UP THE ST. LAWRENCE.
Little Jay could hardly be persuaded into the belief that they were now
sailing on a river; that the swift broad tide bearing against them, more
than one hundred and twenty miles across at this island of Anticosti,
was the mouth of a stream having source in a mountain far away, and once
narrow enough to step over. Arthur showed her the St. Lawrence on a map
hung in the saloon; but such demonstration did not seem to convince her
much. 'Then where are the banks? My geography says that a river always
has banks,' was her argument.
In the evening he was able to show her the wide pitiless snow ranges of
Labrador, whence blew a keen desert air. Perpetual pine-woods--looking
like a black band set against the encroaching snow--edged the land,
whence the brig was some miles distant, tacking to gain the benefit
of the breeze off shore.
Presently came a strange and dismal sound wafted over the waters from
the far pine forests--a high prolonged howl, taken up and echoed by
scores of ravenous throats, repeated again and again, augmenting in
fierce cadences. Jay caught Mr. Wynn's arm closer. 'Like wolves,' said
Arthur; 'but we are a long way off.'
'I must go and tell Edith,' said the child, evidently feeling safer with
that sister than in any other earthly care. After he had brought her
to the cabin, he returned on deck, listening with a curious sort of
pleasure to the wild sounds, and looking at the dim outlines of the
shore.
As darkness dropped over the circle of land and water, a light seemed
to rise behind those hills, revealing their solid shapes anew, stealing
silently aloft into the air, like a pale and pure northern dawn. At
first he thought it must be the rising moon, but no orb appeared; and as
the brilliance deepened, intensified into colour, and shot towards the
zenith, he knew it for the aurora borealis. Soon the stars were blinded
out by the vivid sweeping flicker of its rays; hues bright and varied as
the rainbow thrilled along the iridescent roadways to the central point
above, and tongues of flame leaped from arches in the north-west. Burning
scarlet and amber, purple, green, trembled in pulsations across the
ebony surface of the heavens, as if some vast fire beneath the horizon
was flashing forth coruscations of its splendour to the dark hemisphere
beyond. The floating banners of angels is a hackneyed symbol to express
the oppressive magnificence of a Canadian aurora.
The brothers were fascinated: their admiration had no words.
'This is as bad as the iceberg for making a fellow's brain feel too big
for his head,' said Arthur at last. 'We've seen two sublime things, at
all events, Bob.'
Clear frosty weather succeeded--weather without the sharp sting of cold,
but elastic and pure as on a mountain peak. Being becalmed for a day
or two off a wooded point, the skipper sent a boat ashore for fuel and
water. Arthur eagerly volunteered to help; and after half an hour's
rowing through the calm blue bay, he had the satisfaction to press his
foot on the soil of Lower Canada.
There was a small clearing beside a brook which formed a narrow deep
cove, a sort of natural miniature dock where their boat floated. A
log hut, mossed with years, was set back some fifty yards towards the
forest. What pines were those! what giants of arborescence! Seventy feet
of massive shaft without a bough; and then a dense thicket of black
inwoven branches, making a dusk beneath the fullest sunshine.
'I tell you we haven't trees in the old country; our oaks and larches
are only shrubs,' he said to Robert, when narrating his expedition.
'Wait till you see pines such as I saw to-day. Looking along the forest
glades, those great pillars upheld the roof everywhere in endless
succession. And the silence! as if a human creature never breathed among
them, though the log hut was close by. When I went in, I saw a French
_habitan_, as they call him, who minds the lighthouse on the point,
with his Indian wife, and her squaw mother dressed in a blanket, and of
course babies--the queerest little brown things you ever saw. One of
them was tied into a hollow board, and buried to the chin in "punk," by
way of bed-clothes.'
'And what is punk?' asked Robert.
'Rotten wood powdered to dust,' answered Arthur, with an air of superior
information. 'It's soft enough; and the poor little animal's head
was just visible, so that it looked like a young live mummy. But the
grandmother squaw was even uglier than the grandchildren; a thousand and
one lines seamed her coppery face, which was the colour of an old penny
piece rather burnished from use. And she had eyes, Bob, little and wide
apart, and black as sloes, with a snaky look. I don't think she ever
took them off me, and 'twas no manner of use to stare at her in return.
