And such is fame! It appears that Kean, always fond of excitement, had
organized a tremendous _pow-wow_ among these poor specimens of the red
man, on his visit to Quebec. They adopted him,--constituted him a chief
of their tribe. It would be interesting to have a full account of the
great passionist's demeanor upon that solemn occasion. Did he harrow
up his hearers with a burst from "Othello" or a deep-sea groan from
"Hamlet," and then create a revulsion of feeling by somersaulting over
the centre-fire of the circle and standing on his head before it,
grinning diabolically at the incensed pot? Or did he, foreshadowing the
coming Blondin, then unplanned, stretch his tight-rope across the small
Niagara that flashes down into the chasm of the St. Charles, and,
kicking his boots off, carry some "mute, inglorious" Colcord over in an
Indian bark basket? If he did such things, the old Huronite was foggy
upon the subject and reserved, limiting his assertions to the statement,
that "the British actor" was a _farceur_, and likewise _un danseur
très-renommé sur la corde tendue_.
Long afterwards, when I resided at Quebec, my visits to Lorette were
very frequent. Once, as I passed along the street, or road, between the
straggling log-houses, I was accosted, in good English, by a fat and
very jovial old squaw, who was attired in a green silk dress, sported
a turban, and appeared to be altogether a superior kind of person. On
inquiry, I learned from her that she was the widow of a former chief of
the tribe, and came originally from Upper Canada, where she learned to
speak English. Her husband had been presented with many medals, she
said;--would I like to see them? I followed the old lady into her
dwelling, where she showed me several silver medals, which I thought I
recognized as the same exhibited by the aged Huronite with the red legs.
But the Kean medal was not among them; nor could I, by any system of
description in my power, recall the features of the relic to the memory
of the old squaw.
Subsequently, I tried many times to trace it, but without success. Many
strangers visit Lorette during the summer season, and it is possible
that some virtuoso, struck by the associative value of the relic, may
have prevailed on its owner to part with it for a consideration. There
are people who would have possessed themselves of it without the
exchange of a consideration. Should this meet the eye of its present
possessor, and if so be that the medal came into his hands on the
consideration principle, so that he need not be ashamed of it, he will
confer a favor by giving the correct reading of the Indian name. For
"Toussahissa," as I have rendered it, is not exact, but only as near
as I can make it out from my pencil-memoranda, which, written in a
note-book that did occasional duty as a fly-book, have been partially
obliterated in that spot by the contact of a large and remarkably gaudy
salmon-fly, whose repose between the leaves is disturbed, perhaps, by
aquatic nightmares of salmon gaping at him from whirling eddies.
Between Lorette and the unexplored wilderness that stretches away to
polar desolation there is but a narrow selvage of civilization. Looking
toward it from my windows at Quebec, I could see the blue, serrated
ridge of highlands beyond which the surveyor has never yet run his
lines,--beyond which the surveyor's lines would be superfluous, indeed,
and futile; for the soil is of the barren, rocky kind, and the timber of
the scrubby. Not quite so savage is this frontier, indeed, as the wild
precincts described by the Nebraska editor, whose meditations for a
leader used to be cut short, occasionally, by the bellowing of the
shaggy bison at his window, or the incursion of the redoubtable
"grizzly" into his wood-shed where the elk-meat hung. But, in the clear,
cold nights that precede the punctual and distinct winter of these
regions, the black bears often come down from their fastnesses amid the
wild ridges, and astonish the drowsy _habitant_ and his household by
their pranks among his pigs and calves: also in the spring.
