But winter barricades the realms of frost' in vain; our adventurous traveller pierces the icy barrier and penetrates as far as Montreal and Quebec; and as we cannot but consider the Canadians as our future fellow-citizens, and their country destined sooner or later to become a member of our national family, and therefore presenting objects of lively curiosity and interest, we shall extract fully and freely for the amusement of our readers from that part of the book before us, which is descriptive of Canadian scenery and Canadian character.

'Nothing could be more Siberian than the aspect of the Canadian frontier: a narrow road, choked with snow, led through a wood, in which, patches were occasionally cleared, on either side, to admit the construction of a few log-huts, round which a brood of ragged children, a starved pig, and a few half-broken rustic implements, formed an accompaniment more suited to an Irish landscape than to the thriving scenes we had just quitted. The Canadian peasant is still the same unsophisticated animal whom we may suppose to have been imported by Jacques Cartier. The sharp, unchangeable lineaments of the French countenance, set off with a blue or red night-cap, over which is drawn the hood of a gray capote, fashioned like a monk's cowl, a red worsted girdle, hair tied in a greasy leathern queue, brown mocassins of undressed hide, and a short pipe in his mouth, gave undeniable testimony of the presence of Jean Baptiste. His horse seems to have been equally solicitous to shame neither his progenitors nor his owner, by any mixture with a foreign race, but exhibits the same relationship to the horses, as his rider to the subjects of Louis XIII. Now, too, the frequent cross by the road side, thick-studded with all the implements of crucifixional torture, begins to indicate a catholic country: distorted virgins and ghastly saints decorate each inn room, while the light spires of the parish church, covered with plates of tin, glitter across the snowy plain.

At La Prarie we crossed the ice to Montreal, whose isolated mountain forms a conspicuous object at the distance of some leagues. From thence to Quebec, the road follows the course of the St. Lawrence, whose banks present a succession of villages, many of them delightfully situated; but all form and feature were absorbed in the snowy deluge, which now deepened every league; add to which, the sleightrack, by frequently running on the bed of the river, placed us below prospect of every kind. We found the inns neat, and the people attentive; French politesse began to be contrasted with American bluntness. It is curious to observe that this characteristic of the Americans, which so frequently offends the polished feelings of English travellers, is exactly what was formerly objected by the French to ourselves. The "rudesse" of the English character was long a standing jest with our refined neighbours; but we have now, it seems, so far shaken off this odious remnant of uncourtly habits, as to regard it with true French horror in our trans-atlantic cousins.

It was Sunday when we arrived at St. Anne's, mass was just finished, and above an hundred sleighs were rapidly dispersing themselves up the neighbouring heights, and across the bed of the river, to the adjacent villages. The common country sleigh is a clumsy, boxshaped machine, raised at both ends; perhaps not greatly unlike the old

1

367 heroic car. It holds two persons, with the driver, who stands before them. One horse is commonly sufficient, but two are used in posting, when the leader is attached by cords, tandem-wise, and left to use his own discretion, without the restraint of rein, or impulse of whip. Should, however, the latter stimulus become indispensable, the driver jumps from the sleigh, runs forward, applies his pack-thread lash, and regains his seat without any hazard from extraordinary increase of impetus. The runners of these sleighs are formed of two slips of wood, so low that the shafts collect the snow into a succession of wavy hillocks, properly christened "cahots," for they almost dislocate your limbs five thousand times in a day's journey. An attempt was once made to correct this evil, by prohibiting all low runners, as they are called, from coming within a certain distance of Quebec; meaning, thereby, to force the country people into the use of high runners, in the American fashion. Jean Baptiste, however, sturdily and effectually resisted this heretical innovation, by halting with his produce without the limits, and thus compelling the towns-people to come to him to make their purchases. The markets both of Montreal and Quebec exhibit several hundred market sleighs daily. They differ from the pleasure, or travelling sleigh, in having no sides; that is, they consist merely of a plank bottom, with a kind of railing. staple commodities at this season, both of which are immoderately Hay and wood seem the dear, especially at Quebec; even through the States, the common charge for one horse's hay for a night, was a dollar. Provisions are brought to market frozen, in which state they are preserved during winter; cod fish is brought from Boston, a land carriage of 500 miles, and then sells at a reasonable rate, the American commonly speculating on a cargo of smuggled goods back, to make up his profit; a kind of trade extremely brisk betwixt the frontier and Montreal.

