Chapter III: Part 3

The other day, while walking near a piece of water, I was startled by a very loud deep croak, as like the croak of an ordinary frog, as the bellow of a bull is like the bleat of a calf; and looking round, perceived one of those enormous bull-frogs of the country seated with great dignity on the end of a plank, and staring at me. The monster was at least a foot in length, with a pair of eyes like spectacles; on shaking my parasol at him, he plunged to the bottom in a moment. They are quite harmless, I believe, though slander accuses them of attacking the young ducks and chickens.

There is considerable beauty around me--not that I am going to give you descriptions of scenery, which are always, however eloquent, in some respect failures. Words can no more give you a definite idea of the combination of forms and colours in scenery, than so many musical notes: music were, indeed, the better vehicle of the two. Felix Mendelssohn, when a child, used to say, "I cannot tell you how such or such a thing was--I cannot speak it--I will play it to you!"--and run to his piano: sound was then to him a more perfect vehicle than words;--so, if I were a musician, I would _play_ you Lake Ontario, rather than describe it. Ontario means _the beautiful_, and the word is worthy of its signification, and the lake is worthy of its beautiful name; yet I can hardly tell you in what this fascination consists: there is no scenery around it, no high lands, no bold shores, no picture to be taken in at once by the eye; the swamp and the forest enclose it, and it is so wide and so vast that it presents all the monotony without the majesty of the ocean. Yet, like that great ocean, when I lived beside it, the expanse of this lake has become to me like the face of a friend. I have all its various _expressions_ by heart. I go down upon the green bank, or along the King's Pier, which projects about two hundred yards into the bay. I sit there with my book, reading sometimes, but oftener watching untired the changeful colours as they flit over the bosom of the lake. Sometimes a thunder-squall from the west sends the little sloops and schooners sweeping and scudding into the harbour for shelter. Sometimes the sunset converts its surface into a sea of molten gold, and sometimes the young moon walks trembling in a path of silver; sometimes a purple haze floats over its bosom like a veil; sometimes the wind blows strong, and the wild turbid waves come rolling in like breakers, flinging themselves over the pier in wrath and foam, or dancing like spirits in their glee. Nor is the land without some charm. About four miles from Toronto the river Humber comes down between high wood-covered banks, and rushes into the lake: a more charming situation for villas and garden-houses could hardly be desired than the vicinity of this beautiful little river, and such no doubt we shall see in time.

The opposite shore of the bay of Toronto is formed by a long sand-bank, called "the Island," though, in fact, no island, but a very narrow promontory, about three miles in length, and forming a rampart against the main waters of the lake. At the extremity is a light-house, and a few stunted trees and underwood. This marsh, intersected by islets and covered with reeds, is the haunt of thousands of wild-fowl, and of the terrapin, or small turtle of the lake; and as evening comes on, we see long rows of red lights from the fishing-boats gleaming along the surface of the water, for thus they spear the lake salmon, the bass, and the pickereen.

The only road on which it is possible to take a drive with comfort is Yonge Street, which is macadamised for the first twelve miles. This road leads from Toronto northwards to Lake Simcoe, through a well-settled and fertile country. There are some commodious, and even elegant houses in this neighbourhood. Dundas Street, leading west to the London district and Lake Huron, is a very rough road for a carriage, but a most delightful ride. On this side of Toronto you are immediately in the pine forest, which extends with little interruption (except a new settlement rising here and there) for about fifty miles to Hamilton, which is the next important town. The wooded shores of the lake are very beautiful, and abounding in game. In short, a reasonable person might make himself very happy here, if it were not for some few things, among which, those Egyptian plagues, the flies and frogs in summer, and the relentless iron winter, are not the most intolerable; add, perhaps, the prevalence of sickness at certain seasons. At present many families are flying off to Niagara, for two or three days together, for change of air; and I am meditating a flight myself, of such serious extent, that some of my friends here laugh outright; others look kindly alarmed, and others civilly incredulous. Bad roads, bad inns--or rather _no_ roads, no inns;--wild Indians, and white men more savage far than they;--dangers and difficulties of every kind are threatened and prognosticated, enough to make one's hair stand on end. To undertake such a journey _alone_ is rash perhaps--yet alone it must be achieved, I find, or not at all; I shall have neither companion nor man-servant, nor _femme de chambre_, nor even a "little foot-page" to give notice of my fate, should I be swamped in a bog, or eaten up by a bear, or scalped, or disposed of in some strange way; but shall I leave this fine country without seeing anything of its great characteristic features?--and, above all, of its aboriginal inhabitants? The French have a proverb which does honour to their gallantry, and to which, from experience, I am inclined to give full credence--"_Ce que femme veut, Dieu veut_." We shall see.

* * * * *

MADAME DE MAINTENON.

How admirable what Sir James Mackintosh says of Madame de Maintenon!--that "she was as virtuous as the fear of hell and the fear of shame could make her." The same might be said of the virtue of many women I know, and of these, I believe, that more are virtuous from the fear of shame than the fear of hell.--Shame is the woman's hell.

Who that has lived in the world, in society, and looked on both with observing eye, but has often been astonished at the fearlessness of women, and the cowardice of men, with regard to public opinion? The reverse would seem to be the natural, the necessary result of the existing order of things, but it is not always so. Exceptions occur so often, and so immediately within my own province of observation, that they have made me reflect a good deal. Perhaps this seeming discrepancy might be thus explained.