In a small settlement of this wild tract, a few miles to the north-east
of Lorette, there dwelt, some six or seven years ago, a poor farmer
named Cantin, who added to the meagre fare afforded by his sterile acres
such stray birds and hares as he could get within range of his old
musket, without risking himself very far away from the isolated
clearing. One night in the early part of May, when the snow had
disappeared from the open grounds, but lingered yet in the ravines and
rocky thickets, a dreadful tumult among the cattle of the settlement
indicated the presence of bear. Cantin had the old firelock ready, but
the night was dark and unfavorable for active measures. At gray morning,
traces of the nocturnal intruder were visible, and that close by the
_cabane_ in which Cantin lived, in the little inclosure near which a
struggle had evidently taken place, resulting in the discomfiture of a
yearling calf, portions of which were discovered in the thickets a short
distance from the clearing. Here the patches of snow gave ample evidence
of the passage of a very large bear. When the sun was well up,
Cantin sallied forth alone, with his gun and a small supply of
ammunition,--unluckily for him, a very small supply. He did not return
to dinner. Shots were heard in the course of the day, at a considerable
distance in the hills; and when the afternoon was far advanced, and
Cantin had not made his appearance, several of his neighbors--all the
men of the settlement, indeed, and they made but a small party--set out
in search of him. The snow-patches facilitated their search; and, having
tracked him a good way, they suddenly saw him kneeling by a tree at the
end of an open glade, with his hands clasped in an attitude of prayer.
He was a frightful spectacle when they raised his _bonnet-bleu_, which
had fallen down over his face. The entire facial mask had been torn
clean from the skull by a fearful sweep of the bear's paw, and hung from
his collar-bone by a strip of skin. He must have been dead for some
hours. Fifty yards from where he knelt, the bear was found lying under
some bushes, quite dead, and with two bullet-holes through its carcass.
Cantin, it appeared, had expended all his ammunition, and the wounded
beast had executed a terrible vengeance on him while the life-blood
was welling through the last bullet-hole. I saw this bear brought into
Quebec, in a cart, on the following day; and it is to be seen yet, I
believe, or at least the taxidermal presentment of it is, in the shop of
a furrier in John Street of that city. An enterprising druggist bought
up the little fat left in the animal after its long winter's fast; and
such was the demand among sensational people for gallipots of "grease of
the bear that killed Cantin," that it seemed as if fashion had ordained
the wearing of hair "on end."
Of the other wild beasts of this hill-district, the commonest is that
known to the inhabitants as the _loup-cervier_,--a name oddly enough
misconstructed by a writer on Canadian sports into "Lucifer." This is
the true lynx,--a huge cat with long and remarkably thick legs, paws in
which dangerous claws are sheathed, and short tail. Its principal prey
is the common or Northern hare, which abounds in these regions: but at
times the _loup-cervier_ will invade the poultry-yards; and he is even
held to account, now and then, for the murder of innocent lambs, and the
disappearance of tender piglings whose mothers were so negligent as to
let them stray alone into the brushwood. These fierce cats have been
killed, occasionally, quite close to Quebec. When thus driven to
approach populous districts, it must be from scarcity of their
accustomed food; for they are usually very savage and ravenous, when
found in such places. I know an instance, myself, in which a gentleman
of Quebec, riding a little way from the town, was suddenly pounced upon
and attacked by a _loup-cervier_, near the Plains of Abraham. He struck
the animal with his whip several times, but it persisted in following
him, and he got rid of it only by putting spurs to his horse and beating
it in speed. The animal was killed soon afterwards, near the same place.
I had heard of another variety of wildcat, seen at rare intervals in the
same districts. The _habitant_ is rather foggy on the subject of zoology
in general, and my attempts to obtain a satisfactory description of this
animal were futile. Some of the definitions of this rare _chat-sauvage,_
indeed, might have answered for specifications of a griffin, or of a
vampire-bat. At last, one day, when walking about in the market-place
at Quebec, I saw a crowd assembled round a gray-clad countryman, who
presided over a small box on which the words _Chat-Sauvage_ were
painted. Now was my time to set the question at rest. I invested
sixpence in the show. When a good number of sixpences had been paid in,
the proprietor opened his box, out from which crawled a fat, familiar
raccoon, apparently as much at home in the market-place as he could have
been in the middle of his native swamp. And this was the mysterious
"wild-cat" about which I had asked so many questions and heard so many
stories!
It is noticeable that thunder-storms, travelling from the westward
toward Quebec, usually diverge across the valley of the St. Charles in
the direction of Lorette, and coast along the ridge of ground on which
that place is situated to Charlesbourg, a small village lying about four
miles to the east of it, upon the ridge. There the storms appear to
culminate, pouring out the full vials of their wrath upon the devoted
_habitans_ of white-cotted Charlesbourg. The wayfarer who wends through
this rustical district will hardly fail to observe the prevailing taste
for lightning-rods. The smallest cottage has at least two of these
fire-irons, one upon each gable; houses of more pretensions are provided
with an indefinite number; and the big white church has its purple roof
so bristled with them, that the pause which a flash of lightning must
necessarily make before deciding by which of them to come down must
enable any tolerably active person to get out of the way in good time.
