Wednesday.
Events have been crowding us during the last thirty-six hours—bless me, I mean the last sixty hours—I had positively written Tuesday instead of Wednesday at the top of this. I let my watch run down on the Peruvian, as it was too provoking to have to put it back thirty-five minutes every morning. Since then time has gone all whiz! however, I shall pick up the time now and get to my bearings, at least I shall try. Well, all Sunday afternoon we ran up the glorious St. Lawrence, past the mouths of what we should call big rivers, past the Canadian watering-places, past one long straggling village except where the hills are too steep or the soil absolutely barren. The view is not unlike many Scotch ones, substituting scrub or stunted forest for heather. This of course is a great disadvantage in a picturesque point of view, but it is more than compensated by the great river. I am very glad I came to the new world up the St. Lawrence. Nothing could have brought the startling contrast of the old and new world so vividly home to me as this steaming literally day after day up the stream, and finding it still at 700 miles from the mouth two miles broad, with anchorage for the largest ships that float. We went the round of the ship with the Captain after dinner, to see the wonderful detail of the storerooms, and the huge fire-system which goes glowing on through all the voyage. The sight of the twenty-five great furnaces glowing, and consuming fifty-two tons of coal a day, quite scared several of the ladies, who seemed to think that the Peruvian was flying, I should say sailing, presumptuously in the face of Providence not to have caught fire during the voyage. Luckily we were within a few hours of port, so their anxiety was not of long duration. I went to bed for the last time in my crib on the top of the drawers, leaving word for the quartermaster to call me when we were getting near Quebec. Accordingly I was roused at about three from one of the sleeps without a turn even (by reason that there is no room to turn) which one gets on board ship, and scuffled up on deck in my trousers and fur coat to find myself in the most perfect moonlight rounding the last point below Quebec. Then up went three rockets, and as we slacked our speed at the side of the wharf right opposite the citadel, two guns were fired and the voyage of the Peruvian was over. My packing was all done, so while the vessel was being unladen I went quietly to bed again and slept for another two or three hours amid all the din. Between six and seven I turned out again and had a good breakfast on board, after which came leave-takings, and then those of us who were not going on by train and were ready to start, went on board a little tug ferry-boat and were paddled across to Quebec. I have sent a small map to show you how the land lies. Our ferry-boat took us over from Port Levi to the quay just under the Citadel along the line I have dotted, and we at once chartered two carriages to visit the falls of Montmorency, to which you will see a line drawn on the map and which is about six miles from Quebec. Oh, the air! You know what it is when we land at Dieppe, or at Brussels, or Aix. Well, all that air is fog, depressing wet blanket compared to this Canadian nectar. I really doubt whether it would not be almost worth while to emigrate merely for the exquisite pleasure of the act of living in this country.
Montreal, 19th August 1870.
