Beachville--Ingersoll--Dorchester--Plank road--Westminster
Hall--London--The great Fire of London--Longwoods--Delaware--The
Pious, glorious, and immortal Memory--Moncey--The German
Flats--Tecumseh--Moravian settlement--Thamesville--The Mourning
Dove--The War, the War--Might against Right--Cigar-smoking and all
sorts of curiosity--Young Thames--The Albion--The loyal Western
District--America as it now is.
I was detained at Woodstock for some time by the sickness of one of
the horses. The animal had dropped in his stable after our arrival,
and refused to feed; consequently, our driver had to look for another;
and a miserable one, at a large price, he got. The intense heat had
overpowered the horse.
We departed, however, at half-past six in the morning, on the 10th
July, and reached Beachville, five miles westward.
Beachville is a small country village, beautifully situated, and the
country between is undulating and rich. The driver pointed out Mr.
John Vansittart's house, an English looking residence, with extensive
grounds.
A creek, called Hard Creek, runs along the road with several
mill-sites on it. It loses itself every now and then in deep woods;
and altogether this is the prettiest country I have ever seen in
Canada. The land also appears good.
At Beachville are saw, grist, and water-mills on an extensive scale,
the best in the country, owned and worked by Scotch people.
The creek called Little Thames is seen also, which runs through the
Canada Company's lands to the Forks of the Thames at London. This is a
settlement forty years old; consequently, every thing is forward in
it.
We then came through an equally fine, old-settled country, to
Ingersoll, five miles farther. This is a straggling place of about the
same age, with mills and creeks, and a large inn, called the Mansion
House (Hoffman's).
We drove on to Dorchester, a small settlement and an old mill-site,
about eighteen miles from London, where we stopped to recruit our
wretched horse, at half-past ten. Here we breakfasted at a roadside
inn, not very good nor very comfortable, but were glad to observe that
the plank road commenced again.
A plank road in England would be a curiosity indeed: here it is none:
fancy rolling along a floor of thick boards through field and forest
for a hundred miles. The boards are covered with earth, or gravel, if
it can be had, and this deadens the noise and prevents the wear and
tear, so that you glide along pretty much the same as a child's
go-cart goes over the carpet. But this will only do where wood is
plentiful, and thus the time must come, even in Canada, when gravelled
roads or iron rails will supersede it.
The country was poorer in this section, being very sandy, until near
the tavern called Westminster Hall; what a name! But the beautiful
little river was occasionally in sight in a hollow of woods of the
richest foliage. At one place we saw a party of Indians with ponies
and goods, going down to a ford, where no doubt their canoes awaited
them. Their appearance as they descended was very picturesque, armed
as they were with rifles and fowling-pieces, very Salvator Rosaish.
Westminster Hall, where we arrived at ten minutes to two o'clock, and
staid an hour to bait, is six miles and a half from London. Cockney
land everywhere.
On our approaching the new capital of the London District, we saw
evident signs of recent exertions. Fine turnpike-gates, excellent
roads, arbours for pic-nic parties, and before us, at a distance, a
large wide-spread clearance, in which spires and extensive buildings
lifted their heads.
London is a perfectly new city; it was nothing but a mere forest
settlement before 1838, and is now a very large, well laid out town.
We arrived at five p.m., and put up at a very indifferent inn, the
best however which the great fire of London had spared. The town is
laid out at right angles, each street being very wide and very sandy,
and where the fire had burnt the wooden squares of houses we saw brick
ones rising up rapidly. There is now a splendid hotel, (O'Neill's and
Hackstaff's) where you may really meet with luxury as well as comfort,
for I see, _mirabile dictu_, that fresh lobsters and oysters are
advertised for every day in the season. These come from the Atlantic
coast of the United States, some thousand miles or so; but what will
not steam and railroad do! We saw a stone church erecting; and there
is an immense barrack, containing the 81st regiment of infantry and a
mounted company, or, as it is called in military parlance, a battery
of artillery.
London was so thickly beset with disaffected Americans during the
rebellion, that it was deemed necessary to check them by stationing
this force in the heart of the district; and since then the military
expenditure and the excellent situation of the place has created a
town, and will soon create a large city.
