I heard one
suddenly
coming to the
rear, exclaim, "Michael Donouy, take his name!
rear, exclaim, "Michael Donouy, take his name!
Thoreau - Excursions and Poems
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Title: Excursions and Poems
The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume V (of 20)
Author: Henry David Thoreau
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The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
In Twenty Volumes
VOLUME V
Manuscript Edition
Limited to Six Hundred Copies
Number ----
[Illustration: _Apple Blossoms (page 294)_]
[Illustration: _Wild Apple Tree_]
The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
EXCURSIONS AND POEMS
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin and Company
MDCCCCVI
Copyright 1865 and 1866 by Ticknor and Fields
Copyright 1893 and 1906 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE xi
EXCURSIONS
A YANKEE IN CANADA
I. CONCORD TO MONTREAL 3
II. QUEBEC AND MONTMORENCI 20
III. ST. ANNE 40
IV. THE WALLS OF QUEBEC 69
V. THE SCENERY OF QUEBEC; AND THE
RIVER ST. LAWRENCE 85
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 103
A WALK TO WACHUSETT 133
THE LANDLORD 153
A WINTER WALK 163
THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES 184
WALKING 205
AUTUMNAL TINTS 249
WILD APPLES 290
NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT 323
TRANSLATIONS
THE PROMETHEUS BOUND OF AESCHYLUS 337
TRANSLATIONS FROM PINDAR 375
POEMS
NATURE 395
INSPIRATION 396
THE AURORA OF GUIDO 399
TO THE MAIDEN IN THE EAST 400
TO MY BROTHER 403
GREECE 404
THE FUNERAL BELL 405
THE MOON 406
THE FALL OF THE LEAF 407
THE THAW 409
A WINTER SCENE 410
TO A STRAY FOWL 411
POVERTY 412
PILGRIMS 413
THE DEPARTURE 414
INDEPENDENCE 415
DING DONG 417
OMNIPRESENCE 417
INSPIRATION (QUATRAIN) 418
MISSION 418
DELAY 418
PRAYER 418
A LIST OF THE POEMS AND BITS OF VERSE
SCATTERED AMONG THOREAU'S PROSE
WRITINGS EXCLUSIVE OF THE JOURNAL 420
INDEX 423
ILLUSTRATIONS
APPLE BLOSSOMS, _Carbon photograph (page 294)_ _Frontispiece_
WILD APPLE TREE, _Colored plate_
MONTREAL FROM MOUNT ROYAL 98
MOUNT WACHUSETT FROM THE WAYLAND HILLS 134
THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD 214
FALLEN LEAVES 270
WILD APPLE TREE 300
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The "Excursions" of the present volume follow the arrangement of the
volume bearing that title in the Riverside Edition, which differed
somewhat as to contents from the "Excursions" collected by Thoreau's
sister after his death, and published in 1863 by Messrs. Ticknor &
Fields. The Biographical Sketch by Emerson which prefaced the latter
appears in the first volume of the present edition.
"A Yankee in Canada," which here, as in the Riverside Edition, is made
the first of the series of Excursions, was formerly published in a
volume with "Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers. " Thoreau made this
excursion to Canada with his friend Ellery Channing, and sent his
narrative to Mr. Greeley, who wrote him regarding it, March 18, 1852:
"I shall get you some money for the articles you sent me, though not
immediately. As to your long account of a Canadian tour, I don't know.
It looks unmanageable. Can't you cut it into three or four, and omit
all that relates to time? The cities are described to death, but I
know you are at home with Nature, and that _she_ rarely and slowly
changes. Break this up, if you can, and I will try to have it
swallowed and digested. " Thoreau appears to have taken Greeley's
advice, and the narrative was divided into chapters. But after it had
been begun in _Putnam's_ in January, 1853, where it was entitled
"Excursion to Canada," the author and the editor, who appears from
the following letter to have been Mr. G. W. Curtis, disagreed
regarding the expediency of including certain passages, and Thoreau
withdrew all after the third chapter. The letter is as follows:--
NEW YORK, January 2, 1853.
FRIEND THOREAU. . . . I am sorry you and C. cannot agree so as to
have your whole MS. printed. It will be worth nothing
elsewhere after having partly appeared in _Putnam's_. I think
it is a mistake to conceal the authorship of the several
articles, making them all (so to speak) _editorial_; but _if_
that is done, don't you see that the elimination of very
flagrant heresies (like your defiant Pantheism) becomes a
necessity? If you had withdrawn your MS. on account of the
abominable misprints in the first number, your ground would
have been far more tenable. However, do what you will. Yours,
HORACE GREELEY.
"Natural History of Massachusetts" was contributed to _The Dial_,
July, 1842, nominally as a review of some recent State reports. "A
Walk to Wachusett" was printed in _The Boston Miscellany_, 1843. Mr.
Sanborn, in his volume on Thoreau, prints a very interesting letter
written by Margaret Fuller in 1841, in criticism of the verses which
stand near the beginning of the paper, offered at that time for
publication in _The Dial_. "The Landlord" was printed in _The
Democratic Review_ for October, 1843. "A Winter Walk" appeared in _The
Dial_ in the same month and year. Emerson in a letter to Thoreau,
September 8, 1843, says: "I mean to send the 'Winter's Walk' to the
printer to-morrow for _The Dial_. I had some hesitation about it,
notwithstanding its faithful observation and its fine sketches of the
pickerel-fisher and of the woodchopper, on account of _mannerism_, an
old charge of mine,--as if, by attention, one could get the trick of
the rhetoric; for example, to call a cold place sultry, a solitude
public, a wilderness _domestic_ (a favorite word), and in the woods to
insult over cities, armies, etc. By pretty free omissions, however, I
have removed my principal objections. " The address "The Succession of
Forest Trees" was printed first in _The New York Tribune_, October 6,
1860, and was perhaps the latest of his writings which Thoreau saw in
print.
After his death the interest which had already been growing was
quickened by the successive publication in _The Atlantic Monthly_ of
"Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples" in October and November, 1862, and
"Night and Moonlight" November, 1863. The last named appeared just
before the publication of the volume "Excursions," which collected the
several papers.
"May Days" and "Days and Nights in Concord," which were printed in the
Riverside Edition, are now omitted as consisting merely of extracts
from Thoreau's Journal and therefore superseded by the publication of
the latter in its complete form.
* * * * *
A few of Thoreau's poems, taken from the "Week" and elsewhere, were
added by Mr. Emerson to the volume entitled "Letters to Various
Persons" which he brought out in 1865, but it was not till the volume
of "Miscellanies" was issued in the Riverside Edition that the
otherwise unpublished verse of his that had appeared in _The Dial_ was
gathered into a single volume. Besides the _Dial_ contributions, the
Riverside "Miscellanies" contained a few poems that first found
publication in Mr. Sanborn's Life of Thoreau. But the collection was
not intended to be complete.
Many of Thoreau's poems, including his translations from the
Anacreontics, are imbedded in the "Week," "Walden," and "Excursions,"
and it seemed best not to reproduce them in another volume. In 1895,
shortly after the publication of the Riverside Thoreau, Mr. Henry S.
Salt and Mr. Frank B. Sanborn brought out a book entitled "Poems of
Nature by Henry David Thoreau," in which were collected "perhaps two
thirds of [the poems] which Thoreau preserved. " "Many of them," says
the Introduction to that volume, "were printed by him, in whole or in
part, among his early contributions to Emerson's _Dial_, or in his own
two volumes, the _Week_ and _Walden_. . . . Others were given to Mr.
Sanborn for publication, by Sophia Thoreau, the year after her
brother's death (several appeared in the _Boston Commonwealth_ in
1863); or have been furnished from time to time by Mr. Blake, his
literary executor. " This volume contained a number of poems which had
not before appeared in any of Thoreau's published books. Such poems
are now added to those of the Riverside Edition. The present
collection, however, no more than its predecessors pretends to
completeness. It includes only those of Thoreau's poems which have
been previously published and which are not contained in other volumes
of this series. A list of the poems and scattered bits of verse
printed in the other volumes will be found in an Appendix. The Journal
also contains, especially in the early part, a number of heretofore
unpublished poems which it seems best to retain in their original
setting.
