Kitabı oku: «Pictures of Canadian Life: A Record of Actual Experiences», sayfa 8
CHAPTER X.
DANGERS OF THE ROCKIES. – PRAIRIE FIRES. – THE RETURN. – PORT ARTHUR. – MIGRANTS
There is a great deal of snow in the Rockies. In June that snow begins to melt. The result is, a violent body of water rushes down, which makes the railway people very uncomfortable.
On Sunday I met the engine-driver of the train by which I was to travel east next morning. At Holt City it seems no one knows from what particular spot the train will start.
‘You won’t start without me?’ I said.
‘No; I will look to see whether you are on board.’
‘But,’ said I, ‘you must leave at five, whether I am on board or not.’
‘Oh! as to that,’ he said, ‘no one can make me start before I am ready. But,’ said he, ‘perhaps we may not get away at all. I don’t like the look of the bridge, and there is a deal of water about.’
I smiled incredulously. Had not I seen, only an hour before, with my own eyes, a special train arrive from the west filled with labourers and freight? If that could cross in safety, surely our lighter train could do the same.
Thus reasoning, I lay down with a light heart in my caboose, having invoked, not the saints, but every decent Christian I could find, to take care that I might be aroused at four p.m., in order that I might have a good wash before I started on my little run of 1,500 miles, as far as Port Arthur.
Just as I was falling into the arms of Morpheus, to speak poetically – a habit to which I was much given in my earlier days – a fellow-traveller came rushing into the caboose, saying timidly:
‘You’d better get on board at once. The bridge has given way, and they may go across at once,’ and so saying, he left me in the dark.
However, I managed to jump out of my bed, collect my luggage, and scramble down the plank, the only and somewhat perilous means of access to my caboose, and stumble along the confusing lines of railway by which Holt City is adorned, and climb up into a car, wondering much all the while why we should start at all, when the bridge had partly given way, or whether I had come all that distance merely to find a watery grave. In the car I found a company as grotesque and rough as any I had yet seen anywhere, discussing the situation with more or less earnestness.
The bridge, I heard, was being repaired; that was a comfort. But still no one knew when we should start. Now and then we moved a few feet forward, or a few feet backward; but, in reality, I believe we remained in the same position all night, and started at the usual hour next morning. But the horror of that night was something inexpressible. Sleep was quite out of the question. You can’t sleep in an American railway-car unless you are a navvy or a contractor – who can sleep anywhere. In England, even in a third-class carriage, the chances are you can lie down at your full length and sleep. In Canada you can’t do that, as the seats are too short. So there I sat, bolt upright, all through that tedious night, watching for the light of day, while my companions sat smoking and talking and expectorating. In a playful moment one of them suggested that they should all take off their boots. Fortunately the proposition did not meet with universal approval, and I was saved that horror.
In the Rockies life is not all beer and ’baccy. One day there was an alarm of fire. It seems the woods are on fire all day long, and week after week. In this way much valuable timber is destroyed, and no one knows who does the mischief, or how it will terminate. Daily we saw the smoke of a forest fire; one day the flames came so close to Holt City that everyone was alarmed. If a spark or two reached the place where the explosives were stored, Holt City and all its inhabitants might have been blown to atoms. Down in the prairies fire does a vast amount of mischief to the settler, who awakes in the night to find his tent or house reduced to ashes, and all his worldly goods destroyed. Such cases are of frequent occurrence, especially at this season of the year, when the settler sets fire to the prairie before ploughing, or to insure a better crop of grass. One dark night, in particular, I remember the prairie fire lent quite a mournful grandeur to the scene. Then there came a day I shall never forget as long as I live. A Canadian summer may have its peculiar charms, but I candidly own, not being a salamander, it is far too hot for me. On that particular day the heat was intense. It affected everyone. Those who dared drank gallons of iced water, others pulled off their coats and collars and lay down on the cushions with which the sleeping-car is plentifully provided, and went off to sleep. It was in vain one tried to pass away the time in smoking – it was too hot for that. Newspapers and cheap novels were all neglected – conversation was out of the question. Everyone seemed on the point of giving up the ghost. Even the blackie, who invariably acts as conductor to the sleeping-car – and who is about the only civil official (with the exception of the steamboat attendants, who are models of good behaviour) one meets in Canadian travel, seemed, thinly clad as he was, quite overcome. The sun took all the colour out of his cheeks, and he became quite pale – almost white.
