ARRIVAL AT QUEBEC.
Once more I am on _terra firma_, and on Canadian soil, where I breathe a
balmier air and rejoice in a clearer atmosphere than you in England can
have any idea of. After all, we were in twenty-four hours before the
mail steamer, the _Sarmatian_, which you must own is a feather in the cap
of the _Sarnia_. One hears much of the St. Lawrence, but it is hard to
exaggerate its beauties. When you are fairly in it, after having escaped
the fog of the Newfoundland Banks and the icebergs of the Gulf, on you
sail all day and night amidst islands, and past mountains, their tops
covered with snow, stretching far away into the interior, guarding lands
yet waiting to be tilled, and primeval forests yet ignorant of the
woodcutter’s axe. A hardy people, mostly of French extraction, inhabit
that part of the province of Quebec; but as you reach nearer to the
capital, the land becomes flatter, and the signs of human settlement more
frequent in the shape of wooden houses, each with its plot of ground,
where the rustics carry on the daily work of the farm, or in the shape of
villages, inhabited by ship-wrecked fishermen, who have intermarried with
the French, and whose children, if they bear the commonest of English
names, are at the same time utterly ignorant, not only of the tongue that
Shakespeare spake, but of the faith and morals Milton held. They are a
lazy people, living chiefly on the harvest of the sea, and doing little
when that harvest is over. Men are wanted to cut down timber, and they
come in gangs of two or three hundred, and spend a week in riotous
debauchery before they can be got to work. Few English settlers go into
that region, yet they can easily make a living there if they are inclined
to rough it in the bush, and are not afraid of coarse living and hard
work. Villages, churches, hotels, are all built of wood on a stone
foundation, and, painted as the houses are, they remind one not a little
of Zaandam, and the little wooden cottages you may see in that old
quarter of the world. But the original colonists are a poor people,
living frugally and with little desire for the comforts and luxuries of
life. It is the same in Quebec, where the poor all talk French, and
where the Protestants are in a very small minority. In Quebec there is
little to attract the stranger. It looks its best at it stands on its
picturesque rock rising out of the St. Lawrence. You see the French
University, founded as far back as 1663 by that De Laval whose name is so
deeply interwoven with the French history of the province. It is thus
that his contemporaries describe him. ‘He began,’ writes Mother
Juchiereau de Saint Denis, Superior of the Hôtel Dieu, ‘in his tenderest
years the study of perfection, and we have reason to believe he reached
it, since every virtue which St. Paul demands in a bishop was seen and
admired in him.’ Mother Marie, Superior of the Ursulines, wrote: ‘I will
not say that he is a saint, but I may say with truth that he lives like a
saint and an apostle. We have ample evidence of the austerity of his
life. His servant, a lay-brother, testified after his death that he
slept on a hard bed, and would not suffer it to be changed, even when it
became full of fleas. So great was his charity that he gave fifteen
hundred or two thousand francs to the poor every year.’ ‘I have seen
him,’ writes Houssart, ‘keep cooked meat five or six, seven or eight
days, in the heat of summer, and when it was all mouldy and wormy, he
washed it in warm water, and ate it, and told me it was very good. I
determined to keep everything I could that had belonged to his holy
person, and after his death to soak bits of linen in his blood when his
body was opened, and take a few bones and cartilages from his breast, cut
off his hair, and keep his clothes and such things to serve as most
precious relics.’
Then you see the spire of the English Cathedral, a very plain building,
and higher up still, the modern Parliament House, but recently erected.
Further on, you see the Dufferin Promenade, which is a lasting record to
the most popular of English Governors-General; and higher up still is the
citadel, and beyond that are the plains of Abraham, where Wolfe fell in
the hour of victory.
The Presbyterians and Wesleyans have good congregations, but the Baptists
are not strong, in spite of the wonderful vitality of the aged pastor,
Mr. Marsh, who, octogenarian as he is, seemed much more able to climb the
heights than the writer, who perhaps was a little out of condition on
account of the laziness of sea life. One of the buildings with which I
was most pleased was that of the Young Men’s Christian Association (built
partly by the munificence of Mr. George Williams, of London, the founder
of the Young Men’s Christian Associations all the world over), which is
quite a credit to the place, and from the top of which you get a
magnificent view of the quaint old city, with its gates and narrow
streets, and the pleasant suburbs, and the far-away plains and hills,
amongst which the St. Lawrence or the river Charles, which runs into it
here, urges on its wild career.
