Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men Part 15

Thence I went to the Methodist chapel, where I found a small congregation of the lower cla.s.ses. A very ill-looking man, in comparison to whom Liston's Mawworm were no caricature, was holding forth in a most whining and lugubrious tone; the poor people around joined in sobs and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, which soon became howling, raving, and crying. In the midst of this woful a.s.sembly I observed a little boy who was grinning furtively, kicking his heels, and sliding bits of apple from his pocket into his mouth. Not being able to endure this with proper seriousness, I left the place.

I then went into the Baptist church, on the opposite side of the road.

It is one of the largest in the town, plain in appearance, but the interior handsome, and in good taste. The congregation was not crowded, but composed of most respectable, serious, well-dressed people. As I entered, the preacher was holding forth on the unpardonable sin, very incoherently and unintelligibly, but, on closing his sermon, he commenced a prayer; and I have seldom listened to one more eloquently fervent. Both the sermon and prayer were extemporaneous. He prayed for all people, nations, orders and conditions of men throughout the world, including the king of Great Britain: but the prayer for the president of the United States seemed to me a little original, and admirably calculated to suit the two parties who are at present divided on the merits of that gentleman. The suppliant besought the Almighty, that "if Mr. Van Buren were a good man, he might be made better; and if a bad man, he might be speedily regenerated."

I was still in time for the Episcopal church, a very s.p.a.cious and handsome building, though "somewhat Gothic." On entering, I perceived at one glance that the Episcopal church is here, as at New York, the _fas.h.i.+onable_ church of the place. It was crowded in every part: the women well dressed--but, as at New York, too much dressed, too fine for good taste and real fas.h.i.+on. I was handed immediately to the "strangers'

pew," a book put into my hand, and it was whispered to me that the bishop would preach. Our English idea of the exterior of a bishop is an old gentleman in a wig and lawn sleeves, both equally _de rigueur_; I was therefore childishly surprised to find in the Bishop of Michigan a young man of very elegant appearance, wearing his own fine hair, and in a plain black silk gown. The sermon was on the well-worn subject of charity as it consists in _giving_--the least and lowest it may be of all the branches of charity, though indeed that depends on what we give, and how we give it. We may give our heart, our soul, our time, our health, our life, as well as our money; and the greatest of these, as well as the least, is still but charity. At home I have often thought that when people gave money they gave counters; here, when people give money they are really charitable--they give a portion of their time and their existence, both of which are devoted to money-making.

On closing his sermon, which was short and unexceptionable, the bishop leaned forward over the pulpit, and commenced an extemporaneous address to his congregation. I have often had occasion in the United States to admire the ready, graceful fluency of their extemporaneous speakers and preachers, and I have never heard anything more eloquent and more elegant than this address; it was in perfect good taste, besides being very much to the purpose. He spoke in behalf of the domestic missions of his diocese. I understood that the missions. .h.i.therto supported in the back settlements are, in consequence of the extreme pressure of the times, likely to be withdrawn, and the new, thinly-peopled districts thus left without any ministry whatever. He called on the people to give their aid towards sustaining these domestic missionaries, at least for a time, and said, among other things, that if each individual of the Episcopal church in the United States subscribed one cent. per week for a year, it would amount to more than 300,000 dollars. This address was responded to by a subscription on the spot of above 400 dollars--a large sum for a small town, suffering, like all other places, from the present commercial difficulties.

LEAVE DETROIT.

July 18.

This evening the Thomas Jefferson arrived in the river from Buffalo, and starts early to-morrow morning for Chicago. I hastened to secure a pa.s.sage as far as the island of Mackinaw: when once there, I must trust to Providence for some opportunity of going up Lake Huron to the Sault Ste. Marie to visits my friends the MacMurrays; or down the lake to the Great Manitoolin Island, where the annual distribution of presents to the Indians is to take place under the auspices of the governor. If both these plans--wild plans they are, I am told--should fail, I have only to retrace my way and come down the lake, as I went up, in a steamer; but this were horridly tedious and prosaic, and I _hope_ better things. So _evviva la speranza!_ and Westward Ho!

On board the Jefferson, River St. Clair, July 19.

This morning I came down early to the steam-boat, attended by a _cortege_ of amiable people, who had heard of my sojourn at Detroit too late to be of any solace or service to me, but had seized this last and only opportunity of showing politeness and good-will. The sister of the governor, two other ladies, and a gentleman, came on board with me at that early hour, and remained on deck till the paddles were in motion.

The talk was so pleasant, I could not but regret that I had not seen some of these kind people earlier, or might hope to see more of them; but it was too late. Time and steam wait neither for man nor woman: all expressions of hope and regret on both sides were cut short by the parting signal, which the great bell swung out from on high; all compliments and questions "fumbled up into a loose adieu;" and these new friendly faces--seen but for a moment, then to be lost, yet not quite forgotten--were soon left far behind.

