ST. ANNE
By the middle of the forenoon, though it was a rainy day, we were once
more on our way down the north bank of the St. Lawrence, in a
northeasterly direction, toward the Falls of St. Anne, which are about
thirty miles from Quebec. The settled, more level, and fertile portion
of Canada East may be described rudely as a triangle, with its apex
slanting toward the northeast, about one hundred miles wide at its
base, and from two to three or even four hundred miles long, if you
reckon its narrow northeastern extremity; it being the immediate
valley of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, rising by a single or
by successive terraces toward the mountains on either hand. Though the
words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and
unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored
portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the
river, which one of those syllables would more than cover. The banks
of the St. Lawrence are rather low from Montreal to the Richelieu
Rapids, about forty miles above Quebec. Thence they rise gradually to
Cape Diamond, or Quebec. Where we now were, eight miles northeast of
Quebec, the mountains which form the northern side of this triangle
were only five or six miles distant from the river, gradually
departing farther and farther from it, on the west, till they reach
the Ottawa, and making haste to meet it on the east, at Cape
Tourmente, now in plain sight about twenty miles distant. So that we
were traveling in a very narrow and sharp triangle between the
mountains and the river, tilted up toward the mountains on the north,
never losing sight of our great fellow-traveler on our right.
According to Bouchette's Topographical Description of the Canadas, we
were in the Seigniory of the Côte de Beaupré, in the county of
Montmorenci, and the district of Quebec,--in that part of Canada which
was the first to be settled, and where the face of the country and the
population have undergone the least change from the beginning, where
the influence of the States and of Europe is least felt, and the
inhabitants see little or nothing of the world over the walls of
Quebec. This Seigniory was granted in 1636, and is now the property of
the Seminary of Quebec. It is the most mountainous one in the
province. There are some half a dozen parishes in it, each containing
a church, parsonage-house, gristmill, and several sawmills. We were
now in the most westerly parish, called Ange Gardien, or the Guardian
Angel, which is bounded on the west by the Montmorenci. The north bank
of the St. Lawrence here is formed on a grand scale. It slopes gently,
either directly from the shore or from the edge of an interval, till,
at the distance of about a mile, it attains the height of four or five
hundred feet. The single road runs along the side of the slope two or
three hundred feet above the river at first, and from a quarter of a
mile to a mile distant from it, and affords fine views of the north
channel, which is about a mile wide, and of the beautiful Isle of
Orleans, about twenty miles long by five wide, where grow the best
apples and plums in the Quebec district.
Though there was but this single road, it was a continuous village for
as far as we walked this day and the next, or about thirty miles down
the river, the houses being as near together all the way as in the
middle of one of our smallest straggling country villages, and we
could never tell by their number when we were on the skirts of a
parish, for the road never ran through the fields or woods. We were
told that it was just six miles from one parish church to another. I
thought that we saw every house in Ange Gardien. Therefore, as it was
a muddy day, we never got out of the mud, nor out of the village,
unless we got over the fence; then, indeed, if it was on the north
side, we were out of the civilized world. There were sometimes a few
more houses near the church, it is true, but we had only to go a
quarter of a mile from the road, to the top of the bank, to find
ourselves on the verge of the uninhabited, and, for the most part,
unexplored wilderness stretching toward Hudson's Bay. The farms
accordingly were extremely long and narrow, each having a frontage on
the river. Bouchette accounts for this peculiar manner of laying out a
village by referring to "the social character of the Canadian peasant,
who is singularly fond of neighborhood," also to the advantage arising
from a concentration of strength in Indian times. Each farm, called
_terre_, he says, is, in nine cases out of ten, three arpents wide by
thirty deep, that is, very nearly thirty-five by three hundred and
forty-nine of our rods; sometimes one half arpent by thirty, or one to
sixty; sometimes, in fact, a few yards by half a mile. Of course it
costs more for fences. A remarkable difference between the Canadian
and the New England character appears from the fact that, in 1745, the
French government were obliged to pass a law forbidding the farmers or
_censitaires_ building on land less than one and a half arpents front
by thirty or forty deep, under a certain penalty, in order to compel
emigration, and bring the seigneur's estates all under cultivation;
and it is thought that they have now less reluctance to leave the
paternal roof than formerly, "removing beyond the sight of the parish
spire, or the sound of the parish bell." But I find that in the
previous or seventeenth century, the complaint, often renewed, was of
a totally opposite character, namely, that the inhabitants dispersed
and exposed themselves to the Iroquois. Accordingly, about 1664, the
king was obliged to order that "they should make no more clearings
except one next to another, and that they should reduce their parishes
to the form of the parishes in France as much as possible." The
Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of
adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and
danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though
not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet to range over it as
_coureurs de bois_, or runners of the woods, or, as Hontan prefers to
call them, _coureurs de risques_, runners of risks; to say nothing of
their enterprising priesthood; and Charlevoix thinks that if the
authorities had taken the right steps to prevent the youth from
ranging the woods (_de courir les bois_), they would have had an
excellent militia to fight the Indians and English.
