No More Learning

CHAPTER II

QUEBEC AND MONTMORENCI


About six o'clock we started for Quebec, one hundred and eighty miles
distant by the river; gliding past Longueuil and Boucherville on the
right, and Pointe aux Trembles, "so called from having been originally
covered with aspens," and Bout de l'Isle, or the end of the island, on
the left. I repeat these names not merely for want of more substantial
facts to record, but because they sounded singularly poetic to my
ears. There certainly was no lie in them. They suggested that some
simple, and, perchance, heroic human life might have transpired there.
There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the
mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a
string of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word.
The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.
Inexpressibly beautiful appears the recognition by man of the least
natural fact, and the allying his life to it. All the world
reiterating this slender truth, that aspens once grew there; and the
swift inference is that men were there to see them. And so it would be
with the names of our native and neighboring villages, if we had not
profaned them.

The daylight now failed us, and we went below; but I endeavored to
console myself for being obliged to make this voyage by night, by
thinking that I did not lose a great deal, the shores being low and
rather unattractive, and that the river itself was much the more
interesting object. I heard something in the night about the boat
being at William Henry, Three Rivers, and in the Richelieu Rapids, but
I was still where I had been when I lost sight of Pointe aux Trembles.
To hear a man who has been waked up at midnight in the cabin of a
steamboat inquiring, "Waiter, where are we now? " is as if, at any
moment of the earth's revolution round the sun, or of the system round
its centre, one were to raise himself up and inquire of one of the
deck hands, "Where are we now? "

I went on deck at daybreak, when we were thirty or forty miles above
Quebec. The banks were now higher and more interesting. There was an
"uninterrupted succession of whitewashed cottages," on each side of
the river. This is what every traveler tells. But it is not to be
taken as an evidence of the populousness of the country in general,
hardly even of the river-banks. They have presented a similar
appearance for a hundred years. The Swedish traveler and naturalist
Kalm, who descended the river in 1749, says, "It could really be
called a village, beginning at Montreal and ending at Quebec, which is
a distance of more than one hundred and eighty miles; for the
farmhouses are never above five arpents, and sometimes but three
asunder, a few places excepted. " Even in 1684 Hontan said that the
houses were not more than a gunshot apart at most. Ere long we passed
Cape Rouge, eight miles above Quebec, the mouth of the Chaudiere on
the opposite or south side; New Liverpool Cove with its lumber-rafts
and some shipping; then Sillery and Wolfe's Cove and the Heights of
Abraham on the north, with now a view of Cape Diamond, and the citadel
in front. The approach to Quebec was very imposing. It was about six
o'clock in the morning when we arrived. There is but a single street
under the cliff on the south side of the cape, which was made by
blasting the rocks and filling up the river. Three-story houses did
not rise more than one fifth or one sixth the way up the nearly
perpendicular rock, whose summit is three hundred and forty-five feet
above the water. We saw, as we glided past, the sign on the side of
the precipice, part way up, pointing to the spot where Montgomery was
killed in 1775. Formerly it was the custom for those who went to
Quebec for the first time to be ducked, or else pay a fine. Not even
the Governor-General escaped. But we were too many to be ducked, even
if the custom had not been abolished. [1]

Here we were, in the harbor of Quebec, still three hundred and sixty
miles from the mouth of the St. Lawrence, in a basin two miles across,
where the greatest depth is twenty-eight fathoms, and though the water
is fresh, the tide rises seventeen to twenty-four feet,--a harbor
"large and deep enough," says a British traveler, "to hold the English
navy. " I may as well state that, in 1844, the county of Quebec
contained about forty-five thousand inhabitants (the city and suburbs
having about forty-three thousand),--about twenty-eight thousand being
Canadians of French origin; eight thousand British; over seven
thousand natives of Ireland; one thousand five hundred natives of
England; the rest Scotch and others. Thirty-six thousand belong to the
Church of Rome.

Separating ourselves from the crowd, we walked up a narrow street,
thence ascended by some wooden steps, called the Break-neck Stairs,
into another steep, narrow, and zigzag street, blasted through the
rock, which last led through a low, massive stone portal, called
Prescott Gate, the principal thoroughfare into the Upper Town. This
passage was defended by cannon, with a guard-house over it, a sentinel
at his post, and other soldiers at hand ready to relieve him. I rubbed
my eyes to be sure that I was in the Nineteenth Century, and was not
entering one of those portals which sometimes adorn the frontispieces
of new editions of old black-letter volumes. I thought it would be a
good place to read Froissart's Chronicles. It was such a reminiscence
of the Middle Ages as Scott's novels. Men apparently dwelt there for
security! Peace be unto them! As if the inhabitants of New York were
to go over to Castle William to live! What a place it must be to bring
up children! Being safe through the gate, we naturally took the street
which was steepest, and after a few turns found ourselves on the
Durham Terrace, a wooden platform on the site of the old castle of St.
Louis, still one hundred and fifteen feet below the summit of the
citadel, overlooking the Lower Town, the wharf where we had landed,
the harbor, the Isle of Orleans, and the river and surrounding country
to a great distance. It was literally a _splendid_ view. We could see,
six or seven miles distant, in the northeast, an indentation in the
lofty shore of the northern channel, apparently on one side of the
harbor, which marked the mouth of the Montmorenci, whose celebrated
fall was only a few rods in the rear.

