Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

Leave Niagara—Suspension Bridge—In British territory—Hamilton City—Buildings—Proceed eastward—Toronto—Dine at Mess—Pay visits—Public edifices—Sleighs—Amusement of the boys—Camaraderie in the army—Kindly feeling displayed—Journey resumed towards Quebec—Intense cold—Snow landscape—Morning in the train—Hunger and lesser troubles—Kingston, its rise and military position—Harbour, dockyards—Its connection with the Prince of Wales’ Tour—The Upper St. Lawrence—Canada as to defence.

We left the Falls with regret—the “city of the Falls” without any painful emotion. The people at the hotel were perfectly civil and obliging, though they bore no particular good-will, perhaps, to one whom they had been taught to regard as the bitter enemy and traducer of their country and their cause.

Our guide seemed to pity us for our folly in going to such a place as Canada, when we could, if we liked, stay in an American hotel in the States. He assured us it was “only fit for Irish, Frenchmen, and free niggers.” The true American of this type is perhaps the most prejudiced man in the world, not even excepting the old type of the British farmer, or men of the Sibthorp epoch. His conviction of his immense superiority is founded on the readiness with which others flock to serve him. By their service he becomes a sort of aristocrat in regard to all immigrants, and can live without having recourse to any menial office or duty. I presume our hairy friend never brushed his boots in his life, and would sooner wear them dirty for ever than stoop to the unwonted task. At last came our time to depart.

Our sleighs glided smoothly down to the railway station at the Clifton, where the train was waiting to take us over the Suspension Bridge. That structure is, I fear, too beautiful to last. It requires a good deal of coolness and custom to look down from it on the fearful flood of the river rolling below, and mark the vibration as a heavy train passes over it. Then, too, there is the influence of cold on iron to be considered, the effects of tension, and the like: all have been duly provided for; and yet the bridge looks very light and very graceful, and let us hope it may be very strong and very lasting.

In five minutes we were in British territory. The first palpable and outward sign of the fact was an examination of our luggage by the customs officers at a station a few miles from the frontier, during which, or by which, one of the party lost a hat and its guardian box. The examination was rendered as little irksome as possible by the civility of the officials; and it made me quite happy to see the crowns on their brass buttons, degraded British subject as I was. One burly fellow congratulated me on “escaping alive out of the hands of the Yankees—he would not have given a cent for my life for the last six months.”

Our journey was not so much impeded by snow as we expected. It is forty-three miles from Niagara to the rising city of Hamilton, and we were little more than one hour and a quarter in doing the distance. All I am aware of is that on our way we passed through vast snow-fields, by the mineral waters of St. Catherine’s, the frozen canal, and that we caught glimpses on our right of the blue expanse of Lake Ontario.

The first sight of Hamilton caused a rapid change in my mind respecting the condition of Canada, and a most agreeable feeling of surprise. It was evident the Americans were not justified in their affected depreciation of the provinces, if they contained such towns as these. Despite the unfavourable circumstances under which it was visited, the city presented an appearance of comfort and prosperity which even a democratic people might envy, and which scarcely justified the corporation in refusing, as I hear they do, to rely on local sources for liquidation of certain claims against them.

Fine-looking streets, a forest of spires, important public buildings, did no discredit to the old standard which floated over the Custom-house near the station. And yet it was not possible to help remarking that the passengers in the train were reading American not Canadian newspapers. They were enjoying the fruits of American piracy in their more serious studies. The literary thefts of the sanctimonious Harpers, who play for ever on the moods and tenses of the verb to steal—were in the hands of all the people who were reading books.

Not alone the British flag did we see at Hamilton, but the British soldier; for at the doorway of the hotel were two well-known faces. A battalion of the Rifle Brigade was expected every moment, and two officers had been sent on to provide for their reception, as there were no barracks to receive the force, and they were hunting up house-owners to let their premises on the instant. It may be imagined that house-owners take a favourable view for themselves of the value of property thus suddenly in request; and the officers were proportionately indignant with those griping Canadians, as if they would have met different treatment from English colonists anywhere.

Hamilton is a city of some 20,000 inhabitants. It is on a bay (Burlington), which runs in at the west of Lake Ontario north of the peninsula formed by the lake, by the St. Lawrence, by Lake Erie, and by the river falling into Erie at Maitland. It is on the rail between the west from Detroit and London, the south-east from the States, and the east from Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec. In event of war it is exposed to an attack by any American gunboat from the harbours on the south shore of Lake Ontario, and yet, to the best of my belief, it is utterly destitute of defence, and has not even a martello tower for its protection.