Canada and the Canadians Volume I Part 4

It is not generally known in England that the feudal tenure--although very laughable and absurd at this time of day, and from which some seigneurs, but never those of unmixed French blood, are disposed to claim t.i.tles 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 Buckinghams.h.i.+re 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 from the va.s.sal, and the usual droits. These droits are, first, the barbarous "_lods 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 convenient 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 paramount 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 habitants for rent, or any other claim or inc.u.mbrance, be made.

An inst.i.tution like this paralyzes the resident, paralyzes the settler, and destroys that aristocracy for whose benefit it was created; for it prevents the lord of the manor from ever becoming rich, or taking much interest in the improvement of his domain; and thus every thing continues as it was a hundred years ago. The British emigrant pauses ere he buys land thus enthralled; and almost all the old French families, who dated from Charlemagne, Clovis, or Pepin, from the Merovingian or Carlovingian monarchies, 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 government from Toronto, and the appointment of a governor-general untrammelled by the lieutenant governors.h.i.+p of Western Canada, over which he had had before no control, that it should be considered desirable by degrees to introduce the English land system throughout Canada, and that parliamentary inquiry should be made into the necessity of abolis.h.i.+ng all feudal taxation. 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 them beyond their ready endurance, why should we, to please a few rich capitalists or merchants, suddenly force a British population 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 American continent; we should not forget his worthy and excellent priesthood; nor should we ever lose sight of the fact, that he is contented under the old system. 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 must take place between the United States and England, the French Canadians will prove, as they did before on a similar occasion, loyal to a man.

All animosity, all heart-burning, will be forgotten, and the old French glory will s.h.i.+ne again, as it did under De Salaberry.

Ma foi, nous ne sommes 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 Roland.

Mourons pour notre patrie C'est le sort le plus beau et le plus digne d'envie.

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 serviceable Canadian pony, the best of all hobbies 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 colonisation.

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 Royal mail steamer, at 8 p.m., the usual hour of starting being seven, for Toronto; the weather unusually cold.

This fine boat const.i.tutes, with two others, the City of Toronto and the Sovereign, the royal mail line between Kingston and Toronto. All are built nearly alike, are first cla.s.s seaboats, and low pressure; they combine, with the Highlander, the Canada, and the Gildersleave, 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.

Pa.s.sengers go from Montreal to Kingston by the mail route in twenty-four hours, a distance of 180 miles; a small 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 hours, the boat leaving at seven, and arriving about or before noon next day; performing the pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.senger pa.s.ses from the seat of government to the largest city of Western Canada most comfortably, a journey which twenty years ago it always took a fortnight, and often a month, to accomplish, in the most precarious and uncomfortable manner--on board small, roasting steamers, crowded like a cattle-pen--in lumbering leathern conveniences, miscalled coaches, over roads which enter not into the dreams 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 commentators.

Your _compagnons de voyage_, on board a bateau or Durham boat, which was a _monstre_ bateau, were French Canadian voyageurs, always drunk and always gay, who poled you along up the rapids, or rushed down them with what will be will be.

These happy people had a knack of examining your goods and chattels, which they were conveying in the most admirable manner, and with the utmost _sang-froid_; but still they were above stealing--they only tapped the rum cask or the whiskey barrel, and appropriated any cordage wherewith you bound your chests and packages. I never had a chest, box, or bale sent up by bateau or Durham boat that escaped this rope mail.

By the by, the Durham 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 Jonathan so playfully observes, a _caution_.

I have known an instance of a cask of wine, which, for security from climate, had an outer case or cask strongly secured over it, with an interior s.p.a.ce for neutralizing frost or heat, bored so carefully that you could never discover how it had been effected, and a very considerable quantum of beverage extracted.

I once had a small barrel, perhaps twenty gallons of commissariat 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 means an historical or scientific work, excepting always the geological portion thereof, I will tell him or her, as the case may be, a story about ration rum.

There was a funny fellow, an Irish auctioneer at Kingston, some years ago, called Paddy Moran, whom all the world, priest and parson, minister and methodist, soldier and sailor, tinker and tailor, went to hear when he mounted his rostrum.

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 rum, 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 regiment--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 rum was; and didn't I help meself 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 rum rose to fifteen s.h.i.+llings per gallon at the next bid.

You can have every convenience on board a Lake Ontario mail-packet, which is about as 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 1 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-gla.s.s, was.h.i.+ng-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 families 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 gla.s.s and a piano, with a white lady to wait, who is always decked out in flounces and furbelows, and usually good-looking. All you have got to do on embarking or on disembarking is to see personally to your luggage; for leaving it to a servant unacquainted with the country will not do. At Kingston, matters 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 particularly, the porters and carters are the most presuming and insolent serviles I ever met 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 s.h.i.+ps, is very great. There is a regular drawingroom on board one called the Chief Justice where I saw, just after the horticultural show at Toronto, pots of the most rare and beautiful 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 a.s.sembled, 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 pa.s.sengers 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. 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 refres.h.i.+ng the body and spirits; and where people help each other, or the waiters help them, at table, without a scramble, like hogs, for the best and the most--a custom which all travelled Americans detest and abominate as much as the most fastidious Englishman.

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?

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, particularly 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 s.h.i.+ne at about 80 Fahrenheit. Then take a lump of ice; fix it at the edge of a board; rasp it with a tool made like a drawing knife or carpenter's plane, set face upwards. Collect the raspings, the fine raspings, mind, in a capacious tumbler; pour thereon two gla.s.ses 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.

_C'est l'eau benite_, as the English lord said to the _garcon_ at the Milles Colonnes, when he first tasted real _parfait amour_.--_C'est beaucoup mieux_, _Milor_, answered the waiter with a profound reverence.

Gin-sling, c.o.c.k-tail, mint-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 gentlemen to call for a pint of wine at dinner, or for a bottle, according to the strength of the party; but it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance; for sherry and port are the usual stock, both fiery as brandy, and costing the moderate price of seven s.h.i.+llings and sixpence a bottle, the steward having laid the same in at about one s.h.i.+lling and eight pence, or at most two s.h.i.+llings. 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, encourage it, and have told me that they do so because they get no good port in the States. Ale and porter are charged two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence a bottle, which is double their worth. Be careful also not to drink freely of the iced water, which is always supplied _ad libitum_. Few Europeans escape the effects of water-drinking when they land at Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, &c. There is something peculiar, which has never yet been satisfactorily 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 Americans use ice profusely, and drink such draughts of iced water, that I have been astonished at the impunity 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 b.u.t.ter and grease.