The morning was most lovely and auspicious; blazing hot though, and scarce a breath of air; and the magnificent machine, admirably appointed in all respects, gaily painted and gilt, with flags waving, glided over the dazzling waters with an easy, stately motion.

I had suffered so much at Detroit, that as it disappeared and melted away in the bright southern haze like a vision, I turned from it with a sense of relief, put the past out of my mind, and resigned myself to the present--like a wise woman--or wiser child.

The captain told me that last season he had never gone up the lakes with less than four or five hundred pa.s.sengers. This year, fortunately for my individual comfort, the case is greatly altered: we have not more than one hundred and eighty pa.s.sengers, consequently an abundance of accommodation, and air, and s.p.a.ce--inestimable blessings in this sultry weather, and in the enjoyment of which I did not sympathise in the lamentations of the good-natured captain as much as I ought to have done.

Pa.s.s SNAKE ISLAND.

We pa.s.sed a large and beautifully green island, formerly called Snake Island, from the immense number of rattlesnakes which infested it. These were destroyed by turning large herds of swine upon it, and it is now, in compliment to its last conquerors and possessors, the swinish mult.i.tude, called Hog Island. This was the scene of some most horrid Indian atrocities during the Pontiac war. A large party of British prisoners, surprised while they were coming up to relieve Detroit, were brought over here, and, almost within sight of their friends in the fort, put to death with all the unutterable accompaniments of savage ferocity.

I have been told that since this war the custom of torturing persons to death has fallen gradually into disuse among the Indian tribes of these regions, and even along the whole frontier of the States an instance has not been known within these forty years.

ASCEND THE ST. CLAIR.

Leaving the channel of the river and the cl.u.s.ter of islands at its entrance, we stretched northward across Lake St. Clair. This beautiful lake, though three times the size of the Lake of Geneva, is a mere pond compared with the enormous seas in its neighbourhood. About one o'clock we entered the river St. Clair, (which, like the Detroit, is rather a strait or channel than a river,) forming the communication between Lake St. Clair and Lake Huron. Ascending this beautiful river, we had, on the right, part of the western district of Upper Canada, and on the left the Michigan territory. The sh.o.r.es on either side, though low and bounded always by the line of forest, were broken into bays and little promontories, or diversified by islands, richly wooded, and of every variety of form. The bateaux of the Canadians, or the canoes of the Indians, were perpetually seen gliding among these winding channels, or shooting across the river from side to side, as if playing at hide-and-seek among the leafy recesses. Now and then a beautiful schooner, with white sails, relieved against the green ma.s.ses of foliage, pa.s.sed us, gracefully curtseying and sidling along. Innumerable flocks of wild fowl were disporting among the reedy islets, and here and there the great black loon was seen diving and dipping, or skimming over the waters. As usual, the British coast is here the most beautiful and fertile, and the American coast the best settled and cleared. Along the former I see a few isolated log-shanties, and groups of Indian lodges; along the latter, several extensive clearings, and some hamlets and rising villages. The facility afforded by the American steam-boats for the transport of goods and sale of produce, &c., is one reason of this.

There is a boat, for instance, which leaves Detroit every morning for Fort Gratiot, stopping at the intermediate "landings." We are now moored at a place called "Palmer's Landing," for the purpose of taking in wood for the Lake voyage. This process has already occupied two hours, and is to detain us two more, though there are fourteen men employed in flinging logs into the wood-hold. Meantime I have been sketching and lounging about the little hamlet, where there is a good grocery-store, a sawing-mill worked by steam, and about twenty houses.

I was amused at Detroit to find the phraseology of the people imbued with metaphors taken from the most familiar mode of locomotion. "Will you take in wood?" signifies, will you take refreshment? "Is your steam up?" means, are you ready? The common phrase, "go ahead," has I suppose, the same derivation. A witty friend of mine once wrote to me not to be lightly alarmed at the political and social ferments in America, nor mistake the _whizzing of the safety-valves for the bursting of the boilers_!

MY FELLOW Pa.s.sENGERS.

But all this time I have not yet introduced you to my companions on board; and one of these great American steamers is really a little world, a little social system in itself, where a near observer of faces and manners may find endless subjects of observation, amus.e.m.e.nt, and interest. At the other end of the vessel we have about one hundred emigrants on their way to the Illinois and the settlements to the west of Lake Michigan. Among them I find a large party of Germans and Norwegians, with their wives and families, a very respectable, orderly community, consisting of some farmers and some artisans, having with them a large quant.i.ty of stock and utensils--just the sort of people best calculated to improve and enrich their adopted country, wherever that may be. Then we have twenty or thirty poor ragged Irish emigrants, with good-natured faces, and strong arms and willing hearts. Men are smoking, women nursing, was.h.i.+ng, sewing; children squalling and rolling about.