And yet, with all these defenders of the faithful, I remember how the
steeple was taken clean off the big white church, in splinters, one wild
night after I had watched a long array of cloud-chariots rolling heavily
away eastward along the ridge: also, how a farmer's handsome daughter,
the belle of the village, sat upright and dead upon a sofa when people
came again to their eyesight after a blinding flash. So much for
lightning-rods!--so much for the mystic iron!
When the day of the _Fête Dieu_ comes round, Quebec and its neighboring
villages are all alive for the celebration of the _fête_, which takes
place on the following Sunday. Then the great suburb of St. Roch is
a sight to see. Every street of it is converted into a green alley,
embowered with young pine-trees, and flaunting with banners temporarily
constructed out of all available pieces of dry-goods, lent by the
devoted shop-keepers of the olden Church. Most extraordinary lithographs
of holy personages are hung out upon the door-posts and walls of every
house. Bowers shading curious little shrines meet the eye everywhere.
The white tables of the little shrines are loaded with gilt and
tinselled offerings in immense variety. Curious bosses, like
lace-pillows got up for church, swing pendent from the verdant
pine-branches. The vast parish-church, of sombre gray masonry, flashing
carnival-fires from the tin-plated pepper-boxes and slopes of its acre
of roof, is receiving or disgorging a variegated multitude of good
Catholics. Within, it is a mass of foliage, a wilderness of shrines, a
cloud-land of incense. Long processions of maidens all in white, and
others of maidens all in pale watchet-blue, are threading the principal
streets. They are not _all_ very religious maidens, I am afraid;
because, as sure as fate, one very young one of those robed in pure
white "made eyes" at me as she passed. Now all this display in Quebec
and its suburbs is set forth on a great scale and with bewildering
turmoil; but if you want to see it in miniature presentment, you must
pass down through St. Roch, and take the road to Lorette. Arrived among
the _sauvages_,--for so the Canadian _habitant_ invariably calls
his Indian brother, who is often as like him as one pea is like
another,--you will there see the little old Huron church decked out in
humble imitation of its younger, but bigger brothers in the city. The
lanes between the log-houses are embowered in a modest way, and the
drapery is eked out by many a yellow flannel petticoat and pair of
scarlet leggings that dally riotously with each other in the breeze. The
shrines are certainly less magnificent than those fairy bowers of
the elf-land St. Roch, but there is a good deal of beaded peltry and
bark-work about them, giving them, in a small way, the character of
aboriginal bazaars. The Hurons are _bons Catholiques_, and everything
connected with the _fête_ is conducted with a solemnity becoming the
character of the Christian red man. So decorous, indeed, are the little
_sauvagesses_ forming the miniature processions, that I do not remember
ever detecting the eyes of any of them wandering and wantoning around,
like those of the naughty little processional in white about whose
conduct I just now complained.
The instinct of the French-Canadian for Indian trading has led one of
that race to establish a general store close by the Huron village,
though on the _habitant_ side of the stream. The gay printed cottons
indispensable to the _belle sauvagesse_ are here to be found, as well as
the blue blankets and the white, of so much account in the wardrobe of
the women as well as of the men. Here, too, are to be had the assorted
beads and silks and worsteds used in the embroidery of moccasons,
epaulettes, and such articles; nor is the quality of the Cognac kept on
hand by Joe for his customers to be characterized as despicable. Indeed,
it would be hazardous to aver that anything is _not_ to be had, for the
proper compensation, in Joe's establishment,--that is, anything
that could possibly be required by the most exacting _sauvage_
or _sauvagesse_, from a strap of sleigh-bells to a red-framed
looking-glass. Out of that store, too, comes a deal of the vivid drapery
displayed upon the _Fête Dieu_, and much of the art-union resource
combined in the attractive cheap lithograph element so edifying to the
connoisseur.
I think it was one of those _fêtes_--if not, another bright summer
holiday--that I once saw darkly disturbed in this quiet little hamlet.