The adjacent country is very beautiful, particularly along the
meandering banks of the Thames. I saw some excellent stores, or
general shops; and, although the houses, excepting in the main street,
are at present scattered, and there is nothing but oceans of sand in
the middle, it wants only time to become a very important place.
General Simcoe, when he first settled Upper Canada, thought of making
it the metropolis, but it is not well situated for that purpose, being
too accessible from the United States.
I staid here all night and part of next day; and here I found the
disadvantages of an education for the bar; for my bedroom was
immediately over it, and it was open the greatest part of the night.
Drinking, smoking, smoking, drinking, incessant, with concomitant
noise and bad language; which, combined with a necessity for keeping
the window open on account of the heat, rendered sleep impossible. I
have slept from sheer fatigue under a cannon, or rather very near it,
when it was firing, but Vauban himself could not have slept with the
thermometer at 100° Fahrenheit over a Canadian tap-room.
I was glad to leave London in Canada West for that reason, and
departed the next day in a fresh waggon at half-past five p.m.,
arriving at the Corners, six miles off, where a bran-new settlement
and bran-new toll-gate appeared with a fine cross road, that to the
right leading to Westminster, that to the left to Lake Erie. I was
sorry that the plank road was finished only to this place; but we had
fine settlements all the way.
Then begins a new country, and that most dreary and monotonous of
Canadian landscape scenery--the Long Woods. This lasts to Delaware,
where we stopped at eight o'clock, on a fine evening, having travelled
twelve miles from the Corners.
Here the road suddenly turns from the river to the right; and we drove
past Buller's New House, which he is building, to his old stand. It
was ancient enough, but respectable; and if the rats and mice and
other small deer could only have been persuaded that one had had no
sleep the night before and that the weather was intensely hot, we
should have done well enough; although some soldiers on a look-out
party for deserters, and some travellers, were not at all inclined to
sleep themselves, or to let others enjoy the blessings of repose.
Delaware is a very pretty village, and the Indians are settled some
seven miles from it. It has a very large and very long bridge over the
Thames.
We started, most militarily, at four in the morning of Friday the 12th
of July, without recollecting King William, or the Pious, Glorious,
and Immortal Memory. But we were to be reminded of it.
Here we saw the labours of the Board of Works in the Great Western
Road to much advantage, in deep cuttings and embankments, fine
culverts and bridges, with lots of the sons of green Erin--"first
flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea"--and their cabins along
the line of works, preparing the level for planking.
The country is flat, but very fine and well settled. Quails amused
themselves along the road, looking at us from the wooden rail fences,
and did not leave their perches without persuasion. The rascals looked
knowing, too, as if they were aware that waggoners did not carry guns.
I heard the real whip-poor-will or night-jar last night frequently,
sighing his melancholy ditty along the banks of the beautiful Thames.
The cry of the Canada quail, which is a very small partridge-like
bird, is very plaintive. As we passed them, they gave it out
heartily--Phu--Phoo-iey. We arrived at Smith's tavern, seventeen
miles, at half-past seven, breakfasted, and stayed until ten, at that
miserable place.
We then drove on, and passed Moncey in Caradoc, so named from an
Indian tribe. It is a pretty village, where they had just finished a
church, whereon banners were flying, which showed us, that if we had
forgotten King William, some folks here had not; and, out of bravado,
a refugee American had stuck a pocket-handkerchief flag of the Stars
and Stripes up at his shop-door, which we prophesied, as evening
came, would be pulled down, because orange, blue, and red flags
flourished near it. This is an Indian village, into which the
Americans and other white traders and adventurers have set foot.
I was charmed with the scenery, consisting of fertile fields, rich
woods, the ever-winding Thames and undulating mammillated hills,
covered with verdure. Happy Indians, if unhappy Whites were not
thrusting you out!
We arrived at one o'clock at Fleming's Inn, much better than the last,
twelve miles. Here we rested awhile.--Starting again, the country was
found but very little settled, with long tiresome woods, but still
beautiful, all nearly oak. We halted at the German Flats, not to get
out, for there was no abiding-place, but to look at the ground, where
the battle in the last American war took place, in which Tecumseh, the
great Tecumseh, met his death, and where Kentucky heroes made
razor-straps of his skin.