In the course of our return journey we stopped at Moose Jaw for supper, and then I witnessed a new development of prairie life in the shape of a thunder-storm, which seemed to me unusually vivid and protracted. The lightning was grand as it swept over the wide sea of grass, making everything as bright as noon-day, and then all was dark again. It brought us a rain that had really healing in its wings. While the heat lasted I was a martyr to prickly heat. It seemed to me that I was going to have small-pox or measles. I had little pimples all over me, and as to my wrists, they were really painful, and I could not keep from scratching with a vivacity which a Scotchman might have envied. Was it that vulgar disease to which, it is said, the gallant Scot is peculiarly liable? I could not say. I had shaken hands with so many filthy Indians, and it might be that, as I learn they are much afflicted in that way. Happily the thunder-storm cooled the air, and I felt all the better for it. When I got as far as Port Arthur, and inhaled the cool air of Lake Superior, I suffered no more from unpleasant irritation of the skin. It was with joy I embarked on the C.P.R.’s fine steamer, the Alberta, for Owen Sound. But even travelling on Lake Superior has its disadvantages. The water of the Lake is intensely cold, and when the sun beats fiercely on it there is sure to be a fog. Such happened to be the case on my return, and we ploughed slowly along for a while, seeing hardly anything of the beauty of the scene, while every few minutes we were cheered by the dismal notes of the fog-horn. Fortunately the fog lifted, and then what a display we had of islands, green as emerald, on the tranquil sea! I must add, also, I had good company everywhere, with the exception of the great Sir John M’Neill, who had his meals apart from us at a table all to himself, and an English clergyman from Staffordshire, whom a Canadian gentleman described to me as ‘a regular crank,’ whatever that may mean. The parson is going to write a book, so he tells the people; but he shuns me, which is a pity, as I met a friend at Calgary who told me they had great fun with the parson on their way up from Winnipeg, telling him all sorts of cock-and-bull stories, which he greedily entered in his note-book.
I must give you one more sketch of a Canadian town as an illustration of the enterprise and pluck which are the main characteristics of the Canadian of to-day. If you look at the map, you will see Port Arthur is situated in Thunder Bay, and Thunder Bay, when you pass the rocky barrier by which it is encircled, opens out into Lake Superior.
Thunder Bay is a sheet of water some 13 by 19 miles in area, sheltered from the wild storms which sweep over the northern lakes by the Pie and Welcome Islands and the Thunder Cape on one side, and by the terraced bluffs of ever-green forest on the other; forming thus an unsurpassed harbour for extent and accommodation, and having claim to be what its admirers say it is, the prettiest of all the American Lakes.
It is not an agricultural district that surrounds Port Arthur, though it is a fact that there are vast stretches of rich lands within its borders, including the Kamanistique and other valleys, on which at least 3,000 families could settle and get a good living by agriculture.
The timber resources of the surrounding country, which must find its centre and point of collection in the quiet waters of the bay, comprise thousands of square miles of spruce and other trees; while iron, copper, zinc, and silver are to be found in the neighbouring rocks. Gold also is said to be hidden in the bowels of the earth; though not yet discovered in paying quantities. However this may be, one thing is clear, that from Thunder Bay the whole agricultural exports of the countless fertile acres of the Canadian North-West must find an outlet. Truly did the Marquis of Lorne, when here, describe it as ‘The Silver Gate.’