So, as I could not understand what they were saying,--gabbling a sort
of _patois_ of bad French and worse English, with a sprinkling of
Indian,--and as the old lady's gaze was getting uncomfortable, I went
out again among my friends, the mighty pines. I hope we shall have some
about our location, wherever we settle.'
'And I trust more intimate acquaintance won't make us wish them a trifle
fewer and slighter,' remarked Robert.
'Well, I am afraid my enthusiasm would fade before an acre of such
clearing,' rejoined Arthur. 'But, Bob, the colours of the foliage are
lovelier than I can tell. You see a little of the tinting even from this
distance. The woods have taken pattern by the aurora: it seems we are
now in the Indian summer, and the maple trees are just burning with
scarlet and gold leaves.'
'I suppose you did not see many of our old country trees?'
'Hardly any. Pine is the most plentiful of all: how I like its sturdy
independent look! as if it were used to battling with snowstorms, and
got strong by the exercise. The mate showed me hickory and hemlock,
and a lot of other foreigners, while the men were cutting logs in the
bush.'
'You have picked up the Canadian phraseology already,' observed Robert.
'Yes;' and Arthur reddened slightly. 'Impossible to avoid that, when
you're thrown among fellows that speak nothing else. But I wanted
to tell you, that coming back we hailed a boat from one of those
outward-bound ships lying yonder at anchor: the mate says their wood and
water is half a pretence. They are smuggling skins, in addition to their
regular freight of lumber.'
'Smuggling skins!'
'For the skippers' private benefit, you understand: furs, such as sable,
marten, and squirrel; they send old ship's stores ashore to trade with
vagrant Indians, and then sew up the skins in their clothes, between the
lining and the stuff, so as to pass the Custom-house officers at home.
Bob! I'm longing to be ashore for good. You don't know what it is to
feel firm ground under one's feet after six weeks' unsteady footing. I'm
longing to get out of this floating prison, and begin our life among the
pines.'
Robert shook his head a little sorrowfully. Now that they were nearing
the end of the voyage, many cares pressed upon him, which to the volatile
nature of Arthur seemed only theme for adventure. Whither to bend their
steps in the first instance, was a matter for grave deliberation. They
had letters of introduction to a gentleman near Carillon on the Ottawa,
and others to a family at Toronto. Former friends had settled beside the
lonely Lake Simcoe, midway between Huron and Ontario. Many an hour of
the becalmed days he spent over the maps and guide-books they had brought,
trying to study out a result. Jay came up to him one afternoon, as he
leaned his head on his hand perplexedly.
'What ails you? have you a headache?'
'No, I am only puzzled.'
Her own small elbow rested on the taffrail, and her little fingers
dented the fair round cheek, in unwitting imitation of his posture.
'Is it about a lesson? But you don't have to get lessons.'
'No; it is about what is best for me to do when I land.'
'Edith asks God always; and He shows her what is best,' said the child,
looking at him wistfully. Again he thought of his pious prayerful
mother. She might have spoken through the childish lips. He closed his
books, remarking that they were stupid. Jay gave him her hand to walk
up and down the deck. He had never made it a custom to consult God,
or refer to Him in matters of daily life, though theoretically he
acknowledged His pervading sovereignty. To procure the guidance of
Infinite Wisdom would be well worth a prayer. Something strong as a
chain held him back--the pride of his consciously unrenewed heart.
When the weather became favourable, they passed up the river rapidly;
and a succession of the noblest views opened around them. No panorama
of the choice spots of earth could be lovelier. Lofty granite islets,
such as Kamouraska, which attains an altitude of five hundred feet;
bold promontories and deep basin bays; magnificent ranges of bald blue
mountains inland; and, as they neared Grosse Isle and the quarantine
ground, the soft beauties of civilisation were superadded. Many ships of
all nations lay at anchor; the shore was dotted with white farmhouses,
and neat villages clustered each round the glittering spire of a church.
