Kitabı oku: «Pictures of Canadian Life: A Record of Actual Experiences», sayfa 4
Mrs. Traill has seen great changes in her time. When she came there, there were only one or two houses in Peterborough; all was forest, and now it has a mayor and a town-hall, and is one of the nicest towns in that part of Canada. Mrs. Traill’s cottage is fitted up with English comfort and taste. She has around her books and photographs of loving relatives. She showed me a book of hers recently published by Messrs. Nelson and Sons. As a Canadian authoress, she has done much to commemorate the beauty of Canadian forests, and writes of their floral charms with all the tenderness and grace with which I remember her sketches of East Anglian rural life were richly adorned. She is now hard at work with a new volume on Canadian lichens and flowers.
As we stood talking at the window – the sunbeams played gaily on the blue waters of the lake or river beneath (in Canada there are so many rivers and lakes that you can scarcely tell which is which, or where the one ends or the other begins) – fairy flowers were beginning to gem her lawn; and the American robin redbreast, a far larger bird than ours, and other birds, still more graceful, flew among the trees – I felt how, in such a spot, one weary of the world could lead a tranquil life.
Mrs. Traill must be an advanced octogenarian – she is older than Mrs. Moodie, and Mrs. Moodie claims to be far over eighty. Yet Mrs. Traill retains her conversational power intact, and is full as ever of ‘the lore that nature brings,’ and is as enthusiastic as ever in its pursuit. As much as ever her manners are queenlike. They have never left her, in spite of all the hardships she has had to undergo as wife and mother in the wilderness, and her face still retains something of the freshness and fairness of her youth. She is a wonderful old lady, and Canada must be a wonderful country for such.
CHAPTER VI.
OFF TO THE NORTH-WEST – NIAGARA – LAKE SUPERIOR – THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY – AT WINNIPEG
As in duty bound, I have reached Niagara Falls, and from motives equally conscientious forbear to trouble you with either poetry or prose on the scene that now meets my eye. In seeing them I have an advantage – that in this early season of the year I am alone and free from the crowd of visitors that sometimes infest the spot. As it is, there is quite enough of modern civilization there to disturb the poetry of the place; and the scream of the steam-engine sadly interferes with the enjoyment of that everlasting roar which rises as the vast body of waters tumbles over the falls – raising up majestic mountains of mist – and then sweeps grandly to the rapids, in the raging whirlpools of which poor Captain Webb lost his life, or, in plainer words, committed suicide. Then there are the cabmen, who will not give you a moment’s peace, and affect not to understand you when you intimate that you prefer to walk rather than to ride; and a grand walk it is, about a mile from the station on the Canadian side. Far, far below is the river – a chasm in a mass of old dark rock – into which you peer with wondering eyes till the brain is almost dizzy. Words fail to convey the impressions, as passing cloud and fleeting sunshine add to the marvellous beauty of the spot. I scrambled down to where the ferry-boat is, and drank in all the charm of the place, not caring to be ferried across, quite satisfied with watching the eternal fall of water as I sat there – a mere human speck in that mysterious grandeur. The white man has come and made the place his own. He has now thrown three bridges across it, and on the American side has built a brewery, whose ‘Niagara ales’ are famous all over the American Continent. I am glad to say that it is only on the Canadian side that you have a good view of the Falls; but on neither side is there what there ought to be, a wilderness. On each side there are houses and hotels, and churches, all the way; and I was offered Guinness’s Dublin Stout and Bass’s Pale Ale, just as if I were dining in a Fleet Street restaurant. On my return I met a funeral procession. Death had come into one of the wooden houses on the side, and the friends and relatives had ridden in their buggies and country carts to pay the last tribute of respect to the deceased. Yes; death is lord of life – in the New World as well as in the Old.