Seven miles after leaving these immense woods, the valley of the
Thames opens most magnificently in a gorge below, and spreads into
rich flats to the left, embowered with the most beautiful forest
scenery, in which, about a mile off, stand the Moravian church,
school, and Indian village. A more lovely spot could not have been
selected. There is a large Indian settlement of old date here; and, as
we drove along, we passed through two deserted orchards; the road had
rendered them useless; and, from which and its neighbourhood, the
Indians had retired into their settled village below. Here the forest
was gradually regaining the mastery: fruit-trees had become wild, and
the Thames ran in a deep bold ravine far below, clothed with aged and
solemn trees, willows and poplars, intermixed with oak, beech, ash,
and altogether English and park-like. It put me in mind of the opening
chapter of "Ivanhoe."
The road was a deep sand; and we stopped a little at Smith's Inn,
three miles and a half from our night's halt. Here the soil changes to
clay, and the country is not much settled, but is beginning to be so.
We saw bevies of quail on the roadside, which the driver cut at with
his whip, but they were not disposed to fly. We arrived at Freeman's
Inn at half-past six p.m., twelve miles, and brought up for the night
at Thamesville, where there is a dam and an extensive bridge, and
altogether the preparation for the plank road is a very extraordinary
work, embracing much deep cutting. Here all is sand again, but the
occasional glimpses of the Thames, as you approach this village, are
very fine and picturesque. Squirrels, particularly the ground species,
or chippemunk, amused us a good deal by their gambols as we drove
along. The village of Thamesville is very small.
Oh, Father Thames, did you ever dream of having _ville_ tacked to your
venerable name? But, as the Nevilles have it, _ne vile velis_.
I amused myself here on a scorching evening with looking about me, as
well as the heat would permit; and here I first heard and first saw
that curious little Canadian bird, the mourning dove. It came hopping
along the ground close to the inn, but the evening was not light
enough for me to distinguish more than that it was very small, not so
big as a quail, and dark-coloured. It seemed to prefer the sandy road;
and, as it had probably never been molested, picked up the oats or
grain left in feeding the horses. It became so far domesticated as to
approach mankind, although the slightest advance towards it sent it
away. My host, a very intelligent man, told me that it always came
thus on the hot summer nights; and we soon heard at various distances
its soft but exceedingly melancholy call. It appears peculiar to this
part of Canada, and is the smallest of the dove kind. I know of
nothing to compare with its soft, cadenced, and plaintive cry; it
almost makes one weep to hear it, and is totally different from the
coo of the turtle dove. When it begins, and the whip-poor-will joins
the concert, one is apt to fancy there is a lament among the feathered
kind for some general loss, in the stillness and solemnity of a
summer's night, when the leaves of the vast and obscure forest are
unruffled, when the river is just murmuring in the distance, and the
moon emerging from and re-entering the drifting night-cloud, in a land
of the mere remnant of the Indian tribes gone to their eternal rest.
This in a contemplative mood forcibly reminds us of that sublime
passage of holy writ, wherein that thrilling command is embodied, to
"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, when he shall rise
up at the voice of the bird."
The cruel treatment of the aborigines of that half of the world
discovered by Columbus rises, on such an occasion, to the memory, with
all its force. Here we stood on that soil, a small portion of which
has been doled out to them in return for an empire; and here we could
not avoid reflecting upon the injustice which has been so unsparingly
dealt out to the Indian in that neighbouring Republic instituted to
secure freedom and impartial government to all men.
Yes, a nation claiming to be the most powerful under the sun, claiming
a common origin, quarrelled for self-government; the mild sway of a
limited monarchy was tyranny and bigotry; established laws and a state
religion were swept away under a feeling that the child was strong
enough to defy the parent. A more perfect form of government was
necessary to the welfare of the human race: Washington arose, and a
Republic was created. Did it continue in unison with the aspirations
and views of that great man? did he think it requisite to extirpate
the Red Men? did he forbid the Catholic to exercise the rights of
conscience? did he intend that the Conscript Fathers should break
their ivory wands, and bow to the dust before plebeian rule? did he
imagine, in declaring all men equal, that mind was to succumb before
mere matter, that intelligence was to be ground under the foot of
physical force?