The ladies' saloon and upper deck exhibit a very different scene; there are about twenty ladies and children in the cabin and state-rooms, which are beautifully furnished and carpeted with draperies of blue silk, &c.

On the upper deck, shaded by an awning, we have sofas, rocking-chairs, and people lounging up and down; some reading, some chattering, some sleeping: there are missionaries and missionaries' wives, and officers on their way to the garrisons on the Indian frontier; and settlers, and traders, and some few nondescripts--like myself.

THE BISHOP OF MICHIGAN.

Also among the pa.s.sengers I find the Bishop of Michigan. The governor's sister, Miss Mason, introduced us at starting, and bespoke his good offices for me. His conversation has been a great resource and interest for me during the long day. He is still a young man, who began life as a lawyer, and afterwards from a real vocation adopted his present profession: his talents and popularity have placed him in the rank he now holds. He is on his way to visit the missions and churches in the back settlements, and at Green Bay. His diocese, he tells me, extends about eight hundred miles in length and four hundred in breadth. And then if you think of the scattered population, the _sort_ of population, the immensity of this spiritual charge, and the amount of labour and responsibility it necessarily brings with it, are enough to astound one.

The amount of power is great in proportion; and the extensive moral influence exercised by such a man as this Bishop of Michigan struck me very much. In conversing with him and the missionaries on the spiritual and moral condition of his diocese, and these newly settled regions in general, I learned many things which interested me; and there was one thing discussed which especially surprised me. It was said that two thirds of the misery which came under the immediate notice of a popular clergyman, and to which he was called to minister, arose from the infelicity of the conjugal relations; there was no question here of open immorality and discord, but simply of infelicity and unfitness. The same thing has been brought before me in every country, every society in which I have been a sojourner and an observer; but I did not look to find it so broadly placed before me here in America, where the state of morals, as regards the two s.e.xes, is comparatively pure; where the marriages are early, where conditions are equal, where the means of subsistence are abundant, where the women are much petted and considered by the men--too much so.

For a result then so universal, there must be a cause or causes as universal, not depending on any particular customs, manners, or religion, or political inst.i.tutions. And what are these causes? I cannot understand why an evil everywhere acknowledged and felt is not remedied somewhere, or discussed by some one, with a view to a remedy;--but no, it is like putting one's hand into the fire, only to touch upon it; it is the universal bruise, the putrefying sore, on which you must not lay a finger, or your patient (that is, society) cries out and resists, and, like a sick baby, scratches and kicks its physician.

Strange, and pa.s.sing strange, that the relation between the two s.e.xes, the pa.s.sion of love in short, should not be taken into deeper consideration by our teachers and our legislators. People educate and legislate as if there was no such thing in the world; but ask the priest, ask the physician--let _them_ reveal the amount of moral and physical results from this one cause. Must love be always discussed in blank verse, as if it were a thing to be played in tragedies or sung in songs--a subject for pretty poems and wicked novels, and had nothing to do with the prosaic current of our every-day existence, our moral welfare and eternal salvation? Must love be ever treated with profaneness, as a mere illusion? or with coa.r.s.eness, as a mere impulse?

or with fear, as a mere disease? or with shame, as a mere weakness? or with levity, as a mere accident? Whereas, it is a great mystery and a great necessity, lying at the foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness; mysterious, universal, inevitable as death. Why then should love be treated less seriously than death? It is as serious a thing. Love and Death, the alpha and omega of human life, the author and finisher of existence, the two points on which G.o.d's universe turns; which He, our Father and Creator, has placed beyond our arbitration--beyond the reach of that election and free will which He has left us in all other things!

LOVE AND DEATH.

Death must come, and love must come; but the state in which they find us?--whether blinded, astonished, and frightened, and ignorant, or, like reasonable creatures, guarded, prepared, and fit to manage our own feelings?--_this_, I suppose, depends on ourselves; and for want of such self-management and self-knowledge, look at the evils that ensue!--hasty, improvident, unsuitable marriages; repining, diseased, or vicious celibacy; irretrievable infamy; cureless insanity:--the death that comes early, and the love that comes late, reversing the primal laws of our nature.

It is of little consequence how unequal the conventional difference of rank, as in Germany--how equal the condition, station, and means, as in America,--if there be inequality between the s.e.xes; and if the sentiment which attracts and unites them to each other, and the contracts and relations springing out of this sentiment, be not equally well understood by both, equally sacred with both, equally binding on both.

MISS SEDGWICK.--MRS. LEE.--MR. HENRY.