The road in this clayey-looking soil was exceedingly muddy in
consequence of the night's rain. We met an old woman directing her
dog, which was harnessed to a little cart, to the least muddy part of
it. It was a beggarly sight. But harnessed to the cart as he was, we
heard him barking after we had passed, though we looked anywhere but
to the cart to see where the dog was that barked. The houses commonly
fronted the south, whatever angle they might make with the road; and
frequently they had no door nor cheerful window on the road side. Half
the time they stood fifteen to forty rods from the road, and there was
no very obvious passage to them, so that you would suppose that there
must be another road running by them. They were of stone, rather
coarsely mortared, but neatly whitewashed, almost invariably one story
high and long in proportion to their height, with a shingled roof, the
shingles being pointed, for ornament, at the eaves, like the pickets
of a fence, and also one row halfway up the roof. The gables sometimes
projected a foot or two at the ridge-pole only. Yet they were very
humble and unpretending dwellings. They commonly had the date of their
erection on them. The windows opened in the middle, like blinds, and
were frequently provided with solid shutters. Sometimes, when we
walked along the back side of a house which stood near the road, we
observed stout stakes leaning against it, by which the shutters, now
pushed half open, were fastened at night; within, the houses were
neatly ceiled with wood not painted. The oven was commonly out of
doors, built of stone and mortar, frequently on a raised platform of
planks. The cellar was often on the opposite side of the road, in
front of or behind the houses, looking like an ice-house with us, with
a lattice door for summer. The very few mechanics whom we met had an
old-Bettyish look, in their aprons and _bonnets rouges_ like fools'
caps. The men wore commonly the same _bonnet rouge_, or red woolen or
worsted cap, or sometimes blue or gray, looking to us as if they had
got up with their night-caps on, and, in fact, I afterwards found that
they had. Their clothes were of the cloth of the country, _étoffe du
pays_, gray or some other plain color. The women looked stout, with
gowns that stood out stiffly, also, for the most part, apparently of
some home-made stuff. We also saw some specimens of the more
characteristic winter dress of the Canadian, and I have since
frequently detected him in New England by his coarse gray homespun
capote and picturesque red sash, and his well-furred cap, made to
protect his ears against the severity of his climate.
It drizzled all day, so that the roads did not improve. We began now
to meet with wooden crosses frequently, by the roadside, about a dozen
feet high, often old and toppling down, sometimes standing in a square
wooden platform, sometimes in a pile of stones, with a little niche
containing a picture of the Virgin and Child, or of Christ alone,
sometimes with a string of beads, and covered with a piece of glass to
keep out the rain, with the words, _Pour la Vierge_, or INRI, on them.
Frequently, on the cross-bar, there would be quite a collection of
symbolical knickknacks, looking like an Italian's board; the
representation in wood of a hand, a hammer, spikes, pincers, a flask
of vinegar, a ladder, etc., the whole, perchance, surmounted by a
weathercock; but I could not look at an honest weathercock in this
walk without mistrusting that there was some covert reference in it to
St. Peter. From time to time we passed a little one-story chapel-like
building, with a tin-roofed spire, a shrine, perhaps it would be
called, close to the path-side, with a lattice door, through which we
could see an altar, and pictures about the walls; equally open,
through rain and shine, though there was no getting into it. At these
places the inhabitants kneeled and perhaps breathed a short prayer. We
saw one schoolhouse in our walk, and listened to the sounds which
issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of
enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils
received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the
Catholic Church. The churches were very picturesque, and their
interior much more showy than the dwelling-houses promised. They were
of stone, for it was ordered, in 1699, that that should be their
material. They had tinned spires, and quaint ornaments. That of Ange
Gardien had a dial on it, with the Middle Age Roman numerals on its
face, and some images in niches on the outside. Probably its
counterpart has existed in Normandy for a thousand years. At the
church of Château Richer, which is the next parish to Ange Gardien, we
read, looking over the wall, the inscriptions in the adjacent
churchyard, which began with _Ici gît_ or _Repose_, and one over a boy
contained _Priez pour lui_. This answered as well as Père la Chaise.
We knocked at the door of the curé's house here, when a sleek,
friar-like personage, in his sacerdotal robe, appeared. To our
"Parlez-vous Anglais?" even he answered, "Non, monsieur;" but at last
we made him understand what we wanted. It was to find the ruins of the
old _château_. "Ah! oui! oui!" he exclaimed, and, donning his coat,
hastened forth, and conducted us to a small heap of rubbish which we
had already examined. He said that fifteen years before, it was _plus
considérable_. Seeing at that moment three little red birds fly out of
a crevice in the ruins, up into an arbor-vitæ tree which grew out of
them, I asked him their names, in such French as I could muster, but
he neither understood me nor ornithology; he only inquired where we
had _appris à parler Français_; we told him, _dans les États-Unis_;
and so we bowed him into his house again. I was surprised to find a
man wearing a black coat, and with apparently no work to do, even in
that part of the world.