The Englishman, the true Englishman, and by that word I mean a citizen
of England, a Canadian, as well as he born in Britain or Ireland,
judges differently; he acknowledges all men equal, and that all have
an equal right inherent in them to receive equal protection; but he
renders to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and as he loves his own
self, so loves he the representative of every soul bearing the proud
name of a British subject.
He well knows, from the experience of all history, sacred and profane,
that it is by maintaining order, in the institution of divers ranks in
society and in government, that the true balance of power is found;
and he feels that, if once that power is obtained by either extreme of
the scale, his liberty, both of mind and of body, is at an end.
The manner in which Indian rights are treated in America is so
glaring, that the philanthropist shudders. Protocols pass; the country
west of the Mississippi is declared to belong first to Mexico, then to
Spain, then to France, then to England, then to the United States. At
last, the United States, strong enough to play a new game, a much more
lofty one than the Tea Tragedy, defies the whole world, issues a
decree irrevocable as those famous ones of the Medes and the
Persians, and, perhaps, equally to pass into oblivion, that all the
New World is to be the property of the descendants of the
Anglo-Saxons--all the New World, never mind whether it be Monarchical
England's, Imperial Brazil, Republican Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, &c.--all
is to be guided by the banner of the Stars and Stripes.
Who among the statesmen ever dreams that the Red Man has any rights,
who ever cares about his property in the wilds of the Prairies, of the
Rocky Mountains, of the unknown lands of the Pacific! The United
States declares that all Northern America is hers from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, and the bloody flag of war is unfurled to obtain the
commencement of this crusade against right and against reason,
although the United States has ten times as much land already as ten
times its present population can fill or cultivate, and then, Oregon
is the war cry,
"Truly to speak it, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground,
That hath in it no profit but the name;
To pay five _dollars_, five, I would not farm it;
Two thousand souls and twenty _million dollars_
Will not debate the question of this straw;
This is th' imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies--"
and then, in case Oregon should fail, advantage is taken of Mexico's
distractions to negotiate for California.
The Red Man, the poor Red Man, may however have a voice in all this,
that may speak in thunder. He is neither so powerless, nor so utterly
contemptible as is supposed. In the wilds of the West, it is said,
including the roaming horsemen of Mexico, 100,000 warriors exist. Even
against 20,000, what army entangled in the forest, hidden in the
Prairie grass, lost in the wilderness defiles of the vast Andes of the
north, could also exist? and can the American government afford to
detach regular troops for such a dreadful warfare? will the militia
undertake it? Can an American fleet of sufficient power and resources
be kept in the Pacific to counteract and send supplies? He who knows
the western wilds well knows that once concentrate Indian warfare, and
it would be impossible to keep together or to supply such an army as
that of the Republic, unsupported, as it must necessarily be, by a
fleet.
The time is coming, and that rapidly, there can be no doubt, when the
white man will possess exclusively the Pacific coast; but this is to
be achieved by the commercial and not by the physical power, and that
it is yet very distant when any one nation will obtain it is the
belief of all reasoning people; for even should the Americans force
Mexico from its proper station, should they obtain California and
Oregon, will Russia look quite quietly on, will France see her great
scheme of Pacific colonization in danger, and will England tamely
submit to have her eastern territories and the new trade with China
put in jeopardy?
I think not, and also conceive that it is as impossible for the United
States to support a lengthened war with any great European power as
it is for any great European power to conquer or to subdue any portion
of the United States.
Spain too is gradually recovering from the shock, which the loss of
her Ophir inflicted on her; more liberal notions are gaining ground in
Iberia; and it is by no means impossible, that, backed by France, she
may yet resume her power in America. Look at the tenacity with which,
amidst all her reverses, she has held on to Cuba.
There is, in fact, no surmising the results of a mad war on the part
of America.
But, in all their profound calculations, the Indian, the poor despised
Indian, is forgotten. How he is to live, how he is to die, are alike
matters of indifference.
Well may the mourning dove haunt the villages of the Five Nations!
Thamesville--how I detest the combination! it must have been named in
the very spirit of gin-sling--is a place very likely to become of
importance when the great western road is quite completed.