At a shoe-shop, whither we were directed for this purpose, we got some
of our American money changed into English. I found that American hard
money would have answered as well, excepting cents, which fell very
fast before their pennies, it taking two of the former to make one of
the latter, and often the penny, which had cost us two cents, did us
the service of one cent only. Moreover, our robust cents were
compelled to meet on even terms a crew of vile half-penny tokens, and
Bungtown coppers, which had more brass in their composition, and so
perchance made their way in the world. Wishing to get into the
citadel, we were directed to the Jesuits' Barracks,--a good part of
the public buildings here are barracks,--to get a pass of the Town
Major. We did not heed the sentries at the gate, nor did they us, and
what under the sun they were placed there for, unless to hinder a free
circulation of the air, was not apparent. There we saw soldiers eating
their breakfasts in their mess-room, from bare wooden tables in camp
fashion. We were continually meeting with soldiers in the streets,
carrying funny little tin pails of all shapes, even semicircular, as
if made to pack conveniently. I supposed that they contained their
dinners,--so many slices of bread and butter to each, perchance.
Sometimes they were carrying some kind of military chest on a sort of
bier or hand-barrow, with a springy, undulating, military step, all
passengers giving way to them, even the charette-drivers stopping for
them to pass,--as if the battle were being lost from an inadequate
supply of powder. There was a regiment of Highlanders, and, as I
understood, of Royal Irish, in the city; and by this time there was a
regiment of Yankees also. I had already observed, looking up even from
the water, the head and shoulders of some General Poniatowsky, with an
enormous cocked hat and gun, peering over the roof of a house, away up
where the chimney caps commonly are with us, as it were a caricature
of war and military awfulness; but I had not gone far up St. Louis
Street before my riddle was solved, by the apparition of a real live
Highlander under a cocked hat, and with his knees out, standing and
marching sentinel on the ramparts, between St. Louis and St. John's
Gate. (It must be a holy war that is waged there. ) We stood close by
without fear and looked at him. His legs were somewhat tanned, and the
hair had begun to grow on them, as some of our wise men predict that
it will in such cases, but I did not think they were remarkable in any
respect. Notwithstanding all his warlike gear, when I inquired of him
the way to the Plains of Abraham, he could not answer me without
betraying some bashfulness through his broad Scotch. Soon after, we
passed another of these creatures standing sentry at the St. Louis
Gate, who let us go by without shooting us, or even demanding the
countersign. We then began to go through the gate, which was so thick
and tunnel-like as to remind me of those lines in Claudian's "Old Man
of Verona," about the getting out of the gate being the greater part
of a journey;--as you might imagine yourself crawling through an
architectural vignette _at the end_ of a black-letter volume. We were
then reminded that we had been in a fortress, from which we emerged by
numerous zigzags in a ditch-like road, going a considerable distance
to advance a few rods, where they could have shot us two or three
times over, if their minds had been disposed as their guns were. The
greatest, or rather the most prominent, part of this city was
constructed with the design to offer the deadest resistance to leaden
and iron missiles that might be cast against it. But it is a
remarkable meteorological and psychological fact, that it is rarely
known to rain lead with much violence, except on places so
constructed. Keeping on about a mile we came to the Plains of
Abraham,--for having got through with the Saints, we came next to the
Patriarchs. Here the Highland regiment was being reviewed, while the
band stood on one side and played--methinks it was _La Claire
Fontaine_, the national air of the Canadian French. This is the site
where a real battle once took place, to commemorate which they have
had a sham fight here almost every day since. The Highlanders
manoeuvred very well, and if the precision of their movements was
less remarkable, they did not appear so stiffly erect as the English
or Royal Irish, but had a more elastic and graceful gait, like a herd
of their own red deer, or as if accustomed to stepping down the sides
of mountains. But they made a sad impression on the whole, for it was
obvious that all true manhood was in the process of being drilled out
of them. I have no doubt that soldiers well drilled are, as a class,
peculiarly destitute of originality and independence. The officers
appeared like men dressed above their condition. It is impossible to
give the soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His
natural foe is the government that drills him. What would any
philanthropist who felt an interest in these men's welfare naturally
do, but first of all teach them so to respect themselves that they
could not be hired for this work, whatever might be the consequences
to this government or that? --not drill a few, but educate all. I
observed one older man among them, gray as a wharf-rat, and supple as
the devil, marching lock-step with the rest, who would have to pay for
that elastic gait.

We returned to the citadel along the heights, plucking such flowers as
grew there. There was an abundance of succory still in blossom,
broad-leaved goldenrod, buttercups, thorn bushes, Canada thistles, and
ivy, on the very summit of Cape Diamond. I also found the bladder
campion in the neighborhood. We there enjoyed an extensive view, which
I will describe in another place. Our pass, which stated that all the
rules were "to be strictly enforced," as if they were determined to
keep up the semblance of reality to the last gasp, opened to us the
Dalhousie Gate, and we were conducted over the citadel by a
bare-legged Highlander in cocked hat and full regimentals. He told us
that he had been here about three years, and had formerly been
stationed at Gibraltar. As if his regiment, having perchance been
nestled amid the rocks of Edinburgh Castle, must flit from rock to
rock thenceforth over the earth's surface, like a bald eagle, or other
bird of prey, from eyrie to eyrie. As we were going out, we met the
Yankees coming in, in a body headed by a red-coated officer called the
commandant, and escorted by many citizens, both English and
French-Canadian. I therefore immediately fell into the procession, and
went round the citadel again with more intelligent guides, carrying,
as before, all my effects with me. Seeing that nobody walked with the
red-coated commandant, I attached myself to him, and though I was not
what is called well-dressed, he did not know whether to repel me or
not, for I talked like one who was not aware of any deficiency in that
respect. Probably there was not one among all the Yankees who went to
Canada this time, who was not more splendidly dressed than I was. It
would have been a poor story if I had not enjoyed some distinction. I
had on my "bad-weather clothes," like Olaf Trygvesson the Northman,
when he went to the Thing in England, where, by the way, he won his
bride. As we stood by the thirty-two-pounder on the summit of Cape
Diamond, which is fired three times a day, the commandant told me that
it would carry to the Isle of Orleans, four miles distant, and that no
hostile vessel could come round the island. I now saw the subterranean
or rather "casemated" barracks of the soldiers, which I had not
noticed before, though I might have walked over them. They had very
narrow windows, serving as loop-holes for musketry, and small iron
chimneys rising above the ground. There we saw the soldiers at home
and in an undress, splitting wood,--I looked to see whether with
swords or axes,--and in various ways endeavoring to realize that their
nation was now at peace with this part of the world. A part of each
regiment, chiefly officers, are allowed to marry. A grandfatherly,
would-be witty Englishman could give a Yankee whom he was patronizing
no reason for the bare knees of the Highlanders, other than oddity.
The rock within the citadel is a little convex, so that shells falling
on it would roll toward the circumference, where the barracks of the
soldiers and officers are; it has been proposed, therefore, to make it
slightly concave, so that they may roll into the centre, where they
would be comparatively harmless; and it is estimated that to do this
would cost twenty thousand pounds sterling. It may be well to remember
this when I build my next house, and have the roof "all correct" for
bomb-shells.