Port Arthur – as it was termed when Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived here on his way to suppress the Riel revolt in the North-West, out of compliment to the Duke of Connaught – is in reality one of the few places in Canada that have a history. As early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, some of the French settlers had formed an idea that the great Lake Superior was a highway to the vast fur-producing countries of the North-West, although not till 1641 did any white man venture upon its waters. In 1678 a Frenchman built himself a house in the vicinity of Port Arthur, and commenced trading with the surrounding Indians for their furs.
In 1857 the attention of the Canadian Government was called to the spot, and they sent out commissioners to explore, who, in 1859, published a report which created quite a sensation all over Canada. In due time the C.P.R., which is the great mainspring of all the North-West, took up Port Arthur, had all their stores and men carted there, and now Port Arthur has a grand future before it, of which it is impossible to predict the whole extent. I have great faith in Port Arthur. It must in time be another Montreal or Toronto. Moose Jaw is going down. It will be long before Calgary will be much of a place. The Silver City is half deserted; and at Winnipeg the boom has burst and bankruptcy prevails; but Port Arthur is bound to go ahead.
I spent there a night on my return, and saw a marvellous change – even since my visit there a fortnight previously. Then people were hard at work putting up wooden shops; now those shops are fitted up with glass fronts, and already filled with merchandise from all quarters of the earth, though in many cases the upper parts of the building are in an incomplete state. Every day ships arrive from the American side; thus, within a couple of days previous to my arrival, 20,000 tons of coal had been landed. There are steamers of all sorts and sizes in the harbour, constantly coming in or going out. On one side a new elevator has been erected, on the other side is a great store of lumber and a saw-mill.
Yesterday Port Arthur was a township, now it is incorporated as a city, and rejoices in a mayor. The place is full of hotels, which charge high prices, give very little for the money, and do a roaring trade. A very handsome English church is being erected; just by, the Presbyterians are building one equally handsome, only a little smaller. The Roman Catholics make quite a grand show with their brick church and convent and schools, while the Methodists have a very plain and ugly imitation of an English church, with its steeple all in wood and painted white, which attests, at any rate, if not their taste, their influence and wealth. I visited the school-room, which was filled with bright and well-fed boys and girls, where the children are taught free, as they are all over Canada – where they have, by-the-bye, a compulsory law, which is never enforced, as it is impossible to do so. And then I made my way to the best-looking building in the town – the emigrants’ shed – where already 3,600 emigrants have this season been lodged gratis by the Dominion Government previous to their passing onwards to the North-West.
People tell me there is no room for mechanics in Canada. In Port Arthur I see them in constant demand. At one shop window I see a notice to the effect that 10 carpenters are required, at another a demand for painters, while a third shop window seeks to secure good tinsmiths. At the chief draper’s shop there is a notice stating four good assistants are required. What a pity the discontented men whom I left at Montreal, because work was not offered them immediately they landed, did not come thus far! As to rockmen and labourers, they are wanted by the hundred. Surely, Port Arthur must be a good place for the working man and the working girl. Even at Calgary they were paying the female helps at the hotel – as sour a set as I ever saw – and who were constantly quarrelling with John Smith, the Chinaman cook – as much as 40 dollars a month. But even out here a man must have brains.
‘I came out here seven years ago,’ said a gentleman to me as we sat on one of the rocks which line Port Arthur, ‘and could find nothing to do. I was brought up in a foundry, and had saved 1,100 dollars. I went all round; no one could give me a job. Then I began buying a few hides; this brought me into contact with a great fur merchant at Chicago – he employed me as his agent at 80 dollars a month. Then I gave that up and turned miller, and the year before last I traded to the extent of a quarter of a million dollars. Last year I was too eager, and lost a lot of money; but this year I hope to get it all back again.’
Why cannot an English emigrant be equally successful? Is it because we do not send out the right sort of men?
‘There is not one man in a hundred that comes out here from London who is of any use,’ said an old Toronto trader – himself an Englishman – to me. ‘I never call myself an Englishman,’ said he. ‘When I go to London I always say I am a Canadian. I am ashamed of the name of Englishman. What would Sir Garnet Wolseley have done when he was here had it not have been for the Canadian Volunteers?’
