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

by Sir William Howard Russell

At about three o’clock, we sleighed over by rough roads to the terminus of the railway, close to the Victoria Bridge, where a party of the directors and some officers—Colonel Mackensie, Colonel Wetherall, Colonels Ellison and Earle of the Guards, and others recently arrived—were assembled to view the great work which would stamp the impress of English greatness on Canada, if her power were to be rooted out to-morrow. The royal carriage—a prettily decorated long open waggon, with the Prince of Wales’s coat of arms, plume, and initials still shining brightly—was in readiness; and as cold makes one active, or very lazy, as the case may be, we lost no time in starting to explore the bridge, which threw its massive weight in easy stretches across the vast frozen highway of the St. Lawrence—so light, so strong, so graceful, for all its rigid lines, that I can compare the impression of the thing to nothing so much as to that of the bounds of a tiger.

The entrance, in the limestone rock, is grandly simple; but ere we could well admire its proportions the car ran into the darkness of the great tube. The light admitted by the neatly designed windows in the iron sides of the aërial tunnel was not enough to enable us to pierce through the smoke and the fog which clung to the interior. The car proceeded to the end, the thermometer marking 6°. Statistics, though I have them all by me, I am not about to give, as the history of the bridge is well known; but Mr. Blackwell showed me a table which indicated that the monster suffers or rejoices like a living thing, and contracts and expands and swells out his lines wondrously, just in proportion as the temperature alters.

From this end of the magnificent bridge one could see, nearly a hundred feet below him, the rugged surface of the ice, beneath which was rolling the St. Lawrence. It was distinguished from the snowy expanse covering the land by the bluish glint of the ice, and by the torn glacier-like aspect of the course of the stream, where the frozen masses had been contending fiercely with the current and with each other till the frost-king had clutched them and bound them in the midst of the conflict. You could trace the likeness of spires, pinnacles, castles, battlements, and alpine peaks in the wild confusion of those serried heaps, which were tilted up and forced together; but the haze did not permit us to follow the course of the stream for any great distance. It was too cold for enthusiastic enjoyment, and we got into the car and backed into the darkness till we reached the centre of the bridge.

I confess, when it occurred to me that great cold makes iron brittle, the uneasy feeling I experienced of suspense, malgré moi, in passing over any of these great engineering triumphs, was aggravated so far that it required a good deal of faith in the charming diagram of the effects of temperature on the bridge, to make me quite at ease. I suppose it is only an engineer who can be quite above the thought, “Suppose, after all, the bridge does go at this particular moment.” And then the iron did crackle and bang and shriek most unmistakeably and demonstratively.

At the centre of the bridge we got out, and had another look at the river, some sixty feet below. Remarked the thinness of the iron; was informed it was on purpose, every plate being made specially for its place. Examined carefully a bolt driven in by the Prince of Wales; rather liked its appearance, as it was well hammered and seemed sound. Then the car received us, and we were drawn through this ghastly cold gallery once more, and were divulged at the railway station among a crowd of furred citizens.

Thence through the city over the rough road in our carrioles and sleighs. On our way I remarked a stone obelisk standing out of the snow close to the railway, in a low patch of ground near the river. “That,” said my companion, “is a memorial to six thousand Irish emigrants who died here of ship fever.” What a history in those few words—a tale of sorrow and woe unutterable—I hope, not of neglect and indifference too! The railway engineers have thoughtfully erected the monument of the nameless dead, and so far rescued their fate from oblivion.

I am not so philosophic as to witness the desolating emigrations which leave the homes of a country waste, and fill the lands of future kingdoms and possible rivals with an alienated population, without regret. Above all, I pity the fate of the poor pioneers whose hapless lot it is to labour unthanked and despised, to build up the stranger’s cities, to clear his forests, and make his roads, to found his power and greatness, and then to sit at his gate waiting for alms when the hour cometh that no man can work.

It is most strange, indeed, and yet too true, that a race which, above all others, ought to seek the material advantages and the substantial results of hard work, should be the most readily led astray by windy agitators and by political disputes and passions. Here we are driving through the streets of Montreal, which owes much of its existence to Irish labour, and the labourer lives in filth and degradation, in the back slums of the city, intensely interested in elections and clerical discussions, little better cared for or regarded than the dogs thereof till his vote is required.

The city is now in its winter mantle, but it shows fair proportions. The Roman Catholic chapels are well placed and handsome, and excel in size and numbers the Protestant churches. The Quarter-master-General, who has had to hire one of the Catholic colleges to serve as barracks for the troops, says the priests are remarkably keen practitioners at a bargain: good Churchmen always were in old times. The metal-covered domes and spires, the roofs of houses sheeted with tin, now began to glisten in the sun, and gave a bright look to the place which did not make it all the warmer.