At mid-afternoon we made haste down Sault-au-Matelot Street, towards
the Falls of Montmorenci, about eight miles down the St. Lawrence, on
the north side, leaving the further examination of Quebec till our
return. On our way, we saw men in the streets sawing logs pit-fashion,
and afterward, with a common wood-saw and horse, cutting the planks
into squares for paving the streets. This looked very shiftless,
especially in a country abounding in water-power, and reminded me that
I was no longer in Yankeeland. I found, on inquiry, that the excuse
for this was that labor was so cheap; and I thought, with some pain,
how cheap men are here! I have since learned that the English traveler
Warburton remarked, soon after landing at Quebec, that everything was
cheap there but men. That must be the difference between going thither
from New and from Old England. I had already observed the dogs
harnessed to their little milk-carts, which contain a single large
can, lying asleep in the gutters regardless of the horses, while they
rested from their labors, at different stages of the ascent in the
Upper Town. I was surprised at the regular and extensive use made of
these animals for drawing not only milk but groceries, wood, etc. It
reminded me that the dog commonly is not put to any use. Cats catch
mice; but dogs only worry the cats. Kalm, a hundred years ago, saw
sledges here for ladies to ride in, drawn by a pair of dogs. He says,
"A middle-sized dog is sufficient to draw a single person, when the
roads are good;" and he was told by old people that horses were very
scarce in their youth, and almost all the land-carriage was then
effected by dogs. They made me think of the Esquimaux, who, in fact,
are the next people on the north. Charlevoix says that the first
horses were introduced in 1665.

We crossed Dorchester Bridge, over the St. Charles, the little river
in which Cartier, the discoverer of the St. Lawrence, put his ships,
and spent the winter of 1535, and found ourselves on an excellent
macadamized road, called Le Chemin de Beauport. We had left Concord
Wednesday morning, and we endeavored to realize that now, Friday
morning, we were taking a walk in Canada, in the Seigniory of
Beauport, a foreign country, which a few days before had seemed
almost as far off as England and France. Instead of rambling to
Flint's Pond or the Sudbury meadows, we found ourselves, after being a
little detained in cars and steamboats,--after spending half a night
at Burlington, and half a day at Montreal,--taking a walk down the
bank of the St. Lawrence to the Falls of Montmorenci and elsewhere.
Well, I thought to myself, here I am in a foreign country; let me have
my eyes about me, and take it all in. It already looked and felt a
good deal colder than it had in New England, as we might have expected
it would. I realized fully that I was four degrees nearer the pole,
and shuddered at the thought; and I wondered if it were possible that
the peaches might not be all gone when I returned. It was an
atmosphere that made me think of the fur-trade, which is so
interesting a department in Canada, for I had for all head-covering a
thin palm-leaf hat without lining, that cost twenty-five cents, and
over my coat one of those unspeakably cheap, as well as thin, brown
linen sacks of the Oak Hall pattern, which every summer appear all
over New England, thick as the leaves upon the trees. It was a
thoroughly Yankee costume, which some of my fellow-travelers wore in
the cars to save their coats a dusting. I wore mine, at first, because
it looked better than the coat it covered, and last, because two coats
were warmer than one, though one was thin and dirty. I never wear my
best coat on a journey, though perchance I could show a certificate to
prove that I have a more costly one, at least, at home, if that were
all that a gentleman required. It is not wise for a traveler to go
dressed. I should no more think of it than of putting on a clean
dicky and blacking my shoes to go a-fishing; as if you were going out
to dine, when, in fact, the genuine traveler is going out to work
hard, and fare harder,--to eat a crust by the wayside whenever he can
get it. Honest traveling is about as dirty work as you can do, and a
man needs a pair of overalls for it. As for blacking my shoes in such
a case, I should as soon think of blacking my face. I carry a piece of
tallow to preserve the leather and keep out the water; that's all; and
many an officious shoe-black, who carried off my shoes when I was
slumbering, mistaking me for a gentleman, has had occasion to repent
it before he produced a gloss on them.

My pack, in fact, was soon made, for I keep a short list of those
articles which, from frequent experience, I have found indispensable
to the foot-traveler; and, when I am about to start, I have only to
consult that, to be sure that nothing is omitted, and, what is more
important, nothing superfluous inserted. Most of my fellow-travelers
carried carpet-bags, or valises. Sometimes one had two or three
ponderous yellow valises in his clutch, at each hitch of the cars, as
if we were going to have another rush for seats; and when there was a
rush in earnest,--and there were not a few,--I would see my man in the
crowd, with two or three affectionate lusty fellows along each side of
his arm, between his shoulder and his valises, which last held them
tight to his back, like the nut on the end of a screw. I could not
help asking in my mind, What so great cause for showing Canada to
those valises, when perhaps your very nieces had to stay at home for
want of an escort? I should have liked to be present when the
custom-house officer came aboard of him, and asked him to declare upon
his honor if he had anything but wearing apparel in them. Even the
elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of
traveling is to travel without baggage. After considerable reflection
and experience, I have concluded that the best bag for the
foot-traveler is made with a handkerchief, or, if he study
appearances, a piece of stiff brown paper, well tied up, with a fresh
piece within to put outside when the first is torn. That is good for
both town and country, and none will know but you are carrying home
the silk for a new gown for your wife, when it may be a dirty shirt. A
bundle which you can carry literally under your arm, and which will
shrink and swell with its contents. I never found the carpet-bag of
equal capacity which was not a bundle of itself. We styled ourselves
the Knights of the Umbrella and the Bundle; for, wherever we went,
whether to Notre Dame or Mount Royal or the Champ de Mars, to the Town
Major's or the Bishop's Palace, to the Citadel, with a bare-legged
Highlander for our escort, or to the Plains of Abraham, to dinner or
to bed, the umbrella and the bundle went with us; for we wished to be
ready to digress at any moment. We made it our home nowhere in
particular, but everywhere where our umbrella and bundle were. It
would have been an amusing circumstance, if the mayor of one of those
cities had politely asked us where we were staying. We could only have
answered that we were staying with his honor for the time being. I was
amused when, after our return, some green ones inquired if we found it
easy to get accommodated; as if we went abroad to get accommodated,
when we can get that at home.

