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 travelling 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-traveller 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, grist-mill, and several saw-mills. 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 roadside. 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 half-way 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 woollen 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 _Iniri_, 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, &c.,
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 pathside, 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 school-house 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 l’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 Chateau Richer, which is the next parish to l’Ange Gardien, we
read, looking over the wall, the inscriptions in the adjacent
churchyard, which began with, “_Ici git_” 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 _chateau_. “_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, bass-wood,
wild-cherry, aspens, &c, 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 Chateau Richer and St. Anne, _le premier pont de St. Anne_, and
at dark the church of _La Bonne St. 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]
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, upwards of thirty; at the
Bay of Seven Islands, seventy miles; and at the Island of Anticosti
(about three hundred and fifty miles from Quebec) it rolls a flood
into the ocean nearly one hundred miles across.”
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 guideboards 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 travellers. 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 woollen 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 sheep-skin, 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 travelled 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 St. 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 St. 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
drift-wood, 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 mid-way, 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 perfectly 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, &c., 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 Chateau 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 traveller 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 traveller
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. Fereole_ 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. John_
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_,
_Longueil_, _Pointe aux Trembles_, _Bartholomy_, &c., &c.; 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 travellers 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 traveller 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 Chateau 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 traveller 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 back-yard 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 master-piece 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 curés and five
presbyteries, two schools, two corn-mills, four saw-mills, 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,
&c, &c.; 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 article 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 pre-emption 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,” &c,—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,” &c. 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, &c, &c, without obtaining letters of
naturalization.” When the English had possession of Quebec, in 1630, the
Indians, attempting to practise 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.
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