EXCURSIONS
A YANKEE IN CANADA
New England is by some affirmed to be an island, bounded on the north
with the River Canada (so called from Monsieur Cane). --JOSSELYN'S
RARITIES.
And still older, in Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan," published in
1632, it is said, on page 97, "From this Lake [Erocoise] Northwards is
derived the famous River of Canada, so named, of Monsier de Cane, a
French Lord, who first planted a colony of French in America. "
A YANKEE IN CANADA
CHAPTER I
CONCORD TO MONTREAL
I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen
much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold. I left Concord,
Massachusetts, Wednesday morning, September 25th, 1850, for Quebec.
Fare, seven dollars there and back; distance from Boston, five hundred
and ten miles; being obliged to leave Montreal on the return as soon
as Friday, October 4th, or within ten days. I will not stop to tell
the reader the names of my fellow-travelers; there were said to be
fifteen hundred of them. I wished only to be set down in Canada, and
take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an
afternoon.
The country was new to me beyond Fitchburg. In Ashburnham and
afterward, as we were whirled rapidly along, I noticed the woodbine
(_Ampelopsis quinquefolia_), its leaves now changed, for the most part
on dead trees, draping them like a red scarf. It was a little
exciting, suggesting bloodshed, or at least a military life, like an
epaulet or sash, as if it were dyed with the blood of the trees whose
wounds it was inadequate to stanch. For now the bloody autumn was
come, and an Indian warfare was waged through the forest. These
military trees appeared very numerous, for our rapid progress
connected those that were even some miles apart. Does the woodbine
prefer the elm? The first view of Monadnock was obtained five or six
miles this side of Fitzwilliam, but nearest and best at Troy and
beyond. Then there were the Troy cuts and embankments. Keene Street
strikes the traveler favorably, it is so wide, level, straight, and
long. I have heard one of my relatives, who was born and bred there,
say that you could see a chicken run across it a mile off. I have also
been told that when this town was settled they laid out a street four
rods wide, but at a subsequent meeting of the proprietors one rose and
remarked, "We have plenty of land, why not make the street eight rods
wide? " and so they voted that it should be eight rods wide, and the
town is known far and near for its handsome street. It was a cheap way
of securing comfort, as well as fame, and I wish that all new towns
would take pattern from this. It is best to lay our plans widely in
youth, for then land is cheap, and it is but too easy to contract our
views afterward. Youths so laid out, with broad avenues and parks,
that they may make handsome and liberal old men! Show me a youth whose
mind is like some Washington city of magnificent distances, prepared
for the most remotely successful and glorious life after all, when
those spaces shall be built over and the idea of the founder be
realized. I trust that every New England boy will begin by laying out
a Keene Street through his head, eight rods wide. I know one such
Washington city of a man, whose lots as yet are only surveyed and
staked out, and, except a cluster of shanties here and there, only the
Capitol stands there for all structures, and any day you may see from
afar his princely idea borne coachwise along the spacious but yet
empty avenues. Keene is built on a remarkably large and level
interval, like the bed of a lake, and the surrounding hills, which are
remote from its street, must afford some good walks. The scenery of
mountain towns is commonly too much crowded. A town which is built on
a plain of some extent, with an open horizon, and surrounded by hills
at a distance, affords the best walks and views.
As we travel northwest up the country, sugar maples, beeches, birches,
hemlocks, spruce, butternuts, and ash trees prevail more and more. To
the rapid traveler the number of elms in a town is the measure of its
civility. One man in the cars has a bottle full of some liquor. The
whole company smile whenever it is exhibited. I find no difficulty in
containing myself. The Westmoreland country looked attractive. I heard
a passenger giving the very obvious derivation of this name,
Westmore-land, as if it were purely American, and he had made a
discovery; but I thought of "my cousin Westmoreland" in England. Every
one will remember the approach to Bellows Falls, under a high cliff
which rises from the Connecticut. I was disappointed in the size of
the river here; it appeared shrunk to a mere mountain-stream. The
water was evidently very low. The rivers which we had crossed this
forenoon possessed more of the character of mountain-streams than
those in the vicinity of Concord, and I was surprised to see
everywhere traces of recent freshets, which had carried away bridges
and injured the railroad, though I had heard nothing of it. In
Ludlow, Mount Holly, and beyond, there is interesting mountain
scenery, not rugged and stupendous, but such as you could easily
ramble over,--long, narrow, mountain vales through which to see the
horizon. You are in the midst of the Green Mountains. A few more
elevated blue peaks are seen from the neighborhood of Mount Holly;
perhaps Killington Peak is one. Sometimes, as on the Western Railroad,
you are whirled over mountainous embankments, from which the scared
horses in the valleys appear diminished to hounds. All the hills
blush; I think that autumn must be the best season to journey over
even the _Green_ Mountains. You frequently exclaim to yourself, What
_red_ maples! The sugar maple is not so red. You see some of the
latter with rosy spots or cheeks only, blushing on one side like
fruit, while all the rest of the tree is green, proving either some
partiality in the light or frosts or some prematurity in particular
branches. Tall and slender ash trees, whose foliage is turned to a
dark mulberry color, are frequent. The butternut, which is a
remarkably spreading tree, is turned completely yellow, thus proving
its relation to the hickories. I was also struck by the bright yellow
tints of the yellow birch. The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean
ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their
branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from
the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that
you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy
canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.
As you approach Lake Champlain you begin to see the New York
mountains. The first view of the lake at Vergennes is impressive, but
rather from association than from any peculiarity in the scenery. It
lies there so small (not appearing in that proportion to the width of
the State that it does on the map), but beautifully quiet, like a
picture of the Lake of Lucerne on a music-box, where you trace the
name of Lucerne among the foliage; far more ideal than ever it looked
on the map. It does not say, "Here I am, Lake Champlain," as the
conductor might for it, but having studied the geography thirty years,
you crossed over a hill one afternoon and beheld it. But it is only a
glimpse that you get here. At Burlington you rush to a wharf and go on
board a steamboat, two hundred and thirty-two miles from Boston. We
left Concord at twenty minutes before eight in the morning, and were
in Burlington about six at night, but too late to see the lake. We got
our first fair view of the lake at dawn, just before reaching
Plattsburg, and saw blue ranges of mountains on either hand, in New
York and in Vermont, the former especially grand. A few white
schooners, like gulls, were seen in the distance, for it is not waste
and solitary like a lake in Tartary; but it was such a view as leaves
not much to be said; indeed, I have postponed Lake Champlain to
another day.
The oldest reference to these waters that I have yet seen is in the
account of Cartier's discovery and exploration of the St. Lawrence in
1535. Samuel Champlain actually discovered and paddled up the lake in
July, 1609, eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth,
accompanying a war-party of the Canadian Indians against the
Iroquois. He describes the islands in it as not inhabited, although
they are pleasant,--on account of the continual wars of the Indians,
in consequence of which they withdraw from the rivers and lakes into
the depths of the land, that they may not be surprised. "Continuing
our course," says he, "in this lake, on the western side, viewing the
country, I saw on the eastern side very high mountains, where there
was snow on the summit. I inquired of the savages if those places were
inhabited. They replied that they were, and that they were Iroquois,
and that in those places there were beautiful valleys and plains
fertile in corn, such as I have eaten in this country, with an
infinity of other fruits. " This is the earliest account of what is now
Vermont.