We met with many charettes, bringing wood and stone to the city. The
most ordinary-looking horses traveled faster than ours, or perhaps
they were ordinary-looking because, as I am told, the Canadians do not
use the curry-comb. Moreover, it is said that on the approach of
winter their horses acquire an increased quantity of hair, to protect
them from the cold. If this be true, some of our horses would make you
think winter were approaching, even in midsummer. We soon began to see
women and girls at work in the fields, digging potatoes alone, or
bundling up the grain which the men cut. They appeared in rude health,
with a great deal of color in their cheeks, and, if their occupation
had made them coarse, it impressed me as better in its effects than
making shirts at fourpence apiece, or doing nothing at all--unless it
be chewing slate-pencils--with still smaller results. They were much
more agreeable objects, with their great broad-brimmed hats and
flowing dresses, than the men and boys. We afterwards saw them doing
various other kinds of work; indeed, I thought that we saw more women
at work out of doors than men. On our return, we observed in this town
a girl, with Indian boots nearly two feet high, taking the harness off
a dog.

The purity and transparency of the atmosphere were wonderful. When we
had been walking an hour, we were surprised, on turning round, to see
how near the city, with its glittering tin roofs, still looked. A
village ten miles off did not appear to be more than three or four. I
was convinced that you could see objects distinctly there much
farther than here. It is true the villages are of a dazzling white,
but the dazzle is to be referred, perhaps, to the transparency of the
atmosphere as much as to the whitewash.

We were now fairly in the village of Beauport, though there was still
but one road. The houses stood close upon this, without any front
yards, and at an angle with it, as if they had dropped down, being set
with more reference to the road which the sun travels. It being about
sundown, and the falls not far off, we began to look round for a
lodging, for we preferred to put up at a private house, that we might
see more of the inhabitants. We inquired first at the most
promising-looking houses,--if, indeed, any were promising. When we
knocked, they shouted some French word for come in, perhaps _Entrez_,
and we asked for a lodging in English; but we found, unexpectedly,
that they spoke French only. Then we went along and tried another
house, being generally saluted by a rush of two or three little curs,
which readily distinguished a foreigner, and which we were prepared
now to hear bark in French. Our first question would be "Parlez-vous
Anglais? " but the invariable answer was "Non, monsieur;" and we soon
found that the inhabitants were exclusively French Canadians, and
nobody spoke English at all, any more than in France; that, in fact,
we were in a foreign country, where the inhabitants uttered not one
familiar sound to us. Then we tried by turns to talk French with them,
in which we succeeded sometimes pretty well, but for the most part
pretty ill. "Pouvez-vous nous donner un lit cette nuit? " we would
ask, and then they would answer with French volubility, so that we
could catch only a word here and there. We could understand the women
and children generally better than the men, and they us; and thus,
after a while, we would learn that they had no more beds than they
used.

So we were compelled to inquire, "Y a-t-il une maison publique ici? "
(_auberge_ we should have said, perhaps, for they seemed never to have
heard of the other), and they answered at length that there was no
tavern, unless we could get lodgings at the mill, _le moulin_, which
we had passed; or they would direct us to a grocery, and almost every
house had a small grocery at one end of it. We called on the public
notary or village lawyer, but he had no more beds nor English than the
rest. At one house there was so good a misunderstanding at once
established through the politeness of all parties, that we were
encouraged to walk in and sit down, and ask for a glass of water; and
having drank their water, we thought it was as good as to have tasted
their salt. When our host and his wife spoke of their poor
accommodations, meaning for themselves, we assured them that they were
good enough, for we thought that they were only apologizing for the
poorness of the accommodations they were about to offer us, and we did
not discover our mistake till they took us up a ladder into a loft,
and showed to our eyes what they had been laboring in vain to
communicate to our brains through our ears, that they had but that one
apartment with its few beds for the whole family. We made our _adieus_
forthwith, and with gravity, perceiving the literal signification of
that word. We were finally taken in at a sort of public house, whose
master worked for Patterson, the proprietor of the extensive sawmills
driven by a portion of the Montmorenci stolen from the fall, whose
roar we now heard. We here talked, or murdered, French all the
evening, with the master of the house and his family, and probably had
a more amusing time than if we had completely understood one another.
At length they showed us to a bed in their best chamber, very high to
get into, with a low wooden rail to it. It had no cotton sheets, but
coarse, home-made, dark-colored linen ones. Afterward, we had to do
with sheets still coarser than these, and nearly the color of our
blankets. There was a large open buffet loaded with crockery in one
corner of the room, as if to display their wealth to travelers, and
pictures of Scripture scenes, French, Italian, and Spanish, hung
around. Our hostess came back directly to inquire if we would have
brandy for breakfast. The next morning, when I asked their names, she
took down the temperance pledges of herself and husband and children,
which were hanging against the wall. They were Jean Baptiste Binet and
his wife, Genevieve Binet. Jean Baptiste is the sobriquet of the
French Canadians.