I am glad to hear, however, that he had nothing but praise for the Scotch settlers Lady Cathcart was sending out. She advances them money, and they pay her back a good rate of interest. Why cannot other people do the same? Another question, also, may be asked: Why cannot certain Canadian land companies, who really offer purchasers a fair bargain, put up a few houses on their separate farms? The settler has to build his house under every disadvantage. I am sure they could build the houses by contract at half the expense; and they could have a mortgage on the farm, which would ensure them in every case against loss, and which might add materially to their profits as well.
If the crops this year turn out well in the North-West, and, according to present prospects, there is every reason to suppose they will, the farmers will pour into the country in a way which they have never done before, and the prosperity of the North-West will be placed on a solid basis. Be that as it may, there are bright days in store for Port Arthur.
On the green forest, rising up above the town and overlooking Thunder Bay, it is intended to build a first-class summer hotel for the comfort of holiday makers and health seekers. There the visitor will enjoy fine cool air in the sultry heat of summer, while bathing in the lake will invigorate his enfeebled frame. The waters abound with fish. Islands and lakes and rivers tempt the yachtsman. If the workmen who squander their hard-earned wages in reckless drunkenness would but learn to be sober, few places on the Canadian lakes would be more enjoyable than Port Arthur.
I cannot leave Canada without speaking of its Grand Trunk Railway, which meets the emigrant at Port Levi when he lands at Quebec, and which he will undoubtedly often patronise if he tarries long in the land. It has built the Victoria Bridge at Montreal, one of the wonders of Canada – a tubular structure of magnificent proportions, which spans the St. Lawrence, and gives uninterrupted communication to the western traffic with that of the United States. Including the abutments, the bridge is 9,084 feet in length. The tubes rest on twenty-four piers, the main tubes being sixty feet above the level of the river. It may well be called the Grand Trunk Railway, as it operates under one management over six thousand miles of first-class railway road. Having close connection at Port Huron, Detroit and Chicago with the principal Western American lines, it offers great advantages to emigrants to all parts of the compass. At Montreal I had the pleasure of a long chat with Mr. Joseph Hickson, the general manager, who takes a deep interest in the subject of emigration, and Mr. W. Wainwright, the assistant-manager, to whom I am indebted and grateful for many acts of kindness, especially welcome to the stranger in a strange land. It is the Grand Trunk that takes the traveller over Niagara Falls – on the International Suspension Bridge connecting the Canadian Railways with those of the States. This structure, which is 250 feet above the water, commands a fine view up to the Falls. It is to be feared that as long as Canada and the United States have separate tariffs there will be not a little smuggling along this bridge. When I was there I heard of a Canadian judge, who with his family had been stopping at one or other of the hotels on the Canadian side. One fine morning some of the ladies of the party walked off to the American side, and returned laden with bargains which had paid no duty. In their innocence they boasted of the little transaction to the judge. ‘How can I,’ said he indignantly, ‘punish people for smuggling, if I find my own family do it?’ and the ladies had to pay the duty, so the story goes, after all.
CHAPTER XI.
BACK TO ENGLAND. – CANADIAN HOSPITALITY. – THE ASSYRIAN MONARCH. – HOME
My time was up, and I had to be off, after we got a look at pleasant London in the wood, as my Canadian friends who have been to England call it. I came back from Chicago to New York, and had again to encounter the horrors of nights in a Pullman sleeping-car. Why cannot the railway authorities separate the part of the car devoted to the gentlemen from that part inhabited by the ladies? The way in which the sexes are mixed up at night is, to say the least, unpleasant. I shall never forget my last experience in a Pullman sleeping-car. An ancient dame with blue spectacles, my vis-à-vis, as the shades of evening came on, gave me the horrors. In my despair I began undressing, thinking that the outraged female would rush away in disgust. Alas! she had stronger nerves than I calculated, and there she sat gazing serenely with her tinted orbs till I plunged myself behind my curtained berth, to encounter, early in the morning, once more those eyes.
