Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men Part 1

Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men.

by Anna Brownell Jameson.

PREFACE.

n.o.body reads prefaces on a Railway journey. The leaves are turned over for something to arrest attention, or to dissipate weariness, or to "fleet the time," which even at railway speed moves slowly compared to the "march of ideas." It is, however, necessary to state in few words that these pages are a reprint of the most amusing and interesting chapters of the "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada,"--first published in 1838, in three octavo volumes, favourably received at the time and now out of print. The Auth.o.r.ess in the original preface to the work represents herself as "thrown into scenes and regions. .h.i.therto undescribed by any traveller (for the northern sh.o.r.es of Lake Huron are almost new ground), and into relations with the Indian tribes such as few European women of refined and civilised habits have ever risked, and none have recorded;" and the adventures and sketches of character and scenery among the Red-skins, still retain that freshness which belongs only to what is genuine. All that was of a merely transient or merely personal nature, or obsolete in politics or criticism, has been omitted.

The rest, the book must say for itself.

SKETCHES IN CANADA,

&c.

TORONTO IN 1837.

December 20.

Toronto--such is now the sonorous name of this our sublime capital--was, thirty years ago, a wilderness, the haunt of the bear and deer, with a little, ugly, inefficient fort, which, however, could not be more ugly or inefficient than the present one. Ten years ago Toronto was a village, with one brick house and four or five hundred inhabitants; five years ago it became a city, containing about five thousand inhabitants, and then bore the name of Little York: now it is Toronto, with an increasing trade, and a population of ten thousand people. So far I write as _per_ book.

What Toronto may be in summer, I cannot tell; they say it is a pretty place. At present its appearance to me, a stranger, is most strangely mean and melancholy. A little ill-built town, on low land, at the bottom of a frozen bay, with one very ugly church, without tower or steeple; some government offices, built of staring red brick, in the most tasteless, vulgar style imaginable; three feet of snow all around; and the grey, sullen, wintry lake, and the dark gloom of the pine forest bounding the prospect: such seems Toronto to me now. I did not expect much; but for this I was not prepared.

I know no better way of coming at the truth than by observing and recording faithfully the impressions made by objects and characters on my own mind--or, rather, the impress they _receive_ from my own mind--shadowed by the clouds which pa.s.s over its horizon, taking each tincture of its varying mood--until they emerge into light, to be corrected, or at least modified, by observation and comparison. Neither do I know any better way than this of conveying to the mind of another the truth, and nothing but the truth, if not the whole truth. So I shall write on.

There is much in first impressions, and as yet I have not recovered from the pain and annoyance of my outset here. My friends at New York expended much eloquence--eloquence wasted in vain!--in endeavouring to dissuade me from a winter journey to Canada. I listened, and was grateful for their solicitude, but must own I did not credit the picture they drew of the difficulties and _desagremens_ I was destined to meet by the way. I had chosen, they said, the very worst season for a journey through the state of New York; the usual facilities for travelling were now suspended; a few weeks sooner the rivers and ca.n.a.ls had been open; a few weeks later the roads, smoothed up with snow, had been in sleighing order;--now, the navigation was frozen, and the roads so broken up as to be nearly impa.s.sable. Then there was only a night boat on the Hudson, "to proceed," as the printed paper set forth, "to Albany, _or as far as the ice permitted_." All this, and more, were represented to me--and with so much apparent reason and real feeling, and in words and tones so difficult to resist! But though I could appreciate the kindness of those persuasive words, they brought no definite idea to my mind; I could form no notion of difficulties which by fair words, presence of mind, and money in my pocket, could not be obviated. I had travelled half over the continent of Europe, often alone, and had never yet been in circ.u.mstances where these availed not. In my ignorance I could conceive none; but, with the experience I have gained, I would not lightly counsel a similar journey to any one, certainly not to a woman.

As we ascended the Hudson in the night, I lost, of course, the view of that superb scenery which I was a.s.sured even winter could not divest of all its beauty--rather clothed it in a different kind of beauty. At the very first blush of morning I escaped from the heated cabin, crowded with listless women and clamorous children, and found my way to the deck. I was surprised by a spectacle as beautiful as it was new to me.