After breakfast we proceeded to the fall, which was within half a
mile, and at this distance its rustling sound, like the wind among the
leaves, filled all the air. We were disappointed to find that we were
in some measure shut out from the west side of the fall by the private
grounds and fences of Patterson, who appropriates not only a part of
the water for his mill, but a still larger part of the prospect, so
that we were obliged to trespass.
This gentleman's mansion-house and
grounds were formerly occupied by the Duke of Kent, father to Queen
Victoria. It appeared to me in bad taste for an individual, though he
were the father of Queen Victoria, to obtrude himself with his land
titles, or at least his fences, on so remarkable a natural phenomenon,
which should, in every sense, belong to mankind. Some falls should
even be kept sacred from the intrusion of mills and factories, as
water privileges in another than the millwright's sense. This small
river falls perpendicularly nearly two hundred and fifty feet at one
pitch. The St. Lawrence falls only one hundred and sixty-four feet at
Niagara. It is a very simple and noble fall, and leaves nothing to be
desired; but the most that I could say of it would only have the force
of one other testimony to assure the reader that it is there. We
looked directly down on it from the point of a projecting rock, and
saw far below us, on a low promontory, the grass kept fresh and green
by the perpetual drizzle, looking like moss. The rock is a kind of
slate, in the crevices of which grew ferns and goldenrods. The
prevailing trees on the shores were spruce and arbor-vitae,--the latter
very large and now full of fruit,--also aspens, alders, and the
mountain-ash with its berries. Every emigrant who arrives in this
country by way of the St. Lawrence, as he opens a point of the Isle of
Orleans, sees the Montmorenci tumbling into the Great River thus
magnificently in a vast white sheet, making its contribution with
emphasis. Roberval's pilot, Jean Alphonse, saw this fall thus, and
described it, in 1542. It is a splendid introduction to the scenery of
Quebec. Instead of an artificial fountain in its square, Quebec has
this magnificent natural waterfall, to adorn one side of its harbor.
Within the mouth of the chasm below, which can be entered only at
ebb-tide, we had a grand view at once of Quebec and of the fall. Kalm
says that the noise of the fall is sometimes heard at Quebec, about
eight miles distant, and is a sign of a northeast wind. The side of
this chasm, of soft and crumbling slate too steep to climb, was among
the memorable features of the scene. In the winter of 1829 the frozen
spray of the fall, descending on the ice of the St. Lawrence, made a
hill one hundred and twenty-six feet high. It is an annual phenomenon
which some think may help explain the formation of glaciers.

In the vicinity of the fall we began to notice what looked like our
red-fruited thorn bushes, grown to the size of ordinary apple trees,
very common, and full of large red or yellow fruit, which the
inhabitants called _pommettes_, but I did not learn that they were put
to any use.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Hierosme Lalemant says in 1648, in his Relation, he being
Superior: "All those who come to New France know well enough the
mountain of Notre Dame, because the pilots and sailors, being arrived
at that part of the Great River which is opposite to those high
mountains, baptize ordinarily for sport the new passengers, if they do
not turn aside by some present the inundation of this baptism which
one makes flow plentifully on their heads. "




CHAPTER III

ST. ANNE


By the middle of the forenoon, though it was a rainy day, we were once
more on our way down the north bank of the St. Lawrence, in a
northeasterly direction, toward the Falls of St. Anne, which are about
thirty miles from Quebec. The settled, more level, and fertile portion
of Canada East may be described rudely as a triangle, with its apex
slanting toward the northeast, about one hundred miles wide at its
base, and from two to three or even four hundred miles long, if you
reckon its narrow northeastern extremity; it being the immediate
valley of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, rising by a single or
by successive terraces toward the mountains on either hand. Though the
words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and
unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored
portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the
river, which one of those syllables would more than cover. The banks
of the St. Lawrence are rather low from Montreal to the Richelieu
Rapids, about forty miles above Quebec. Thence they rise gradually to
Cape Diamond, or Quebec. Where we now were, eight miles northeast of
Quebec, the mountains which form the northern side of this triangle
were only five or six miles distant from the river, gradually
departing farther and farther from it, on the west, till they reach
the Ottawa, and making haste to meet it on the east, at Cape
Tourmente, now in plain sight about twenty miles distant. So that we
were traveling in a very narrow and sharp triangle between the
mountains and the river, tilted up toward the mountains on the north,
never losing sight of our great fellow-traveler on our right.
According to Bouchette's Topographical Description of the Canadas, we
were in the Seigniory of the Cote de Beaupre, in the county of
Montmorenci, and the district of Quebec,--in that part of Canada which
was the first to be settled, and where the face of the country and the
population have undergone the least change from the beginning, where
the influence of the States and of Europe is least felt, and the
inhabitants see little or nothing of the world over the walls of
Quebec. This Seigniory was granted in 1636, and is now the property of
the Seminary of Quebec. It is the most mountainous one in the
province. There are some half a dozen parishes in it, each containing
a church, parsonage-house, gristmill, and several sawmills. We were
now in the most westerly parish, called Ange Gardien, or the Guardian
Angel, which is bounded on the west by the Montmorenci. The north bank
of the St. Lawrence here is formed on a grand scale. It slopes gently,
either directly from the shore or from the edge of an interval, till,
at the distance of about a mile, it attains the height of four or five
hundred feet. The single road runs along the side of the slope two or
three hundred feet above the river at first, and from a quarter of a
mile to a mile distant from it, and affords fine views of the north
channel, which is about a mile wide, and of the beautiful Isle of
Orleans, about twenty miles long by five wide, where grow the best
apples and plums in the Quebec district.

