WOODEN-NESS.
Piled on the summit of Cape Diamond, and duplicated in shadow upon the
deep waters at its base, three hundred feet below, stands the fortress
of Quebec. Edinburgh and Ehrenbreitstein have been used as old-world
symbols to suggest its beauty and strength; but the girdle of mighty
river is wanting to the former, and the latter is a trifling miniature
of the Canadian city-queen. Robert Wynn knew of no such comparisons;
he only felt how beautiful was that mass of interwoven rock, and wood,
and town, reflected and rooted in the flood; he scarcely heard Captain
Armytage at his left reminding him for the tenth time that he had been
here before with his regiment.
'There's Point Levi to the south, a mile away, in front of the mountains.
Something unpleasant once befell me in crossing there. I and another
sub. hired a boat for a spree, just because the hummocks of ice were
knocking about on the tide, and all prudent people stayed ashore; but we
went out in great dreadnought boots, and bearskin caps over our ears,
and amused ourselves with pulling about for a while among the floes. I
suppose the grinding of the ice deafened us, and the hummocks hid us
from view of the people on board; at all events, down came one of the
river steamers slap on us. I saw the red paddles laden with ice at every
revolution, and the next instant was sinking, with my boots dragging me
down like a cannon-ball at my feet. I don't know how I kicked them off,
and rose: Gilpin, the other sub., had got astride on the capsized boat;
a rope flung from the steamer struck me, and you may believe I grasped
it pretty tightly. D'ye see here?' and he showed Robert a front tooth
broken short: 'I caught with my hands first, and they were so numb, and
the ice forming so fast on the dripping rope, that it slipped till I
held by my teeth; and another noose being thrown around me lasso-wise,
I was dragged in. A narrow escape, eh?'
'Very narrow,' echoed Robert. He noticed the slight shiver that ran
through the daughter's figure, as she leaned on her father's arm. His
handsome face looked down at her carelessly.
'Edith shudders,' said he; 'I suppose thinking that so wonderful an
escape ought to be remembered as more than a mere adventure.' To which
he received no answer, save an appealing look from her soft eyes. He
turned away with a short laugh.
'Well, at all events, it cured me of boating among the ice. Ugh! to be
sucked in and smothered under a floe would be frightful.'
Mr. Wynn wishing to say something that would prove he was not thinking
of the little aside-scene between father and daughter, asked if the St.
Lawrence was generally so full of ice in winter.
It was difficult to believe now in the balmy atmosphere of the Indian
summer, with a dreamy sunshine warming and gladdening all things,--the
very apotheosis of autumn,--that wintry blasts would howl along this
placid river, surging fierce ice-waves together, before two months
should pass.
'There's rarely a bridge quite across,' replied Captain Armytage;
'except in the north channel, above the isle of Orleans, where the tide
has less force than in the southern, because it is narrower; but in the
widest place the hummocks of ice are frequently crushed into heaps
fifteen or twenty feet high, which makes navigation uncomfortably
exciting.'
'I should think so,' rejoined Robert drily.
'Ah, you have yet to feel what a Canadian winter is like, my young
friend;' and Captain Armytage nodded in that mysterious manner which
is intended to impress a 'griffin' with the cheering conviction that
unknown horrors are before him.
'I wonder what is that tall church, whose roof glitters so intensely?'
'The cathedral, under its tin dome and spires. The metal is said to
hinder the lodging and help the thawing of the snow, which might
otherwise lie so heavy as to endanger the roof.'
'Oh, that is the reason!' ejaculated Robert, suddenly enlightened as to
the needs-be of all the surface glitter.
'Rather a pretty effect, eh? and absolutely unique, except in Canadian
cities. It suggests an infinitude of greenhouses reflecting sunbeams at
a variety of angles of incidence.'
'I presume this is the lower town, lying along the quays?' said Robert.
'Yes, like our Scottish Edinburgh, the old city, being built in
dangerous times, lies huddled close together under protection of its
guardian rock,' said the Captain. 'But within, you could fancy yourself
suddenly transported into an old Normandy town, among narrow crooked
streets and high-gabled houses: nor will the degree of cleanliness
undeceive you. For, unlike most other American cities, Quebec has a
Past as well as a Present: there is the French Past, narrow, dark,
crowded, hiding under a fortification; and there is the English Present,
embodied in the handsome upper town, and the suburb of St. John's,
broad, well-built, airy. The line of distinction is very marked between
the pushing Anglo-Saxon's premises and the tumble-down concerns of the
stand-still _habitan_.'
Perhaps, also, something is due to the difference between Protestant
enterprise and Roman Catholic supineness.
'There's a boat boarding us already,' said Robert.