I went then by way of Hamilton, through a district as fertile and as well-farmed as any in England, looking far more civilized than any part I have yet seen. There are no stumps of trees in the ground, as there are elsewhere, and the houses look as if they had been built long enough to allow of home comforts; and, as Hamilton is the place to which many of our poor lads are sent, I was glad to feel that in such a district they would have few hardships to encounter, and would have every chance of getting on. Here at one time there were bears and wolves; but they have long since disappeared before the march of their master, man. It is not so long since there was quail shooting on the very site of the city of Toronto, and hawks would carry off the chickens the earlier emigrants were attempting painfully to rear, and the Indians were also unwelcome guests. I have heard of an old Scotch settler who, as his last resort, invoked the aid of bagpipes, wherewith to frighten his unwelcome guests; but even that did not frighten the Indians, who carried off the contents of his potato ground, undisturbed by a musical performance which would have struck terror into the stoutest English heart. Well, all that wild forest region is now the home of peace and plenty, and distant be the day when Professor Goldwin Smith’s idea will be realized, and it has been peacefully annexed by the United States. Out in Canada that idea finds little favour. Why should it? It is a favourite boast with Americans that Canada will ultimately be theirs. I am sure that is not a favourite idea of the Canadians themselves. Great Britain, it is to be hoped, will be as loyal to Canada as Canada is to her.
The thing is not to be settled quite so easily as Professor Goldwin Smith anticipates. In Quebec Province we have a million of French Canadians, who make no secret of their preference to a French rather than an English alliance, and who are quite prepared to act accordingly, as soon as British authority shall have become relaxed. Then we have the Acadians of Nova Scotia, who would probably follow the lead of French Canada; nor could the few Britishers of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island escape the same fate. France is quite prepared to increase her influence in this part of the world. Indeed, at the present moment there is talk of her buying the island of Anticosti, which, as you may be aware, though almost uninhabited now – save in the summer, when the fishermen go there – makes a very respectable appearance in the river St. Lawrence. Then we come to Ontario, which, placed as she is, could not withstand an attack from the United States.
Once upon a time the Yankees did make an attempt of the kind – that was in 1837 – an attempt which the loyal men of Canada helped Sir Francis Head to put down. Toronto escaped, though she had the enemy at her very gates. I must say that all the Canadians with whom I have spoken have no wish to become Americans. For one thing, they say they can’t afford it. Government is more costly in America than in Canada. I admit as much as anyone the right of the people to decide their fate. If the Canadians prefer to live under the star-spangled banner, it is vain for us to attempt to retain them. But the danger is the indifference of the English public as to the value of such a colony as that of Canada, a country bigger than all Europe, and at present with a sparse population only equalling that of London. A few brief facts will show the importance of the North-West to the English, not merely as a field for emigration, but for other reasons as well.
From Liverpool to Winnipeg, viâ Hudson’s Bay, the distance is less by 1,100 miles than by way of the St. Lawrence, and they are now talking of making a railway along that route. From Liverpool to China and Japan, viâ the northern route, the distance is 1,000 miles shorter than by any other line. It is really 2,000 miles shorter than by San Francisco and New York. How immense, then, will be the power which the possession of Hudson’s Bay, and of the railway route through to the Pacific, must confer upon Great Britain, so long as she holds it under safe control! – and where is the nation that can prevent her so holding it, as long as her fleets command the North Atlantic? It is utterly inconceivable that English statesmen would be found so mad or so unpatriotic as thus to throw away the key of the world’s commerce, by neglecting or surrendering British interests in the North-West. Our great cities would not sanction such a policy for an instant. England could better afford to give up the Suez Canal, or be rid of her South African colonies. The interests of the two countries are inseparable. We require the North-West to send us grain. She requires us as her best customer. Manitoba has her natural market in Great Britain, and in the near future Great Britain will have her best customers in Manitoba and the North-Western Provinces.
It is to the credit of the Canadians – that is, if figures may be trusted – that they spend less on drink, and more on education, than we do in the Old Country.