Though there was but this single road, it was a continuous village for
as far as we walked this day and the next, or about thirty miles down
the river, the houses being as near together all the way as in the
middle of one of our smallest straggling country villages, and we
could never tell by their number when we were on the skirts of a
parish, for the road never ran through the fields or woods. We were
told that it was just six miles from one parish church to another. I
thought that we saw every house in Ange Gardien. Therefore, as it was
a muddy day, we never got out of the mud, nor out of the village,
unless we got over the fence; then, indeed, if it was on the north
side, we were out of the civilized world. There were sometimes a few
more houses near the church, it is true, but we had only to go a
quarter of a mile from the road, to the top of the bank, to find
ourselves on the verge of the uninhabited, and, for the most part,
unexplored wilderness stretching toward Hudson's Bay. The farms
accordingly were extremely long and narrow, each having a frontage on
the river. Bouchette accounts for this peculiar manner of laying out a
village by referring to "the social character of the Canadian peasant,
who is singularly fond of neighborhood," also to the advantage arising
from a concentration of strength in Indian times. Each farm, called
_terre_, he says, is, in nine cases out of ten, three arpents wide by
thirty deep, that is, very nearly thirty-five by three hundred and
forty-nine of our rods; sometimes one half arpent by thirty, or one to
sixty; sometimes, in fact, a few yards by half a mile. Of course it
costs more for fences. A remarkable difference between the Canadian
and the New England character appears from the fact that, in 1745, the
French government were obliged to pass a law forbidding the farmers or
_censitaires_ building on land less than one and a half arpents front
by thirty or forty deep, under a certain penalty, in order to compel
emigration, and bring the seigneur's estates all under cultivation;
and it is thought that they have now less reluctance to leave the
paternal roof than formerly, "removing beyond the sight of the parish
spire, or the sound of the parish bell. " But I find that in the
previous or seventeenth century, the complaint, often renewed, was of
a totally opposite character, namely, that the inhabitants dispersed
and exposed themselves to the Iroquois. Accordingly, about 1664, the
king was obliged to order that "they should make no more clearings
except one next to another, and that they should reduce their parishes
to the form of the parishes in France as much as possible. " The
Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of
adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and
danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though
not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet to range over it as
_coureurs de bois_, or runners of the woods, or, as Hontan prefers to
call them, _coureurs de risques_, runners of risks; to say nothing of
their enterprising priesthood; and Charlevoix thinks that if the
authorities had taken the right steps to prevent the youth from
ranging the woods (_de courir les bois_), they would have had an
excellent militia to fight the Indians and English.

The road in this clayey-looking soil was exceedingly muddy in
consequence of the night's rain. We met an old woman directing her
dog, which was harnessed to a little cart, to the least muddy part of
it. It was a beggarly sight. But harnessed to the cart as he was, we
heard him barking after we had passed, though we looked anywhere but
to the cart to see where the dog was that barked. The houses commonly
fronted the south, whatever angle they might make with the road; and
frequently they had no door nor cheerful window on the road side. Half
the time they stood fifteen to forty rods from the road, and there was
no very obvious passage to them, so that you would suppose that there
must be another road running by them. They were of stone, rather
coarsely mortared, but neatly whitewashed, almost invariably one story
high and long in proportion to their height, with a shingled roof, the
shingles being pointed, for ornament, at the eaves, like the pickets
of a fence, and also one row halfway up the roof. The gables sometimes
projected a foot or two at the ridge-pole only. Yet they were very
humble and unpretending dwellings. They commonly had the date of their
erection on them. The windows opened in the middle, like blinds, and
were frequently provided with solid shutters. Sometimes, when we
walked along the back side of a house which stood near the road, we
observed stout stakes leaning against it, by which the shutters, now
pushed half open, were fastened at night; within, the houses were
neatly ceiled with wood not painted. The oven was commonly out of
doors, built of stone and mortar, frequently on a raised platform of
planks. The cellar was often on the opposite side of the road, in
front of or behind the houses, looking like an ice-house with us, with
a lattice door for summer. The very few mechanics whom we met had an
old-Bettyish look, in their aprons and _bonnets rouges_ like fools'
caps. The men wore commonly the same _bonnet rouge_, or red woolen or
worsted cap, or sometimes blue or gray, looking to us as if they had
got up with their night-caps on, and, in fact, I afterwards found that
they had. Their clothes were of the cloth of the country, _etoffe du
pays_, gray or some other plain color. The women looked stout, with
gowns that stood out stiffly, also, for the most part, apparently of
some home-made stuff. We also saw some specimens of the more
characteristic winter dress of the Canadian, and I have since
frequently detected him in New England by his coarse gray homespun
capote and picturesque red sash, and his well-furred cap, made to
protect his ears against the severity of his climate.

It drizzled all day, so that the roads did not improve. We began now
to meet with wooden crosses frequently, by the roadside, about a dozen
feet high, often old and toppling down, sometimes standing in a square
wooden platform, sometimes in a pile of stones, with a little niche
containing a picture of the Virgin and Child, or of Christ alone,
sometimes with a string of beads, and covered with a piece of glass to
keep out the rain, with the words, _Pour la Vierge_, or INRI, on them.
Frequently, on the cross-bar, there would be quite a collection of
symbolical knickknacks, looking like an Italian's board; the
representation in wood of a hand, a hammer, spikes, pincers, a flask
of vinegar, a ladder, etc. , the whole, perchance, surmounted by a
weathercock; but I could not look at an honest weathercock in this
walk without mistrusting that there was some covert reference in it to
St. Peter. From time to time we passed a little one-story chapel-like
building, with a tin-roofed spire, a shrine, perhaps it would be
called, close to the path-side, with a lattice door, through which we
could see an altar, and pictures about the walls; equally open,
through rain and shine, though there was no getting into it. At these
places the inhabitants kneeled and perhaps breathed a short prayer. We
saw one schoolhouse in our walk, and listened to the sounds which
issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of
enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils
received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the
Catholic Church. The churches were very picturesque, and their
interior much more showy than the dwelling-houses promised. They were
of stone, for it was ordered, in 1699, that that should be their
material. They had tinned spires, and quaint ornaments. That of Ange
Gardien had a dial on it, with the Middle Age Roman numerals on its
face, and some images in niches on the outside. Probably its
counterpart has existed in Normandy for a thousand years. At the
church of Chateau Richer, which is the next parish to Ange Gardien, we
read, looking over the wall, the inscriptions in the adjacent
churchyard, which began with _Ici git_ or _Repose_, and one over a boy
contained _Priez pour lui_. This answered as well as Pere la Chaise.
We knocked at the door of the cure's house here, when a sleek,
friar-like personage, in his sacerdotal robe, appeared. To our
"Parlez-vous Anglais? " even he answered, "Non, monsieur;" but at last
we made him understand what we wanted. It was to find the ruins of the
old _chateau_. "Ah! oui! oui! " he exclaimed, and, donning his coat,
hastened forth, and conducted us to a small heap of rubbish which we
had already examined. He said that fifteen years before, it was _plus
considerable_. Seeing at that moment three little red birds fly out of
a crevice in the ruins, up into an arbor-vitae tree which grew out of
them, I asked him their names, in such French as I could muster, but
he neither understood me nor ornithology; he only inquired where we
had _appris a parler Francais_; we told him, _dans les Etats-Unis_;
and so we bowed him into his house again. I was surprised to find a
man wearing a black coat, and with apparently no work to do, even in
that part of the world.