The universal salutation from the inhabitants whom we met was _bon
jour_, at the same time touching the hat; with _bon jour_, and
touching your hat, you may go smoothly through all Canada East. A
little boy, meeting us, would remark, "Bon jour, monsieur; le chemin
est mauvais" (Good morning, sir; it is bad walking). Sir Francis Head
says that the immigrant is forward to "appreciate the happiness of
living in a land in which the old country's servile custom of touching
the hat does not exist," but he was thinking of Canada West, of
course. It would, indeed, be a serious bore to be obliged to touch
your hat several times a day. A Yankee has not leisure for it.
We saw peas, and even beans, collected into heaps in the fields. The
former are an important crop here, and, I suppose, are not so much
infested by the weevil as with us. There were plenty of apples, very
fair and sound, by the roadside, but they were so small as to suggest
the origin of the apple in the crab. There was also a small, red fruit
which they called _snells_, and another, also red and very acid, whose
name a little boy wrote for me, "_pinbéna_." It is probably the same
with, or similar to, the _pembina_ of the voyageurs, a species of
viburnum, which, according to Richardson, has given its name to many
of the rivers of Rupert's Land. The forest trees were spruce,
arbor-vitæ, firs, birches, beeches, two or three kinds of maple,
basswood, wild cherry, aspens, etc., but no pitch pines (_Pinus
rigida_). I saw very few, if any, trees which had been set out for
shade or ornament. The water was commonly running streams or springs
in the bank by the roadside, and was excellent. The parishes are
commonly separated by a stream, and frequently the farms. I noticed
that the fields were furrowed or thrown into beds seven or eight feet
wide to dry the soil.
At the Rivière du Sault à la Puce, which, I suppose, means the River
of the Fall of the Flea, was advertised in English, as the sportsmen
are English, "The best Snipe-shooting grounds," over the door of a
small public house. These words being English affected me as if I had
been absent now ten years from my country, and for so long had not
heard the sound of my native language, and every one of them was as
interesting to me as if I had been a snipe-shooter, and they had been
snipes. The prunella, or self-heal, in the grass here, was an old
acquaintance. We frequently saw the inhabitants washing or cooking
for their pigs, and in one place hackling flax by the roadside. It was
pleasant to see these usually domestic operations carried on out of
doors, even in that cold country.
At twilight we reached a bridge over a little river, the boundary
between Château Richer and St. Anne, _le premier pont de Ste. Anne_,
and at dark the church of _La Bonne Ste. Anne_. Formerly vessels from
France, when they came in sight of this church, gave "a general
discharge of their artillery," as a sign of joy that they had escaped
all the dangers of the river. Though all the while we had grand views
of the adjacent country far up and down the river, and, for the most
part, when we turned about, of Quebec in the horizon behind us, and we
never beheld it without new surprise and admiration; yet, throughout
our walk, the Great River of Canada on our right hand was the main
feature in the landscape, and this expands so rapidly below the Isle
of Orleans, and creates such a breadth of level horizon above its
waters in that direction, that, looking down the river as we
approached the extremity of that island, the St. Lawrence seemed to be
opening into the ocean, though we were still about three hundred and
twenty-five miles from what can be called its mouth.[2]
When we inquired here for a _maison publique_ we were directed
apparently to that private house where we were most likely to find
entertainment. There were no guide-boards where we walked, because
there was but one road; there were no shops nor signs, because there
were no artisans to speak of, and the people raised their own
provisions; and there were no taverns, because there were no
travelers. We here bespoke lodging and breakfast. They had, as usual,
a large, old-fashioned, two-storied box stove in the middle of the
room, out of which, in due time, there was sure to be forthcoming a
supper, breakfast, or dinner. The lower half held the fire, the upper
the hot air, and as it was a cool Canadian evening, this was a
comforting sight to us. Being four or five feet high it warmed the
whole person as you stood by it. The stove was plainly a very
important article of furniture in Canada, and was not set aside during
the summer. Its size, and the respect which was paid to it, told of
the severe winters which it had seen and prevailed over. The master of
the house, in his long-pointed red woolen cap, had a thoroughly
antique physiognomy of the old Norman stamp. He might have come over
with Jacques Cartier. His was the hardest French to understand of any
we had heard yet, for there was a great difference between one speaker
and another, and this man talked with a pipe in his mouth beside,--a
kind of tobacco French. I asked him what he called his dog. He shouted
_Brock_! (the name of the breed). We like to hear the cat called
_min_, "Min! min! min!" I inquired if we could cross the river here to
the Isle of Orleans, thinking to return that way when we had been to
the falls. He answered, "S'il ne fait pas un trop grand vent" (If
there is not too much wind). They use small boats, or pirogues, and
the waves are often too high for them. He wore, as usual, something
between a moccasin and a boot, which he called _bottes Indiennes_,
Indian boots, and had made himself. The tops were of calf or
sheepskin, and the soles of cowhide turned up like a moccasin. They
were yellow or reddish, the leather never having been tanned nor
colored. The women wore the same. He told us that he had traveled ten
leagues due north into the bush. He had been to the Falls of St. Anne,
and said that they were more beautiful, but not greater, than
Montmorenci, _plus beau, mais non plus grand, que Montmorenci_. As
soon as we had retired, the family commenced their devotions. A little
boy officiated, and for a long time we heard him muttering over his
prayers.
