A
+YANKEE IN CANADA+,
WITH
ANTI-SLAVERY AND REFORM PAPERS.
BY
+HENRY D. THOREAU+,
AUTHOR OF “A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS,”
“WALDEN,” “CAPE COD,” ETC., ETC.
[Illustration]
+BOSTON
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
1866+.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
+TICKNOR AND FIELDS+,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
-------
PAGE
A YANKEE IN CANADA 1
CHAP. I. CONCORD TO MONTREAL 3
II. QUEBEC AND MONTMORENCI 18
III. ST. ANNE 37
IV. THE WALLS OF QUEBEC 64
V. THE SCENERY OF QUEBEC; AND THE RIVER ST. 78
LAWRENCE
ANTI-SLAVERY AND REFORM PAPERS 95
· SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS 97
· PRAYERS 117
· CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 123
· A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN 152
· PARADISE (TO BE) REGAINED 182
· HERALD OF FREEDOM 206
· THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS WORKS 211
· LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 248
· WENDELL PHILLIPS BEFORE THE CONCORD LYCEUM 274
· THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN BROWN 278
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A YANKEE IN CANADA.
-------
“New England is by some affirmed to be an island, bounded on the north
with the River Canada (so called from Monsieur Cane).”—JOSSELYN’S
RARETIES.
And still older, in Thomas Morton’s “New English Canaan,” published in
1632, it is said, on page 97, “From this Lake [Erocoise] Northwards is
derived the famous River of Canada, so named, of Monsieur de Cane, a
French Lord, who first planted a Colony of French in America.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I.
CONCORD TO MONTREAL.
I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen
much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold. I left Concord,
Massachusetts, Wednesday morning, September 25th, 1850, for Quebec.
Fare, seven dollars there and back; distance from Boston, five hundred
and ten miles; being obliged to leave Montreal on the return as soon as
Friday, October 4th, or within ten days. I will not stop to tell the
reader the names of my fellow-travellers; there were said to be fifteen
hundred of them. I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one
honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
The country was new to me beyond Fitchburg. In Ashburnham and afterward,
as we were whirled rapidly along, I noticed the woodbine (_Ampelopsis
quinquefolia_), its leaves now changed, for the most part on dead trees,
draping them like a red scarf. It was a little exciting, suggesting
bloodshed, or at least a military life, like an epaulet or sash, as if
it were dyed with the blood of the trees whose wounds it was inadequate
to stanch. For now the bloody autumn was come, and an Indian warfare was
waged through the forest. These military trees appeared very numerous,
for our rapid progress connected those that were even some miles apart.
Does the woodbine prefer the elm? The first view of Monadnoc was
obtained five or six miles this side of Fitzwilliam, but nearest and
best at Troy and beyond. Then there were the Troy cuts and embankments.
Keene Street strikes the traveller favorably, it is so wide, level,
straight, and long. I have heard one of my relatives, who was born and
bred there, say that you could see a chicken run across it a mile off. I
have also been told that when this town was settled they laid out a
street four rods wide, but at a subsequent meeting of the proprietors
one rose and remarked, “We have plenty of land, why not make the street
eight rods wide?” and so they voted that it should be eight rods wide,
and the town is known far and near for its handsome street. It was a
cheap way of securing comfort, as well as fame, and I wish that all new
towns would take pattern from this. It is best to lay our plans widely
in youth, for then land is cheap, and it is but too easy to contract our
views afterward. Youths so laid out, with broad avenues and parks, that
they may make handsome and liberal old men! Show me a youth whose mind
is like some Washington city of magnificent distances, prepared for the
most remotely successful and glorious life after all, when those spaces
shall be built over and the idea of the founder be realized. I trust
that every New England boy will begin by laying out a Keene Street
through his head, eight rods wide. I know one such Washington city of a
man, whose lots as yet are only surveyed and staked out, and except a
cluster of shanties here and there, only the Capitol stands there for
all structures, and any day you may see from afar his princely idea
borne coachwise along the spacious but yet empty avenues. Keene is built
on a remarkably large and level interval, like the bed of a lake, and
the surrounding hills, which are remote from its street, must afford
some good walks. The scenery of mountain towns is commonly too much
crowded. A town which is built on a plain of some extent, with an open
horizon, and surrounded by hills at a distance, affords the best walks
and views.