The number of French-Canadian gentlemen and ladies among the
passengers, and the sound of the French language, advertised us by
this time that we were being whirled towards some foreign vortex. And
now we have left Rouse's Point, and entered the Sorel River, and
passed the invisible barrier between the States and Canada. The shores
of the Sorel, Richelieu, or St. John's River are flat and reedy, where
I had expected something more rough and mountainous for a natural
boundary between two nations. Yet I saw a difference at once, in the
few huts, in the pirogues on the shore, and as it were, in the shore
itself. This was an interesting scenery to me, and the very reeds or
rushes in the shallow water and the tree-tops in the swamps have left
a pleasing impression. We had still a distant view behind us of two or
three blue mountains in Vermont and New York. About nine o'clock in
the forenoon we reached St. John's, an old frontier post three hundred
and six miles from Boston, and twenty-four from Montreal. We now
discovered that we were in a foreign country, in a station-house of
another nation. This building was a barn-like structure, looking as if
it were the work of the villagers combined, like a log house in a new
settlement. My attention was caught by the double advertisements in
French and English fastened to its posts, by the formality of the
English, and the covert or open reference to their queen and the
British lion. No gentlemanly conductor appeared, none whom you would
know to be the conductor by his dress and demeanor; but ere long we
began to see here and there a solid, red-faced, burly-looking
Englishman, a little pursy perhaps, who made us ashamed of ourselves
and our thin and nervous countrymen,--a grandfatherly personage, at
home in his greatcoat, who looked as if he might be a stage
proprietor, certainly a railroad director, and knew, or had a right to
know, when the cars did start. Then there were two or three
pale-faced, black-eyed, loquacious Canadian-French gentlemen there,
shrugging their shoulders; pitted as if they had all had the
small-pox. In the meanwhile some soldiers, redcoats, belonging to the
barracks near by, were turned out to be drilled. At every important
point in our route the soldiers showed themselves ready for us; though
they were evidently rather raw recruits here, they manoeuvred far
better than our soldiers; yet, as usual, I heard some Yankees talk as
if they were no great shakes, and they had seen the Acton Blues
manoeuvre as well. The officers spoke sharply to them, and appeared
to be doing their part thoroughly. I heard one suddenly coming to the
rear, exclaim, "Michael Donouy, take his name! " though I could not see
what the latter did or omitted to do. It was whispered that Michael
Donouy would have to suffer for that. I heard some of our party
discussing the possibility of their driving these troops off the field
with their umbrellas. I thought that the Yankee, though undisciplined,
had this advantage at least, that he especially is a man who,
everywhere and under all circumstances, is fully resolved to better
his condition essentially, and therefore he could afford to be beaten
at first; while the virtue of the Irishman, and to a great extent the
Englishman, consists in merely maintaining his ground or condition.
The Canadians here, a rather poor-looking race, clad in gray homespun,
which gave them the appearance of being covered with dust, were riding
about in caleches and small one-horse carts called charettes. The
Yankees assumed that all the riders were racing, or at least
exhibiting the paces of their horses, and saluted them accordingly. We
saw but little of the village here, for nobody could tell us when the
cars would start; that was kept a profound secret, perhaps for
political reasons; and therefore we were tied to our seats. The
inhabitants of St. John's and vicinity are described by an English
traveler as "singularly unprepossessing," and before completing his
period he adds, "besides, they are generally very much disaffected to
the British crown. " I suspect that that "besides" should have been a
because.
At length, about noon, the cars began to roll towards La Prairie. The
whole distance of fifteen miles was over a remarkably level country,
resembling a Western prairie, with the mountains about Chambly visible
in the northeast. This novel but monotonous scenery was exciting. At
La Prairie we first took notice of the tinned roofs, but above all of
the St. Lawrence, which looked like a lake; in fact it is considerably
expanded here; it was nine miles across diagonally to Montreal. Mount
Royal in the rear of the city, and the island of St. Helen's opposite
to it, were now conspicuous. We could also see the Sault St. Louis
about five miles up the river, and the Sault Norman still farther
eastward.
I heard one suddenly coming to the
rear, exclaim, "Michael Donouy, take his name! " though I could not see
what the latter did or omitted to do. It was whispered that Michael
Donouy would have to suffer for that. I heard some of our party
discussing the possibility of their driving these troops off the field
with their umbrellas. I thought that the Yankee, though undisciplined,
had this advantage at least, that he especially is a man who,
everywhere and under all circumstances, is fully resolved to better
his condition essentially, and therefore he could afford to be beaten
at first; while the virtue of the Irishman, and to a great extent the
Englishman, consists in merely maintaining his ground or condition.
The Canadians here, a rather poor-looking race, clad in gray homespun,
which gave them the appearance of being covered with dust, were riding
about in caleches and small one-horse carts called charettes. The
Yankees assumed that all the riders were racing, or at least
exhibiting the paces of their horses, and saluted them accordingly. We
saw but little of the village here, for nobody could tell us when the
cars would start; that was kept a profound secret, perhaps for
political reasons; and therefore we were tied to our seats. The
inhabitants of St. John's and vicinity are described by an English
traveler as "singularly unprepossessing," and before completing his
period he adds, "besides, they are generally very much disaffected to
the British crown. " I suspect that that "besides" should have been a
because.
At length, about noon, the cars began to roll towards La Prairie. The
whole distance of fifteen miles was over a remarkably level country,
resembling a Western prairie, with the mountains about Chambly visible
in the northeast. This novel but monotonous scenery was exciting. At
La Prairie we first took notice of the tinned roofs, but above all of
the St. Lawrence, which looked like a lake; in fact it is considerably
expanded here; it was nine miles across diagonally to Montreal. Mount
Royal in the rear of the city, and the island of St. Helen's opposite
to it, were now conspicuous. We could also see the Sault St. Louis
about five miles up the river, and the Sault Norman still farther
eastward. The former are described as the most considerable rapids in
the St. Lawrence; but we could see merely a gleam of light there as
from a cobweb in the sun. Soon the city of Montreal was discovered
with its tin roofs shining afar. Their reflections fell on the eye
like a clash of cymbals on the ear. Above all the church of Notre Dame
was conspicuous, and anon the Bonsecours market-house, occupying a
commanding position on the quay, in the rear of the shipping. This
city makes the more favorable impression from being approached by
water, and also being built of stone, a gray limestone found on the
island. Here, after traveling directly inland the whole breadth of New
England, we had struck upon a city's harbor,--it made on me the
impression of a seaport,--to which ships of six hundred tons can
ascend, and where vessels drawing fifteen feet lie close to the wharf,
five hundred and forty miles from the Gulf, the St. Lawrence being
here two miles wide. There was a great crowd assembled on the
ferry-boat wharf and on the quay to receive the Yankees, and flags of
all colors were streaming from the vessels to celebrate their arrival.
When the gun was fired, the gentry hurrahed again and again, and then
the Canadian caleche-drivers, who were most interested in the matter,
and who, I perceived, were separated from the former by a fence,
hurrahed their welcome; first the broadcloth, then the homespun.