Standing upon the table-rock that juts out at the foot of the fall so
as to half-bridge over the lower-most eddy, I saw a small object topple
over the summit of the cascade. It was nothing but a common pail or
stable-bucket, as I perceived, when it glided past, almost within arm's
length of me, and disappeared down the winding gorge. When I went up
again to the road, I saw a crowd of holiday people standing near the
little inn. They were solemn and speechless, and, on approaching, I saw
that they were gazing upon the body of a man, dead and sadly crushed
and mutilated. He was a _calèche_-driver from Quebec, well known to the
small community; and although it does not seem any great height from the
roadway near the inn to the tumbled rocks by the river's edge just
above the fall, yet it was a drop to mash and kill the poor fellow dead
enough, when his foot slipped, as he descended the unsafe path to get
water for his horse. A dweller in great cities--say, for instance, one
who lives within decent distance of such a charming locality as that
called the Five Points in New York--could hardly realize the amount of
awe that an event so trifling as a sudden and violent death will spread
over a primitive village community. This happened in the French division
of the place, which, of course, was decorated to the utmost ability of
the people in honor of the _fête_: and so palpable was the gloom cast
over all by the circumstance, that the bright flannels flaunting from
the _cordons_ stretched across the way seemed to darken into palls, and
the gay red streamers must have appeared to the subdued carnival spirits
as warning crape-knots on the door-handle of death.
I believe it is a maxim with the Italian connoisseur of art, that no
landscape is perfect without one red spot to give value to its varieties
of green. On this principle, let me break the monotony of this little
rural sketch with the one touch of genuine American character that
belonged to it at the time of which I speak. Let William Button be the
one red spot that predominated vastly over the green influences by which
he was surrounded. The little inn at Lorette was then kept by a worthy
host bearing the above-mentioned name, which was dingily lettered out
upon a swinging sign, dingily representing a trotting horse,--emblem
as dear to the slow Canadian as to the fast American mind. William
Button--known as Billy Button to hosts of familiar friends--was, I
think, a Kentuckian by birth; a fact which might honestly account for
his having come by the loss of an eye through some operation by which
marks of violence had been left upon the surrounding tracts of his
rugged countenance. He was a short, thick-set man, with bow-legs like
those of a bull-terrier, and walked with a heavy lurch in his gait.
William's head was of immense size in proportion to his stature. Indeed,
that important joint of his person must have been a division by about
two of what artists term heroic proportions, or eight heads to a
height,--a standard by which Button was barred from being a hero, for
his head could hardly have been much less than a fourth of his entire
length. The expression of his face was remarkably typical of American
humor and shrewdness, an effect much aided by the chronic wink afforded
by his closed eye. How Button found his way to this remote spot would
have been a puzzle to any person unfamiliar with American character. How
he managed to live among and deal with and very considerably master a
community speaking no language with which he was acquainted was more
unaccountable still. The inn could not have been a very profitable
speculation, in itself; but there was one room in it fitted out with a
display of Indian manufactures,--some of the articles reposing in
glass cases to protect them from hands and dust, others arranged with
negligent regularity upon the walls. Out of these the landlord made a
good penny, as he charged an extensive percentage upon the original
cost,--that is, to strangers; but if you were in Button's confidence,
then was there no better fellow to intrust with a negotiation for a
pair of snow-shoes, or moose-horns, or anything else in that line
of business. In the winter season he was a great instigator of
moose- and caribou-expeditions to the districts where these animals
abound, assembling for this purpose the best Indian hunters to be found
in the neighborhood, and accompanying the party himself. Out of the spoils
of these expeditions he sometimes made a handsome profit: a good pair of
moose-horns, for instance, used to fetch from six to ten dollars; and
there is always a demand for the venison in the Quebec market. The skins
were manufactured into moccason-leather by Indian adepts whom Button had
in his pay, and who worked for a very low rate of remuneration,--quite
disproportioned, indeed, to the fancy prices always paid by strangers
for the articles turned out by their hands.