The universal salutation from the inhabitants whom we met was _bon
jour_, at the same time touching the hat; with _bon jour_, and
touching your hat, you may go smoothly through all Canada East. A
little boy, meeting us, would remark, "Bon jour, monsieur; le chemin
est mauvais" (Good morning, sir; it is bad walking). Sir Francis Head
says that the immigrant is forward to "appreciate the happiness of
living in a land in which the old country's servile custom of touching
the hat does not exist," but he was thinking of Canada West, of
course. It would, indeed, be a serious bore to be obliged to touch
your hat several times a day. A Yankee has not leisure for it.

We saw peas, and even beans, collected into heaps in the fields. The
former are an important crop here, and, I suppose, are not so much
infested by the weevil as with us. There were plenty of apples, very
fair and sound, by the roadside, but they were so small as to suggest
the origin of the apple in the crab. There was also a small, red fruit
which they called _snells_, and another, also red and very acid, whose
name a little boy wrote for me, "_pinbena_. " It is probably the same
with, or similar to, the _pembina_ of the voyageurs, a species of
viburnum, which, according to Richardson, has given its name to many
of the rivers of Rupert's Land. The forest trees were spruce,
arbor-vitae, firs, birches, beeches, two or three kinds of maple,
basswood, wild cherry, aspens, etc. , but no pitch pines (_Pinus
rigida_). I saw very few, if any, trees which had been set out for
shade or ornament. The water was commonly running streams or springs
in the bank by the roadside, and was excellent. The parishes are
commonly separated by a stream, and frequently the farms. I noticed
that the fields were furrowed or thrown into beds seven or eight feet
wide to dry the soil.

At the Riviere du Sault a la Puce, which, I suppose, means the River
of the Fall of the Flea, was advertised in English, as the sportsmen
are English, "The best Snipe-shooting grounds," over the door of a
small public house. These words being English affected me as if I had
been absent now ten years from my country, and for so long had not
heard the sound of my native language, and every one of them was as
interesting to me as if I had been a snipe-shooter, and they had been
snipes. The prunella, or self-heal, in the grass here, was an old
acquaintance. We frequently saw the inhabitants washing or cooking
for their pigs, and in one place hackling flax by the roadside. It was
pleasant to see these usually domestic operations carried on out of
doors, even in that cold country.

At twilight we reached a bridge over a little river, the boundary
between Chateau Richer and St. Anne, _le premier pont de Ste. Anne_,
and at dark the church of _La Bonne Ste. Anne_. Formerly vessels from
France, when they came in sight of this church, gave "a general
discharge of their artillery," as a sign of joy that they had escaped
all the dangers of the river. Though all the while we had grand views
of the adjacent country far up and down the river, and, for the most
part, when we turned about, of Quebec in the horizon behind us, and we
never beheld it without new surprise and admiration; yet, throughout
our walk, the Great River of Canada on our right hand was the main
feature in the landscape, and this expands so rapidly below the Isle
of Orleans, and creates such a breadth of level horizon above its
waters in that direction, that, looking down the river as we
approached the extremity of that island, the St. Lawrence seemed to be
opening into the ocean, though we were still about three hundred and
twenty-five miles from what can be called its mouth. [2]

When we inquired here for a _maison publique_ we were directed
apparently to that private house where we were most likely to find
entertainment. There were no guide-boards where we walked, because
there was but one road; there were no shops nor signs, because there
were no artisans to speak of, and the people raised their own
provisions; and there were no taverns, because there were no
travelers. We here bespoke lodging and breakfast. They had, as usual,
a large, old-fashioned, two-storied box stove in the middle of the
room, out of which, in due time, there was sure to be forthcoming a
supper, breakfast, or dinner. The lower half held the fire, the upper
the hot air, and as it was a cool Canadian evening, this was a
comforting sight to us. Being four or five feet high it warmed the
whole person as you stood by it. The stove was plainly a very
important article of furniture in Canada, and was not set aside during
the summer. Its size, and the respect which was paid to it, told of
the severe winters which it had seen and prevailed over. The master of
the house, in his long-pointed red woolen cap, had a thoroughly
antique physiognomy of the old Norman stamp. He might have come over
with Jacques Cartier. His was the hardest French to understand of any
we had heard yet, for there was a great difference between one speaker
and another, and this man talked with a pipe in his mouth beside,--a
kind of tobacco French. I asked him what he called his dog. He shouted
_Brock_! (the name of the breed). We like to hear the cat called
_min_, "Min! min! min! " I inquired if we could cross the river here to
the Isle of Orleans, thinking to return that way when we had been to
the falls. He answered, "S'il ne fait pas un trop grand vent" (If
there is not too much wind). They use small boats, or pirogues, and
the waves are often too high for them. He wore, as usual, something
between a moccasin and a boot, which he called _bottes Indiennes_,
Indian boots, and had made himself. The tops were of calf or
sheepskin, and the soles of cowhide turned up like a moccasin. They
were yellow or reddish, the leather never having been tanned nor
colored. The women wore the same. He told us that he had traveled ten
leagues due north into the bush. He had been to the Falls of St. Anne,
and said that they were more beautiful, but not greater, than
Montmorenci, _plus beau, mais non plus grand, que Montmorenci_. As
soon as we had retired, the family commenced their devotions. A little
boy officiated, and for a long time we heard him muttering over his
prayers.