It was early in the afternoon when we stepped ashore. With a single
companion, I soon found my way to the church of Notre Dame. I saw that
it was of great size and signified something. It is said to be the
largest ecclesiastical structure in North America, and can seat ten
thousand. It is two hundred and fifty-five and a half feet long, and
the groined ceiling is eighty feet above your head. The Catholic are
the only churches which I have seen worth remembering, which are not
almost wholly profane. I do not speak only of the rich and splendid
like this, but of the humblest of them as well. Coming from the
hurrahing mob and the rattling carriages, we pushed aside the listed
door of this church, and found ourselves instantly in an atmosphere
which might be sacred to thought and religion, if one had any. There
sat one or two women who had stolen a moment from the concerns of the
day, as they were passing; but, if there had been fifty people there,
it would still have been the most solitary place imaginable. They did
not look up at us, nor did one regard another. We walked softly down
the broad aisle with our hats in our hands. Presently came in a troop
of Canadians, in their homespun, who had come to the city in the boat
with us, and one and all kneeled down in the aisle before the high
altar to their devotions, somewhat awkwardly, as cattle prepare to lie
down, and there we left them. As if you were to catch some farmer's
sons from Marlborough, come to cattle-show, silently kneeling in
Concord meeting-house some Wednesday! Would there not soon be a mob
peeping in at the windows? It is true, these Roman Catholics, priests
and all, impress me as a people who have fallen far behind the
significance of their symbols. It is as if an ox had strayed into a
church and were trying to bethink himself. Nevertheless, they are
capable of reverence; but we Yankees are a people in whom this
sentiment has nearly died out, and in this respect we cannot bethink
ourselves even as oxen. I did not mind the pictures nor the candles,
whether tallow or tin. Those of the former which I looked at appeared
tawdry. It matters little to me whether the pictures are by a neophyte
of the Algonquin or the Italian tribe. But I was impressed by the
quiet, religious atmosphere of the place. It was a great cave in the
midst of a city; and what were the altars and the tinsel but the
sparkling stalactites, into which you entered in a moment, and where
the still atmosphere and the sombre light disposed to serious and
profitable thought? Such a cave at hand, which you can enter any day,
is worth a thousand of our churches which are open only Sundays,
hardly long enough for an airing, and then filled with a bustling
congregation,--a church where the priest is the least part, where you
do your own preaching, where the universe preaches to you and can be
heard. I am not sure but this Catholic religion would be an admirable
one if the priest were quite omitted. I think that I might go to
church myself some Monday, if I lived in a city where there was such a
one to go to. In Concord, to be sure, we do not need such. Our forests
are such a church, far grander and more sacred. We dare not leave
_our_ meeting-houses open for fear they would be profaned. Such a
cave, such a shrine, in one of our groves, for instance, how long
would it be respected? for what purposes would it be entered, by such
baboons as we are? I think of its value not only to religion, but to
philosophy and to poetry; besides a reading-room, to have a
thinking-room in every city! Perchance the time will come when every
house even will have not only its sleeping-rooms, and dining-room, and
talking-room or parlor, but its thinking-room also, and the architects
will put it into their plans. Let it be furnished and ornamented with
whatever conduces to serious and creative thought. I should not object
to the holy water, or any other simple symbol, if it were consecrated
by the imagination of the worshipers.
I heard that some Yankees bet that the candles were not wax, but tin.
A European assured them that they were wax; but, inquiring of the
sexton, he was surprised to learn that they were tin filled with oil.
The church was too poor to afford wax. As for the Protestant churches,
here or elsewhere, they did not interest me, for it is only as caves
that churches interest me at all, and in that respect they were
inferior.
Montreal makes the impression of a larger city than you had expected
to find, though you may have heard that it contains nearly sixty
thousand inhabitants. In the newer parts, it appeared to be growing
fast like a small New York, and to be considerably Americanized. The
names of the squares reminded you of Paris,--the Champ de Mars, the
Place d'Armes, and others,--and you felt as if a French revolution
might break out any moment. Glimpses of Mount Royal rising behind the
town, and the names of some streets in that direction, make one think
of Edinburgh. That hill sets off this city wonderfully. I inquired at
a principal bookstore for books published in Montreal. They said that
there were none but school-books and the like; they got their books
from the States. From time to time we met a priest in the streets, for
they are distinguished by their dress, like the _civil_ police. Like
clergymen generally, with or without the gown, they made on us the
impression of effeminacy. We also met some Sisters of Charity, dressed
in black, with Shaker-shaped black bonnets and crosses, and cadaverous
faces, who looked as if they had almost cried their eyes out, their
complexions parboiled with scalding tears; insulting the daylight by
their presence, having taken an oath not to smile. By cadaverous I
mean that their faces were like the faces of those who have been dead
and buried for a year, and then untombed, with the life's grief upon
them, and yet, for some unaccountable reason, the process of decay
arrested.
"Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves him
With the day's shame upon him. "
They waited demurely on the sidewalk while a truck laden with raisins
was driven in at the seminary of St. Sulpice, never once lifting their
eyes from the ground.
The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward,
and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the soldiers to
the laborers in an African ant-hill. The inhabitants evidently rely on
them in a great measure for music and entertainment. You would meet
with them pacing back and forth before some guard-house or
passage-way, guarding, regarding, and disregarding all kinds of law by
turns, apparently for the sake of the discipline to themselves, and
not because it was important to exclude anybody from entering that
way. They reminded me of the men who are paid for piling up bricks and
then throwing them down again. On every prominent ledge you could see
England's hands holding the Canadas, and I judged by the redness of
her knuckles that she would soon have to let go. In the rear of such a
guard-house, in a large graveled square or parade ground, called the
Champ de Mars, we saw a large body of soldiers being drilled, we being
as yet the only spectators. But they did not appear to notice us any
more than the devotees in the church, but were seemingly as
indifferent to fewness of spectators as the phenomena of nature are,
whatever they might have been thinking under their helmets of the
Yankees that were to come. Each man wore white kid gloves. It was one
of the most interesting sights which I saw in Canada. The problem
appeared to be how to smooth down all individual protuberances or
idiosyncrasies, and make a thousand men move as one man, animated by
one central will; and there was some approach to success. They obeyed
the signals of a commander who stood at a great distance, wand in
hand; and the precision, and promptness, and harmony of their
movements could not easily have been matched. The harmony was far more
remarkable than that of any choir or band, and obtained, no doubt, at
a greater cost. They made on me the impression, not of many
individuals, but of one vast centipede of a man, good for all sorts of
pulling down; and why not then for some kinds of building up? If men
could combine thus earnestly, and patiently, and harmoniously to some
really worthy end, what might they not accomplish? They now put their
hands, and partially perchance their heads together, and the result is
that they are the imperfect tools of an imperfect and tyrannical
government. But if they could put their hands and heads and hearts and
all together, such a cooperation and harmony would be the very end and
success for which government now exists in vain,--a government, as it
were, not only with tools, but stock to trade with.
I was obliged to frame some sentences that sounded like French in
order to deal with the market-women, who, for the most part, cannot
speak English. According to the guidebook the relative population of
this city stands nearly thus: two fifths are French-Canadian; nearly
one fifth British-Canadian; one and a half fifths English, Irish, and
Scotch; somewhat less than one half fifth Germans, United States
people, and others. I saw nothing like pie for sale, and no good cake
to put in my bundle, such as you can easily find in our towns, but
plenty of fair-looking apples, for which Montreal Island is
celebrated, and also pears cheaper and I thought better than ours, and
peaches, which, though they were probably brought from the South, were
as cheap as they commonly are with us. So imperative is the law of
demand and supply that, as I have been told, the market of Montreal is
sometimes supplied with green apples from the State of New York some
weeks even before they are ripe in the latter place. I saw here the
spruce wax which the Canadians chew, done up in little silvered
papers, a penny a roll; also a small and shriveled fruit which they
called _cerises_, mixed with many little stems, somewhat like raisins,
but I soon returned what I had bought, finding them rather insipid,
only putting a sample in my pocket. Since my return, I find on
comparison that it is the fruit of the sweet viburnum (_Viburnum
Lentago_), which with us rarely holds on till it is ripe.
I stood on the deck of the steamer John Munn, late in the afternoon,
when the second and third ferry-boats arrived from La Prairie,
bringing the remainder of the Yankees. I never saw so many caleches,
cabs, charettes, and similar vehicles collected before, and doubt if
New York could easily furnish more. The handsome and substantial stone
quay which stretches a mile along the riverside and protects the
street from the ice was thronged with the citizens who had turned out
on foot and in carriages to welcome or to behold the Yankees. It was
interesting to see the caleche-drivers dash up and down the slope of
the quay with their active little horses. They drive much faster than
in our cities. I have been told that some of them come nine miles into
the city every morning and return every night, without changing their
horses during the day. In the midst of the crowd of carts, I observed
one deep one loaded with sheep with their legs tied together, and
their bodies piled one upon another, as if the driver had forgotten
that they were sheep and not yet mutton,--a sight, I trust, peculiar
to Canada, though I fear that it is not.