As we travel northwest up the country, sugar-maples, beeches, birches,
hemlocks, spruce, butternuts, and ash trees prevail more and more. To
the rapid traveller the number of elms in a town is the measure of its
civility. One man in the cars has a bottle full of some liquor. The
whole company smile whenever it is exhibited. I find no difficulty in
containing myself. The Westmoreland country looked attractive. I heard a
passenger giving the very obvious derivation of this name,
West-more-land, as if it were purely American, and he had made a
discovery; but I thought of “my cousin Westmoreland” in England. Every
one will remember the approach to Bellows Falls, under a high cliff
which rises from the Connecticut. I was disappointed in the size of the
river here; it appeared shrunk to a mere mountain stream. The water was
evidently very low. The rivers which we had crossed this forenoon
possessed more of the character of mountain streams than those in the
vicinity of Concord, and I was surprised to see everywhere traces of
recent freshets, which had carried away bridges and injured the
railroad, though I had heard nothing of it. In Ludlow, Mount Holly, and
beyond, there is interesting mountain scenery, not rugged and
stupendous, but such as you could easily ramble over,—long narrow
mountain vales through which to see the horizon. You are in the midst of
the Green Mountains. A few more elevated blue peaks are seen from the
neighborhood of Mount Holly, perhaps Killington Peak is one. Sometimes,
as on the Western Railroad, you are whirled over mountainous
embankments, from which the scared horses in the valleys appear
diminished to hounds. All the hills blush; I think that autumn must be
the best season to journey over even the _Green_ Mountains. You
frequently exclaim to yourself, what _red_ maples! The sugar-maple is
not so red. You see some of the latter with rosy spots or cheeks only,
blushing on one side like fruit, while all the rest of the tree is
green, proving either some partiality in the light or frosts, or some
prematurity in particular branches. Tall and slender ash trees, whose
foliage is turned to a dark mulberry color, are frequent. The butternut,
which is a remarkably spreading tree, is turned completely yellow, thus
proving its relation to the hickories. I was also struck by the bright
yellow tints of the yellow-birch. The sugar-maple is remarkable for its
clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds,
their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet
from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that
you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy,
as under a tent whose curtain is raised.
As you approach Lake Champlain you begin to see the New York mountains.
The first view of the Lake at Vergennes is impressive, but rather from
association than from any peculiarity in the scenery. It lies there so
small (not appearing in that proportion to the width of the State that
it does on the map), but beautifully quiet, like a picture of the Lake
of Lucerne on a music-box, where you trace the name of Lucerne among the
foliage; far more ideal than ever it looked on the map. It does not say,
“Here I am, Lake Champlain,” as the conductor might for it, but having
studied the geography thirty years, you crossed over a hill one
afternoon and beheld it. But it is only a glimpse that you get here. At
Burlington you rush to a wharf and go on board a steamboat, two hundred
and thirty-two miles from Boston. We left Concord at twenty minutes
before eight in the morning, and were in Burlington about six at night,
but too late to see the lake. We got our first fair view of the lake at
dawn, just before reaching Plattsburg, and saw blue ranges of mountains
on either hand, in New York and in Vermont, the former especially grand.
A few white schooners, like gulls, were seen in the distance, for it is
not waste and solitary like a lake in Tartary; but it was such a view as
leaves not much to be said; indeed, I have postponed Lake Champlain to
another day.
The oldest reference to these waters that I have yet seen is in the
account of Cartier’s discovery and exploration of the St. Lawrence in
1535. Samuel Champlain actually discovered and paddled up the Lake in
July, 1609, eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth, accompanying
a war-party of the Canadian Indians against the Iroquois. He describes
the islands in it as not inhabited, although they are pleasant,—on
account of the continual wars of the Indians, in consequence of which
they withdraw from the rivers and lakes into the depths of the land,
that they may not be surprised. “Continuing our course,” says he, “in
this lake, on the western side, viewing the country, I saw on the
eastern side very high mountains, where there was snow on the summit. I
inquired of the savages if those places were inhabited. They replied
that they were, and that they were Iroquois, and that in those places
there were beautiful valleys and plains fertile in corn, such as I have
eaten in this country, with an infinity of other fruits.” This is the
earliest account of what is now Vermont.
The number of French-Canadian gentlemen and ladies among the passengers,
and the sound of the French language, advertised us by this time that we
were being whirled towards some foreign vortex. And now we have left
Rouse’s Point, and entered the Sorel River, and passed the invisible
barrier between the States and Canada. The shores of the Sorel,
Richelieu, or St. John’s River, are flat and reedy, where I had expected
something more rough and mountainous for a natural boundary between two
nations. Yet I saw a difference at once, in the few huts, in the
pirogues on the shore, and as it were, in the shore itself. This was an
interesting scenery to me, and the very reeds or rushes in the shallow
water, and the tree-tops in the swamps, have left a pleasing impression.