New York and Boston are full of fairy forms. Why don’t they travel? The change would be pleasant for sore eyes like mine.
No wonder I sat all that night thinking of the great kindness I had received in Canada, and regretting especially that I had refused an invitation to dine that evening at the home of one of the leading barristers of Toronto, to meet some clergymen there who were familiar with my name, and who wished to meet me.
Surely I did wrong to leave Toronto, with all its friendly faces and kindly hearts. It will be long ere I cease to remember how the Canadians made me at home, as I met them on the rail, or on the boat, or in the hotel.
Said a London Evangelist to me: ‘You will find the Canadians a cold people, who will show you no hospitality. While I was there not one of them invited me to have a cup of tea.’
All I can say is, I found the Canadians quite the reverse. But then my friend went on a mission, and is a man of very serious views, while I travelled merely to see a land of whose wonders I had heard much, to talk to sinners as well as saints, and to learn from them what I could.
I was a great reformer once myself, and had glorious visions which never came to pass. In youth we have all such dreams. Now, as the days darken round me and the years, I seek to put up with the shortcomings of my brother-man, trusting that he in his Christian charity may extend a similar forbearance to my own.
I came back in the Assyrian Monarch. I was glad I did so. That fine ship has a distinguished record. It has carried no end of theatricals to New York; it did the same kind office for Jumbo: it carried troops and horses to Egypt; and when we English undertook to punish Arabi, it was a home for the refugees for a while.
Perhaps we have no ship more noticeable than the Assyrian Monarch, belonging to the Monarch Line, which runs weekly, I fancy, between New York and London.
It is a great treat in the fine weather to take that route. You are a little longer at sea – you glide along the south coast till you reach the Scilly Isles, and the ships of the company are all that can be desired.
It is a great deal of trouble and expense to some to go with all their goods and chattels to Liverpool, then unpack them, and get them down to the landing-stage, and then repack them in one or other of the far-famed steamers of that busy spot, and all this you save if you patronize the ships of the Monarch Line, which carry chiefly cargo, with a few saloon passengers as well.
We had a very heavy cargo on board the Assyrian Monarch as we came back from New York. We carried 260 bullocks, besides cheese and grain, to make glad the heart and fill the stomach, and thus one felt that if the screw were to fail or the fog to hinder a rapid transit, there was corn in Egypt, and that there was something to fall back on. Happily, we were not driven to that alternative. We fared well in the saloon of the Assyrian Monarch; so well, indeed, that a poor elderly lady, who seemed at death’s door when we started, became quite vigorous, comparatively speaking, by the time we ended our voyage.
We had more freedom in the way of sitting up late and having lights than is possible in a crowded passenger ship, and we came more into contact with the captain of the ship and his merry men.
In the case of the Assyrian Monarch this was a great advantage, as Captain Harrison is a good companion as well as an able navigator, and I felt myself safe in his hands, that is, as far as anyone can be safe at sea.
Further, I felt that the chances were in my favour. The Assyrian Monarch had carried over the Atlantic, in stormy weather, the highly-respected and ever-to-be-regretted by Londoners Jumbo; surely it could be trusted to perform the same kind office for myself in the summer season, when the air is still and the seas are calm; and so it did, though every now and then we encountered that greatest of all dangers at sea, fog, more or less dense, especially on the Banks of Newfoundland, where the ice-laden waters of the Arctic come in contact with the warmer waves of the Gulf Stream. As our course was very fortunately much to the south, we had a good deal of the latter.