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.
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Title: Excursions and Poems
The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume V (of 20)
Author: Henry David Thoreau
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The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
In Twenty Volumes
VOLUME V
Manuscript Edition
Limited to Six Hundred Copies
Number ----
[Illustration: _Apple Blossoms (page 294)_]
[Illustration: _Wild Apple Tree_]
The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
EXCURSIONS AND POEMS
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin and Company
MDCCCCVI
Copyright 1865 and 1866 by Ticknor and Fields
Copyright 1893 and 1906 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE xi
EXCURSIONS
A YANKEE IN CANADA
I. CONCORD TO MONTREAL 3
II. QUEBEC AND MONTMORENCI 20
III. ST. ANNE 40
IV. THE WALLS OF QUEBEC 69
V. THE SCENERY OF QUEBEC; AND THE
RIVER ST. LAWRENCE 85
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 103
A WALK TO WACHUSETT 133
THE LANDLORD 153
A WINTER WALK 163
THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES 184
WALKING 205
AUTUMNAL TINTS 249
WILD APPLES 290
NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT 323
TRANSLATIONS
THE PROMETHEUS BOUND OF AESCHYLUS 337
TRANSLATIONS FROM PINDAR 375
POEMS
NATURE 395
INSPIRATION 396
THE AURORA OF GUIDO 399
TO THE MAIDEN IN THE EAST 400
TO MY BROTHER 403
GREECE 404
THE FUNERAL BELL 405
THE MOON 406
THE FALL OF THE LEAF 407
THE THAW 409
A WINTER SCENE 410
TO A STRAY FOWL 411
POVERTY 412
PILGRIMS 413
THE DEPARTURE 414
INDEPENDENCE 415
DING DONG 417
OMNIPRESENCE 417
INSPIRATION (QUATRAIN) 418
MISSION 418
DELAY 418
PRAYER 418
A LIST OF THE POEMS AND BITS OF VERSE
SCATTERED AMONG THOREAU'S PROSE
WRITINGS EXCLUSIVE OF THE JOURNAL 420
INDEX 423
ILLUSTRATIONS
APPLE BLOSSOMS, _Carbon photograph (page 294)_ _Frontispiece_
WILD APPLE TREE, _Colored plate_
MONTREAL FROM MOUNT ROYAL 98
MOUNT WACHUSETT FROM THE WAYLAND HILLS 134
THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD 214
FALLEN LEAVES 270
WILD APPLE TREE 300
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The "Excursions" of the present volume follow the arrangement of the
volume bearing that title in the Riverside Edition, which differed
somewhat as to contents from the "Excursions" collected by Thoreau's
sister after his death, and published in 1863 by Messrs. Ticknor &
Fields. The Biographical Sketch by Emerson which prefaced the latter
appears in the first volume of the present edition.
"A Yankee in Canada," which here, as in the Riverside Edition, is made
the first of the series of Excursions, was formerly published in a
volume with "Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers. " Thoreau made this
excursion to Canada with his friend Ellery Channing, and sent his
narrative to Mr. Greeley, who wrote him regarding it, March 18, 1852:
"I shall get you some money for the articles you sent me, though not
immediately. As to your long account of a Canadian tour, I don't know.
It looks unmanageable. Can't you cut it into three or four, and omit
all that relates to time? The cities are described to death, but I
know you are at home with Nature, and that _she_ rarely and slowly
changes. Break this up, if you can, and I will try to have it
swallowed and digested. " Thoreau appears to have taken Greeley's
advice, and the narrative was divided into chapters. But after it had
been begun in _Putnam's_ in January, 1853, where it was entitled
"Excursion to Canada," the author and the editor, who appears from
the following letter to have been Mr. G. W. Curtis, disagreed
regarding the expediency of including certain passages, and Thoreau
withdrew all after the third chapter. The letter is as follows:--
NEW YORK, January 2, 1853.
FRIEND THOREAU. . . . I am sorry you and C. cannot agree so as to
have your whole MS. printed. It will be worth nothing
elsewhere after having partly appeared in _Putnam's_. I think
it is a mistake to conceal the authorship of the several
articles, making them all (so to speak) _editorial_; but _if_
that is done, don't you see that the elimination of very
flagrant heresies (like your defiant Pantheism) becomes a
necessity? If you had withdrawn your MS. on account of the
abominable misprints in the first number, your ground would
have been far more tenable. However, do what you will. Yours,
HORACE GREELEY.
"Natural History of Massachusetts" was contributed to _The Dial_,
July, 1842, nominally as a review of some recent State reports. "A
Walk to Wachusett" was printed in _The Boston Miscellany_, 1843. Mr.
Sanborn, in his volume on Thoreau, prints a very interesting letter
written by Margaret Fuller in 1841, in criticism of the verses which
stand near the beginning of the paper, offered at that time for
publication in _The Dial_. "The Landlord" was printed in _The
Democratic Review_ for October, 1843. "A Winter Walk" appeared in _The
Dial_ in the same month and year. Emerson in a letter to Thoreau,
September 8, 1843, says: "I mean to send the 'Winter's Walk' to the
printer to-morrow for _The Dial_. I had some hesitation about it,
notwithstanding its faithful observation and its fine sketches of the
pickerel-fisher and of the woodchopper, on account of _mannerism_, an
old charge of mine,--as if, by attention, one could get the trick of
the rhetoric; for example, to call a cold place sultry, a solitude
public, a wilderness _domestic_ (a favorite word), and in the woods to
insult over cities, armies, etc. By pretty free omissions, however, I
have removed my principal objections. " The address "The Succession of
Forest Trees" was printed first in _The New York Tribune_, October 6,
1860, and was perhaps the latest of his writings which Thoreau saw in
print.
After his death the interest which had already been growing was
quickened by the successive publication in _The Atlantic Monthly_ of
"Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples" in October and November, 1862, and
"Night and Moonlight" November, 1863. The last named appeared just
before the publication of the volume "Excursions," which collected the
several papers.
"May Days" and "Days and Nights in Concord," which were printed in the
Riverside Edition, are now omitted as consisting merely of extracts
from Thoreau's Journal and therefore superseded by the publication of
the latter in its complete form.
* * * * *
A few of Thoreau's poems, taken from the "Week" and elsewhere, were
added by Mr. Emerson to the volume entitled "Letters to Various
Persons" which he brought out in 1865, but it was not till the volume
of "Miscellanies" was issued in the Riverside Edition that the
otherwise unpublished verse of his that had appeared in _The Dial_ was
gathered into a single volume. Besides the _Dial_ contributions, the
Riverside "Miscellanies" contained a few poems that first found
publication in Mr. Sanborn's Life of Thoreau. But the collection was
not intended to be complete.
Many of Thoreau's poems, including his translations from the
Anacreontics, are imbedded in the "Week," "Walden," and "Excursions,"
and it seemed best not to reproduce them in another volume. In 1895,
shortly after the publication of the Riverside Thoreau, Mr. Henry S.
Salt and Mr. Frank B. Sanborn brought out a book entitled "Poems of
Nature by Henry David Thoreau," in which were collected "perhaps two
thirds of [the poems] which Thoreau preserved. " "Many of them," says
the Introduction to that volume, "were printed by him, in whole or in
part, among his early contributions to Emerson's _Dial_, or in his own
two volumes, the _Week_ and _Walden_. . . . Others were given to Mr.
Sanborn for publication, by Sophia Thoreau, the year after her
brother's death (several appeared in the _Boston Commonwealth_ in
1863); or have been furnished from time to time by Mr. Blake, his
literary executor. " This volume contained a number of poems which had
not before appeared in any of Thoreau's published books. Such poems
are now added to those of the Riverside Edition. The present
collection, however, no more than its predecessors pretends to
completeness. It includes only those of Thoreau's poems which have
been previously published and which are not contained in other volumes
of this series. A list of the poems and scattered bits of verse
printed in the other volumes will be found in an Appendix. The Journal
also contains, especially in the early part, a number of heretofore
unpublished poems which it seems best to retain in their original
setting.