In the morning, after a breakfast of tea, maple-sugar, bread and
butter, and what I suppose is called _potage_ (potatoes and meat
boiled with flour), the universal dish as we found, perhaps the
national one, I ran over to the Church of La Bonne Ste. Anne, whose
matin bell we had heard, it being Sunday morning. Our book said that
this church had "long been an object of interest, from the miraculous
cures said to have been wrought on visitors to the shrine." There was
a profusion of gilding, and I counted more than twenty-five crutches
suspended on the walls, some for grown persons, some for children,
which it was to be inferred so many sick had been able to dispense
with; but they looked as if they had been made to order by the
carpenter who made the church. There were one or two villagers at
their devotions at that early hour, who did not look up, but when they
had sat a long time with their little book before the picture of one
saint, went to another. Our whole walk was through a thoroughly
Catholic country, and there was no trace of any other religion. I
doubt if there are any more simple and unsophisticated Catholics
anywhere. Emery de Caen, Champlain's contemporary, told the Huguenot
sailors that "Monseigneur the Duke de Ventadour (Viceroy) did not wish
that they should sing psalms in the Great River."
On our way to the falls, we met the habitans coming to the Church of
La Bonne Ste. Anne, walking or riding in charettes by families. I
remarked that they were universally of small stature. The toll-man at
the bridge over the St. Anne was the first man we had chanced to meet,
since we left Quebec, who could speak a word of English. How good
French the inhabitants of this part of Canada speak, I am not
competent to say; I only know that it is not made impure by being
mixed with English. I do not know why it should not be as good as is
spoken in Normandy. Charlevoix, who was here a hundred years ago,
observes, "The French language is nowhere spoken with greater purity,
there being no accent perceptible;" and Potherie said "they had no
dialect, which, indeed, is generally lost in a colony."
The falls, which we were in search of, are three miles up the St.
Anne. We followed for a short distance a foot-path up the east bank of
this river, through handsome sugar maple and arbor-vitæ groves. Having
lost the path which led to a house where we were to get further
directions, we dashed at once into the woods, steering by guess and by
compass, climbing directly through woods a steep hill, or mountain,
five or six hundred feet high, which was, in fact, only the bank of
the St. Lawrence. Beyond this we by good luck fell into another path,
and following this or a branch of it, at our discretion, through a
forest consisting of large white pines,--the first we had seen in our
walk,--we at length heard the roar of falling water, and came out at
the head of the Falls of St. Anne. We had descended into a ravine or
cleft in the mountain, whose walls rose still a hundred feet above us,
though we were near its top, and we now stood on a very rocky shore,
where the water had lately flowed a dozen feet higher, as appeared by
the stones and driftwood, and large birches twisted and splintered as
a farmer twists a withe. Here the river, one or two hundred feet wide,
came flowing rapidly over a rocky bed out of that interesting
wilderness which stretches toward Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits.
Ha-ha Bay, on the Saguenay, was about one hundred miles north of where
we stood. Looking on the map, I find that the first country on the
north which bears a name is that part of Rupert's Land called East
Main. This river, called after the holy Anne, flowing from such a
direction, here tumbled over a precipice, at present by three
channels, how far down I do not know, but far enough for all our
purposes, and to as good a distance as if twice as far. It matters
little whether you call it one, or two, or three hundred feet; at any
rate, it was a sufficient water privilege for us. I crossed the
principal channel directly over the verge of the fall, where it was
contracted to about fifteen feet in width, by a dead tree which had
been dropped across and secured in a cleft of the opposite rock, and
a smaller one a few feet higher, which served for a hand-rail. This
bridge was rotten as well as small and slippery, being stripped of
bark, and I was obliged to seize a moment to pass when the falling
water did not surge over it, and midway, though at the expense of wet
feet, I looked down probably more than a hundred feet, into the mist
and foam below. This gave me the freedom of an island of precipitous
rock by which I descended as by giant steps,--the rock being composed
of large cubical masses, clothed with delicate close-hugging lichens
of various colors, kept fresh and bright by the moisture,--till I
viewed the first fall from the front, and looked down still deeper to
where the second and third channels fell into a remarkably large
circular basin worn in the stone. The falling water seemed to jar the
very rocks, and the noise to be ever increasing. The vista down-stream
was through a narrow and deep cleft in the mountain, all white suds at
the bottom; but a sudden angle in this gorge prevented my seeing
through to the bottom of the fall. Returning to the shore, I made my
way down-stream through the forest to see how far the fall extended,
and how the river came out of that adventure. It was to clamber along
the side of a precipitous mountain of loose mossy rocks, covered with
a damp primitive forest, and terminating at the bottom in an abrupt
precipice over the stream. This was the east side of the fall. At
length, after a quarter of a mile, I got down to still water, and, on
looking up through the winding gorge, I could just see to the foot of
the fall which I had before examined; while from the opposite side of
the stream, here much contracted, rose a perpendicular wall, I will
not venture to say how many hundred feet, but only that it was the
highest perpendicular wall of bare rock that I ever saw. In front of
me tumbled in from the summit of the cliff a tributary stream, making
a beautiful cascade, which was a remarkable fall in itself, and there
was a cleft in this precipice, apparently four or five feet wide,
perfectly straight up and down from top to bottom, which, from its
cavernous depth and darkness, appeared merely as _a black streak_.
