CHAP. III.
EASTERN TOWNSHIPS.
The county of Sherbrooke embraces the greater part of the district of St. Francis, immediately south of Trois Rivières, to which it is often considered as attached. Being quite beyond the range of the Seigniories, it has been divided into twenty-nine townships, which include much valuable land. It presents in general a broken and varied surface, sometimes rising into mountains clothed with fine timber, is well watered, yet not so encumbered with swamps as the more western districts. The only part hitherto settled is that adjoining to Stanstead in Montreal; but the British American Land Company expect soon to diffuse culture over the whole. Orford, indeed, the first on this side, is so mountainous as to be almost unfit for improvement, and contains only 320 inhabitants. But the west, Ascot, with 1,800, Compton to the south, with 2,020, and Eaton to the east, with 1,500, are in general very fine, with an undulating surface, and commodiously watered by streams well adapted for mills. The first contains Sherbrooke, the county town, where the commerce of the neighbouring settlements chiefly centres. It contains about 350 inhabitants, with three places of worship and a woollen manufactory; and the Land Company have lately made it the centre of their operations. They have undertaken a new road to Port St. Francis, whereby the distance will be reduced to seventy miles, and have likewise established a stage conveyance between the two places, by which the journey is performed in one day. They have also improved the roads to Quebec and Montreal, from each of which it is about 100 miles distant. In Eaton and Compton are rising villages bearing the same names. South from Eaton, Clifton and Newport, though hilly, contain much good land; yet in 1831 their united population was only 188.
Mills at Sherbrooke, on the River Magog.
Bridge at Sherbrooke.
(Eastern Townships.)
The north-western part of the county includes Melbourne, with 1,280 settlers, and Shipton, on the Nicolet, with 1,900. The two are considered the finest of all the St. Francis townships, and their population is rapidly increasing. Shipton contains Richmond, a village of some consequence, and another is rapidly rising in Melbourne. Windsor and Stoke are represented as possessing almost equal advantages; yet they have drawn little attention, the former containing only 220 settlers, the latter scarcely any. Brompton, west from these, though uneven and rocky, has some good tracts, which have drawn 350 inhabitants; while Dudswell, east of Windsor, which has also a variegated surface, can boast of 342.
The whole south-eastern part of this large county, containing the townships of Garthby, Strafford, Whitton, Adstock, Marston, Chesham, Emberton, Hampden, and Bury, with certain portions of Weedon, Singwick, Ditton, Auckland, and Hereford, composes the great block purchased by the Land Company. It had not been previously surveyed, and was occupied only by detached individuals, who had availed themselves of its neglected situation to squat upon it. Its surface is very varied. The central part, according to a recent report, appears too mountainous to invite settlement; but from this height it slopes down in various directions to the St. Francis, to its tributary the Salmon, and to Lake Megantie. These lower declivities are richly wooded, and well fitted for a mixed system of corn and pasture farming. The Salmon river, which traverses in a northerly direction nearly the whole district, has beautiful and fertile banks, one part of which, about ten miles long, from its luxuriant verdure is called “The Meadows.” This river, as well as numerous little streams which flow into it, is rapid and broken by falls, unfit for navigation, but convenient for mills. Here the Company have determined to begin their settlement; and about half a mile from the principal fall they have founded a village, named Victoria. During the summer of 1836 several hundred labourers were employed by them in forming a road between it and Sherbrooke.
Pass of Bolton, Eastern Townships.
Scene on the River St. Francis near Sherbrooke.
(Eastern Townships.)
The tracts on this side of the river belonging to the district of Quebec, embrace a great extent of coast; but the settlements do not extend far into the interior. The possession of a portion, too, amounting to 6,400,000 acres, is still under discussion with the United States. This division consists of the counties of Beance, Belle-chasse, Dorchester, Kamouraska, L’Islet, Lotbinière, Megantie, and Rimouski, which contain a population of 87,700. The aspect of the territory, as compared with the western, is decidedly bold and hilly, though not mountainous, as on the opposite shore. The land generally stretches in irregular ridges, which, at from ten to twenty miles inland, swell into a broad table land, that slopes down to the river St. John. Between these ridges, however, intervene valleys, and even extensive plains, many of which, from the encouragement afforded by the markets of the capital, have been brought into very tolerable cultivation. The territory is watered by numerous rivers, full and rapid, though, from being closely hemmed in by high land on the south, they have not so long a course as those farther west. The principal are the Chaudière, Du Sud, St. Anne, Ouelle, Green River, Rimouski, Great Mitis, and Matane. In ascending the St. Lawrence, the views along the valleys marked out by these streams and the heights by which they are bounded, are singularly grand and picturesque.
Orford Mountain.
(Eastern Townships.)
The tract watered by the Chaudière, the largest of these rivers, and comprising the county of Beance, is hilly and broken, the soil light, and in some places stony, yet on the whole fertile, and the vicinity of the capital has led to its careful cultivation. It derives very great advantages also from the Kennebeck road, leading from Quebec to Boston, and completed in 1830, by which its agricultural produce is conveyed to a good market, and large supplies of live stock transported. The fall on the Chaudière forms one of the most picturesque objects in America. If it does not equal the grandeur of Niagara and Montmorency, it possesses features more interesting than either. The river is here narrowed to the breadth of between 300 and 400 feet, and the height does not exceed 130. It descends, too, not in one continuous sheet, but is broken by projecting rocks into three channels, which, however, unite before reaching the basin below. Nothing, therefore, is on the same great scale as in its two rivals; yet it surpasses both in the magnificent forests by which it is overhung, whose dark foliage, varied and contrasted by the white foam of the cataracts, produces the most striking effects. These are heightened by the deep and hollow sound of the waters, and the clouds of spray, which, when illumined by the sun, exhibit the most brilliant variety of prismatic colours. A succession of rapids for some space upwards displays a continuation of the same bold and beautiful scenery.
Lake Memphremagog.
(near Georgeville.)
Outlet of Lake Memphremagog.