'As we approached Quebec, snow lay to the depth of six feet; from the heights of Abram, the eye rested upon what seemed an immense lake of milk; all smaller irregularities of ground, fences, boundaries, and copse woods, had disappeared; the tops of villages and scattered farm houses, with here and there dark lines of pine-wood, and occasionally the mast of some ice-locked schooner, marking the bed of the Charles river, were the only objects peering above it. A range of mountains, sweeping round from west to north, until it meets the St. Lawrence, bounds the horizon; no herald of Spring had yet approached this dreary outpost of civilization; we had observed a few blue thrushes in the neighbourhood of Albany, but none had yet reached Canada; two only of the feathered tribe, brave the winter of this inclement region; the cosmopolite crow, and the snow bird, a small white bird, reported to feed upon snow, because it is not very clear what else it can find.

'It would be acting unfairly to Quebec, to describe it as I found it on my arrival, choked with ice and snow, which one day flooded the streets with a profusion of dirty kennels, and the next, cased them with a sheet of glass. Cloth or carpet boots; galashes, with spikes to their heels; iron pointed walking-sticks, are the defensive weapons perpetually in employ on these occasions. The direction of the streets too, which are most of them built up a precipice, greatly facilitates any inclination one may entertain for tumbling, or neck-breaking.'

* Emberiza hyemalis.

The falls of Montmorenci are formed by a little river of that name, near its junction with the St. Lawrence, about five miles north of Quebec. They have a peculiar interest in winter, from the immense cone of ice, formed at their foot, which was unimpaired when I visited them, in the second week of April. After winding up a short but steep ascent, the road crosses a wooden bridge, beneath which the Montmorenci rushes betwixt its dark gray rocks, and precipitates itself in a broken torrent down a wooded glen on the right; it is not until you have wound round the edge of this glen, which is done by quitting the road at the bridge-foot, that you obtain a view of the falls; nor was their effect lessened by this approach; a partial thaw, succeeded by a frost, had spread a silvery brightness over the waste of snow. Every twig and branch of the surrounding pine-trees, every waving shrub and briar was encased in chrystal, and glittering to the sun beams, like the diamond forest of some northern elf-land. You are now on the edge of a precipice, to which the fall itself, a perpendicular of 220 feet seems diminutive; it is not until you descend and approach its foot, that the whole majesty of the scene becomes apparent; the breadth of the torrent is about fifty feet. The waters, from their prodigious descent, seem snowy-white with foam, and enveloped in a light drapery of gauzy mist. The cone appears about 100 feet in height; mathematically regular in shape, with its base extending nearly all across the stream: its sides are not so steep but that ladies have ascended to the top of it; the interior is hollow. I regret to add, that a mill is constructing on this river, which will, by diverting the stream, destroy this imperial sport of nature; or at least reduce it to the degradation of submitting to be played off at the miller's discretion, like a Versailles fountain.'

The town, or rather city, of Quebec, is built on the northern extremity of a narrow strip of high land, which follows the course of the St. Lawrence for several miles, to its confluence with the Charles. The basis of this height is a dark slate-rock, of which most of the buildings in the town are constructed. Cape Diamond terminates the promontory, with a bold precipice towards the St. Lawrence, to which, it is nearly perpendicular, at the height of 320 feet. It derives its name from the crystals of quartz found in it, which are so abundant, that after a shower the ground glitters with them The lower town is built round the foot of these heights, without the fortifications, which, with the upper town, occupy their crest, in bleak pre-eminence; the former, snug and dirty, is the abode of thriving commerce, and of most of the lower classes employed about the navy. The latter, cold and lofty, is the seat of government, and principal residence of the military; and claims, in consequence, that kind of superiority which some heads have been said to assert over the inglorious belly: to speak the truth, neither has much to boast on the score, either of beauty, or convenience.'

'The Huron village of Loretto stands on the left bank of the Charles about four miles below the lake, (eight from Quebec.) The river, immediately on passing the bridge, below the village, rushes down its broken bed of granite, with a descent of about seventy feet, and buries itself in the windings of the deeply-shadowed glen below. A part of the fall is diverted to turn a mill, which seems fearfully suspended above the foaming torrent. The village covers a plot of ground very much in the manner of an English barrack, and altogether the reverse

of the straggling Canadian method; it is, in fact, the method of their ancestors. I found the children amusing themselves with little bows and arrows. The houses had generally an air of poverty and slovenliness: that, however, of their principal chief, whom I visited, was neat and comfortable. One of their old men gave me a long account of the manner in which the Jesuits had contrived to trick them out of their seignoral rights, and possession of the grant of land made them by the king of France, which consisted, originally, of four leagues, by one in breadth, from Sillori, north. Two leagues of this, which were taken from them by the French government, upon promise of an equivalent, they give up, he said, as lost; but as the property of the Jesuits is at present in the hands of commissioners appointed by our government, they were in hopes of recovering the remainder, which it never could be proved that their ancestors either gave, sold, lent, or in any way alienated. Although the oldest among them retains no remembrance of the wandering life of their ancestors, it is still the life they covet; "for," said a young Huron, " on s'ennuie dans le village, et on ne s'ennuie jamais dans les bois."