Party feeling runs high; but it is difficult to an outsider to understand what is the line of separation between the ins and the outs. An English writer tells us that she once asked a member of the Greek Opposition in Parliament, what was the difference between them and the Government. ‘Why,’ was his reply, ‘it is this. If M. Tricoupi says we want railroads, we say, “No; we want canals.” If he says a thing must be done by horses, we say, “No; it must be done by oxen.”’ It is just the same here. What one party proposes the other opposes. The present rulers rode into power on the wings of Protection. They are Tories; but it is to be feared the Liberals would have done the same, had they had a chance. It is the fashion to use very bad language, and to imply the worst of motives to your opponents; and it is in this easy way the Canadian newspapers fill up their columns when they are not – and this seems their great mission – quarrelling with one another.
The country farmers, who are much keener men of business than their fellow farmers in the Old Country, care little about politics. At the last election a friend of mine said to a farmer, ‘Have you voted?’ ‘Oh yes!’ was the reply. ‘Well, for which party?’ Ah, that was a question he could not answer. He had voted as his neighbour told him; and he knew that his neighbour was a real good man, and that he would not give him bad advice. So long as voters are thus simple, elections will be a mockery and a sham.
I have left Toronto behind, and here I am on Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the world – so large is it, that if you immerse in it Great Britain and Ireland, and add the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight, there would still be a respectable amount of water to spare – enough, at any rate, to make a river as long as the Thames, which we in England hold to be a very decent sort of river indeed. As I came up the St. Lawrence, some of the Canadians, who are, as they may well be, proud of their grand river, asked me what I thought of it. My reply was that for a colony so young, it was a very tidy sort of river indeed; and I may say the same of the enormous body of water on which I am now floating. It is a big thing indeed – as might be expected, where both Canada and the United States contribute to its bigness. We are in the middle of the lake, having Michigan on one side. Already we have stopped twice – once to take a pilot, and then again at Le Sault, where we had to stay while we waited our turn to enter the canal which connects the Georgian Bay to Lake Superior. There, indeed, we were made conscious of the fact that we were within the United States, as the banner of the stars and stripes floated proudly on each side of us, and there were a few soldiers in blue regimentals standing on the wharf, to say nothing of loafers, and boys and girls and half-breeds, to welcome our arrival.
For one thing I felt proud of my country. The Americans have nothing here equal to the Algoma, a crack steamer built on the Clyde for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and to which, at this present moment, are entrusted Cæsar and his fortunes. It is only the second trip the Algoma has made, as for the greater season of the year this immense water-way, incredible as it seems to us, is a solid block of ice, and we have it all around us still. I boarded the Algoma on Saturday afternoon, after a rapid run by rail from Toronto, which city we left in the morning at half-past eleven, and I assure you I was glad the journey was safely over, as once or twice it seemed to me, at one or two of the curves, the cars were very near leaving the rails; and the boy – they are all boys here – who had to attend to the brake, gave me a grin, as if he thought that we had much to be thankful for that we kept the track at all. I presume I shall get used to that sort of thing, but at present the sensation experienced in rounding some of the curves is more novel than agreeable.
We are a very miscellaneous company on board, chiefly Toronto traders and stalwart boys from Manitoba, who have been enjoying a holiday in Upper Canada, and emigrants. Gloves are unknown, likewise hats and shirt-collars are the exception rather than the rule. As to having one’s boots blackened, that is rather an expensive luxury, when you recollect the charge is fivepence a pair, and no one on board apparently has had his boots blackened for the last week or two; and I question much whether I shall require any of Day and Martin till I get back to Toronto again – an event which will take place apparently about the time of the Greek kalends. Hitherto I have managed the blacking difficulty most effectively. As far as Toronto I travelled with my London friend, who, aware of the custom of the country, had provided himself with the needful materials for the fitting amount of polish, and who generously permitted me to reap the benefit of his superior knowledge. My first attempt, I fear, was a failure. In my bedroom at the hotel I set to work, and soon acquired the requisite amount of polish; but, alas! I had forgotten the effect of blacking on clean sheets, and to my horror I discovered the bed-linen was, at any rate, as plentifully covered with blacking as ‘them precious boots.’ However, I did not regret the catastrophe, as I hoped it might teach the landlord it would be cheaper to get the boots of his guests blackened in an efficient manner, than to leave such unskilful amateurs as myself to do it on their own account.