The name "Billy Button" carries with it an association oddly
corroborated by a story narrated of himself by the man of whom I am
speaking. Of all the reminiscences connected with the illegitimate drama
that have dwelt with me from my early childhood until now, not one is
more vividly impressed upon my memory than that standard old comedy
on horseback performed by circus-riders long since gone to rest, and
entitled "Billy Button's Journey to Brentford." The hero of this
pleasant horse-play was a tailor,--men following that useful trade being
considered capable of affording more amusement in connection with horses
than any others, excepting, perhaps, jolly mariners on a spree. The plot
of the drama used to strike my young mind as being a "crib" from "John
Gilpin"; but I forgave that, in consideration of the skilful manner in
which the story was wrought out. With what withering contempt used
I, brought up among horses and their riders, to jeer at the wretched
attempts of the tailor to remain permanently upon any central point of
the horse's spinal ridge! How cheerful my feelings, when that man
of shreds and patches fell prostrate in the sawdust, where he lay
grovelling until the next revolution of his noble steed, when the animal
caught him up by the baggiest portion of the trousers and carried him
round the arena as a terrier might a rat! But, oh, what mingled joy and
admiration, when out from the worried mass of coats leaped the nimble
rider, now no longer a miserable tailor, but a roseate young man in
tights and spangles, featly posturing over all the available area of his
steed, and "witching the world with noble horsemanship"!
All these memories crowded upon me with a tremendous shock the very
first time I saw the name of William Button upon the dingy swinging
sign. Afterwards, when I became intimate with that curious person, I
discovered that he was a capital "whip,"--first-rate, indeed, as a
driver of the fast trotting horse, as well as a good judge of that
superior article. With respect to his experiences as a rider he was more
reserved; and it was not until after I had known him a long time that he
confided to me the particulars of a ride once taken by him, which bore,
in its principal features, a singular resemblance to the one performed
by his great name-sake of the sawdust-ring.
There is a pack of fox-hounds kept at Montreal, maintained chiefly by
officers of the garrison, as a shadowy reminiscence, perhaps, of the
real thing, which is essentially of insular Britain and of nowhere else.
Button happened to go to Montreal, on one occasion, for the purpose of
picking up a race-horse, I think, for the Quebec market. Somebody who
used to ride with the hounds had a horse which he wanted to get rid
of, on account of headstrong tendencies in general and inability to
appreciate the advantages of a bit. I remember the animal well. He was
a fiery chestnut, with white about the legs, and very good across a
country so long as he was wanted to go; but no common power could stop
him when once he began to do that. On this animal--"The Buffer," he was
called--Button was persuaded to mount, "just to try him a little,"
his owner said; and by way of doing that with perfect freedom from
restraint, they rode out to where the hounds were to throw off, a couple
of miles from the city. Button used to say that the term "throw off,"
which was new to him in that application, haunted him all the way out,
like a bad dream. It was a bag-fox day, I believe: that is, the hunt was
provided with a trapped animal, brought upon the ground in a sack and
let out when the proper time came,--a process known in sporting parlance
as "shaking a fox." The usual amount of "law" having been conceded, the
hounds were laid on, and went away, as Button said, like a fire-flake
over a prairie. No sooner did "The Buffer" hear the cry of the pack,
than he started forward with a suddenness and force by which his
wretched rider was jerked back at least a foot behind the saddle,
into which place of rest he never once again fell during his many
vicissitudes of position in that ride. I have said that Button was
bow-legged; and to that providential fact did he attribute the power by
which he clung on to various parts of the steed during his wild career
of perhaps a mile, but which seemed to the troubled senses of the rider
not much less than fifty. It was providential for him, too, that the
country was but sparsely intersected by fences, and those not of a very
formidable character: nevertheless, at each of these the too confiding
Button experienced a change of position, being, as he used to express
it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle,
accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time
booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil
another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no
account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy
Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen a
terrible fate staring him imminently in the face. The hounds had just
entered a little grove of young pine-trees, which stood very close
together, and bristled with sharp, jagged branches nearly to the root,
after the manner of these children of the wood. At this place of torture
"The Buffer" was rushing with all his might, Button being then situated
upon his neck, in a position most convenient for being "skinned alive"
by the trees, as he said, when a plunge made by the animal over a plashy
pool transferred the rider to his tail, from which he "collapsed right
down in a kind o' swoon, and when he come to, found himself settin' up
to his elbows in muddy water, very solitary-like, and with a terrible
stillness all around."--What became of "The Buffer" I forget, and also
how Button got home; but he certainly did not ride. And he always wound
up the narrative of his first and last fox-hunt by invoking terrible
ends to himself, if ever he "threw leg over dog-hoss ag'in, to see a
throw-off."
