing their own terms, bludgeons and bullets are resorted to, in order to compel compliance, 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 sums 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 ca.n.a.l riot; and, wherever its station has afterwards been cast, the vengeance of these people has followed it.

At Montreal, the elections have been disgraced by bodies of these ca.n.a.llers having been employed to intimidate and overawe voters; and, were it not that a large military force is always at hand there, no election could be made of a member, whose seat would be the unbia.s.sed and free choice of his const.i.tuents.

It is, however, very fortunate for Canada that these ca.n.a.llers are not usually inclined to settle, but wander about from work to work, and generally, in the end, go to the United States. The Irish who settle are fortunately 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 human 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-maids, &c.

When they come to the mistress of a family to hire, they generally sit down on the nearest chair to the door in the room, and a.s.sume a manner of perfect familiarity, a.s.suring the lady of the house that they never expected to go out to service in America, but that some family misfortune has rendered such a step necessary. The lady then, of course, asks them 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 expect 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 just as she was dressing for dinner, and exclaimed, "Mistress, dear, what'll 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 emigrant, to plough for him; and, on asking him 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 away. 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 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 servants in most parts of the northern states and throughout Canada, excepting the French Canadians, and very attached, faithful servants 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 modic.u.m 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 must be the proper way of spelling it), a bustle, a parasol, an expensive shawl, and a silk gown, and fine bonnet, gloves, and a white pocket-handkerchief. The men are not so aspiring, and usually don on Sundays a blue coat and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, white pantaloons, white gloves, and a good fur cap in winter, or a neat straw hat or brilliant beaver in summer. 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 distinguish her nursery-maid from her own sister at a little distance; and, being somewhat afflicted that way myself, I frequently nod to a well-dressed soubrette, thinking she is at least a leading member 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 magnificence 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 threadbare subjects, etiquette, "nothing is more decidedly the sign of a vulgar-born or a vulgar-bred person than to be ready to practise 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 chambermaids 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 _rarae aves_, but the latter--why, every change of ministry creates a batch of them.

CHAPTER II.

The Emigrant and his Prospects.

Those who really wish Canada well desire it to become 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 become a second Britain and hold the balance of power on the continent of America is my prayer, and the prayer too of one who entertains no enmity towards the people of the United States, but who admires their unceasing exertions in behalf of their country, who would admire their inst.i.tutions, based as they are upon those of England, if the grand design of Was.h.i.+ngton 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 ma.s.ses, a sovereign contempt of the opinion of the world in accomplis.h.i.+ng any 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 ma.s.ses, 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 undertaken to continue an account of this fine province, where nothing is provided by Nature 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 grandchildren of Britannia, and whose well-being is so essential to the peace and security of Christendom.

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 resources of Canada, and, for this end, Geology and other scientific subjects must be introduced; but, as I dislike exceedingly that heavy and gaudy veil of learning, that embroidered science, with which modern taste conceals those secrets of Nature which have been so partially unfolded, I shall not have frequent recourse to absurd Greek derivations, which are very commonly borrowed for the occasion from technical dictionaries, or lent by a cla.s.sical friend; but, whenever they must 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 of the Ctenoids and the Cycloids as the more recent finners.

It always puts me in mind of Shakespeare's magniloquence 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 overdone and continual changing of terms that now constantly occurs; insomuch that the terms of plain science, instead of being simplified and brought within the reach of ordinary capacities, is made as uncouth and as 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 p.r.o.ne 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 respects 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 anything scientific, 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 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, meant that his soil contained 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 representation of the chief emigrant agent at Quebec, subjoined.

In all the great sea-ports of England, Ireland, and Scotland, there are emigrant agents appointed by the government, to whom application should always be made for information, 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, 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 princ.i.p.al agent, who is stationed there for the lower or eastern part of Canada, and he will give them either advice or pa.s.sage, according to the nature of the case.

It is a pity that a rage exists for going as far west as possible at first, 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 a.s.sistance 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.

There is excellent land, and plenty of it to be obtained from the British American Land Company in Lower Canada, in that portion called "The Towns.h.i.+ps," which adjoin the states of Vermont and New York; and, excepting that the winters are longer, the climate more 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 make 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 neighbourhood of fresh water in large bodies, and the use of whiskey as a preventive.

From a statement of the number of emigrants 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 emigration from the British Isles was 165,793. From other sources, in the three years, from 1829 to 1832, the emigration exceeded that of the previous ten years--the numbers being respectively, 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 emigration from Britain. At the port of New York alone, from 1st November, 1844, to 31st October, 1845, there arrived--

From England and Scotland 10,653 From Ireland 38,300 ------- Total at New York 48,953

The number of emigrants landed at the port of Quebec, in 1845, was 25,375.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ NUMBER OF EMIGRANTS SINCE 1829. ----------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+--------- '29 to '33 '34 to '38 '39 to '43 '44 to '45 Total. ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- --------- England. 43,386 28,624 30,318 16,531 119,354 Ireland. 102,264 54,898 74,981 24,201 256,344 Scotland. 20,143 10,998 16,289 4,408 51,838 British American Prov. &c. 1,904 1,831 1,777 377 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 inhabitants, between 1827 and 1843, is stated at 230,000.

The local government has for some few years past encouraged, although rather scantily, 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 agriculture, that primary and most n.o.ble of all applications of the mind to matter, is making rapid strides, by the formation of district and local societies, which will do infinitely more good than any system of government 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 formation of a board, which is itself also subject to the supervision of the government.

But much remains to be done on this important head. A melancholy error was committed in making the President, and consequently all the officers and _employes_, of the Board of Works, partizans of the ministry 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 popular will, and neutralizing his efforts whilst in office, by rendering his measures mere jobs.

This has been amended under Lord Metcalfe's administration; and it is to be hoped that the office of President of the Board of Works will hereafter be one subjected to severe 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 former volumes to prove, a magnificent country. I doubt very much 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, from Quebec to the Falls of St. Mary, almost a flat surface, intersected and interlaced by numberless streams, and studded with small 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, and even some of the tropical ones, owing to the richness of its soil and the great heat of the summer. Maize, or Indian corn, flourishes, 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 capsic.u.m, 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 concerned. 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 brought 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 more directly, than to travel alone through its forests.

Pines, lifting their h.o.a.ry 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 them; oaks, of the most gigantic form; the immense and graceful weeping elm; enormous poplars, whose magnitude must be seen to be conceived; lindens, equally vast; walnut trees of immense 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 man has never desecrated them with his unsparing devastations; that a peculiar race, born for these solitudes, once dwelt amidst their shades, living as Nature's woodland 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 woods; I see, in spirit, the bearded stranger from the rising sun, with his deadly arms and his more deadly fire-water, conversing with his savage fellow, and displaying the envied wealth of gorgeous beads and of gaudy clothing.