Life on board the Algoma is as agreeable as can well be imagined. We have three good meals a day. I am writing in a magnificent saloon, nearly three hundred feet long, and if the nights are cold, as they always are on the lakes, I have a cabin all to myself, and by heaping the bed-clothes for two berths on my bed, and throwing a heavy great-coat over them, I manage to keep myself warm for the night. The scenery by day is magnificent, as we sail in and out among a thousand isles, all richly wooded to the water’s edge, with here and there a little village, or small settlement, where the woodmen ply their calling – the results of which may be seen now in a raft being towed by a tug, to be shipped lower down to Liverpool or Glasgow, or in stacks of planks along the shore. Further behind is the mainland, with rock and wood in endless succession. At Sault St. Marie, the river is celebrated for its fish, and as you pass through the canal, you have plenty of Indian canoes paddling about, with a man at the stern to seize the fish by a hand-net: the white fish of Lake Superior is held to be a great delicacy. After a day and night, we get into the open lake, out of sight of land, and then we land at Port Arthur, whence we take the train to Winnipeg, where I hope to hear a scrap of English news.
I have but one complaint to make, and that is, on the Sunday we had no service of any kind. I am not, nor ever was, a stickler for forms; but there are times, especially as many now on board may be planted far away from any religious observance, when it seems to me a simple service might be the means of strengthening old impressions, and perhaps planting new ones. One thinks of that fine old hymn of Andrew Marvel’s:
‘What can we do but sing His praise,
Who guides us through the watery maze?’
And an hour or so thus spent, surely may be quite as helpful to the higher life we all dream of, at any rate, as the favourite occupation of the majority – smoking and spitting, or the study of the maps of the district to which we are all rapidly approaching. I had a queer chat this morning with an old Canadian farmer who landed at Le Sault. He was pleased to hear that I had been at Yarmouth in Norfolk. His mother was a Clarke of Yarmouth. Did I know any of the Clarkes of Yarmouth? I replied that I had not that pleasure, but that I knew many of the Clarkes, and that they were a highly-respectable family indeed.
Well, I have now done with Ontario, and you ask me what I think of it? I reply that it is a beautiful country, and that it has room for any amount of farm labourers and servant girls. I have been talking with a gentleman this morning, who tells me that he pays his groom about £6 a month, and that he boards him as well. He tells me of a Scotch labourer who came out without £1 in his pocket, and who has just died worth £12,000.
At Ottawa I saw a large lumber-yard worth many thousand pounds, which was the property of one who came from England as a working man. As to mechanics, I fear the case is different. In Ontario, in all the towns, the mechanics have strong unions, and they do all they can to keep out emigrants of that class, fearing that their own wages will be reduced. This dog-in-the-manger policy prevails everywhere, and many mechanics, directly they land, are thus frightened by them, and want to get back to England at once. There are two sides to every question. All I can say is, that while a mechanic’s representative, at Montreal, was telling me that there was no room for mechanics, and was doing all he could to induce those who came out with me to return to England at once, I saw an advertisement with my own eyes in a local paper (I am sorry I have forgotten the name) for five hundred mechanics, who were immediately wanted. A man who has got a good situation in England would be a fool to give it up and come out; but I believe a mechanic who has a head on his shoulders – who is young and in good health, and knows how to take advantage of his situation – may find a living even in Ontario. This is my deliberate conviction, after all I have seen and heard, and with the full knowledge that in Montreal, and Ottawa, and Toronto, there is a pauper class as badly off as any of the denizens of our London slums. The people I most pity are the young fellows who in England have had the training of gentlemen, and who are sadly out of place in Canada, and whom the Canadian mothers dread, fearing that they may corrupt the native youth. Many of them, however, are decent fellows; but nevertheless, there is no room for them, unless they go out to Manitoba, and get some farmer to give them board and lodging for their work. I parted with quite a pang with one such on Friday, at Toronto. He was the nephew of a well-known noble lord, and really seemed a very decent sort of fellow. ‘What can you do?’ I said to him. ‘Oh, I can row and play cricket,’ was his reply. Unfortunately, Canada is not much of a country for cricket – the summer season is too short; and I felt that my young friend, unless he could turn his hand to something more useful or lucrative, had better have remained at home.