From Quebec to Montreal may be called one long village. On either shore a stripe of land, seldom exceeding a mile in breadth, (except near the streams which fall into the St. Lawrence,) bounded by aboriginal forests, and thickly studded with low-browed farm houses, white-washed from top to bottom, to which a log-barn and stable are attached, and commonly a neat plot of garden ground, represents all that is inhabited of Lower Canada. A cluster of these houses becomes a village, generally honoured with the name of some saint, whose church glitters afar with tin spires and belfry. Upon the shoulders of this patron saint, the Canadian rests the chief part of his cares, both temporal and eternal -having committed his seed to the same ground, and in the same manner with his forefathers, he trusts that the "bon Dieu" will, through the Intercession of the said saint, do the rest. Should an inclement season, as was the case last year, disappoint his hopes, he is prepared patiently to confess himself, and die of hunger, fully persuaded that the blessed St. Anne, or St. Anthony, will not fail him in both worlds.'

After quitting the neighbourhood of Montreal, we see little of the French Canadian; he is succeeded by settlers of a character very different; and with whom he is generally placed in humiliating contrast. He gains little by travellers; few enter his cottage, or inquisitively scan the character of an ignorant and superstitious race, who aspire to little more than to walk in the steps of their priests and forefathers. Certainly if intellectual power be the sole measure of human merit, their's lies in little compass.-Ignorant they unquestionably are, though I doubt whether they have a right to such extreme pre-eminence in this respect, as Englishmen are usually liberal enough to assign them: Schools are common through the province, and the number of colleges seems proportioned to the population: the gentry and tradesmen appear not much inferior in information, to the country gentlemen and tradesmen of wiser nations; and if the share of the peasant's intellect exceeds not much that of the ox he drives, he may claim fellowship in this respect, with the peasant of almost every country on the globe, except the United States. He is certainly superstitious, that is, he believes all his priest tells him-no great peculiarity. Let not, however, those quali

ties be overlooked, which give a grace to his poverty, sweeten the cup of his privations, and almost convert his ignorance into bliss.-Essentially a Frenchman, he is gay, courteous and contented: If the rigours of a Canadian climate have somewhat chilled the overflowing vivacity derived from his parent stock, he has still a sufficient portion of good spirits, and loquacity, to make his rulers, and neighbours, seem cold and silent: To strangers and travellers. he is invariably civil, seeming to value their good-word beyond their money: He is reckoned parsimonious, because all his gains arise from his savings: He is sa isfied with the humblest fare, and his utmost debauch never exceeds a "coup" of rum, and pipe of tobacco, taken with a dish of gossip, the only luxury in which he can be accounted extravagant.'

'At present, great crimes are almost unknown, and petty offences are rare; I have indeed heard the lower classes accused of a propensity to pilfer, but I am inclined to think, few instances of this kind occur, except from the pressure of extreme want. The late war, by calling out a considerable proportion of the population to serve in the militia; has produced an evident change in the manners of the young men: I always found two invariable symptoms of a man's having served; a little more intelligence, and a great deal more knavery. But if the war did not mend their morals, it certainly raised their character: They exhibited a high degree of courage in the field, and an affectionate zeal towards their governor, whom they believed their friend: a striking instance of this occurred early in the war. While Sir George Prevost was at Montreal, a body of several hundred peasants, from the remotest settlements of the province, came to wait on him; each man was armed with whatever weapon he could procure on the spur of the occasion, and all were clothed and provisioned for immediate service: An old man, who had been a soldier in the revolutionary war, was at their head, who thus addressed Sir George: "My general, we heard you were in difficulty, and have marched to your assistance; I have served myself, and though an old man, do not think I am quite incapable of duty."-Sir George, strongly affected with this instance of attachment, accepted their services, and they acted as a separate body during the whole of the campaign.

The Canadians bear a considerable antipathy to the Americans, whom they denominate," Sacres Bastonnais."* I believe it to arise principaily from religious prejudices; in proof of which, there is a striking anecdote related in the life of Franklin, who made an attempt to bring them over to the revolutionary cause. At this day, even the better informed among them are fully persuaded that the American government is constantly plotting their ruin, and the destruction of the mighty city of Quebec. I was witness to a curious exemplification of this feeling: A young Canadian, by no means illiterate, informed me one morning, with a very grave face, that a tremendous plot had been discovered to destroy the whole city by blowing up the powder magazine; that a train had been found ready laid, and no doubt existed of an American's being at the end of it. I took the trouble to trace the source of this report, and found it to originate in an order to mend a broken door belonging to the magazine. A fire never happens in the

* Not sacres Bastonnais,' but sacrés Bostoniens.' R.