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

by Sir William Howard Russell

We were now in a basin of clear water surrounded quite by ice, which only left the tops of the small bergs and the high banks on each side visible to us seated low down in the boat; and as we looked the floes were rapidly closing in upon us; but the skipper saw where the frozen wall was about opening, and forced the boat to the point of the advancing and narrowing circle, in which suddenly a tiny canal was cleft by the parting of the bergs, and the opportunity was instantly seized by the boatmen.

The ice was already closing and gripping the timbers as soon as we had fairly entered, and in an instant out leaped the crew on the treacherous surface, which here and there sank till they were knee-deep, and by main force they slid the boat up on a floe, and rocking her from side to side as a kite flutters before it makes a swoop, they roused her along on the surface of the ice, which was floating up towards the city very rapidly. With loud cries to a sort of chorus, the crew forced the craft across the floe till they floundered in some half-frozen snow, through which the boat dropped into the water. Then in they leaped, like so many Newfoundland dogs coming to land, all wet and furry, took the oars again, and rowed across and against the tide-set as hard as they could. Now in the water, then hanging on by the gunwales, this moment rowing, in another tugging at the boat ropes, clambering over small ice rocks, running across floes, sinking suddenly to the waist in the cold torrent, the men battled with the current, and by degrees the shore grew nearer, and the picturesque outlines of the city became more distinct in the morning sun.

What with the extraordinary combinations and forms of the ice drifts, the inimitably fantastic outlines of the miniature ice architecture, and the novelty of the scene, one’s attention was entirely fixed on what was passing around, and it was not till we had nearly touched land that we had time to admire the fine effect of the streets and citadel, which, rising from the icy wall of the river bank, towered aloft over us like the old town of Edinburgh suddenly transplanted to the sea.

We found an opening in the blue cold water-rocks near the Custom-house landing-wharf, at which place there was a shelving bank; a stout horse was attached to the boat by a rope, on which the crew threw themselves with enthusiasm; and in a few seconds more we were on the quay, and thence proceeded to Russell’s Hotel, which was recommended to us as the best in the place. One may find fault with American hostelries; but assuredly they are better than the imitations of them which one finds in Canada, combining all the bad qualities of hotels in the States and in Europe, and destitute of any of the good ones.

The master of the hotel was an American, and he had struggled hard “under the depressing influences of the British aristocracy” to establish an American hotel, and he only succeeded in introducing the least agreeable features of the institution; but the attendants were civil and obliging, and there was no extravagant pressure on the resources of the place, so that we fared better than if we had been down south of the frontier. Even the landlord, though not particularly well-disposed towards one so unpopular among his countrymen as myself, yielded so far to the genius loci as to be civil. The rooms were small, and not particularly clean; but as painting and papering were going on, those who follow me may be better provided for.

A short rest was very welcome; but what fate is like that which drives the sightseer ever onwards, and forces him, with the rage of all the furies, from repose? “The Falls of Montmorenci were but a drive away, and the ‘Cone’ was in great perfection.”

“What is ‘the Cone?’” The effect of our ignorance on the waiter was so touching—he was so astonished by the profound barbarism of our condition—that we felt it necessary for our own character to proceed at once to a spot which forms the delight of Quebec in the winter season, and to which the bourgeoisie were repairing in hot haste for the afternoon’s pleasure.

A sleigh was brought round, and in it, ensconced in furs, we started off for the Falls, which are about eight miles distant. It was delightful to see anything so old on this continent as the tortuous streets of the city, which bear marks of their French origin, after such a long contact as I had endured with the raw youth of American cities in general, but it was impossible to deny that the antiquity before us had a certain air of dreary staleness about it also. The double-windowed flat-faced houses had a lanky, compressed air, as if they had been starved in early life, and the citizens had the appearance of people who had no particular object in being there, and set no remarkable value on time. A considerable sprinkling of priests was perhaps the most remarkable feature in the scene, and occasionally knots of ruddy-faced riflemen, in all the glory of winter fur caps and great coats, disputed the narrow pavement, alternating with the “red” soldiers of the line.

The city is built on very irregular ground, and some of the streets are so steep that it is desirable for new comers to have steel spikes screwed into the foot-gear to combat the inclination to proneness on the part of the wearers. Emerging through a postern in the ancient battlemented wall we came out in an uninteresting suburb of small houses, from which a descent led to the margin of the water. Far as the eye could reach a vast snow plain extended, with surface broken into ridges, mounds, and long dark lines, and dotted with opaque blocks from which the church steeples sprung aloft, indicating the sites of villages. The ridges were the hills over the St. Lawrence, the mounds its islands, and the lines its banks, which expand widely on the left to embrace the sweep of the St. Charles Lake, on which stands the projecting ledge of the eastern part of the city.

As we approached the Lake, over which our route lay, black specks, which were resolved into sleighs, or men and women on foot, were visible making their way over the ice, which was marked by lines of bushes and branches of trees dressed up in the snow so as to indicate the route, and far away similar black specks could be made out crossing the St. Lawrence below, which has now become the great highway. But not a very smooth road. The surface is far from being level, and consists indeed of a succession of undulations in which the profound cavities sometimes give one a sense of insecure travelling.