The pleasant steamship journey ended, I landed at Port Arthur – a town situated in one of the loveliest bays I have yet seen, almost surrounded by weird and fantastic rocks – with a view to run by the Canadian Pacific as far as Winnipeg. As I landed a bill met my eye: ‘Wanted, a hundred rock-men and fifty labourers;’ and that seemed to me an indication that emigrants need not go begging for work in that particular locality. Port Arthur, which stands near the ancient Hudson Bay Company’s station of Fort William, was in a state of intense activity. Every one was building wooden houses and shops who could do so. According to all appearances, it is certainly a busy place; but architecturally I cannot say that it is of much account. The main street opens on to the railway, along which the engines, ringing a doleful bell in order to bid passengers keep out of the way, pass every few minutes. Then there are wooden shops and wooden hotels, and the usual concourse of rough, unwashed, half-dressed loafers in the streets. Behind them is the forest and in front the bay, with its waters almost as clear as those of the Baltic, and almost as blue as those of Naples. Yet I certainly got very heartily tired of Port Arthur, and so, I am sure, did all my travelling companions, who sat on the planks or on the wooden pavement, which, being raised above the road, made passable seats, or on the bits of rock which the railway builders had been too busy to remove, wondering at what hour the train would start. I pitied the poor emigrants, with their children, and their beds, and their household furniture, as they sat there, hour after hour, in that hot and sandy street. We landed at eleven, having made the whole distance from Toronto – a run of about eight hundred miles – in exactly two days and two nights – not quite so long as Jonah was in the whale’s belly, but we certainly got over more ground than he did. When were we to start? No one knew. It takes a long time to get out £4,000 worth of freight and passengers’ luggage, and that is what the Algoma had on board. The worst of railway travelling in Canada is that there is no one of whom you can ask a question. There may be a station-master, there may be a whole herd of officials, there may be an army of porters, but Canadians in one respect resemble the Americans – and that is, that they think it inconsistent with their manly dignity to wear any kind of garb which can in any possible way distinguish them from the crowd of lookers-on, always to be met with in a railway station, so that the railway traveller is always in a perplexity. When we got on shore we were told that we should start in half an hour. Then came word that we were to be off at half-past one, and so, as soon as the cars were made up, we joyfully climbed into them – and the steps are in many cases so high that it is hard work climbing into them; but still we were no further on our way, and it was not till a little before four that, after many false starts, we could fairly believe that we were off. Oh, it was wearisome work, but then it may be asked, Whoever travels on a railway for pleasure? It is true these big American cars have certain advantages ours lack. You can change your position; you can talk without breaking a blood-vessel; and you can see more of the country, especially as they do not go the pace we are accustomed to at home; but there is such a confusion of persons in them, that to one accustomed to the society to be met with in an English first-class carriage, the result is anything but pleasing. In the Canadian first-class carriage Jack and his master ride side by side, unless the latter takes a berth in a sleeping car, for which he has to pay extra. As I did not feel inclined to give three dollars for a night’s unquiet rest, I took my chance with the first-class car company, and I can assure you that by the time the dim grey of morning glimmered on the horizon, I had heartily repented of my decision. The night was so cold that everything in the way of ventilation was stopped up. The car was quite full, and few of my fellow travellers seemed to have had much regard for soap and water. It is true there was a lavatory attached to the car, but there was neither water nor soap nor towels, and the neatness of the lavatory in other respects only seemed to me to make matters worse. I must say that the car, which was built in Canada, was a remarkably handsome one, with its dark wood panels beautifully carved, and its seats all lined with red velvet; yet when I left it in the morning it was in a filthy state. I also found in it agreeable society, but there were many who could not truthfully be included in such a category – rough men and women with whom in England you would not care to travel in a third-class carriage: but I am an Englishman, and may be pardoned for not knowing any better. It is to the same defect, perhaps, that I may trace the disappointment I felt at the refreshment sheds, in which we were permitted to snatch a hasty meal, waited on by a man in shirt-sleeves. Certainly we do that part of our business better at home. The Canadian Pacific have a dining-room of their own at Winnipeg, and there, if possible, the traveller should endeavour to secure a meal.