This precipice is not sloped, nor is the material soft and crumbling
slate as at Montmorenci, but it rises perpendicular, like the side of
a mountain fortress, and is cracked into vast cubical masses of gray
and black rock shining with moisture, as if it were the ruin of an
ancient wall built by Titans. Birches, spruces, mountain-ashes with
their bright red berries, arbor-vitæs, white pines, alders, etc.,
overhung this chasm on the very verge of the cliff and in the
crevices, and here and there were buttresses of rock supporting trees
part way down, yet so as to enhance, not injure, the effect of the
bare rock. Take it altogether, it was a most wild and rugged and
stupendous chasm, so deep and narrow, where a river had worn itself a
passage through a mountain of rock, and all around was the
comparatively untrodden wilderness.
This was the limit of our walk down the St. Lawrence. Early in the
afternoon we began to retrace our steps, not being able to cross the
north channel and return by the Isle of Orleans, on account of the
_trop grand vent_, or too great wind. Though the waves did run pretty
high, it was evident that the inhabitants of Montmorenci County were
no sailors, and made but little use of the river. When we reached the
bridge between St. Anne and Château Richer, I ran back a little way to
ask a man in the field the name of the river which we were crossing,
but for a long time I could not make out what he said, for he was one
of the more unintelligible Jacques Cartier men. At last it flashed
upon me that it was _La Rivière au Chien_, or the Dog River, which my
eyes beheld, which brought to my mind the life of the Canadian
voyageur and _coureur de bois_, a more western and wilder Arcadia,
methinks, than the world has ever seen; for the Greeks, with all their
wood and river gods, were not so qualified to name the natural
features of a country as the ancestors of these French Canadians; and
if any people had a right to substitute their own for the Indian
names, it was they. They have preceded the pioneer on our own
frontiers, and named the _prairie_ for us. _La Rivière au Chien_
cannot, by any license of language, be translated into Dog River, for
that is not such a giving it to the dogs, and recognizing their place
in creation, as the French implies. One of the tributaries of the St.
Anne is named _La Rivière de la Rose_; and farther east are _La
Rivière de la Blondelle_ and _La Rivière de la Friponne_. Their very
_rivière_ meanders more than our _river_.
Yet the impression which this country made on me was commonly
different from this. To a traveler from the Old World, Canada East may
appear like a new country, and its inhabitants like colonists, but to
me, coming from New England and being a very green traveler
withal,--notwithstanding what I have said about Hudson's Bay,--it
appeared as old as Normandy itself, and realized much that I had heard
of Europe and the Middle Ages. Even the names of humble Canadian
villages affected me as if they had been those of the renowned cities
of antiquity. To be told by a habitan, when I asked the name of a
village in sight, that it is _St. Feréol_ or _St. Anne_, the _Guardian
Angel_ or the _Holy Joseph's_; or of a mountain, that it was _Bélange_
or _St. Hyacinthe_! As soon as you leave the States, these saintly
names begin. _St. Johns_ is the first town you stop at (fortunately we
did not see it), and thenceforward, the names of the mountains, and
streams, and villages reel, if I may so speak, with the intoxication
of poetry,--_Chambly_, _Longueuil_, _Pointe aux Trembles_,
_Bartholomy_, etc., etc.; as if it needed only a little foreign
accent, a few more liquids and vowels perchance in the language, to
make us locate our ideals at once. I began to dream of Provence and
the Troubadours, and of places and things which have no existence on
the earth. They veiled the Indian and the primitive forest, and the
woods toward Hudson's Bay were only as the forests of France and
Germany. I could not at once bring myself to believe that the
inhabitants who pronounced daily those beautiful and, to me,
significant names lead as prosaic lives as we of New England. In
short, the Canada which I saw was not merely a place for railroads to
terminate in and for criminals to run to.
