Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1

by Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

But, gentle reader, although it be a well-worn tale, I had not seen the Falls for five years, and I wish to tell you whether they are altered or improved; and most likely you will take some little interest in so old a friend as the Falls of Niagara; for you must have read about those before you read Robinson Crusoe, and have had them thrust under your notice by every tourist, from Trollope to Dickens. They say, on dit, I mean, which is not translatable into English, that this is the age of Materialism and Utilitarianism. By George, you would think so indeed, if you had the chance of seeing the Falls of Niagara twice in ten years. They are materially injured by the Utilitarian mania. The Yankees put an ugly shot tower on the brink of the Horseshoe at the beginning of that era, and they are about to consummate the barbarism, by throwing a wire bridge, if the British government is consenting, over the river, just below the American Fall. But Niagara is a splendid "Water Privilege," and so thought the Company of the City of the Falls—a most enlightened body of British subjects, who first disfigured the Table Rock, by putting a water-mill on it, and now are adding the horror of gin-palaces, with sundry ornamental booths for the sale of juleps and sling, all along the venerable edge of the precipice, so that trees of unequalled beauty on the bank above, trees which grow no where else in Canada, are daily falling before the monster of gain.

What they will do next in their freaks it is difficult to surmise; but it requires very little more to show that patriotism, taste, and self-esteem, are not the leading features in the character of the inhabitants of this part of the world.

If the Colossus of Rhodes could be remodelled and brought to the Falls, one leg standing in Canada, and the other in the United States, there would be a company immediately formed for hydraulic purposes, to convey a waste pipe from the tips of the fingers as far as Buffalo; and another to light the paltry village of Manchester, all mills and mint-juleps, with the natural gas which would be made to feed the lamp. A grogshop would be set up in his head; telescopes would be poked out of his eyes, and philosophers would seat themselves on his toes, to calculate whether the waters of the British Fall could not be dammed out, so as to turn a few cotton mills more in Manchester, as it is called, which scheme some Canadian worthy would upset, by resorting to Mr. Lyell's proof that the whole river might once have flowed, and may again be made to flow, down to St. David's—thus, by expending a few millions, cutting off Jonathan's chance.

But it is of no use to joke on this subject; Niagara is, both to the United States and to England, but especially to Canada, a public property. It is the greatest wonder of the visible world here below, and should be protected from the rapacity of private speculations, and not made a Greenwich fair of; where pedlars and thimble-riggers, niggers and barkers, the lowest trulls and the vilest scum of society, congregate to disgust and annoy the visitors from all parts of the world, plundering and pestering them without control.

The only really pretty thing on the British side is the Museum, the result of the indefatigable labours of Mr. Barnett, a person who, by his own unassisted industry, has gathered together a most interesting collection of animals, shells, coins, &c., and has added a garden, in which all the choicest plants and flowers of North America and of Britain grow, watered by the incessant spray of the Great Fall. In this garden I saw, for the first time in Canada, the English holly, the box, the heath, and the ivy; and there is a willow from the St. Helena stock.

It requires unremitting watchfulness, however, to keep all this together, for loafers are rife in these parts. He had gathered a very choice collection of coins, which was placed in a glass case in the Museum. A loafer cast his eye upon them, visited the Museum frequently, until he fully comprehended the whereabouts, and then, by the help of a comrade or two, broke a window-pane, passed through a glazed division of stuffed snakes, &c., and bore off his prize in the dead of the night. By advertising in time, and by dint of much exertion, the greater part was recovered, but the proprietor has not dared publicly to exhibit them since.

He is now forming a menagerie, and also has a collection of fossils and minerals from the neighbourhood, with a camera obscura. He is, in short, a specimen of what untiring industry can accomplish, even when unassisted.

There are some tulip-trees near the Falls, but this plant does not grow to any size so far north; and, although native to the soil, it is, perhaps, the extreme limit of its range. The snake-wood, a sort of slender bush, is found here, with very many other rare Canadian plants, which are no doubt fostered by the continual humidity of the place; and, if you wish to sup full of horrors,[4] Mr. Barnett has plenty of live rattlesnakes.

To wind up all, the Americans are going to put up another immense gin-palace on the opposite shore; and, as a climax to the excellent taste of the vicinage, they are about to place a huge steamboat to cross the rapids at the foot of the Manchester Falls. The next speculation, as I hinted above, must be to turn the Niagara into the Erie, or into the Welland Canal, and make it carry flour, grind wheat, and do the duty which the political economists of this thriving place consider all rivers as alone created for.

One traveller of the Utilitarian school has recorded, in the traveller's album at the Falls, the number of gallons of water running over to waste per minute; and another writes, "What an almighty splash!"