The Catskill mountains, which we had left behind us in the night, were still visible, but just melting from the view, robed in a misty purple light, while our magnificent steamer--the prow armed with a sharp iron sheath for the purpose--was _cras.h.i.+ng_ its way through solid ice four inches thick, which seemed to close behind us into an adhesive ma.s.s, so that the wake of the vessel was not distinguished a few yards from the stern: yet in the path thus opened, and only seemingly closed, followed at some little distance a beautiful schooner and two smaller steam-vessels. I walked up and down, from the prow to the stern, refreshed by the keen frosty air, and the excitement caused by various picturesque effects, on the ice-bound river and the frozen sh.o.r.es, till we reached Hudson. Beyond this town it was not safe for the boat to advance, and we were still thirty miles below Albany. After leaving Hudson (with the exception of the railroad between Albany and Utica), it was all heavy, weary work; the most painfully fatiguing journey I ever remember. Such were the roads, that we were once six hours going eleven miles. What was usually a day's journey from one town, or one good inn, to another, occupied sometimes a day and a night, or even two days.[1]

After six days and three nights of this travelling, unrelieved by companions.h.i.+p, or interest of any kind, I began to sink with fatigue.

The first thing that roused me was our arrival at the ferry of the Niagara river at Queenston, about seven miles below the Falls. It was a dark night, and while our little boat was tossed in the eddying waters and guided by a light to the opposite sh.o.r.e, we could distinctly hear the deep roar of the cataract, filling, and, as it seemed to me, shaking the atmosphere around us. That mighty cataract, the dream and vision of my childhood and youth, so near--yet unseen,--making itself thus heard and felt,--like Job's vision, consciously present, yet unrevealed and undiscerned! You may believe that I woke up very decidedly from my lethargy of weariness to listen to that mysterious voice, which made my blood pause and thrill. At Queenston we slept, and proceeded next morning to the town of Niagara on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Ontario. Now, as we had heard, the navigation on the lake had ceased, and we looked for nothing better than a further journey of one hundred miles round the head of the lake, and by the most execrable roads, instead of an easy pa.s.sage of thirty miles across from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. But Fortune, seized with one of those freaks which, when we met them in books, we p.r.o.nounce improbable and unnatural, (and she has played me many such, some good, some bad,) had ordered matters otherwise. A steam-vessel, making a last trip, had called accidentally at the port, and was just going off; the paddles were actually in motion as I and my baggage together were hurried--almost _flung_--on board. No sooner there, than I threw myself down in the cabin utterly overwhelmed with fatigue, and sank at once into a profound and dreamless sleep.

How long I slept I knew not: they roused me suddenly to tell me we were at Toronto, and, not very well able to stand, I hurried on deck. The wharf was utterly deserted, the arrival of the steam-boat being accidental and unexpected; and as I stepped out of the boat I sank ankle-deep into mud and ice. The day was intensely cold and damp; the sky lowered sulkily, laden with snow, which was just beginning to fall.

Half-blinded by the sleet driven into my face and the tears which filled my eyes, I walked about a mile through a quarter of the town mean in appearance, not thickly inhabited, and to me, as yet, an unknown wilderness; and through dreary, miry ways, never much thronged, and now, by reason of the impending snow-storm, nearly solitary. I heard no voices, no quick footsteps of men or children; I met no familiar face, no look of welcome!--Up to the present hour all objects wear one hue.

Land is not distinguishable from water. I see nothing but snow heaped up against my windows, not only without but within; I hear no sound but the tinkling of sleigh-bells and the occasional lowing of a poor half-starved cow, that, standing up to the knees in a snowdrift, presents herself at the door of a wretched little shanty opposite, and supplicates for her small modic.u.m of hay.

The choice of this site for the capital of the Upper Province was decided by the fine harbour, the only one between Burlington Bay and Cobourg, a distance of about a hundred and fifty miles. General Simcoe, the first governor after the division of the two provinces, and a man of great activity and energy of character, entertained the idea of founding a metropolis. At that time the head quarters of the government were at Niagara, then called Newark, on the opposite sh.o.r.e; but this was too near the frontiers to be a safe position. Nor is Toronto much safer: from its low situation, and the want of any commanding height in the neighbourhood, it is nearly defenceless. In case of a war with America, a few boats sent from the opposite coast of New York could easily lay the fort and town in ashes; and, in fact, during the last war, in 1813, such was the fate of both. But the same reasons which rendered the place indefensible to us, rendered it untenable for the enemy, and it was immediately evacuated. Another objection was, and _is_, the unhealthiness of its situation,--in a low swamp not yet wholly drained, and with large portions of uncleared land immediately round it: still the beauty and safety of the s.p.a.cious harbour, and its central position about half-way between Lake Huron and the frontier line of Lower Canada, have fixed its rank as capital of the province and the seat of the legislature.[2]

