Silleri, August 24.
I have been a month arrived, my dear, without having seen your
brother, who is at Montreal, but I am told is expected to-day. I have
spent my time however very agreably. I know not what the winter may be,
but I am enchanted with the beauty of this country in summer; bold,
picturesque, romantic, nature reigns here in all her wanton
luxuriance, adorned by a thousand wild graces which mock the cultivated
beauties of Europe. The scenery about the town is infinitely lovely;
the prospect extensive, and diversified by a variety of hills, woods,
rivers, cascades, intermingled with smiling farms and cottages, and
bounded by distant mountains which seem to scale the very Heavens.
The days are much hotter here than in England, but the heat is more
supportable from the breezes which always spring up about noon; and the
evenings are charming beyond expression. We have much thunder and
lightening, but very few instances of their being fatal: the thunder is
more magnificent and aweful than in Europe, and the lightening brighter
and more beautiful; I have even seen it of a clear pale purple,
resembling the gay tints of the morning.
The verdure is equal to that of England, and in the evening acquires
an unspeakable beauty from the lucid splendor of the fire-flies
sparkling like a thousand little stars on the trees and on the grass.
There are two very noble falls of water near Quebec, la Chaudiere
and Montmorenci: the former is a prodigious sheet of water, rushing
over the wildest rocks, and forming a scene grotesque, irregular,
astonishing: the latter, less wild, less irregular, but more pleasing
and more majestic, falls from an immense height, down the side of a
romantic mountain, into the river St. Lawrence, opposite the most
smiling part of the island of Orleans, to the cultivated charms of
which it forms the most striking and agreeable contrast.
The river of the same name, which supplies the cascade of
Montmorenci, is the most lovely of all inanimate objects: but why do
I call it inanimate? It almost breathes; I no longer wonder at the
enthusiasm of Greece and Rome; 'twas from objects resembling this their
mythology took its rise; it seems the residence of a thousand deities.
Paint to yourself a stupendous rock burst as it were in sunder by
the hands of nature, to give passage to a small, but very deep and
beautiful river; and forming on each side a regular and magnificent
wall, crowned with the noblest woods that can be imagined; the sides of
these romantic walls adorned with a variety of the gayest flowers, and
in many places little streams of the purest water gushing through, and
losing themselves in the river below: a thousand natural grottoes in
the rock make you suppose yourself in the abode of the Nereids; as a
little island, covered with flowering shrubs, about a mile above the
falls, where the river enlarges itself as if to give it room, seems
intended for the throne of the river goddess. Beyond this, the rapids,
formed by the irregular projections of the rock, which in some places
seem almost to meet, rival in beauty, as they excel in variety, the
cascade itself, and close this little world of enchantment.
In short, the loveliness of this fairy scene alone more than pays
the fatigues of my voyage; and, if I ever murmur at having crossed the
Atlantic, remind me that I have seen the river Montmorenci.
I can give you a very imperfect account of the people here; I have
only examined the landscape about Quebec, and have given very little
attention to the figures; the French ladies are handsome, but as to the
beaux, they appear to me not at all dangerous, and one might safely
walk in a wood by moonlight with the most agreeable Frenchman here. I
am not surprized the Canadian ladies take such pains to seduce our men
from us; but I think it a little hard we have no temptation to make
reprisals.
I am at present at an extreme pretty farm on the banks of the river
St. Lawrence; the house stands at the foot of a steep mountain covered
with a variety of trees, forming a verdant sloping wall, which rises in
a kind of regular confusion, "Shade above shade, a woody theatre," and
has in front this noble river, on which the ships continually passing
present to the delighted eye the most charming moving picture
imaginable; I never saw a place so formed to inspire that pleasing
lassitude, that divine inclination to saunter, which may not improperly
be called, the luxurious indolence of the country. I intend to build a
temple here to the charming goddess of laziness.
A gentleman is just coming down the winding path on the side of the
hill, whom by his air I take to be your brother. Adieu! I must receive
him: my father is at Quebec.
Yours,
Arabella Fermor.
Your brother has given me a very pleasing piece of intelligence: my
friend Emily Montague is at Montreal, and is going to be married to
great advantage; I must write to her immediately, and insist on her
making me a visit before she marries. She came to America two years
ago, with her uncle Colonel Montague, who died here, and I imagined was
gone back to England; she is however at Montreal with Mrs. Melmoth, a
distant relation of her mother's. Adieu! _ma tres chere!_