But oh, that ride! I shall never forget it. Burns tells us that Nature tried her ’prentice hand on man
‘And then she made the lassies, oh!’
I think Nature must have made that part of Canada which lies between Port Arthur and Winnipeg before she tried her hand on Great Britain and Ireland. It is true some part of it has an exquisite combination of wood and water and rock, but the greater part was either forest or gigantic plains or valleys of stone – which seemed to shut all hope from the spectator. In Canada – that is, along the railway lines – there is little life in the forest, few flowers display their loveliness, and no song-birds warble in the trees. All is still – or would be, were it not for the peculiar croaking of the frogs, to be heard like so many hoarse whistles from afar. You go miles and miles without seeing a farm or even a log-hut. In one place I saw an Indian wigwam, much resembling a gipsy’s tent, and a large canoe; but dwellings of any kind are the exception, not the rule. The train every now and then stops, but you see no station, and why we stop is only known to the engine-driver. We take no passengers up, and we set none down, or hardly ever. The people who get in at Port Arthur only want to be taken to Winnipeg. There is no traffic along the line, because there are no inhabitants along the line, and for the greater part of the way it is not only a solitary ride, but a rough one as well. As you get nearer Winnipeg, the road is easier, and the pace is more rapid. You leave behind you rocks and forests, and reach an open plain on which you see, perhaps, a dozen cows, where millions might fatten and feed. A good deal of this land, I am told, belongs to the half-breeds. In time it is to be hoped that they may utilize it more than they seem to do now.
A great change is impending over this part of the world. Even that stony district of which I wrote, and which seemed to me as the abomination of desolation, is, I hear, full of mineral wealth, which will be brought to light as soon as a certain boundary difficulty is settled – Ontario and Manitoba at present are each contending for the prize – and the decision of the question must shortly take place.
Perhaps the one thing that has most struck me with admiration is the pluck which has given birth to the Canadian Pacific Railway, by means of which the emigrant is taken from his landing in Quebec to his destination on the slopes of the Pacific, without ever leaving the Canadian soil. It is a patriotic enterprise, for under the former system the emigrant who intended to settle in Canada, and who, in reality, was wanted there, was often tempted to change his mind and to settle in the United States. It was a bold enterprise, for the cost was enormous, and Canada is not a wealthy country. It was an enterprise which was made the subject of party conflict. Appalling difficulties have had to be surmounted by the engineers. Yet all have been vanquished, and in a few months this grand scheme will be an accomplished fact, and you will be carried direct from one side of this enormous continent to the other. I think Sir John Macdonald is to be congratulated for the courage and tenacity he has displayed on the subject, through good or bad report, and too much praise cannot be awarded to Mr. George Stephens, who has been the ruling spirit and life of the undertaking from the first, and I am sure that such railway officials as those I have met, such as Mr. Van Horne, have proved loyal coadjutors, evincing a similar wide grasp of mind and readiness of resource for which Sir John himself is distinguished.
In England they are well represented by Mr. Begg, who, as he knows the district well, can speak of it with a confidence and certainty possessed by no one else. It is to him the credit must be given of the Manitoba farm in the Forestry Exhibition at Edinburgh last autumn, which was visited with much interest by the Prince of Wales and Mr. Gladstone, and to which I was glad to see, for I was there several days, the Scotch farmers and agriculturists paid particular attention. Such men are an honour to Canada, and may be ranked amongst its best friends. It is to them that Canada owes her present proud position and ability to find happy homes for the tens of thousands of England and the Continent, whom she has rescued from starvation, and whom she has placed in the way to insure wealth and health and happiness. I find even poor persecuted Jews driven from Russia on this fertile land, who, under these favouring skies, have learned to become prosperous farmers. One may well be proud of Canada, and be proud to think Canada belongs to us. When Bret Harte asks,
