Peter the Whaler

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Chapter Eleven.

We were kindly welcomed and cared for on board the Mary, though we subjected her passengers and crew to much inconvenience, and to no little risk of starving, should her voyage be prolonged.

There were ladies who attended with gentle care to the women and children, and aided also in nursing the men. Many of the passengers and crew gave up their berths to the sick; but the greater number of our people were compelled to remain on deck, sheltered, however, by every means the kindness of our hosts could devise. There was one fair, blue-eyed girl—can I ever forget her? What a pure, light-hearted young creature she was! I felt at once that I could place the same confidence in her that I could in my own sisters, and that she was a being superior both to me and to any of those by whom I had been lately surrounded. Her name was Mary Dean. She was the daughter of the master of the Mary, and the ship was named after her. Mr Bell told the master of my behaviour, which he was pleased to praise, and of my refusing to quit the ship till he did; and Mary heard the tale. The mate also told him that I was the son of a gentleman, and how I had been treated by Captain Swales.

Captain Dean was a very different character to Captain Swales, with whose conduct he was so thoroughly disgusted, that he refused to hold any further communication with him than business actually required. I had held out till I was in safety, and a severe attack of illness then came on. Captain Dean had me removed to a berth in his own cabin, and Mary became my nurse. Where there is sickness and misery, there will the ministering hand of gentle woman be found. Mary Dean watched over me as the ship which bore us steered her course for the mouth of the Saint Lawrence. To her gentle care, under Providence, I owed my life. Several of the emigrants died after they came on board the Mary, and such would probably have been my fate under less watchful treatment.

I was in a low fever and unconscious. How long I remained so, I scarcely know. I awoke one afternoon, and found Mary Dean sitting by my side working with her needle. I fancied that I was dead, and that she was an angel watching over me. Although I discovered that the first part of the notion was a hallucination, I was every day more convinced of the truth of the second. When I got rather better, she used to read to me interesting and instructive works; and every morning she read some portion of the Bible, and explained it to me in a manner which made me comprehend it better than I had ever done before.

Ten days thus passed rapidly away before I was able to go on deck. Captain Dean was very kind to me, and often came and spoke to me, and gave me much useful instruction in seamanship, and also in navigation. I then thought Mary Dean very beautiful, and I now know that she was so. She was a child, it must be remembered, or little more than one; but though very small, she was very graceful. She was beautifully fair, with blue, truthful eyes, in which it was impossible guile could ever find a dwelling-place. I have no doubt that my readers will picture her to themselves as she sat in the cabin with a book on her lap, gravely conning its contents, or skipped along the deck, a being of light and life, the fair spirit of the summer sea. Such was Mary Dean as I first saw her. Every one loved her. Her father’s heart was wrapped up in her. His crew would, to a man, have died rather than that harm should have happened to her. On sailed the ship. There was much sickness, for all hands were put on the smallest allowance of water and provisions it was possible to subsist on; and we, unfortunately, fell in with no other ship able to furnish us with a supply.

At length the welcome sound was heard of “Land ahead!” It was Cape Breton, at the entrance of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Rounding the cape, we stood towards the mouth of the river Saint Lawrence, that vast stream, fed by those inland seas the lakes of Upper Canada, and innumerable rivers and streams. On the north side of the gulf is the large island of Newfoundland, celebrated for its cod fisheries. A glance at the map will show our course far better than any description of mine. I could scarcely believe that we were actually in the river when we had already proceeded a hundred miles up it, so distant were the opposite shores, and, till told of it, I fancied that we were still in the open sea. I was much struck with the grand spectacle which Quebec and its environs presented, as, the ship emerging from the narrow channel of the river formed by the island of Orleans, the city first met my view. It is at this point that the Saint Lawrence, taking a sudden turn, expands, so as to assume the appearance of a broad lake.

The sun had just risen, and all nature looked fresh and green, rejoicing in the genial warmth of a Canadian spring. On the left was the town, the bright tin steeples and housetops of which, crowning the summit of Cape Diamond, glittered in the rays of the glorious luminary. Ships of all rigs and sizes lay close under the cliffs, and from their diminutive appearance I calculated the great height of the promontory. About eight miles off, on the right, I could see the falls of Montmorency, descending in a sheet of milk-white foam over a lofty precipitous bank into the stream, which, winding through a plain interspersed with villages and studded with vegetation, finds its way into the Saint Lawrence. Quebec is divided into two distinct parts.

The lower town, occupies a narrow strip of land between the precipitous heights of Cape Diamond and the river. It is connected with the upper town by means of a steep street, built in a ravine, which is commanded by the guns of a strongly fortified gateway.

The lower town is principally inhabited by merchants; and so much straitened are they for room, that many of their houses are built upon wharfs, and other artificial ground. The streets of Quebec are very narrow, and there is a general appearance of antiquity, not often to be met with in an American town. The suburbs are situated on the shores of the Saint Charles, without the fortifications. But I afterwards found that the most magnificent prospect was from the summit of the Citadel on Cape Diamond, whence one may look over the celebrated Plains of Abraham, on which the gallant Wolfe gained the victory which gave Canada to England, and where, fighting nobly, he fell in the hour of triumph. But my object is rather to describe a few of the events of my early days than the scenes I visited. It was a happy moment when we at length dropped our anchor, and water was brought off to quench the thirst from which all had more or less suffered. As soon as the necessary forms were gone through, the emigrants went on shore, and, with few exceptions, I saw them no more.