When I asked the man to whom I have referred, if there were any falls
on the Rivière au Chien,--for I saw that it came over the same high
bank with the Montmorenci and St. Anne,--he answered that there were.
How far? I inquired. "Trois quatres lieue." How high? "Je
pense-quatre-vingt-dix pieds;" that is, ninety feet. We turned aside
to look at the falls of the Rivière du Sault à la Puce, half a mile
from the road, which before we had passed in our haste and ignorance,
and we pronounced them as beautiful as any that we saw; yet they
seemed to make no account of them there, and, when first we inquired
the way to the falls, directed us to Montmorenci, seven miles distant.
It was evident that this was the country for waterfalls; that every
stream that empties into the St. Lawrence, for some hundreds of miles,
must have a great fall or cascade on it, and in its passage through
the mountains was, for a short distance, a small Saguenay, with its
upright walls. This fall of La Puce, the least remarkable of the four
which we visited in this vicinity, we had never heard of till we came
to Canada, and yet, so far as I know, there is nothing of the kind in
New England to be compared with it. Most travelers in Canada would not
hear of it, though they might go so near as to hear it. Since my
return I find that in the topographical description of the country
mention is made of "two or three romantic falls" on this stream,
though we saw and heard of but this one. Ask the inhabitants
respecting any stream, if there is a fall on it, and they will
perchance tell you of something as interesting as Bashpish or the
Catskill, which no traveler has ever seen, or if they have not found
it, you may possibly trace up the stream and discover it yourself.
Falls there are a drug, and we became quite dissipated in respect to
them. We had drank too much of them. Beside these which I have
referred to, there are a thousand other falls on the St. Lawrence and
its tributaries which I have not seen nor heard of; and above all
there is one which I have heard of, called Niagara, so that I think
that this river must be the most remarkable for its falls of any in
the world.
At a house near the western boundary of Château Richer, whose master
was said to speak a very little English, having recently lived at
Quebec, we got lodging for the night. As usual, we had to go down a
lane to get round to the south side of the house, where the door was,
away from the road. For these Canadian houses have no front door,
properly speaking. Every part is for the use of the occupant
exclusively, and no part has reference to the traveler or to travel.
Every New England house, on the contrary, has a front and principal
door opening to the great world, though it may be on the cold side,
for it stands on the highway of nations, and the road which runs by it
comes from the Old World and goes to the far West; but the Canadian's
door opens into his backyard and farm alone, and the road which runs
behind his house leads only from the church of one saint to that of
another. We found a large family, hired men, wife, and children, just
eating their supper. They prepared some for us afterwards. The hired
men were a merry crew of short, black-eyed fellows, and the wife a
thin-faced, sharp-featured French-Canadian woman. Our host's English
staggered us rather more than any French we had heard yet; indeed, we
found that even we spoke better French than he did English, and we
concluded that a less crime would be committed on the whole if we
spoke French with him, and in no respect aided or abetted his attempts
to speak English. We had a long and merry chat with the family this
Sunday evening in their spacious kitchen. While my companion smoked a
pipe and parlez-vous'd with one party, I parleyed and gesticulated to
another. The whole family was enlisted, and I kept a little girl
writing what was otherwise unintelligible. The geography getting
obscure, we called for chalk, and the greasy oiled table-cloth having
been wiped,--for it needed no French, but only a sentence from the
universal language of looks on my part, to indicate that it needed
it,--we drew the St. Lawrence, with its parishes, thereon, and
thenceforward went on swimmingly, by turns handling the chalk and
committing to the table-cloth what would otherwise have been left in a
limbo of unintelligibility. This was greatly to the entertainment of
all parties. I was amused to hear how much use they made of the word
oui in conversation with one another. After repeated single insertions
of it, one would suddenly throw back his head at the same time with
his chair, and exclaim rapidly, "Oui! oui! oui! oui!" like a Yankee
driving pigs. Our host told us that the farms thereabouts were
generally two acres or three hundred and sixty French feet wide, by
one and a half leagues (?), or a little more than four and a half of
our miles deep. This use of the word _acre_ as long measure arises
from the fact that the French acre or arpent, the arpent of Paris,
makes a square of ten perches, of eighteen feet each, on a side, a
Paris foot being equal to 1.06575 English feet. He said that the wood
was cut off about one mile from the river. The rest was "bush," and
beyond that the "Queen's bush." Old as the country is, each landholder
bounds on the primitive forest, and fuel bears no price. As I had
forgotten the French for _sickle_, they went out in the evening to the
barn and got one, and so clenched the certainty of our understanding
one another. Then, wishing to learn if they used the cradle, and not
knowing any French word for this instrument, I set up the knives and
forks on the blade of the sickle to represent one; at which they all
exclaimed that they knew and had used it. When _snells_ were mentioned
they went out in the dark and plucked some. They were pretty good.