'How very French that is, eh?' said Captain Armytage, referring to those
shining metal roofs. 'Tinsel is charming to the eyes of a _habitan_. You
know, I've been in these parts before with my regiment: so I am well
acquainted with the ground. We have the parish of St. Thomas to our left
now, thickly spotted with white cottages: St. Joachim is on the opposite
bank. The nomenclature all about here smacks of the prevailing faith and
of the old masters.'
''Tis a pity they didn't hold by the musical Indian names,' said Robert
Wynn.
'Well, yes, when the music don't amount to seventeen syllables a-piece,
eh?' Captain Armytage had a habit of saying 'eh' at every available
point in his sentences. Likewise had he the most gentleman-like manners
that could be, set off by the most gentleman-like personal appearance;
yet, an inexplicable something about him prevented a thorough liking.
Perhaps it was the intrinsic selfishness, and want of sincerity of
nature, which one instinctively felt after a little intercourse had worn
off the dazzle of his engaging demeanour. Perhaps Robert had detected
the odour of rum, ineffectually concealed by the fragrance of a smoking
pill, more frequently than merely after dinner, and seen the sad shadow
on his daughter's face, following. But that did not prevent Captain
Armytage's being a very agreeable and well-informed companion
nevertheless.
'Granted that "Canada" is a pretty name,' said he; 'but it's Spanish
more than native. "Aca nada," nothing here,--said the old Castilian
voyagers, when they saw no trace of gold mines or other wealth along
the coast. That's the story, at all events. But I hold to it that our
British John Cabot was the first who ever visited this continent, unless
there's truth in the old Scandinavian tales, which I don't believe.'
But the gallant officer's want of credence does not render it the less
a fact, that, about the year 1001, Biorn Heriolson, an Icelander, was
driven south from Greenland by tempestuous weather, and discovered
Labrador. Subsequently, a colony was established for trading purposes
on some part of the coast named Vinland; but after a few Icelanders
had made fortunes of the peltries, and many had perished among the
Esquimaux, all record of the settlement is blotted out, and Canada fades
from the world's map till restored by the exploration of the Cabots and
Jacques Cartier. The two former examined the seaboard, and the latter
first entered the grand estuary of the St. Lawrence, which he named from
the saint's day of its discovery; and he also was the earliest white
man to gaze down from the mighty precipice of Quebec, and pronounce
the obscure Indian name which was hereafter to suggest a world-famed
capital. Then, the dwellings and navies of nations and generations yet
unborn were growing all around in hundreds of leagues of forest; a dread
magnificence of shade darkened the face of the earth, amid which the red
man reigned supreme. Now, as the passengers of the good brig Ocean Queen
gazed upon it three centuries subsequently, the slow axe had chopped
away those forests of pine, and the land was smiling with homesteads,
and mapped out in fields of rich farm produce: the encroachments of the
irresistible white man had metamorphosed the country, and almost blotted
out its olden masters. Robert Wynn began to realize the force of Hiram
Holt's patriotic declaration, 'It's the finest country in the world!'
'And the loveliest!' he could have added, without even a saving clause
for his own old Emerald Isle, when they passed the western point of the
high wooded island of Orleans, and came in view of the superb Falls of
Montmorenci; two hundred and fifty feet of sheer precipice, leaped by a
broad full torrent, eager to reach the great river flowing beyond, and
which seemed placidly to await the turbulent onset. As Robert gazed, the
fascination of a great waterfall came over him like a spell. Who has not
felt this beside Lodore, or Foyers, or Torc? Who has not found his eye
mesmerized by the falling sheet of dark polished waters, merging into
snowy spray and crowned with rainbow crest, most changeable, yet most
unchanged?
Thousands of years has this been going on; you may read it in the worn
limestone layers that have been eaten through, inches in centuries, by
the impetuous stream. Thus, also, has the St. Lawrence carved out its
mile-wide bed beneath the Heights of Abraham--the stepping-stone to
Wolfe's fame and Canadian freedom.