It proved to be the Custom-house officers; and when their domiciliary
visit was over, Robert and Arthur went ashore. Navigating through a
desert expanse of lumber rafts and a labyrinth of hundreds of hulls,
they stepped at last on the ugly wooden wharves which line the water's
edge, and were crowded with the usual traffic of a port; yet singularly
noiseless, from the boarded pavement beneath the wheels.
Though the brothers had never been in any part of France, the peculiarly
French aspect of the lower town struck them immediately. The old-fashioned
dwellings, with steep lofty roofs, accumulated in narrow alleys, seemed
to date back to an age long anterior to Montcalm's final struggle with
Wolfe on the heights; even back, perchance, to the brave enthusiast
Champlain's first settlement under the superb headland, replacing the
Indian village of Stadacona. To perpetuate his fame, a street alongside
the river is called after him; and though his 'New France' has long
since joined the dead names of extinct colonies, the practical effects
of his early toil and struggle remain in this American Gibraltar which
he originated.
Andy Callaghan had begged leave to accompany his young masters ashore,
and marched at a respectful distance behind them, along that very
Champlain Street, looking about him with unfeigned astonishment. 'I
suppose the quarries is all used up in these parts, for the houses is
wood, an' the churches is wood, and the sthreets has wooden stones
ondher our feet,' he soliloquized, half audibly. 'It's a mighty quare
counthry intirely: between the people making a land on top of the wather
for 'emselves by thim big rafts, an' buildin' houses on 'em, and
kindlin' fires'----
Here his meditation was rudely broken into by the sudden somerset of a
child from a doorstep he was passing; but it had scarcely touched the
ground when Andy, with an exclamation in Irish, swung it aloft in his
arms.
'_Mono mush thig thu_! you crathur, is it trying which yer head or the
road is the hardest, ye are? Whisht now, don't cry, me fine boy, and
maybe I'd sing a song for ye.'
'Wisha then, cead mille failthe a thousand times, Irishman, whoever ye
are!' said the mother, seizing Andy's hand. 'And my heart warms to the
tongue of the old counthry! Won't you come in, honest man, an' rest
awhile, an' it's himself will be glad to see ye?'
'And who's himself?' inquired Andy, dandling the child.
'The carpenter, Pat M'Donagh of Ballinoge'--
'Hurroo!' shouted Andy, as he executed a whirligig on one leg, and then
embraced the amazed Mrs. M'Donagh fraternally. 'My uncle's son's wife!
an' a darling purty face you have of yer own too.'
'Don't be funnin', now,' said the lady, bridling; 'an' you might have
axed a person's lave before ye tossed me cap that way. Here, Pat, come
down an' see yer cousin just arrived from the ould counthry!'
Robert and Arthur Wynn, missing their servitor at the next turn, and
looking back, beheld something like a popular _emeute_ in the narrow
street, which was solely Andy fraternizing with his countrymen and
recovered relations.
'Wait a minit,' said Andy, returning to his allegiance, as he saw them
looking back; 'let me run afther the gentlemen and get lave to stay.'
'Lave, indeed!' exclaimed the republican-minded Mrs. M'Donagh; 'it's I
that wud be afther askin lave in a free counthry! Why, we've no masthers
nor missusses here at all.'
'Hut, woman, but they're my fostherers--the young Mr. Wynns of Dunore.'
Great had been that name among the peasantry once; and even yet it had
not lost its prestige with the transplanted Pat M'Donagh. He had left
Ireland a ragged pauper in the famine year, and was now a thriving
artisan, with average wages of seven shillings a day; an independence
with which Robert Wynn would have considered himself truly fortunate,
and upon less than which many a lieutenant in Her Majesty's infantry has
to keep up a gentlemanly appearance. Pat's strength had been a drug in
his own country; here it readily worked an opening to prosperity.
And presently forgetting his sturdy Canadian notions of independence,
the carpenter was bowing cap in hand before the gentlemen, begging them
to accept the hospitality of his house while they stayed in Quebec. 'The
M'Donaghs is ould tenants of yer honours' father, an' many a kindness
they resaved from the family, and 'twould be the joy of me heart to see
one of the ancient stock at me table,' he said; 'an' sure me father's
brother's son is along wid ye.'
'The ancient stock' declined, with many thanks, as they wanted to see
the city; but Andy, not having the same zeal for exploring, remained in
the discovered nest of his kinsfolk, and made himself so acceptable,
that they parted subsequently with tears.
Meanwhile the brothers walked from the Lower to the Upper Town, through
the quaint steep streets of stone houses--relics of the old French
occupation. The language was in keeping with this foreign aspect, and
the vivacious gestures of the inhabitants told their pedigree. Robert
and Arthur were standing near a group of them in the market-square,
assembled round a young bear brought in by an Indian, when the former
felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, and the next instant the tenacity of
his wrist was pretty well tested in the friendly grasp of Hiram Holt.