They said they had three kinds of plums growing wild,--blue, white,
and red, the two former much alike and the best. Also they asked me if
I would have _des pommes_, some apples, and got me some. They were
exceedingly fair and glossy, and it was evident that there was no worm
in them; but they were as hard almost as a stone, as if the season was
too short to mellow them. We had seen no soft and yellow apples by the
roadside. I declined eating one, much as I admired it, observing that
it would be good _dans le printemps_, in the spring. In the morning
when the mistress had set the eggs a-frying she nodded to a thick-set,
jolly-looking fellow, who rolled up his sleeves, seized the
long-handled griddle, and commenced a series of revolutions and
evolutions with it, ever and anon tossing its contents into the air,
where they turned completely topsy-turvy and came down t'other side
up; and this he repeated till they were done. That appeared to be his
duty when eggs were concerned. I did not chance to witness this
performance, but my companion did, and he pronounced it a masterpiece
in its way. This man's farm, with the buildings, cost seven hundred
pounds; some smaller ones, two hundred.
In 1827, Montmorenci County, to which the Isle of Orleans has since
been added, was nearly as large as Massachusetts, being the eighth
county out of forty (in Lower Canada) in extent; but by far the
greater part still must continue to be waste land, lying as it were
under the walls of Quebec.
I quote these old statistics, not merely because of the difficulty of
obtaining more recent ones, but also because I saw there so little
evidence of any recent growth. There were in this county, at the same
date, five Roman Catholic churches, and no others, five cures and five
presbyteries, two schools, two corn-mills, four sawmills, one
carding-mill,--no medical man or notary or lawyer,--five shopkeepers,
four taverns (we saw no sign of any, though, after a little
hesitation, we were sometimes directed to some undistinguished hut as
such), thirty artisans, and five river crafts, whose tonnage amounted
to sixty-nine tons! This, notwithstanding that it has a frontage of
more than thirty miles on the river, and the population is almost
wholly confined to its banks. This describes nearly enough what we
saw. But double some of these figures, which, however, its growth will
not warrant, and you have described a poverty which not even its
severity of climate and ruggedness of soil will suffice to account
for. The principal productions were wheat, potatoes, oats, hay, peas,
flax, maple-sugar, etc., etc.; linen cloth, or _étoffe du pays_,
flannel, and homespun, or _petite étoffe_.
In Lower Canada, according to Bouchette, there are two tenures,--the
feudal and the socage. _Tenanciers_, _censitaires_, or holders of land
_en roture_ pay a small annual rent to the seigneurs, to which "is
added some articles of provision, such as a couple of fowls, or a
goose, or a bushel of wheat." "They are also bound to grind their corn
at the _moulin banal_, or the lord's mill, where one fourteenth part
of it is taken for his use" as toll. He says that the toll is one
twelfth in the United States where competition exists. It is not
permitted to exceed one sixteenth in Massachusetts. But worse than
this monopolizing of mill rents is what are called _lods et ventes_,
or mutation fines,--according to which the seigneur has "a right to a
twelfth part of the purchase-money of every estate within his
seigniory that changes its owner by sale." This is over and above the
sum paid to the seller. In such cases, moreover, "the lord possesses
the _droit de retrait_, which is the privilege of preemption at the
highest bidden price within forty days after the sale has taken
place,"--a right which, however, is said to be seldom exercised.
"Lands held by Roman Catholics are further subject to the payment to
their curates of one twenty-sixth part of all the grain produced upon
them, and to occasional assessments for building and repairing
churches," etc.,--a tax to which they are not subject if the
proprietors change their faith; but they are not the less attached to
their church in consequence. There are, however, various modifications
of the feudal tenure. Under the socage tenure, which is that of the
townships or more recent settlements, English, Irish, Scotch, and
others, and generally of Canada West, the landholder is wholly
unshackled by such conditions as I have quoted, and "is bound to no
other obligations than those of allegiance to the king and obedience
to the laws." Throughout Canada "a freehold of forty shillings yearly
value, or the payment of ten pounds rent annually, is the
qualification for voters." In 1846 more than one sixth of the whole
population of Canada East were qualified to vote for members of
Parliament,--a greater proportion than enjoy a similar privilege in
the United States.