EXCURSIONS
A YANKEE IN CANADA
New England is by some affirmed to be an island, bounded on the north
with the River Canada (so called from Monsieur Cane). --JOSSELYN'S
RARITIES.
And still older, in Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan," published in
1632, it is said, on page 97, "From this Lake [Erocoise] Northwards is
derived the famous River of Canada, so named, of Monsier de Cane, a
French Lord, who first planted a colony of French in America. "
A YANKEE IN CANADA
CHAPTER I
CONCORD TO MONTREAL
I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen
much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold. I left Concord,
Massachusetts, Wednesday morning, September 25th, 1850, for Quebec.
Fare, seven dollars there and back; distance from Boston, five hundred
and ten miles; being obliged to leave Montreal on the return as soon
as Friday, October 4th, or within ten days. I will not stop to tell
the reader the names of my fellow-travelers; there were said to be
fifteen hundred of them. I wished only to be set down in Canada, and
take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an
afternoon.
The country was new to me beyond Fitchburg. In Ashburnham and
afterward, as we were whirled rapidly along, I noticed the woodbine
(_Ampelopsis quinquefolia_), its leaves now changed, for the most part
on dead trees, draping them like a red scarf. It was a little
exciting, suggesting bloodshed, or at least a military life, like an
epaulet or sash, as if it were dyed with the blood of the trees whose
wounds it was inadequate to stanch. For now the bloody autumn was
come, and an Indian warfare was waged through the forest. These
military trees appeared very numerous, for our rapid progress
connected those that were even some miles apart. Does the woodbine
prefer the elm? The first view of Monadnock was obtained five or six
miles this side of Fitzwilliam, but nearest and best at Troy and
beyond. Then there were the Troy cuts and embankments. Keene Street
strikes the traveler favorably, it is so wide, level, straight, and
long. I have heard one of my relatives, who was born and bred there,
say that you could see a chicken run across it a mile off. I have also
been told that when this town was settled they laid out a street four
rods wide, but at a subsequent meeting of the proprietors one rose and
remarked, "We have plenty of land, why not make the street eight rods
wide? " and so they voted that it should be eight rods wide, and the
town is known far and near for its handsome street. It was a cheap way
of securing comfort, as well as fame, and I wish that all new towns
would take pattern from this. It is best to lay our plans widely in
youth, for then land is cheap, and it is but too easy to contract our
views afterward. Youths so laid out, with broad avenues and parks,
that they may make handsome and liberal old men! Show me a youth whose
mind is like some Washington city of magnificent distances, prepared
for the most remotely successful and glorious life after all, when
those spaces shall be built over and the idea of the founder be
realized. I trust that every New England boy will begin by laying out
a Keene Street through his head, eight rods wide. I know one such
Washington city of a man, whose lots as yet are only surveyed and
staked out, and, except a cluster of shanties here and there, only the
Capitol stands there for all structures, and any day you may see from
afar his princely idea borne coachwise along the spacious but yet
empty avenues. Keene is built on a remarkably large and level
interval, like the bed of a lake, and the surrounding hills, which are
remote from its street, must afford some good walks. The scenery of
mountain towns is commonly too much crowded. A town which is built on
a plain of some extent, with an open horizon, and surrounded by hills
at a distance, affords the best walks and views.
As we travel northwest up the country, sugar maples, beeches, birches,
hemlocks, spruce, butternuts, and ash trees prevail more and more. To
the rapid traveler the number of elms in a town is the measure of its
civility. One man in the cars has a bottle full of some liquor. The
whole company smile whenever it is exhibited. I find no difficulty in
containing myself. The Westmoreland country looked attractive. I heard
a passenger giving the very obvious derivation of this name,
Westmore-land, as if it were purely American, and he had made a
discovery; but I thought of "my cousin Westmoreland" in England. Every
one will remember the approach to Bellows Falls, under a high cliff
which rises from the Connecticut. I was disappointed in the size of
the river here; it appeared shrunk to a mere mountain-stream. The
water was evidently very low. The rivers which we had crossed this
forenoon possessed more of the character of mountain-streams than
those in the vicinity of Concord, and I was surprised to see
everywhere traces of recent freshets, which had carried away bridges
and injured the railroad, though I had heard nothing of it. In
Ludlow, Mount Holly, and beyond, there is interesting mountain
scenery, not rugged and stupendous, but such as you could easily
ramble over,--long, narrow, mountain vales through which to see the
horizon. You are in the midst of the Green Mountains. A few more
elevated blue peaks are seen from the neighborhood of Mount Holly;
perhaps Killington Peak is one. Sometimes, as on the Western Railroad,
you are whirled over mountainous embankments, from which the scared
horses in the valleys appear diminished to hounds. All the hills
blush; I think that autumn must be the best season to journey over
even the _Green_ Mountains. You frequently exclaim to yourself, What
_red_ maples! The sugar maple is not so red. You see some of the
latter with rosy spots or cheeks only, blushing on one side like
fruit, while all the rest of the tree is green, proving either some
partiality in the light or frosts or some prematurity in particular
branches. Tall and slender ash trees, whose foliage is turned to a
dark mulberry color, are frequent. The butternut, which is a
remarkably spreading tree, is turned completely yellow, thus proving
its relation to the hickories. I was also struck by the bright yellow
tints of the yellow birch. The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean
ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their
branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from
the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that
you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy
canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.
As you approach Lake Champlain you begin to see the New York
mountains. The first view of the lake at Vergennes is impressive, but
rather from association than from any peculiarity in the scenery. It
lies there so small (not appearing in that proportion to the width of
the State that it does on the map), but beautifully quiet, like a
picture of the Lake of Lucerne on a music-box, where you trace the
name of Lucerne among the foliage; far more ideal than ever it looked
on the map. It does not say, "Here I am, Lake Champlain," as the
conductor might for it, but having studied the geography thirty years,
you crossed over a hill one afternoon and beheld it. But it is only a
glimpse that you get here. At Burlington you rush to a wharf and go on
board a steamboat, two hundred and thirty-two miles from Boston. We
left Concord at twenty minutes before eight in the morning, and were
in Burlington about six at night, but too late to see the lake. We got
our first fair view of the lake at dawn, just before reaching
Plattsburg, and saw blue ranges of mountains on either hand, in New
York and in Vermont, the former especially grand. A few white
schooners, like gulls, were seen in the distance, for it is not waste
and solitary like a lake in Tartary; but it was such a view as leaves
not much to be said; indeed, I have postponed Lake Champlain to
another day.
The oldest reference to these waters that I have yet seen is in the
account of Cartier's discovery and exploration of the St. Lawrence in
1535. Samuel Champlain actually discovered and paddled up the lake in
July, 1609, eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth,
accompanying a war-party of the Canadian Indians against the
Iroquois. He describes the islands in it as not inhabited, although
they are pleasant,--on account of the continual wars of the Indians,
in consequence of which they withdraw from the rivers and lakes into
the depths of the land, that they may not be surprised. "Continuing
our course," says he, "in this lake, on the western side, viewing the
country, I saw on the eastern side very high mountains, where there
was snow on the summit. I inquired of the savages if those places were
inhabited. They replied that they were, and that they were Iroquois,
and that in those places there were beautiful valleys and plains
fertile in corn, such as I have eaten in this country, with an
infinity of other fruits. " This is the earliest account of what is now
Vermont.