Button left Lorette about two years after I first became acquainted with
him, and I next heard of him down at the rock-walled Saguenay, where he
had gone into a speculation for supplying the Boston market with salmon.
But horse-flesh seemed to be more palatable to him than fish; for, later
still, I met him at Toronto, in Upper Canada, mounted upon a powerful
dark brown stallion, and leading another, its exact counterpart.
"Hollo, Button!" said I, in response to his cheery, "How de dew?"--"On
horseback again, I see; have you forgotten the Buffer-business, then?"
"Forgot the yaller cuss!" replied he. "No, Sir-ree! He hangs round me
yet, like fever 'n' agur upon a ma'sh. But the critter I'm onto a'n't no
dog-hoss, you may believe; he don't 'throw off' nor nothin', _he_ don't.
Him and his mate here a'n't easy matched. I fetched 'em up from below on
spec, and you can hev the span for a cool thousand on ice."
And this was the last I saw of Button, who was one of the strangest
combinations of hotel-keeper, horse-jockey, Indian-trader, fish-monger,
and alligator, I ever met.
Tradition still retains a hold upon the Hurons of Lorette, little as
remains to them of the character and lineaments of the red man. A
pitiable procession of their diluted "braves" may sometimes be seen in
the streets of Quebec, on such distinguished occasions as the Prince's
visit. But it is with a manifest consciousness of the ludicrous that
these industrials now do their little drama of the war-dance and the
oration and the council-smoke. That drama has degenerated into a very
feeble farce now, and the actors in it would be quite outdone in their
travesty by any average corps of "supes" at one of our theatres.
By-and-by all this will have died out, and the "Indian side" of the
stream at Lorette will be assimilated in all its features to the other.
The moccason is already typifying the decadence of aboriginal things
there. That article is now fitted with India-rubber soles for the Quebec
demand,--a continuation of the sole running in a low strip round the
edge of the foot. With the gradual widening of that strip, until the
moccason of the red man has been clean obliterated from things that are
by the India-rubber of the white, will the remnant of the Hurons have
passed away with things that were. Verdict on the "poor Indian":--"Wiped
out with an India-rubber shoe."
And then, in future generations, the tradition of Indian blood among
Canadian families of dark complexion, along these ridges, will be about
as vague as that of Spanish descent in the case of certain tribes of
fishermen on the western coast of Ireland. From the assimilation already
going on, however, it may be argued that the physical character of the
Indian will be gradually merged and lost in that of the French colonist.
The Hurons are described as having formerly been a people of large
stature, while those of the present day in Lower Canada are usually
rather undersized than otherwise, like their _habitant_ neighbors. As
a race, the latter are below the middle stature, although generally of
great bodily strength and endurance.
Physical size and grand proportions are looked upon by the
French-Canadian with great respect. In all the cases of popular
_émeutes_ that have from time to time broken out in Lower Canada, the
fighting leaders of the people were exceptional men, standing head
and shoulders over their confiding followers. Where gangs of raftsmen
congregate, their "captains" may be known by superior stature. The
doings of their "big men" are treasured by the French-Canadians in
traditionary lore. One famous fellow of this governing class is known
by his deeds and words to every lumberer and stevedore and timber-tower
about Montreal and Quebec. This man, whose name was Joe Monfaron, was
the bully of the Ottawa raftsmen. He was about six feet six inches high
and proportionably broad and deep; and I remember how people would turn
round to look after him, as he came pounding along Notre-Dame Street, in
Montreal, in his red shirt and tan-colored _shupac_ boots, all dripping
wet after mooring an acre or two of raft, and now bent for his
ashore-haunts in the Ste.-Marie suburb, to indemnify himself with
bacchanalian and other consolations for long-endured hardship. Among
other feats of strength attributed to him, I remember the following,
which has an old, familiar taste, but was related to me as a fact.