When the engineer, Bouchette, was sent by General Simcoe to survey the site (in 1793), it was a mere swamp, a tangled wilderness; the birch, the hemlock, and the tamarac-trees were growing down to the water's edge, and even into the lake. I have been told that Toronto, the Indian appellation of the whole district, signifies _trees growing out of water_. Colonel Bouchette says, that at this time the only vestige of humanity for a hundred miles on every side was one solitary wigwam on the sh.o.r.e, the dwelling of a few Missa.s.sagua Indians. Three years afterwards, when the Duc de Rochefoucauld was here, the infant metropolis consisted of a fort and twelve miserable log huts, the inhabitants of which, as the duke tells us, bore no good reputation. The town was, however, already marked out in streets running parallel with the sh.o.r.e of the bay for about two miles, and crossed by others at right angles. It is a pity that while they were about it they did not follow the example of the Americans in such cases, and make the princ.i.p.al streets of ample width; some hundred feet, or even furlongs, more or less, would have made little difference where the wild unowned forest extended, for all they knew, from the lake to the north pole,--_now_, it would not be so easy to amend the error. King Street, the princ.i.p.al street, looks narrow, and will look narrower when the houses are higher, better, and more regularly built. I perceive that in laying out the _fas.h.i.+onable_, or west-end of the city, they have avoided the same mistake. A wide s.p.a.ce between the building lots and Lake Ontario has been reserved very properly as a road or esplanade, but I doubt whether even this be wide enough. One of the most curious and inexplicable phenomena connected with these immense inland seas is the gradual rise of the waters; and even within these few years, as I am informed, great part of the high bank has been washed away, and a carriage-road at the foot of it along the sh.o.r.e has been wholly covered. If this process goes on, and at the same rate, there must be a solid embankment, or quay, raised as a barrier against the encroaching waters, or the esplanade itself will in time disappear.

January 14.

It should seem that this wintry season, which appears to me so dismal, is for the Canadians the season of festivity. Now is the time for visiting, for sleighing excursions, for all intercourse of business and friends.h.i.+p, for b.a.l.l.s in town, and dances in farm-houses, and courts.h.i.+ps and marriages, and prayer-meetings and a.s.signations of all sorts. In summer, the heat and the mosquitos render travelling disagreeable at best; in spring the roads are absolutely impa.s.sable; in autumn there is too much agricultural occupation: but in winter the forests are pervious; the roads present a smooth surface of dazzling snow; the settlers in the woods drive into the towns, supply themselves with stores and clothing, and fresh meat,--the latter a luxury which they can seldom obtain in the summer. I stood at my window to-day watching the sleighs as they glided past. They are of all shapes and sizes. A few of the carriage-sleighs are well appointed and handsome. The market-sleighs are often two or three boards nailed together in form of a wooden box upon runners; some straw and a buffalo skin or blanket serve for the seat; barrels of flour and baskets of eggs fill up the empty s.p.a.ce.

Others are like cars, and others, called _cutters_, are mounted on high runners, like sleigh phaetons; these are sported by the young men and officers of the garrison, and require no inconsiderable skill in driving: however, as I am a.s.sured, they are overturned in the snow not above once in a quarter of an hour, and no harm and much mirth ensues: but the wood sleighs are my delight; a large platform of boards is raised upon runners, with a few upright poles held together at top by a rope, the logs of oak, pine, and maple, are then heaped up to the height of six or seven feet. On the summit lie a couple of deer frozen stiff their huge antlers projecting in a most picturesque fas.h.i.+on, and on these, again, a man is seated with a blanket round him, his furred cap drawn down upon his ears, and his scarlet woollen comforter forming a fine bit of colour. He guides with a pole his two patient oxen, the clouds of vapour curling from their nostrils into the keen frosty air--the whole machine, in short, as wildly picturesque as the grape waggons in Italy, though to be sure, the a.s.sociations are somewhat different.