I was listening to the mourning dove, which then gave a balm to my
wounded spirit, when I observed on the bench under the verandah, or
_stoup_, as the Dutch settlers call it, of the inn, on the seat near
me, a mass of black mud, or some such substance. Always curious--a
phrenologic doctor told me I had the bump of wonder--I took hold of
it, and found it to be adherent. It smelt strongly of bitumen. The
landlord seeing me examining it chimed in, and said that the Indians
had brought it to him from thirteen miles beyond Cornwall's Creek,
where there was an immense deposit of the same kind. It was, in fact,
soft asphalte, or petroleum, or bitumen, or whatever the learned may
please to designate it, in a state of coherence.
My researches did not stop here: I had had specimens of all the
Canadian woods to send officially for transmission to England, and
amongst others I had observed a very curious one, called white wood,
which was certainly neither pine, nor any thing approaching to the fir
kind. It was very light, very tenacious, and is extensively employed
in this portion of Canada, where fir and pine are not common, for the
purposes of flooring and building, making an extremely delicate and
ornamental board.
In travelling along I had asked the name of every strange tree, and so
frequently had received the words white wood for answer, that I at
last found it was a Canadian poplar, which grows in the western and
London districts to an enormous size.
The cotton wood is also another species of western poplar, and both
would form a useful and an ornamental addition to our park scenery at
home.
The white wood, the cotton wood, and the yellow white wood, are used
in this part of Canada for all building purposes, wherein pine is
employed elsewhere, and the last named makes the best flooring. I
should think, from its lightness and beauty, that it might be used
with great advantage in Tunbridge ware.
The quaking asp is also another poplar of western West Canada, and is
a variety of the aspen.
Here too I began to observe gigantic walnut-trees, from which such a
large proportion of household furniture throughout Canada is
manufactured, but regretted to find that it is much wasted in being
split up into rails for fences by the farmers, on account of its
durability. They are, however, beginning to be sensible of its value,
for it is now largely exported to England and elsewhere. The size of
the black walnut and of the cotton wood is inconceivable: of the
latter curbs for the mouths of large wells are often made, by merely
hollowing out the trunk.
Vegetation in the western district is, in fact, extraordinary, and
altogether it is undoubtedly the garden of Canada. Tobacco grows well
in some portions of it, and is largely cultivated near the shores of
Lake Erie. I believe most of the Havana cigars smoked in Canada,
particularly at Montreal, are Canadian tobacco. So much the better;
for if a man must put an enemy to his digestive organs into his
mouth, it is better that that enemy should be the produce of the soil
of which he is a native or denizen, as he derives some benefit from
the consumption, although consumption of another sort may accrue.
I have long and earnestly thought upon the subject of _the weed_, and
have come to the conclusion that, as a necessary of life, it is about
upon a par with opium. Men of the lower classes, I mean labouring
people, who leave off drinking either from religious motives or from
fear, usually take to smoking, and in general their constitutions are
as much injured by the one as by the other. Cigar-smoking is a sort of
devil-may-care imitation of the vulgar by gentlemen, and is no more
requisite for health or amusement than whiskey, dice, or cards. It is
amusing in the extreme to see old fellows aping extreme juvenility,
and professing to smoke before breakfast; and it is ridiculous to see
young gentlemen, very young and very green, cigar in mouth, fancying
it very manly and very independent to imitate a rough, weather-beaten
sailor or soldier, who, not being able to smoke a cigar, sticks to the
pipe. That it stupifies is certain, that it is very vulgar is more
certain, and that it injures health is more certain still. I wonder if
Father Matthew smokes--almost all priests do: they have very little
other solace.
The approach to Chatham is very pretty. Young Thames, for I do not see
why there should not be Young Thames as well as Young England, that
most absurd of all D'Israelisms, looks enchanting in a country where
lakes as flat on their shores as a pancake take the lead, and where
rivers are creeks, and creeks are--nothing.
We crossed a long whitewashed bridge, much out of repair, and saw an
enormous American flag upon a very little American schooner, which had
penetrated thus far into the bowels of the land. Bunting cannot be
dear in the United States, and English Manchester must drive a pretty
good trade in this article.