‘In a city where we have to contend,’ says the last Report of the
Association, ‘against great disadvantages, where the Protestant
population seems to be gradually diminishing, and the young men seeking
other fields of enterprise, it is a matter of sincere thankfulness that
we have not to record a retrograde movement.’ It was with regret that I
saw that the Independent church, which is a fine one, has had to close
its doors. Another disadvantage resulting from this decay of
Protestantism is, that the Protestants have to bear more than their fair
share of taxation, as the Roman Catholic churches and convents and
nunneries, which are wealthy, are exempt from taxation altogether. I
fancy, also, that the men employed at the extensive wharves are doing all
they can to drive the trade away, as they impose such regulations as to
the number of men to be employed in loading or unloading ships, that now
many of them load lower down the river. However, the place is busy
enough, especially on the other side of the river, where the steamers
land their passengers, and where Miss Richardson has established a
comfortable home for girls and young women—which I inspected—free of
expense, as they arrive from England, and seeks to plant them out where
their services may be required.
[Picture: Falls of Montmorenci, Quebec]
One of our latest lady writers is very enthusiastic on the subject of
Quebec. I am sorry to say I cannot share in that enthusiasm, and I was
by no means disconsolate that I could not stay to attend a convivial
meeting to which I was invited by a French colonist, one of our
fellow-passengers. I was soon tired of its dusty and narrows streets,
and its pavements all made of boards, and its priests and nuns. There
are no shops to look at worth speaking of, and the idea of riding in one
of the _caleches_ was quite out of the question. Nothing more rickety in
the shape of a riding machine was ever invented. It seemed to me that
they were sure to turn over as soon as you turned the corner. The
_caleche_ is simply a little sledge on wheels. As a sledge I fancy it is
delightful, though by no means up to the sledges I have driven on the
Elbe in hard winters in days long long departed; but as a carriage, drawn
by a broken-down horse, with a driver almost as wild as the original
Indian, the _caleche_, I own, finds little favour in my eyes. Up the
town there does not seem much life. There is plenty of it, however, in
the shipping district, where a great deal of building is going on.
Of one thing I must complain in connection with emigration, and that is
the pity the emigrants land at Quebec at all. The steamers all go up to
Montreal after they have shot down their helpless crowd of emigrants on
the wharf, where they have to spend a dreary day waiting to get their
luggage. How much more pleasant it would be to take them right on to
Montreal, which, at any rate, is the destination of ninety-nine out of a
hundred at the very least. As it is, they are taken on by a special
train, which starts no one knows when, and which arrives at Montreal at
what hour it suits the railway authorities. In that respect, it seems to
me, there is room for great improvement; but on this head I speak
diffidently, as, perhaps, the steamship owners and the railway companies
know their own business better than I do. The trip is a picturesque one,
and can be enjoyed in these short nights better on the deck of a steamer
than in a railway-car. [I am glad to hear since writing the above that
this state of things will not further exist, and that every arrangement
is now being made by the Canadian Pacific Railway authorities for the
speedy transfer from the steamer to the train.] The more I see of
matters, the clearer it seems to me that large parties of emigrants
should not be sent out by themselves, but that they should be under the
care of some one who knows the country and the railway officials.
I am sorry to say, as regards some of the better class of emigrants, the
long delay at Quebec gave them an opportunity of getting drunk, of which
they seemed gladly to have availed themselves. The future of some of
these young fellows it is not difficult to predict. In a little while
they will have exhausted their resources, and will return home disgusted
with Canada, and swearing that it is impossible to get a living there.
There was no need for them to go to an hotel at all. In the yard there
was a capital shed fitted up for refreshments. I had there a plate of
good ham, bread-and-butter and jam, and as much good tea as I wanted—all
for a shilling. It was a boon indeed to the emigrants we had landed from
the _Sarnia_ to find such a place at their disposal.
As to myself, I need not assure you I was glad enough to find myself in a
Pullman car, bound for Montreal. I shed no tears as we left Quebec far
behind, and glided on under a cloudless, moonlit sky, serenaded by those
Canadian nightingales, the frogs. At first I felt a little difficulty in
retiring to rest. As a modest man, I was inclined to object to the
presence of so many ladies, although we had been on the best of terms
during our voyage out. It is true that they had their husbands with
them, but nevertheless I felt uncomfortable, and vowed I would retreat to
the smoking-room. However, I was over-persuaded, and lay down with the
rest; though more than once that eventful night I was awoke by awful
sounds, reminding me rather of the hoarse roar of the Atlantic in a storm
than of the peaceful slumbers of a Pullman car.