The number of French-Canadian gentlemen and ladies among the
passengers, and the sound of the French language, advertised us by
this time that we were being whirled towards some foreign vortex. And
now we have left Rouse's Point, and entered the Sorel River, and
passed the invisible barrier between the States and Canada. The shores
of the Sorel, Richelieu, or St. John's River are flat and reedy, where
I had expected something more rough and mountainous for a natural
boundary between two nations. Yet I saw a difference at once, in the
few huts, in the pirogues on the shore, and as it were, in the shore
itself. This was an interesting scenery to me, and the very reeds or
rushes in the shallow water and the tree-tops in the swamps have left
a pleasing impression. We had still a distant view behind us of two or
three blue mountains in Vermont and New York. About nine o'clock in
the forenoon we reached St. John's, an old frontier post three hundred
and six miles from Boston, and twenty-four from Montreal. We now
discovered that we were in a foreign country, in a station-house of
another nation. This building was a barn-like structure, looking as if
it were the work of the villagers combined, like a log house in a new
settlement. My attention was caught by the double advertisements in
French and English fastened to its posts, by the formality of the
English, and the covert or open reference to their queen and the
British lion. No gentlemanly conductor appeared, none whom you would
know to be the conductor by his dress and demeanor; but ere long we
began to see here and there a solid, red-faced, burly-looking
Englishman, a little pursy perhaps, who made us ashamed of ourselves
and our thin and nervous countrymen,--a grandfatherly personage, at
home in his greatcoat, who looked as if he might be a stage
proprietor, certainly a railroad director, and knew, or had a right to
know, when the cars did start. Then there were two or three
pale-faced, black-eyed, loquacious Canadian-French gentlemen there,
shrugging their shoulders; pitted as if they had all had the
small-pox. In the meanwhile some soldiers, redcoats, belonging to the
barracks near by, were turned out to be drilled. At every important
point in our route the soldiers showed themselves ready for us; though
they were evidently rather raw recruits here, they manoeuvred far
better than our soldiers; yet, as usual, I heard some Yankees talk as
if they were no great shakes, and they had seen the Acton Blues
manoeuvre as well. The officers spoke sharply to them, and appeared
to be doing their part thoroughly. I heard one suddenly coming to the
rear, exclaim, "Michael Donouy, take his name! " though I could not see
what the latter did or omitted to do. It was whispered that Michael
Donouy would have to suffer for that. I heard some of our party
discussing the possibility of their driving these troops off the field
with their umbrellas. I thought that the Yankee, though undisciplined,
had this advantage at least, that he especially is a man who,
everywhere and under all circumstances, is fully resolved to better
his condition essentially, and therefore he could afford to be beaten
at first; while the virtue of the Irishman, and to a great extent the
Englishman, consists in merely maintaining his ground or condition.
The Canadians here, a rather poor-looking race, clad in gray homespun,
which gave them the appearance of being covered with dust, were riding
about in caleches and small one-horse carts called charettes. The
Yankees assumed that all the riders were racing, or at least
exhibiting the paces of their horses, and saluted them accordingly. We
saw but little of the village here, for nobody could tell us when the
cars would start; that was kept a profound secret, perhaps for
political reasons; and therefore we were tied to our seats. The
inhabitants of St. John's and vicinity are described by an English
traveler as "singularly unprepossessing," and before completing his
period he adds, "besides, they are generally very much disaffected to
the British crown. " I suspect that that "besides" should have been a
because.
At length, about noon, the cars began to roll towards La Prairie. The
whole distance of fifteen miles was over a remarkably level country,
resembling a Western prairie, with the mountains about Chambly visible
in the northeast. This novel but monotonous scenery was exciting. At
La Prairie we first took notice of the tinned roofs, but above all of
the St. Lawrence, which looked like a lake; in fact it is considerably
expanded here; it was nine miles across diagonally to Montreal. Mount
Royal in the rear of the city, and the island of St. Helen's opposite
to it, were now conspicuous. We could also see the Sault St. Louis
about five miles up the river, and the Sault Norman still farther
eastward.
I heard one suddenly coming to the
rear, exclaim, "Michael Donouy, take his name! " though I could not see
what the latter did or omitted to do. It was whispered that Michael
Donouy would have to suffer for that. I heard some of our party
discussing the possibility of their driving these troops off the field
with their umbrellas. I thought that the Yankee, though undisciplined,
had this advantage at least, that he especially is a man who,
everywhere and under all circumstances, is fully resolved to better
his condition essentially, and therefore he could afford to be beaten
at first; while the virtue of the Irishman, and to a great extent the
Englishman, consists in merely maintaining his ground or condition.
The Canadians here, a rather poor-looking race, clad in gray homespun,
which gave them the appearance of being covered with dust, were riding
about in caleches and small one-horse carts called charettes. The
Yankees assumed that all the riders were racing, or at least
exhibiting the paces of their horses, and saluted them accordingly. We
saw but little of the village here, for nobody could tell us when the
cars would start; that was kept a profound secret, perhaps for
political reasons; and therefore we were tied to our seats. The
inhabitants of St. John's and vicinity are described by an English
traveler as "singularly unprepossessing," and before completing his
period he adds, "besides, they are generally very much disaffected to
the British crown. " I suspect that that "besides" should have been a
because.
At length, about noon, the cars began to roll towards La Prairie. The
whole distance of fifteen miles was over a remarkably level country,
resembling a Western prairie, with the mountains about Chambly visible
in the northeast. This novel but monotonous scenery was exciting. At
La Prairie we first took notice of the tinned roofs, but above all of
the St. Lawrence, which looked like a lake; in fact it is considerably
expanded here; it was nine miles across diagonally to Montreal. Mount
Royal in the rear of the city, and the island of St. Helen's opposite
to it, were now conspicuous. We could also see the Sault St. Louis
about five miles up the river, and the Sault Norman still farther
eastward. The former are described as the most considerable rapids in
the St. Lawrence; but we could see merely a gleam of light there as
from a cobweb in the sun. Soon the city of Montreal was discovered
with its tin roofs shining afar. Their reflections fell on the eye
like a clash of cymbals on the ear. Above all the church of Notre Dame
was conspicuous, and anon the Bonsecours market-house, occupying a
commanding position on the quay, in the rear of the shipping. This
city makes the more favorable impression from being approached by
water, and also being built of stone, a gray limestone found on the
island. Here, after traveling directly inland the whole breadth of New
England, we had struck upon a city's harbor,--it made on me the
impression of a seaport,--to which ships of six hundred tons can
ascend, and where vessels drawing fifteen feet lie close to the wharf,
five hundred and forty miles from the Gulf, the St. Lawrence being
here two miles wide. There was a great crowd assembled on the
ferry-boat wharf and on the quay to receive the Yankees, and flags of
all colors were streaming from the vessels to celebrate their arrival.
When the gun was fired, the gentry hurrahed again and again, and then
the Canadian caleche-drivers, who were most interested in the matter,
and who, I perceived, were separated from the former by a fence,
hurrahed their welcome; first the broadcloth, then the homespun.