January 16.

This morning, before I was quite dressed, a singular visit was announced. I had expressed to my friend Mr. H * * * a wish to see some of the aborigines of the country: he had the kindness to remember my request; and Colonel Givins, the princ.i.p.al Indian agent, had accordingly brought some Indians to visit us.

The party consisted of three--a chief named the White Deer, and two of his friends. The chief wore a blanket coat and leggings, and a blanket hood with a peak, from which depended a long black eagle plume; stout mocazins (shoes of undressed deer-skin) completed his attire: he had about fifty strings of blue wampum round his neck. The other two were similarly dressed, with the exception of the wampum and the feathers.

Before I went down I had thrown a chain of wampum round my neck, which seemed to please them. Chairs being presented, they sat down at once (though, as Colonel Givins said, they would certainly have preferred the floor), and answered with a grave and quiet dignity the compliments and questions addressed to them. Their deportment was taciturn and self-possessed, and their countenances melancholy; that of the chief was by far the most intelligent. They informed me that they were Chippewas from the neighbourhood of Lake Huron, that the hunting season had been unsuccessful, that their tribe was suffering the extremity of hunger and cold, and that they had come to beg from their Great Father the Governor rations of food, and a supply of blankets for their women and children.

They had walked over the snow, in their snow-shoes, from the Lake, one hundred and eighty miles; and for the last forty-eight hours none of them had tasted food. A breakfast of cold meat, bread, and beer, was immediately ordered for them; and though they had certainly never beheld in their lives the arrangement of an European table, and were besides half famished, they sat down with unembarra.s.sed tranquillity, and helped themselves to what they wished with the utmost propriety--only, after one or two trials, using their own knives and fingers in preference to the table knife and fork. After they had eaten and drunk sufficiently, they were conducted to the government-house to receive from the governor presents of blankets, rifles, and provisions; and each, on parting, held out his hand to me, and the chief, with a grave earnestness, prayed for the blessing of the Great Spirit on me and my house. On the whole, the impression they left, though amusing and exciting from its mere novelty, was melancholy. The sort of desperate resignation in their swarthy countenances, their squalid, dingy habiliments, and their forlorn story, filled me with pity, and, I may add, disappointment; and all my previous impressions of the independent children of the forest are for the present disturbed.

These are the first specimens I have seen of that fated race, with which I hope to become better acquainted before I leave the country.

Notwithstanding all I have heard and read, I have yet but a vague idea of the Indian character; and the very different aspect under which it has been represented by various travellers as well as writers of fiction, adds to the difficulty of forming a correct estimate of the people, and more particularly of the true position of their women.

Colonel Givins, who has pa.s.sed thirty year of his life among the north west tribes, till he has become in habits and language almost identified with them, is hardly an impartial judge. He was their interpreter on this occasion; and he says that there is as much difference between the customs and language of different nations--the Chippewas and Mohawks, for instance--as there is between any two nations of Europe.

The cold is at this time so intense that the ink freezes while I write, and my fingers stiffen round the pen. A gla.s.s of water by the bed-side, within a few feet of the hearth (heaped with logs of oak and maple kept burning all night long), is a solid ma.s.s of ice in the morning. G.o.d help the poor emigrants who are yet unprepared against the rigour of the season!--yet this is nothing to the climate of the Lower Province, where, as we hear, the thermometer has been thirty degrees below zero.

I lose all heart to write home, or to register a reflection or a feeling--thought stagnates in my head as the ink in my pen--and this will never do!--I _must_ arouse myself to occupation; and if I cannot find it without, I must create it from within. There are yet four months of winter and leisure to be disposed of. How?--I know not; but they _must_ be employed, not wholly lost.

[Footnote 1: Through all these districts there are now railroads, and every facility for comfortable travelling.]

[Footnote 2: Now removed to Kingston, though some of the courts of law still remain at Toronto.]

WINTER EXCURSION TO NIAGARA.

January 23.

At half-past eight my escort was at the door in a very pretty commodious sleigh, in form like a barouche with the head up. I was absolutely buried in furs; a blanket netted for me by the kindest hands, of the finest lamb's wool, rich in colour, and as light and elastic as it was deliciously warm, was folded round my limbs; buffalo and bear skins were heaped over all, and every breath of the external air excluded by every possible device. Mr. C. drove his own grey horses; and thus fortified and accoutred, off we flew, literally "urged by storms along the slippery way," for the weather was terrific.