In the morning, after a breakfast of tea, maple-sugar, bread and
butter, and what I suppose is called _potage_ (potatoes and meat
boiled with flour), the universal dish as we found, perhaps the
national one, I ran over to the Church of La Bonne Ste. Anne, whose
matin bell we had heard, it being Sunday morning. Our book said that
this church had "long been an object of interest, from the miraculous
cures said to have been wrought on visitors to the shrine. " There was
a profusion of gilding, and I counted more than twenty-five crutches
suspended on the walls, some for grown persons, some for children,
which it was to be inferred so many sick had been able to dispense
with; but they looked as if they had been made to order by the
carpenter who made the church. There were one or two villagers at
their devotions at that early hour, who did not look up, but when they
had sat a long time with their little book before the picture of one
saint, went to another. Our whole walk was through a thoroughly
Catholic country, and there was no trace of any other religion. I
doubt if there are any more simple and unsophisticated Catholics
anywhere. Emery de Caen, Champlain's contemporary, told the Huguenot
sailors that "Monseigneur the Duke de Ventadour (Viceroy) did not wish
that they should sing psalms in the Great River. "

On our way to the falls, we met the habitans coming to the Church of
La Bonne Ste. Anne, walking or riding in charettes by families. I
remarked that they were universally of small stature. The toll-man at
the bridge over the St. Anne was the first man we had chanced to meet,
since we left Quebec, who could speak a word of English. How good
French the inhabitants of this part of Canada speak, I am not
competent to say; I only know that it is not made impure by being
mixed with English. I do not know why it should not be as good as is
spoken in Normandy. Charlevoix, who was here a hundred years ago,
observes, "The French language is nowhere spoken with greater purity,
there being no accent perceptible;" and Potherie said "they had no
dialect, which, indeed, is generally lost in a colony. "

The falls, which we were in search of, are three miles up the St.
Anne. We followed for a short distance a foot-path up the east bank of
this river, through handsome sugar maple and arbor-vitae groves. Having
lost the path which led to a house where we were to get further
directions, we dashed at once into the woods, steering by guess and by
compass, climbing directly through woods a steep hill, or mountain,
five or six hundred feet high, which was, in fact, only the bank of
the St. Lawrence. Beyond this we by good luck fell into another path,
and following this or a branch of it, at our discretion, through a
forest consisting of large white pines,--the first we had seen in our
walk,--we at length heard the roar of falling water, and came out at
the head of the Falls of St. Anne. We had descended into a ravine or
cleft in the mountain, whose walls rose still a hundred feet above us,
though we were near its top, and we now stood on a very rocky shore,
where the water had lately flowed a dozen feet higher, as appeared by
the stones and driftwood, and large birches twisted and splintered as
a farmer twists a withe. Here the river, one or two hundred feet wide,
came flowing rapidly over a rocky bed out of that interesting
wilderness which stretches toward Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits.
Ha-ha Bay, on the Saguenay, was about one hundred miles north of where
we stood. Looking on the map, I find that the first country on the
north which bears a name is that part of Rupert's Land called East
Main. This river, called after the holy Anne, flowing from such a
direction, here tumbled over a precipice, at present by three
channels, how far down I do not know, but far enough for all our
purposes, and to as good a distance as if twice as far. It matters
little whether you call it one, or two, or three hundred feet; at any
rate, it was a sufficient water privilege for us. I crossed the
principal channel directly over the verge of the fall, where it was
contracted to about fifteen feet in width, by a dead tree which had
been dropped across and secured in a cleft of the opposite rock, and
a smaller one a few feet higher, which served for a hand-rail. This
bridge was rotten as well as small and slippery, being stripped of
bark, and I was obliged to seize a moment to pass when the falling
water did not surge over it, and midway, though at the expense of wet
feet, I looked down probably more than a hundred feet, into the mist
and foam below. This gave me the freedom of an island of precipitous
rock by which I descended as by giant steps,--the rock being composed
of large cubical masses, clothed with delicate close-hugging lichens
of various colors, kept fresh and bright by the moisture,--till I
viewed the first fall from the front, and looked down still deeper to
where the second and third channels fell into a remarkably large
circular basin worn in the stone. The falling water seemed to jar the
very rocks, and the noise to be ever increasing. The vista down-stream
was through a narrow and deep cleft in the mountain, all white suds at
the bottom; but a sudden angle in this gorge prevented my seeing
through to the bottom of the fall. Returning to the shore, I made my
way down-stream through the forest to see how far the fall extended,
and how the river came out of that adventure. It was to clamber along
the side of a precipitous mountain of loose mossy rocks, covered with
a damp primitive forest, and terminating at the bottom in an abrupt
precipice over the stream. This was the east side of the fall. At
length, after a quarter of a mile, I got down to still water, and, on
looking up through the winding gorge, I could just see to the foot of
the fall which I had before examined; while from the opposite side of
the stream, here much contracted, rose a perpendicular wall, I will
not venture to say how many hundred feet, but only that it was the
highest perpendicular wall of bare rock that I ever saw. In front of
me tumbled in from the summit of the cliff a tributary stream, making
a beautiful cascade, which was a remarkable fall in itself, and there
was a cleft in this precipice, apparently four or five feet wide,
perfectly straight up and down from top to bottom, which, from its
cavernous depth and darkness, appeared merely as _a black streak_.
This precipice is not sloped, nor is the material soft and crumbling
slate as at Montmorenci, but it rises perpendicular, like the side of
a mountain fortress, and is cracked into vast cubical masses of gray
and black rock shining with moisture, as if it were the ruin of an
ancient wall built by Titans. Birches, spruces, mountain-ashes with
their bright red berries, arbor-vitaes, white pines, alders, etc. ,
overhung this chasm on the very verge of the cliff and in the
crevices, and here and there were buttresses of rock supporting trees
part way down, yet so as to enhance, not injure, the effect of the
bare rock.