It was early in the afternoon when we stepped ashore. With a single
companion, I soon found my way to the church of Notre Dame. I saw that
it was of great size and signified something. It is said to be the
largest ecclesiastical structure in North America, and can seat ten
thousand. It is two hundred and fifty-five and a half feet long, and
the groined ceiling is eighty feet above your head. The Catholic are
the only churches which I have seen worth remembering, which are not
almost wholly profane. I do not speak only of the rich and splendid
like this, but of the humblest of them as well. Coming from the
hurrahing mob and the rattling carriages, we pushed aside the listed
door of this church, and found ourselves instantly in an atmosphere
which might be sacred to thought and religion, if one had any. There
sat one or two women who had stolen a moment from the concerns of the
day, as they were passing; but, if there had been fifty people there,
it would still have been the most solitary place imaginable. They did
not look up at us, nor did one regard another. We walked softly down
the broad aisle with our hats in our hands. Presently came in a troop
of Canadians, in their homespun, who had come to the city in the boat
with us, and one and all kneeled down in the aisle before the high
altar to their devotions, somewhat awkwardly, as cattle prepare to lie
down, and there we left them. As if you were to catch some farmer's
sons from Marlborough, come to cattle-show, silently kneeling in
Concord meeting-house some Wednesday! Would there not soon be a mob
peeping in at the windows? It is true, these Roman Catholics, priests
and all, impress me as a people who have fallen far behind the
significance of their symbols. It is as if an ox had strayed into a
church and were trying to bethink himself. Nevertheless, they are
capable of reverence; but we Yankees are a people in whom this
sentiment has nearly died out, and in this respect we cannot bethink
ourselves even as oxen. I did not mind the pictures nor the candles,
whether tallow or tin. Those of the former which I looked at appeared
tawdry. It matters little to me whether the pictures are by a neophyte
of the Algonquin or the Italian tribe. But I was impressed by the
quiet, religious atmosphere of the place. It was a great cave in the
midst of a city; and what were the altars and the tinsel but the
sparkling stalactites, into which you entered in a moment, and where
the still atmosphere and the sombre light disposed to serious and
profitable thought? Such a cave at hand, which you can enter any day,
is worth a thousand of our churches which are open only Sundays,
hardly long enough for an airing, and then filled with a bustling
congregation,--a church where the priest is the least part, where you
do your own preaching, where the universe preaches to you and can be
heard. I am not sure but this Catholic religion would be an admirable
one if the priest were quite omitted. I think that I might go to
church myself some Monday, if I lived in a city where there was such a
one to go to. In Concord, to be sure, we do not need such. Our forests
are such a church, far grander and more sacred. We dare not leave
_our_ meeting-houses open for fear they would be profaned. Such a
cave, such a shrine, in one of our groves, for instance, how long
would it be respected? for what purposes would it be entered, by such
baboons as we are? I think of its value not only to religion, but to
philosophy and to poetry; besides a reading-room, to have a
thinking-room in every city! Perchance the time will come when every
house even will have not only its sleeping-rooms, and dining-room, and
talking-room or parlor, but its thinking-room also, and the architects
will put it into their plans. Let it be furnished and ornamented with
whatever conduces to serious and creative thought. I should not object
to the holy water, or any other simple symbol, if it were consecrated
by the imagination of the worshipers.
I heard that some Yankees bet that the candles were not wax, but tin.
A European assured them that they were wax; but, inquiring of the
sexton, he was surprised to learn that they were tin filled with oil.
The church was too poor to afford wax. As for the Protestant churches,
here or elsewhere, they did not interest me, for it is only as caves
that churches interest me at all, and in that respect they were
inferior.
Montreal makes the impression of a larger city than you had expected
to find, though you may have heard that it contains nearly sixty
thousand inhabitants. In the newer parts, it appeared to be growing
fast like a small New York, and to be considerably Americanized. The
names of the squares reminded you of Paris,--the Champ de Mars, the
Place d'Armes, and others,--and you felt as if a French revolution
might break out any moment. Glimpses of Mount Royal rising behind the
town, and the names of some streets in that direction, make one think
of Edinburgh. That hill sets off this city wonderfully. I inquired at
a principal bookstore for books published in Montreal. They said that
there were none but school-books and the like; they got their books
from the States. From time to time we met a priest in the streets, for
they are distinguished by their dress, like the _civil_ police. Like
clergymen generally, with or without the gown, they made on us the
impression of effeminacy. We also met some Sisters of Charity, dressed
in black, with Shaker-shaped black bonnets and crosses, and cadaverous
faces, who looked as if they had almost cried their eyes out, their
complexions parboiled with scalding tears; insulting the daylight by
their presence, having taken an oath not to smile. By cadaverous I
mean that their faces were like the faces of those who have been dead
and buried for a year, and then untombed, with the life's grief upon
them, and yet, for some unaccountable reason, the process of decay
arrested.
"Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves him
With the day's shame upon him. "
They waited demurely on the sidewalk while a truck laden with raisins
was driven in at the seminary of St. Sulpice, never once lifting their
eyes from the ground.
The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward,
and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the soldiers to
the laborers in an African ant-hill. The inhabitants evidently rely on
them in a great measure for music and entertainment. You would meet
with them pacing back and forth before some guard-house or
passage-way, guarding, regarding, and disregarding all kinds of law by
turns, apparently for the sake of the discipline to themselves, and
not because it was important to exclude anybody from entering that
way. They reminded me of the men who are paid for piling up bricks and
then throwing them down again. On every prominent ledge you could see
England's hands holding the Canadas, and I judged by the redness of
her knuckles that she would soon have to let go. In the rear of such a
guard-house, in a large graveled square or parade ground, called the
Champ de Mars, we saw a large body of soldiers being drilled, we being
as yet the only spectators. But they did not appear to notice us any
more than the devotees in the church, but were seemingly as
indifferent to fewness of spectators as the phenomena of nature are,
whatever they might have been thinking under their helmets of the
Yankees that were to come. Each man wore white kid gloves. It was one
of the most interesting sights which I saw in Canada. The problem
appeared to be how to smooth down all individual protuberances or
idiosyncrasies, and make a thousand men move as one man, animated by
one central will; and there was some approach to success. They obeyed
the signals of a commander who stood at a great distance, wand in
hand; and the precision, and promptness, and harmony of their
movements could not easily have been matched. The harmony was far more
remarkable than that of any choir or band, and obtained, no doubt, at
a greater cost. They made on me the impression, not of many
individuals, but of one vast centipede of a man, good for all sorts of
pulling down; and why not then for some kinds of building up? If men
could combine thus earnestly, and patiently, and harmoniously to some
really worthy end, what might they not accomplish? They now put their
hands, and partially perchance their heads together, and the result is
that they are the imperfect tools of an imperfect and tyrannical
government. But if they could put their hands and heads and hearts and
all together, such a cooperation and harmony would be the very end and
success for which government now exists in vain,--a government, as it
were, not only with tools, but stock to trade with.
I was obliged to frame some sentences that sounded like French in
order to deal with the market-women, who, for the most part, cannot
speak English. According to the guidebook the relative population of
this city stands nearly thus: two fifths are French-Canadian; nearly
one fifth British-Canadian; one and a half fifths English, Irish, and
Scotch; somewhat less than one half fifth Germans, United States
people, and others. I saw nothing like pie for sale, and no good cake
to put in my bundle, such as you can easily find in our towns, but
plenty of fair-looking apples, for which Montreal Island is
celebrated, and also pears cheaper and I thought better than ours, and
peaches, which, though they were probably brought from the South, were
as cheap as they commonly are with us. So imperative is the law of
demand and supply that, as I have been told, the market of Montreal is
sometimes supplied with green apples from the State of New York some
weeks even before they are ripe in the latter place. I saw here the
spruce wax which the Canadians chew, done up in little silvered
papers, a penny a roll; also a small and shriveled fruit which they
called _cerises_, mixed with many little stems, somewhat like raisins,
but I soon returned what I had bought, finding them rather insipid,
only putting a sample in my pocket. Since my return, I find on
comparison that it is the fruit of the sweet viburnum (_Viburnum
Lentago_), which with us rarely holds on till it is ripe.
I stood on the deck of the steamer John Munn, late in the afternoon,
when the second and third ferry-boats arrived from La Prairie,
bringing the remainder of the Yankees. I never saw so many caleches,
cabs, charettes, and similar vehicles collected before, and doubt if
New York could easily furnish more. The handsome and substantial stone
quay which stretches a mile along the riverside and protects the
street from the ice was thronged with the citizens who had turned out
on foot and in carriages to welcome or to behold the Yankees. It was
interesting to see the caleche-drivers dash up and down the slope of
the quay with their active little horses. They drive much faster than
in our cities. I have been told that some of them come nine miles into
the city every morning and return every night, without changing their
horses during the day. In the midst of the crowd of carts, I observed
one deep one loaded with sheep with their legs tied together, and
their bodies piled one upon another, as if the driver had forgotten
that they were sheep and not yet mutton,--a sight, I trust, peculiar
to Canada, though I fear that it is not.
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.
