“I do not know why he regarded a connexion with the Mohawks as degrading, for they were members of the celebrated confederation of the Six Nations—the Iroquois Confederation. The other members were the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, the Senecas, and the Tuscaroras.”
The Chaudière Falls,
near Quebec.
It is our wish to assemble pictures of Canada by as many different classes of observers, and during as many different seasons, as is possible. Here are some winter sketches, which are not unentertaining.
“Nothing could be more Siberian than the aspect of the Canadian frontier; a narrow road, choked with snow, led them through a wood, in which patches were occasionally cleared on either side to admit the construction of a few log-huts, round which a brood of ragged children, a starved pig, and a few half-broken rustic implements, formed an accompaniment more suited to an Irish landscape, than to the thriving scenes we had just quitted. The Canadian peasant is still the same unsophisticated animal whom we may suppose to have been imported by Jacques Carrier. The sharp unchangeable lineaments of the French countenance, set off with a blue or red night-cap, over which is drawn the hood of a grey capote, fashioned like a monk’s cowl, a red worsted girdle, hair tied in a greasy leather queue, brown moccasins of undressed hide, and a short pipe in his mouth, give undeniable testimony of the presence of Jean Baptiste. His horse seems to have been equally solicitous to shame neither his progenitors nor his owner, by any mixture with a foreign race, but exhibits the same relationship to the horses, as his rider to the subjects of Louis XIII. Now, too, the frequent cross by the road side, thick-studded with all the implements of crucifixional torture, begins to indicate a catholic country: distorted virgins and ghastly saints decorate each inn room, while the light spires of the parish church, covered with plates of tin, glitter across the snowy plain.
Raft on the St. Lawrence, Cape Sante.
“At La Prairie we crossed the ice to Montreal, whose isolated mountain forms a conspicuous object at the distance of some leagues. From thence to Quebec, the road follows the course of the St. Lawrence, whose banks present a succession of villages, many of them delightfully situated; but all form and feature were absorbed in the snowy deluge, which now deepened every league; add to which, the sleigh-track, by frequently running on the bed of the river, placed us below prospect of every kind. We found the inns neat, and the people attentive; French politesse began to be contrasted with American bluntness. It is curious to observe that this characteristic of the Americans, which so frequently offends the polished feelings of English travellers, is exactly what was formerly objected by the French to ourselves. The ‘rudesse’ of the English character was long a standing jest with our refined neighbours; but we have now, it seems, so far shaken off this odious remnant of uncourtly habits, as to regard it with true French horror in our trans-Atlantic cousins.
“It was Sunday when we arrived at St. Anne’s; mass was just finished, and above a hundred sleighs were rapidly dispersing themselves up the neighbouring heights, and across the bed of the river, to the adjacent villages. The common country sleigh is a clumsy box-shaped machine, raised at both ends, perhaps not greatly unlike the old heroic car. It holds two persons, with the driver, who stands before them. One horse is commonly sufficient, but two are used in posting, when the leader is attached by cords, tandem-wise, and left to use his own discretion, without the restraint of rein, or impulse of whip. Should, however, the latter stimulus become indispensable, the driver jumps from the sleigh, runs forward, applies his pack-thread lash, and regains his seat without any hazard from extraordinary increase of impetus. The runners of these sleighs are formed of two slips of wood, so low that the shafts collect the snow into a succession of wavy hillocks, properly christened ‘cahots,’ for they almost dislocate your limbs five thousand times in a day’s journey. An attempt was once made to correct this evil, by prohibiting all low runners, as they are called, from coming within a certain distance of Quebec; meaning thereby to force the country people into the use of high runners in the American fashion. Jean Baptiste, however, sturdily and effectually resisted this heretical innovation, by halting with his produce without the limits, and thus compelling the townspeople to come to him to make their purchases.
“The markets, both of Montreal and Quebec, exhibit several hundred market sleighs daily. They differ from the pleasure or travelling sleigh, in having no sides; that is, they consist merely of a plank bottom, with a kind of railing. Hay and wood seem the staple commodities at this season, both of which are immoderately dear, especially at Quebec; even through the States, the common charge for one horse’s hay for a night was a dollar. Provisions are brought to market frozen, in which state they are preserved during the winter; cod-fish is brought from Boston, a land-carriage of 500 miles, and then sells at a reasonable rate, the American commonly speculating on a cargo of smuggled goods back, to make up his profit; a kind of trade extremely brisk betwixt the frontier and Montreal.