I must get on with my journal or shall fall altogether astern—you have no idea how hard it is even to find time to write a few lines home; however if I can only make up the time to-day I hope to keep down the arrears more regularly hereafter. We had a long day of sightseeing in and about Quebec. First we drove down to the Montmorency Falls, 220 feet high and very beautiful, then back to the Citadel, which rises some 600 or 700 feet right above the river—a regular little Gibraltar; then we went off to the Heights of Abraham, at the back of the Citadel, where Wolfe fought his battle and was killed after scaling the cliffs in the early morning. Then we drove down into the town, and had lunch at a restaurant, and walked about to see the place. Well worth seeing it is; a quaint, old, thoroughly French town of the last century dropped down into the middle of the new world. In the evening we went on board the great river steamer, and came away all night up the St. Lawrence to Montreal. There were 1000 passengers on board, every one of whom had an excellent berth—mine was broader and lighter than that on the Peruvian. We were not the least crowded in the splendid saloon (some 150 feet long), and the open galleries running all round the ship in two tiers. I preferred the latter, though there was music, Yankee and Canadian, in the saloon, and spent my evening till bedtime out in the stern gallery looking at the most superb moonlight on the smooth water you can conceive. We had a small English party there, and there were half a dozen constantly changing groups round us. The girls have evidently much more freedom than at home, at least more than they had in our day—two or three would come out with as many young men, and sit round in a ring. The men lighted cigars, and then they would all set to work singing glees, songs, or what not, and chaffing and laughing away for half an hour perhaps, after which they would disappear into the saloon. There was a regular bar on board at which all manner of cool drinks were sold. We tried several, which I thought, I must say, very nasty, especially brandy-smash. After a most comfortable night I awoke between five and six as we were nearing Montreal. The city is very fine, the river still two miles broad, and ocean steamer drawing twenty feet and more of water able to lie right up against the quay. S———, a friend of Sir J. Rose’s, a great manufacturer here, whom I had taken to the “Cosmopolitan,” was in waiting on the landing-place, and took us at once up to his charming house on the hill (the mountain they call it) at the back of the city. He is a man of forty-three or forty-four; his wife, a very pleasant woman a little younger, and adopted daughter, Alice (a very sweet girl of nineteen, just home from an English school), form the whole family. I can’t tell you how kind they are and how perfectly at home they have made us. After breakfast we went down to see the city, got photographed with the rest of the above-named Peruvians, had a delicious lunch of fried oysters at a luncheon shop kept by a Yankee, washed it down with a drink called John Collins, a pleasant, cold, weak, scented kind of gin and water. Sir Geo. Carter and Sir Fras. Hinks, two of the present Government, both of whom I had met in England, came to dinner, also Holton the leading senator of the Opposition, and the two young Roses, one bringing his pretty young wife, and we had a long and very interesting political talk afterwards. Nothing could have suited me better, as there are many points of Canadian politics I am very anxious to get views on. We didn’t get to bed till 12.30, so I had no time to write. On Wednesday we saw more of the city which I shan’t attempt to describe till I can sit by you with photographs and explain, lunched at the Club, of which we have been made honorary members, with a large party of merchants and other big folk, and then at three were picked up by Mrs. S.—-, who drove us up the river to a place called Lachine, past the rapids (see Canadian boat-song), “The rapids are near and the daylight’s past.” Lachine gets its queer name from the first French Missionaries who started up the St. Lawrence to get to China, and for some unaccountable reason thought they had reached the flowery land when they got to this place, so settled down and called it China. The air was still charming, but the sky was beginning to get less bright, and Mrs. S—— and A———agreed that there must be a forest burning somewhere. And so it proved, for in a few hours the whole sky was covered with a smoke-cloud, light but not depressing, like our fogs, but still so dense that we could scarcely see across the river. We got back in time for dinner, to which came Colonel Buller, now commanding the Rifles here; Hugh Allan, the head of the great firm of ship-owners to whom the Peruvian and all the rest of the Allan line packets belong; and several young Canadians. It was very pleasant again, and again I got a heap of information on Canadian subjects from Allan, who is a longheaded able old Scotchman, the founder of the immense prosperity of himself and all his family. He has his private steam yacht and a great place on a lake near here, wherein is a private telegraph, so that he can wire all over the world from his own hall. Prince Arthur went to stay with him when he was out here in the late autumn and spring, and the Queen wired him every day while he was there. Early next morning S———,
Miss A———, I, and R——— were off by rail to a station ten or twelve miles up the river, where we waited till the Montreal market-boat came down and picked us up to shoot the rapids. We had a very pleasant run to Quebec, and the shooting the rapids is very interesting, but neither dangerous nor even exciting. The river widens out perhaps to two and a half miles in width, and for some mile or mile and a half breaks into these rapids, which boil and rush along at a great pace, and in quite a little boat would no doubt keep the steerer and oarsmen on the stretch. The approach to Montreal under the great Victoria Bridge, two miles long, is very noble. We got back to breakfast at ten, and afterwards went up the mountain at the back of the town, but the haze from the burning forest quite spoiled the view. The carriage is announced, so I must close.