I think that but for this journey I never could have imagined the sublime desolation of a northern winter; and it has impressed me strongly. In the first place, the whole atmosphere appeared as if converted into snow, which fell in thick, tiny, starry flakes, till the buffalo robes and furs about us appeared like swansdown, and the harness on the horses of the same delicate material. The whole earth was a white waste. The road, on which the sleigh-track was only just perceptible, ran for miles in a straight line; on each side rose the dark, melancholy pine-forest, slumbering drearily in the hazy air. Between us and the edge of the forest were frequent s.p.a.ces of cleared or half-cleared land, spotted over with the black charred stumps and blasted trunks of once magnificent trees, projecting from the snow-drift. These, which are perpetually recurring objects in a Canadian landscape, have a most melancholy appearance. Sometimes wide openings occurred to the left, bringing us in sight of Lake Ontario, and even in some places down upon the edge of it: in this part of the lake the enormous body of the water and its incessant movement prevents it from freezing, and the dark waves rolled in, heavily plunging on the icy sh.o.r.e with a sullen booming sound. A few roods from the land, the cold grey waters, and the cold, grey, snow-enc.u.mbered atmosphere, were mingled with each other, and each seemed either. The only living thing I saw in a s.p.a.ce of about twenty miles was a magnificent bald-headed eagle, which, after sailing a few turns in advance of us, alighted on the topmost bough of a blasted pine, and slowly folding his great wide wings, looked down upon us as we glided beneath him.

The first village we pa.s.sed through was Springfield, on the river Credit, a river of some importance in summer, but now converted into ice, heaped up with snow, and undistinguishable. Twenty miles further, we stopped at Oakville to refresh ourselves and the horses.

Oakville stands close upon the lake, at the mouth of a little river called Sixteen-mile Creek; it owes its existence to a gentleman of the name of Chisholm, and, from its situation and other local circ.u.mstances, bids fair to become a place of importance. In the summer it is a frequented harbour, and carries on a considerable trade in _lumber_, for so they characteristically call timber in this country. From its dock-yards I am told that a fine steam-boat and a dozen schooners have been already launched.

In summer, the country round is rich and beautiful, with a number of farms all in a high state of cultivation; but Canada in winter and in summer must be like two different regions. At present the mouth of the creek is frozen up; all trade, all s.h.i.+p-building suspended. Oakville presents the appearance of a straggling hamlet, containing a few frame and log-houses; one brick-house (the grocery store, or general shop, which in a new Canadian village is always the best house in the place), a little Methodist church, painted green and white, but as yet no resident preacher; and an inn dignified by the name of the "Oakville House Hotel." Where there is a store, a tavern, and a church, habitations soon rise around them. Oakville contains at present more than three hundred inhabitants, who are now subscribing among themselves for a schoolmaster and a resident clergyman.

I stood conversing in the porch, and looking about me, till I found it necessary to seek shelter in the house, before my nose was absolutely taken off by the ice-blast. The little parlour was solitary, and heated like an oven. Against the wall were stuck a few vile prints, taken out of old American magazines; there was the d.u.c.h.ess de Berri in her wedding-dress, and, as a pendant, the Modes de Paris--"Robe de tulle garnie de fleurs--coiffure nouvelle, inventee par Mons. Plaisir." The incongruity was but too laughable! I looked round for some amus.e.m.e.nt or occupation, and at last spied a book open, and turned down upon its face. I pounced upon it as a prize; and what do you think it was?

"Devinez, madame! je vous le donne en trois, je vous le donne en quatre!" it was--Don Juan! And so, while looking from the window on a scene which realised all you can imagine of the desolation of savage life, mixed up with just so much of the common-place vulgarity of civilised life as sufficed to spoil it, I amused myself reading of the Lady Adeline Amundeville and her precious coterie, and there anent.

Society is smoothed to that excess, That manners hardly differ more than dress.

Our ridicules are kept in the background, Ridiculous enough, but also dull; Professions, too, are no more to be found Professional, and there is nought to cull Of Folly's fruit; for tho' your fools abound, They're barren, and not worth the pains to pull.

Society is now one polished horde, Form'd of two mighty tribes--the _bores_ and _bored_.