The population which we had seen the last two days--I mean the
habitans of Montmorenci County--appeared very inferior, intellectually
and even physically, to that of New England. In some respects they
were incredibly filthy. It was evident that they had not advanced
since the settlement of the country, that they were quite behind the
age, and fairly represented their ancestors in Normandy a thousand
years ago. Even in respect to the common arts of life, they are not so
far advanced as a frontier town in the West three years old. They have
no money invested in railroad stock, and probably never will have. If
they have got a French phrase for a railroad, it is as much as you can
expect of them. They are very far from a revolution, have no quarrel
with Church or State, but their vice and their virtue is content. As
for annexation, they have never dreamed of it; indeed, they have not a
clear idea what or where the States are. The English government has
been remarkably liberal to its Catholic subjects in Canada, permitting
them to wear their own fetters, both political and religious, as far
as was possible for subjects. Their government is even too good for
them. Parliament passed "an act [in 1825] to provide for the
extinction of feudal and seigniorial rights and burdens on lands in
Lower Canada, and for the gradual conversion of those tenures into the
tenure of free and common socage," etc. But as late as 1831, at least,
the design of the act was likely to be frustrated, owing to the
reluctance of the seigniors and peasants. It has been observed by
another that the French Canadians do not extend nor perpetuate their
influence. The British, Irish, and other immigrants, who have settled
the townships, are found to have imitated the American settlers and
not the French. They reminded me in this of the Indians, whom they
were slow to displace, and to whose habits of life they themselves more
readily conformed than the Indians to theirs. The Governor-General
Denouville remarked, in 1685, that some had long thought that it was
necessary to bring the Indians near them in order to Frenchify
(_franciser_) them, but that they had every reason to think themselves
in an error; for those who had come near them and were even collected
in villages in the midst of the colony had not become French, but the
French who had haunted them had become savages. Kalm said, "Though
many nations imitate the French customs, yet I observed, on the
contrary, that the French in Canada, in many respects, follow the
customs of the Indians, with whom they converse every day. They make
use of the tobacco-pipes, shoes, garters, and girdles of the Indians.
They follow the Indian way of making war with exactness; they mix the
same things with tobacco [he might have said that both French and
English learned the use itself of this weed of the Indian]; they make
use of the Indian bark-boats, and row them in the Indian way; they
wrap square pieces of cloth round their feet instead of stockings; and
have adopted many other Indian fashions." Thus, while the descendants
of the Pilgrims are teaching the English to make pegged boots, the
descendants of the French in Canada are wearing the Indian moccasin
still. The French, to their credit be it said, to a certain extent
respected the Indians as a separate and independent people, and spoke
of them and contrasted themselves with them as the English have never
done. They not only went to war with them as allies, but they lived at
home with them as neighbors. In 1627 the French king declared "that
the descendants" of the French, settled in New France, "and the
savages who should be brought to the knowledge of the faith, and
should make profession of it, should be counted and reputed French
born (_Naturels François_); and as such could emigrate to France, when
it seemed good to them, and there acquire, will, inherit, etc., etc.,
without obtaining letters of naturalization." When the English had
possession of Quebec, in 1630, the Indians, attempting to practice the
same familiarity with them that they had with the French, were driven
out of their houses with blows; which accident taught them a
difference between the two races, and attached them yet more to the
French. The impression made on me was that the French Canadians were
even sharing the fate of the Indians, or at least gradually
disappearing in what is called the Saxon current.
The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure,
nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor to hold offices under
the crown, as the French to a great extent did, but to live in earnest
and with freedom. The latter overran a great extent of country,
selling strong water, and collecting its furs, and converting its
inhabitants,--or at least baptizing its dying infants (_enfans
moribonds_),--without _improving_ it. First went the _coureur de bois_
with the _eau de vie_; then followed, if he did not precede, the
heroic missionary with the _eau d'immortalité_. It was freedom to
hunt, and fish, and convert, not to work, that they sought. Hontan
says that the _coureurs de bois_ lived like sailors ashore. In no part
of the Seventeenth Century could the French be said to have had a
foothold in Canada; they held only by the fur of the wild animals
which they were exterminating. To enable the poor seigneurs to get
their living, it was permitted by a decree passed in the reign of
Louis the Fourteenth, in 1685, "to all nobles and gentlemen settled in
Canada, to engage in commerce, without being called to account or
reputed to have done anything derogatory." The reader can infer to
what extent they had engaged in agriculture, and how their farms must
have shone by this time. The New England youth, on the other hand,
were never _coureurs de bois_ nor _voyageurs_, but backwoodsmen and
sailors rather. Of all nations the English undoubtedly have proved
hitherto that they had the most business here.
Yet I am not sure but I have most sympathy with that spirit of adventure
which distinguished the French and Spaniards of those days, and made
them especially the explorers of the American Continent,--which so
early carried the former to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi on the
north, and the latter to the same river on the south. It was long
before our frontiers reached their settlements in the West. So far as
inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English
was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the
enterprise of traders.
There was apparently a greater equality of condition among the
habitans of Montmorenci County than in New England. They are an almost
exclusively agricultural, and so far independent population, each
family producing nearly all the necessaries of life for itself. If the
Canadian wants energy, perchance he possesses those virtues, social
and others, which the Yankee lacks, in which case he cannot be
regarded as a poor man.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] From McCulloch's Geographical Dictionary we learn that
"immediately beyond the Island of Orleans it is a mile broad; where
the Saguenay joins it, eighteen miles; at Point Peter, upward of
thirty; at the Bay of Seven Islands, seventy miles; and at the Island
of Anticosti (above three hundred and fifty miles from Quebec), it
rolls a flood into the ocean nearly one hundred miles across."