TO MRS. J. BOSWELL.
‘On board a huge River Steamer,
June 9, 1875.
‘Here we are steaming up the St. Lawrence to Montreal.... Quebec is a wondrously fair city.... We went this morning to see the Montmorency Fall, a cascade where a great volume of water churned into foam dashes down a precipice 300 feet high....
‘June 10.
‘I finish this off in Montreal, a very handsome, thriving-looking city, with far grander buildings than Quebec: but it wants the dreamlike, exquisite beauty of its sister. More kindness meets us here.... Have you seen the account of the loss of the Vicksburg in the ice, just three days before we encountered the ice off the same coast? Only five sailors saved; not one passenger! We should have gone down faster than the poor Vicksburg, because of our heavier cargo. I should not have had a chance; and my gallant Louis would probably have lost his (life), because he would never have deserted me.’
Although Charlotte Tucker’s Indian life lay still in the future, this seems to be the right place for quoting a few words from her pen, written after years of toil in the East. Her mind was plainly reverting to the voyage above described:—
‘It seems strange that the idea of an ice-bound vessel should suggest itself to a Missionary, working in the “glowing East”; yet it is so. We, in Batala, seem for years to have been labouring to cut a passage through hard, cold ice, with the chilly bergs of Muhammadanism and Hinduism towering on either hand. But though channels which had been laboriously opened may be closed, the crew are by no means disheartened. The worst of the winter is now, we hope, over. We see on various sides cracks in the ice. A Brahmin convert, brave and true, has been like a bright fragment broken from the berg, helping somewhat to throw it off its balance. The way is becoming more open, and there are tokens of melting below the surface of the ice. We know that one day of God’s bright sunshine can do more to make a clear way than our little picks can accomplish.’