We had still a distant view behind us of two or three blue mountains in
Vermont and New York. About nine o’clock in the forenoon we reached St.
John’s, an old frontier post three hundred and six miles from Boston and
twenty-four from Montreal. We now discovered that we were in a foreign
country, in a station-house of another nation. This building was a
barn-like structure, looking as if it were the work of the villagers
combined, like a log-house in a new settlement. My attention was caught
by the double advertisements in French and English fastened to its
posts, by the formality of the English, and the covert or open reference
to their queen and the British lion. No gentlemanly conductor appeared,
none whom you would know to be the conductor by his dress and demeanor;
but erelong we began to see here and there a solid, red-faced,
burly-looking Englishman, a little pursy perhaps, who made us ashamed of
ourselves and our thin and nervous countrymen,—a grandfatherly
personage, at home in his great-coat, who looked as if he might be a
stage proprietor, certainly a railroad director, and knew, or had a
right to know, when the cars did start. Then there were two or three
pale-faced, black-eyed, loquacious Canadian French gentlemen there,
shrugging their shoulders; pitted as if they had all had the small-pox.
In the mean while some soldiers, red-coats, belonging to the barracks
near by, were turned out to be drilled. At every important point in our
route the soldiers showed themselves ready for us; though they were
evidently rather raw recruits here, they manœuvred far better than our
soldiers; yet, as usual, I heard some Yankees talk as if they were no
great shakes, and they had seen the Acton Blues manœuvre as well. The
officers spoke sharply to them, and appeared to be doing their part
thoroughly. I heard one suddenly coming to the rear, exclaim, “Michael
Donouy, take his name!” though I could not see what the latter did or
omitted to do. It was whispered that Michael Donouy would have to suffer
for that. I heard some of our party discussing the possibility of their
driving these troops off the field with their umbrellas. I thought that
the Yankee, though undisciplined, had this advantage at least, that he
especially is a man who, everywhere and under all circumstances, is
fully resolved to better his condition essentially, and therefore he
could afford to be beaten at first; while the virtue of the Irishman,
and to a great extent the Englishman, consists in merely maintaining his
ground or condition. The Canadians here, a rather poor-looking race,
clad in gray homespun, which gave them the appearance of being covered
with dust, were riding about in caleches and small one-horse carts
called charettes. The Yankees assumed that all the riders were racing,
or at least exhibiting the paces of their horses, and saluted them
accordingly. We saw but little of the village here, for nobody could
tell us when the cars would start; that was kept a profound secret,
perhaps for political reasons; and therefore we were tied to our seats.
The inhabitants of St. John’s and vicinity are described by an English
traveller as “singularly unprepossessing,” and before completing his
period he adds, “besides, they are generally very much disaffected to
the British crown.” I suspect that that “besides” should have been a
because.
At length, about noon, the cars began to roll towards La Prairie. The
whole distance of fifteen miles was over a remarkably level country,
resembling a Western prairie, with the mountains about Chambly visible
in the northeast. This novel, but monotonous scenery, was exciting. At
La Prairie we first took notice of the tinned roofs, but above all of
the St. Lawrence, which looked like a lake; in fact it is considerably
expanded here; it was nine miles across diagonally to Montreal. Mount
Royal in the rear of the city, and the island of St. Helen’s opposite to
it, were now conspicuous. We could also see the Sault St. Louis about
five miles up the river, and the Sault Norman still farther eastward.
The former are described as the most considerable rapids in the St.
Lawrence; but we could see merely a gleam of light there as from a
cobweb in the sun. Soon the city of Montreal was discovered with its tin
roofs shining afar. Their reflections fell on the eye like a clash of
cymbals on the ear. Above all the church of Notre Dame was conspicuous,
and anon the Bonsecours market-house, occupying a commanding position on
the quay, in the rear of the shipping. This city makes the more
favorable impression from being approached by water, and also being
built of stone, a gray limestone found on the island. Here, after
travelling directly inland the whole breadth of New England, we had
struck upon a city’s harbor,—it made on me the impression of a
seaport,—to which ships of six hundred tons can ascend, and where
vessels drawing fifteen feet lie close to the wharf, five hundred and
forty miles from the Gulf; the St. Lawrence being here two miles wide.
There was a great crowd assembled on the ferry-boat wharf and on the
quay to receive the Yankees, and flags of all colors were streaming from
the vessels to celebrate their arrival. When the gun was fired, the
gentry hurrahed again and again, and then the Canadian caleche-drivers,
who were most interested in the matter, and who, I perceived, were
separated from the former by a fence, hurrahed their welcome; first the
broadcloth, then the homespun.