There was a fighting stevedore or timber-tower, I forget which, at
Quebec, who never had seen Joe Monfaron, as the latter seldom came
farther down the river than Montreal. This fighting character, however,
made a custom of laughing to scorn all the rumors that came down on
rafts, every now and then, about terrible chastisements inflicted by Joe
upon several hostile persons at once. He, the fighting timber-tower,
hadn't found his match yet about the lumber-coves at Quebec, and he only
wanted to see Joe Monfaron once, when he would settle the question as to
the championship of the rafts on sight. One day, a giant in a red shirt
stood suddenly before him, saying,--
"You're Dick Dempsey, eh?"
"That's me," replied the timber-tower; "and who are you?"
"Joe Monfaron. I heard you wanted me,--here I am," was the Caesarean
response of the great captain of rafts.
"Ah! you're Joe Monfaron!" said the bully, a little staggered at the
sort of customer he saw before him. "I said I'd like to see you, for
sure; but how am I to know you're the right man?"
"Shake hands, first," replied Joe, "and then you'll find out, may be."
They shook hands,--rather warmly, perhaps, for the timber-tower, whose
features wore an uncertain expression during the operation, and who at
last broke out into a yell of pain, as Joe cast him off with a defiant
laugh. Nor did the bully wait for any further explanations; for, whether
the man who had just brought the blood spouting out at the tips of his
fingers was Joe Monfaron or not, he was clearly an ugly customer and had
better be left alone.
There are several roads from Quebec to Lorette, all of them good for
carriages except one, which, from its extreme destitution of every
condition essential to easy locomotion on wheels, is called, in the
expressive language of the French colonists, _La Misère_. And yet this
is the only road which, from touching various points of the River St.
Charles, affords the traveller compensating glimpses of the picturesque
windings of that stream. The pedestrian, however, is the only kind of
explorer who really sees a country and its people; and for him who is
not too proud to walk, _La Misère_ is not so hard to bear as its name
might imply.
If iron takes the romance out of things, in a general way, as I
mentioned at the beginning of this article my impression that it
rather does, I know not whether primitive Lorette has not become sadly
vulcanized into prosaic progress by the grand system of water-works
established there for the benefit of Quebec. Connected as it is, now,
with the latter place, by seven miles of iron pipes, I would not
undertake to say that it retains aught of the rustic simplicity of its
greener days. Had the pipes been of wood, indeed, the place might
yet have had a chance. To understand this, one should hear the
French-Canadian expatiate upon the superiority of the wooden to the
metal bridge. Five years ago, the road-trustees of Quebec undertook to
span the Montmorency River, just above the great fall, with an iron
suspension-bridge. This would shorten the road, they said, by some two
or three hundred yards of divergence from the old wooden bridge higher
up. They built their bridge, which looked like a spider's web spanning
the verge of the stupendous cataract, when seen from the St. Lawrence
below. It was opened to the public in April, 1856, but was little used
for some days, as the conservative _habitans_, who had gone the crooked
road over the wooden bridge all their lives, declined to see what
advantage could be gained by taking to a straight one pontificed with
iron. It had not been open a week, however, when, as two or three
hurrying peasants were venturing it with their carts, it fell with a
crash, and all were washed headlong in an instant over the precipice
and into the boiling abyss below, from which not one vestige of their
remains was ever returned for a sign to their awe-stricken friends.
Supposing this bridge to be rebuilt,--which is not likely,--I do not
believe that a _habitant_ of all that region could be got to cross it,
even under the malediction, with bell, book, and candle, of his priest.
And so the old wooden bridge flourishes, and the crooked road is
travelled by gray-coated _cultivateurs_, whose forefathers went crooked
in the same direction for several generations, mounted upon persevering
ponies which wouldn't upon any account be persuaded into going straight.
A gleam of hope for Lorette flashes upon me since the above was written.
On looking over a provincial paper, I find astounding rumors of ghosts
appearing upon the track of a western railroad. Things clothed in the
traditional white appear before the impartial cow-catcher, which divides
them for the passage of the train, in the wake of which they immediately
reappear in a full state of repair and posture of contempt. If this
sort of thing goes on, what a splendid new field will be opened for the
writer of romance!
Certainly, I do not yet see what antidote there is for the primitive and
pastoral against seven miles of iron pipe; but it is cheerful to know
that ghosts are beginning to come about railroads, and all may yet be
well with Lorette.