At Detroit I had purchased Miss Sedgwick's tale of "The Rich Poor Man and the Poor Rich Man," and this sent away two hours delightfully, as we were gliding over the expanse of Lake St. Clair. Those who glanced on my book while I was reading always smiled--a significant sympathising smile, very expressive of that unenvious, affectionate homage and admiration which this genuine American writer inspires among her countrymen. I do not think I ever mentioned her name to any of them, that the countenance did not light up with pleasure and gratified pride.

I have also a sensible little book, called "Three Experiments in Living," written by Mrs. Lee, of Boston: it must be popular, and _true_ to life and nature, for the edition I bought is the tenth. I have also another book to which I must introduce you more particularly--"The Travels and Adventures of Alexander Henry." Did you ever hear of such a man? No. Listen then, and perpend.

This Mr. Henry was a fur-trader who journeyed over these lake regions about seventy years ago, and is quoted as first-rate authority in more recent books of travels. His book, which was lent to me at Toronto, struck me so much as to have had some influence in directing the course of my present tour. Plain, unaffected, telling what he has to tell in few and simple words, and without comment--the internal evidence of truth--the natural sensibility and power of fancy, betrayed rather than displayed--render not only the narrative, but the man himself, his personal character, unspeakably interesting. Wild as are the tales of his hairbreadth escapes, I never heard the slightest impeachment of his veracity. He was living at Montreal so late as 1810 or 1811, when a friend of mine saw him, and described him to me as a very old man past eighty, with white hair, and still hale-looking and cheerful, so that his hard and adventurous life, and the horrors he had witnessed and suffered, had in no respect impaired his spirits or his const.i.tution.

His book has been long out of print. I had the greatest difficulty in procuring the loan of a copy, after sending to Montreal, Quebec, and New York, in vain. Mr. Henry is to be my travelling companion. I do not know how he might have figured as a squire of dames when living, but I a.s.sure you that being dead he makes a very respectable hero of epic or romance.

He is the Ulysses of these parts; and to cruise among the sh.o.r.es, rocks, and islands of Lake Huron without Henry's travels, were like coasting Calabria and Sicily without the Odyssey in your head or hand,--only here you have the island of Mackinaw instead of the island of Circe; the land of the Ottawas instead of the sh.o.r.es of the Lotophagi; cannibal Chippewas, instead of man-eating Laestrigons. Pontiac figures as Polypheme; and Wa,wa,tam plays the part of good king Alcinous. I can find no type for the women, as Henry does not tell us his adventures among the squaws; but no doubt he might have found both Calypsos and Nausicaas, and even a Penelope, among them.

July 20.

Before I went down to my rest yesterday evening, I beheld a strange and beautiful scene. The night was coming on; the moon had risen round and full, like an enormous globe of fire; we were still in the channel of the river, when, to the right, I saw a crowd of Indians on a projecting point of land. They were encamping for the night, some hauling up their canoes, some building up their wigwams: there were numerous fires blazing amid the thick foliage, and the dusky figures of the Indians were seen glancing to and fro; and I heard loud laughs and shouts as our huge steamer swept past them. In another moment we turned a point, and all was dark: the whole had vanished like a scene in a melodrama. I rubbed my eyes, and began to think I was already dreaming.

At the entrance of the river St. Clair, the Americans have a fort and garrison (Fort Gratiot), and a lighthouse, which we pa.s.sed in the night.

On the opposite side we have no station; so that, in case of any misunderstanding between the two nations, it would be in the power of the Americans to shut the entrance of Lake Huron upon us.

LAKE HURON.

At seven this morning, when I went on deck, we had advanced about one hundred miles into Lake Huron. We were coasting along the south sh.o.r.e, about four miles from the land, while, on the other side, we had about two hundred miles of open _sea_, and the same expanse before us. Soon after, we had to pa.s.s the entrance of Sagginaw Bay. Here we lost sight of land for the first time. Sagginaw Bay, I should suppose, is as large as the Gulf of Genoa; it runs seventy or eighty miles up into the land, and is as famous for storms as the Bay of Biscay. Here, if there be a capful of wind, or a cupful of sea, one is sure to have the benefit of it; for even in the finest weather there is a considerable swell. We were about three hours crossing from the Pointe Aux Barques to Cape Thunder; and during this time a number of my companions were put _hors de combat_.

All this part of Michigan is unsettled, and is said to be sandy and barren. Along the whole horizon was nothing visible but the dark omnipresent pine-forest. The Sagginaw Indians, whose hunting-grounds extend along the sh.o.r.e, are, I believe, a tribe of Ottawas. I should add, that the Americans have built a lighthouse on a little island near Thunder Bay. A situation more terrific in its solitude you cannot imagine than that of the keeper of this lonely tower, among rocks, tempests, and savages. All their provisions come from a distance of at least one hundred miles, and a long course of stormy weather, which sometimes occurs, would place them in danger of starvation.