It was early in the afternoon when we stepped ashore. With a single
companion, I soon found my way to the church of Notre Dame. I saw that
it was of great size and signified something. It is said to be the
largest ecclesiastical structure in North America, and can seat ten
thousand. It is two hundred and fifty-five and a half feet long, and the
groined ceiling is eighty feet above your head. The Catholic are the
only churches which I have seen worth remembering, which are not almost
wholly profane. I do not speak only of the rich and splendid like this,
but of the humblest of them as well. Coming from the hurrahing mob and
the rattling carriages, we pushed aside the listed door of this church,
and found ourselves instantly in an atmosphere which might be sacred to
thought and religion, if one had any. There sat one or two women who had
stolen a moment from the concerns of the day, as they were passing; but,
if there had been fifty people there, it would still have been the most
solitary place imaginable. They did not look up at us, nor did one
regard another. We walked softly down the broad-aisle with our hats in
our hands. Presently came in a troop of Canadians, in their homespun,
who had come to the city in the boat with us, and one and all kneeled
down in the aisle before the high altar to their devotions, somewhat
awkwardly, as cattle prepare to lie down, and there we left them. As if
you were to catch some farmer’s sons from Marlboro, come to cattle-show,
silently kneeling in Concord meeting-house some Wednesday! Would there
not soon be a mob peeping in at the windows? It is true, these Roman
Catholics, priests and all, impress me as a people who have fallen far
behind the significance of their symbols. It is as if an ox had strayed
into a church and were trying to bethink himself. Nevertheless, they are
capable of reverence; but we Yankees are a people in whom this sentiment
has nearly died out, and in this respect we cannot bethink ourselves
even as oxen. I did not mind the pictures nor the candles, whether
tallow or tin. Those of the former which I looked at appeared tawdry. It
matters little to me whether the pictures are by a neophyte of the
Algonquin or the Italian tribe. But I was impressed by the quiet
religious atmosphere of the place. It was a great cave in the midst of a
city; and what were the altars and the tinsel but the sparkling
stalactics, into which you entered in a moment, and where the still
atmosphere and the sombre light disposed to serious and profitable
thought? Such a cave at hand, which you can enter any day, is worth a
thousand of our churches which are open only Sundays,—hardly long enough
for an airing,—and then filled with a bustling congregation,—a church
where the priest is the least part, where you do your own preaching,
where the universe preaches to you and can be heard. I am not sure but
this Catholic religion would be an admirable one if the priest were
quite omitted. I think that I might go to church myself sometimes some
Monday, if I lived in a city where there was such a one to go to. In
Concord, to be sure, we do not need such. Our forests are such a church,
far grander and more sacred. We dare not leave _our_ meeting-houses open
for fear they would be profaned. Such a cave, such a shrine, in one of
our groves, for instance, how long would it be respected? for what
purposes would it be entered, by such baboons as we are? I think of its
value not only to religion, but to philosophy and to poetry; besides a
reading-room, to have a thinking-room in every city! Perchance the time
will come when every house even will have not only its sleeping-rooms,
and dining-room, and talking-room or parlor, but its thinking-room also,
and the architects will put it into their plans. Let it be furnished and
ornamented with whatever conduces to serious and creative thought. I
should not object to the holy water, or any other simple symbol, if it
were consecrated by the imagination of the worshippers.
I heard that some Yankees bet that the candles were not wax, but tin. A
European assured them that they were wax; but, inquiring of the sexton,
he was surprised to learn that they were tin filled with oil. The church
was too poor to afford wax. As for the Protestant churches, here or
elsewhere, they did not interest me, for it is only as caves that
churches interest me at all, and in that respect they were inferior.
Montreal makes the impression of a larger city than you had expected to
find, though you may have heard that it contains nearly sixty thousand
inhabitants. In the newer parts it appeared to be growing fast like a
small New York, and to be considerably Americanized. The names of the
squares reminded you of Paris,—the Champ de Mars, the Place d’Armes, and
others, and you felt as if a French revolution might break out any
moment. Glimpses of Mount Royal rising behind the town, and the names of
some streets in that direction, make one think of Edinburgh. That hill
sets off this city wonderfully. I inquired at a principal bookstore for
books published in Montreal. They said that there were none but
school-books and the like; they got their books from the States. From
time to time we met a priest in the streets, for they are distinguished
by their dress, like the _civil_ police. Like clergymen generally, with
or without the gown, they made on us the impression of effeminacy. We
also met some Sisters of Charity, dressed in black, with Shaker-shaped
black bonnets and crosses, and cadaverous faces, who looked as if they
had almost cried their eyes out, their complexions parboiled with
scalding tears; insulting the daylight by their presence, having taken
an oath not to smile. By cadaverous I mean that their faces were like
the faces of those who have been dead and buried for a year, and then
untombed, with the life’s grief upon them, and yet, for some
unaccountable reason, the process of decay arrested.
“Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves him
With the day’s shame upon him.”
They waited demurely on the sidewalk while a truck laden with raisins
was driven in at the seminary of St. Sulpice, never once lifting their
eyes from the ground.
The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward,
and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the soldiers to the
laborers in an African ant-hill. The inhabitants evidently rely on them
in a great measure for music and entertainment. You would meet with them
pacing back and forth before some guard-house or passage-way, guarding,
regarding, and disregarding all kinds of law by turns, apparently for
the sake of the discipline to themselves, and not because it was
important to exclude anybody from entering that way. They reminded me of
the men who are paid for piling up bricks and then throwing them down
again. On every prominent ledge you could see England’s hands holding
the Canadas, and I judged by the redness of her knuckles that she would
soon have to let go. In the rear of such a guard-house, in a large
gravelled square or parade-ground, called the Champ de Mars, we saw a
large body of soldiers being drilled, we being as yet the only
spectators. But they did not appear to notice us any more than the
devotees in the church, but were seemingly as indifferent to fewness of
spectators as the phenomena of nature are, whatever they might have been
thinking under their helmets of the Yankees that were to come. Each man
wore white kid gloves. It was one of the most interesting sights which I
saw in Canada. The problem appeared to be how to smooth down all
individual protuberances or idiosyncrasies, and make a thousand men move
as one man, animated by one central will; and there was some approach to
success. They obeyed the signals of a commander who stood at a great
distance, wand in hand; and the precision, and promptness, and harmony
of their movements could not easily have been matched. The harmony was
far more remarkable than that of any choir or band, and obtained, no
doubt, at a greater cost. They made on me the impression, not of many
individuals, but of one vast centipede of a man, good for all sorts of
pulling down; and why not then for some kinds of building up? If men
could combine thus earnestly, and patiently, and harmoniously to some
really worthy end, what might they not accomplish? They now put their
hands, and partially perchance their heads, together, and the result is
that they are the imperfect tools of an imperfect and tyrannical
government. But if they could put their hands and heads and hearts and
all together, such a co-operation and harmony would be the very end and
success for which government now exists in vain,—a government, as it
were, not only with tools, but stock to trade with.
I was obliged to frame some sentences that sounded like French in order
to deal with the market-women, who, for the most part, cannot speak
English. According to the guide-book the relative population of this
city stands nearly thus: two fifths are French Canadian; nearly one
fifth British Canadian; one and a half fifth English, Irish, and Scotch;
somewhat less than one half fifth Germans, United States people, and
others. I saw nothing like pie for sale, and no good cake to put in my
bundle, such as you can easily find in our towns, but plenty of
fair-looking apples, for which Montreal Island is celebrated, and also
pears, cheaper, and I thought better than ours, and peaches, which,
though they were probably brought from the South, were as cheap as they
commonly are with us. So imperative is the law of demand and supply
that, as I have been told, the market of Montreal is sometimes supplied
with green apples from the State of New York some weeks even before they
are ripe in the latter place. I saw here the spruce wax which the
Canadians chew, done up in little silvered papers, a penny a roll; also
a small and shrivelled fruit which they called _cerises_ mixed with many
little stems somewhat like raisins, but I soon returned what I had
bought, finding them rather insipid, only putting a sample in my pocket.
Since my return, I find on comparison that it is the fruit of the sweet
viburnum (_Viburnum Lentago_), which with us rarely holds on till it is
ripe.
I stood on the deck of the steamer John Munn, late in the afternoon,
when the second and third ferry-boats arrived from La Prairie, bringing
the remainder of the Yankees. I never saw so many caleches, cabs,
charettes, and similar vehicles collected before, and doubt if New York
could easily furnish more. The handsome and substantial stone quay,
which stretches a mile along the river-side, and protects the street
from the ice, was thronged with the citizens who had turned out on foot
and in carriages to welcome or to behold the Yankees. It was interesting
to see the caleche drivers dash up and down the slope of the quay with
their active little horses. They drive much faster than in our cities. I
have been told that some of them come nine miles into the city every
morning and return every night, without changing their horses during the
day. In the midst of the crowd of carts, I observed one deep one loaded
with sheep with their legs tied together, and their bodies piled one
upon another, as if the driver had forgotten that they were sheep and
not yet mutton. A sight, I trust, peculiar to Canada, though I fear that
it is not.
------------------------------------------------------------------------