The town of Chatham is situated on the banks of the Thames and of a
large creek; and, being a Kentish man, I should have felt quite at
home but for three things, videlicet, that enormous American flag; the
name of the creek, which was Mac Gill or Mac something; and a
thermometer pointing to somewhere about 101° Fahrenheit at nine a.m.
Besides this, the town is a wooden one, and has a wooden little fort,
which divides Scotland from Kent, or the river from the creek, nicely
picketed in, and kept in the most perfect order by a worthy barrack
serjeant, its sole tenant, whose room was hung round with prints of
the Queen, Windsor Castle, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord
Nelson--all in frames, and excellently well engraved, from the
"Albion" newspaper.
The Albion newspaper is no ordinary hebdomadal; it has disseminated
loyalty throughout America for years, and, as a gift on each 1st of
January, has been in the habit of publishing a print of large size,
engraved in exceedingly brilliant style, which is presented to its
subscribers. The Queen, the Duke, the Conqueror of the Seas, Walter
Scott, and his Monument at Edinburgh, &c., are the fruits; and these
plates would sell in England for at least half a guinea, or a guinea
each.
The Albion, moreover, gives extracts at length from the current
literature of England; and thus science, art, politics, agriculture,
find admirers and readers in every corner of the backwoods.
Dr. Bartlett, its editor, at New York, deserves much more than this
ephemeral encomium, for he has done more than all the orators upon
loyalty in the Canadas towards keeping up a true British spirit in it.
The Albion, in fact, in Canada is a _Times_ as far as influence and
sound feeling go; and although, like that autocrat of newspapers, it
differs often from the powers that be, John Bull's, Paddy's, and
Sawney's real interests are at the bottom, and the bottom is based
upon the imperishable rock of real liberty. It steers a medium course
between the _extrême droit_ of the so-called Family Compact, and the
_extrême gauche_ of the Baldwin opposition.
Political feeling ran very high in the section of country through
which we are travelling, both in the war of 1812 and in the rebellion
of 1837; and, from the vicinity of the Western district to the United
States, in both instances it was inferred by the American people that
an easy conquest was certain. Proclamations followed upon
proclamations, and attacks upon attacks, but the people loved their
soil, and the invaders were driven back. So it will be again, if,
unhappily, war should follow the mad courses now pursuing. The
Canadians at heart are sound, and nowhere is this soundness more
apparent than in the western district. It is not the mere name of
liberty which can tempt thinking men to abandon the reality.
It has fallen to my lot to be acquainted with many leaders of faction,
both in the Old and in the New World, and I never yet knew one whose
personal ambition or whose private hatred had not stimulated him to
endeavour to overturn all order, all rule. The patriot, whose sole
aim is to amend and not to destroy, is now-a-days a _rara avis_,
particularly if he is needy. One has only to read with attention the
details of the horrors of the French revolution to be fully impressed
with this fact. Where was patriotism then? and was not Napoleon the
real patriot when he said, "two or three six-pounders would have
settled the _canaille_ of Paris!" I by no means advocate the _ultima
ratio regum_ being resorted to in popular commotions, in saying this;
but France would have been happier had the little corporal been
permitted to use his artillerymen. It has often surprised me, in
reading the history of the American revolution, assisted as the
Americans were by the demoralised French of that day, that that
revolution was so bloodless a one; a fact only to be accounted for by
the agricultural and pastoral character of the people who engaged in
it, and by the unwillingness, even at the last moment, to sever all
ties between the parent and the child. The character of that
population has greatly altered since; generations have been born on
the soil, whose recollections of their progenitors across the Atlantic
have dwindled to the smallest span; and the intermixture of races has
since done everything but destroy all filial feeling, has in fact
destroyed nearly all but the common language, whilst ultra-democracy
has been steadily at work upon the young idea to inculcate hatred to
monarchy, and, above all, to the limited monarchy of England. Will the
result be less harmless than the Tea Triumph? The world, it is to be
feared, will yet see two nations, the most free in the world, speaking
the same tongue, educated from the same sources, embruing their hands
in each other's blood, to build up a new universal system, impossible
in its very nature, or to support that which the experience of ages
has perfected, and which three estates so continually watch over each
other to guard.