That Gulf Stream was a revelation to me. When I took my morning bath it seemed as if I were in warm water, and the new forms of life it fostered and developed were particularly pleasant to a casual observer like myself. There one could see the nautilus, or the Portugeuse man-of-war, as it is familiarly termed, in the language of the poet, and cruel, big-headed sharks, which, indeed, followed us almost all the way to England (the fact is that now, when so many cattle are thrown overboard, the Atlantic abounds with sharks), and lovely flying-fish like streaks of silver flashing along the deep and boundless blue ocean. Of these latter one flew on board. It met with a cruel fate. It was eaten by the first officer of the Assyrian Monarch for breakfast. It ought to have choked him. It did nothing of the kind; he, hardened sinner that he was, enjoyed it greatly, and said that it was as good as a whiting.
‘Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,’
In the Gulf Stream we found the usual number of whales and porpoises. The latter would play around the bow or race along the side of the ship in considerable quantities of all sorts of sizes. There were other fish of which I know not the names to be seen occasionally leaping out of the water as high and repeatedly as possible, as if a shark were in their midst seeking whom he might devour.
One sight I shall never forget in the Gulf Stream. It was that of a tortoise. I was leaning over the ship’s side, when something big and round seemed to be coming to the surface. I could not make out what it was; then all at once the truth flashed upon me as he wobbled along, paddling with his fins, his head erect, his little eyes peering at the ship as if he wondered what the dickens it was, and what business it had there. He seemed to be treading the water.
‘I saw him but a moment,
But methinks I see him now.’
The sight gave me quite an appetite, though my friend Sir Henry Thompson will insist upon it that turtle soup is made of conger-eel, but in the wide Atlantic one has time to think of such things; day by day passes and you see nothing but the ocean – not even a distant sail, or the smoke of a passing steamer.
People complain of the uneventfulness of life on board a ship. That, however, is a matter of great thankfulness. A collision or a shipwreck are exciting, but they are disagreeable, nevertheless. It seems the homeward voyage is always the pleasantest as far as the sea is concerned, the wind being more frequently in the west than in any other quarter. Perhaps that is one reason why the Americans are so ready to cross the Atlantic. When I left New York, Cook’s office, in the Broadway, was full of tourists, including Mrs. Langtry and other distinguished personages. Mr. John Cook seems as popular in New York as he is elsewhere. Indeed, I was confidentially informed that he was engaged in organizing a personally-conducted tour for the relief of Gordon and the capture of the Mahdi, and I hear from Egypt that he has a chance of being made Khedive, a position which I am certain he would fill with credit to himself and advantage to the people. Of course, there is a little exaggeration in this, but the American tourist has good reason to revere the name of Cook, and so have we all. As much as anyone he has promoted travel between the Old World and the New, and has made us better friends. It is to be hoped that every steamer that crosses the Atlantic does something similar.
I must own, however, that the nearer I approached England the more I felt ashamed of my native land. The weather was villainous. It rained every day, and the worst of it was, I had had the audacity to assure the Americans on board that we had dry weather in England, that occasionally we saw the sun, and that we were not a web-footed race. Fortunately, at the time of writing this I have not yet encountered any of my American friends, or I should feel, as they say, uncommonly mean. However, the weather was fine enough to admit of a good look at Bishop’s Rock, the name of the lighthouse at the Scilly Isles, where we got our first sight of land; you can imagine how we all rushed on deck to see that. In fine weather, I say, by all means return from America in one of the fine, steady, well-built ships of the Monarch Line. The scenery is far finer than that offered by Queenstown and Liverpool. You have the Scilly Isles to look at, and the Land’s End, and the Lizards. At Portland Bill we laid off till a pilot came on board, and we had a good look at the establishment where so many smart men are sent for a season, and Weymouth heading the distant bay; and then what a fine sweep you have up the Channel – crowded with craft of all kinds, from the eight thousand ton steamer to the frail and awkward fishing lugger – and round the Nore; whilst old towns and castles, speaking not alone of the living present, but of the dead and buried past, are to be seen. Even Americans, fond as they are of modern life, feel the charm of that; whilst to the returning traveller the landscape speaks of ‘home, sweet home.’