Women are brought up in the fear of opinion, but, from their ignorance of the world, they are in fact ignorant of that which they fear. They fear opinion as a child fears a spectre, as something shadowy and horrible, not defined or palpable. It is a fear based on habit, on feeling, not on principle or reason. When their passions are strongly excited, or when reason becomes matured, this exaggerated fear vanishes, and the probability is, that they are immediately thrown into the opposite extreme of incredulity, defiance, and rashness: but a man, even while courage is preached to him, learns from habitual intercourse with the world the immense, the terrible power of opinion. It wraps him round like despotism; it is a reality to him; to a woman a shadow, and if she can overcome the fear in her own person, all is overcome. A man fears opinion for himself, his wife, his daughter; and if the fear of opinion be brought into conflict with primary sentiments and principles, it is ten to one but the habit of fear prevails, and opinion triumphs over reason and feeling too.

* * * * *

MRS. MACMURRAY.

June 13.

In these latter days I have lived in friendly communion with so many excellent people, that my departure from Toronto was not what I anticipated--an escape on one side, or a riddance on the other. My projected tour to the west has excited not only some interest, but much kind solicitude; and aid and counsel have been tendered with a feeling which touched me deeply.

The first bell of the steam-boat had not yet rung, when one of my friends came running up to tell me that the missionary from the Sault-Saint-Marie, and his Indian wife, had arrived at Toronto, and were then at the inn, and that there was just time to introduce me to them. No sooner thought than done: in another moment we were in the hotel, and I was introduced to Mrs. MacMurray, otherwise O-ge-ne-bu-go-quay, (i. e. _the wild rose_).

I must confess that the specimens of Indian squaws and half-caste women I had met with, had in no wise prepared me for what I found in Mrs. MacMurray. The first glance, the first sound of her voice, struck me with a pleased surprise. Her figure is tall--at least it is rather above than below the middle size, with that indescribable grace and undulation of movement which speaks the perfection of form. Her features are distinctly Indian, but softened and refined, and their expression at once bright and kindly. Her dark eyes have a sort of fawn-like shyness in their glance, but her manner, though timid, was quite free from embarrassment or restraint. She speaks English well, with a slightly foreign intonation, not the less pleasing to my ear that it reminded me of the voice and accent of some of my German friends. In two minutes I was seated by her--my hand kindly folded in hers--and we were talking over the possibility of my plans. It seems that there is some chance of my reaching the Island of Michilimackinac, but of the Sault-Saint-Marie I dare hardly think as yet--it looms in my imagination dimly described in far space, a kind of Ultima Thule; yet the sight of Mrs. MacMurray seemed to give something definite to the vague hope which had been floating in my mind. Her sister, she said, was married to the American Indian agent at Michilimackinac, and from both she promised me a welcome, should I reach their island. To her own far off home at the Sault-Saint-Marie, between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, she warmly invited me--without, however, being able to point out any conveyance or mode of travelling thither that could be depended on--only a possible chance of such. Meantime there was _some_ hope of our meeting _some_where on the road, but it was of the faintest. She thanked me feelingly for the interest I took in her own fated race, and gave me excellent hints as to my manner of proceeding. We were in the full tide of conversation when the bell of the steam-boat rang for the last time, and I was hurried off. On the deck of the vessel I found her husband, Mr. MacMurray, who had only time to say, in fewest words, all that was proper, polite, and hospitable. This rencontre, which some would call accidental, and some providential, pleased and encouraged me. Then came blessings, good wishes, kind pressures of the hand, and last adieus, and waving of handkerchiefs from the shore, as the paddles were set in motion, and we glided swiftly over the mirror-like bay.

The day was sultry, the air heavy and still, and a strange fog, or rather a series of dark clouds, hung resting on the bosom of the lake, which in some places was smooth and transparent as glass--in others, little eddies of wind had ruffled it into tiny waves, or welts rather--so that it presented the appearance of patchwork. The boatmen looked up, and foretold a storm; but when we came within three or four miles from the mouth of the river Niagara, the fog drew off like a curtain, and the interminable line of the dark forest came into view, stretching right and left along the whole horizon; then the white buildings of the American fort, and the spires of the town of Niagara, became visible against the rich purple-green back-ground, and we landed after a four hours' voyage. The threatened storm came on that night. The summer storms of Canada are like those of the tropics: not in Italy, not among the Apennines, where I have in my time heard the "live thunder leaping from crag to crag," did I ever hear such terrific explosions of sound as burst over our heads this night. The silence and the darkness lent an added horror to the elemental tumult--and for the first time in my life I felt sickened and unpleasantly affected in the intervals between the thunder-claps, though I cannot say I felt fear. Meantime the rain fell as in a deluge, threatening to wash us into the lake, which reared itself up, and roared--like a monster for its prey.

Yet, the next morning, when I went down upon the shore, how beautiful it looked--the hypocrite!--there it lay rocking and sleeping in the sunshine, quiet as a cradled infant. Niagara, in its girdle of verdure and foliage, glowing with fresh life, and breathing perfume, appeared to me a far different place from what I had seen in winter. As I stood on the shore, quietly thinking, I was startled by the sound of the death-bell, pealing along the sunny blue waters. They said it was tolled for a young man of respectable family, who, at the age of three or four and twenty, had died from habitual drinking; his elder brother having a year or two before fallen from his horse in a state of intoxication, and perished in consequence. Yes, everything I see and hear on this subject convinces me that it should be one of the first objects of the government to put down, by all and every means, a vice which is rotting at the core of this colony--poisoning the very sources of existence; but all their taxes, and prohibitions, and excise laws, will do little good, unless they facilitate the means of education. In society, the same evening, the appearance of a very young, very pretty, sad-looking creature, with her first baby at her bosom, whose husband was staggering and talking drunken gibberish at her side, completed the impression of disgust and affright with which the continual spectacle of this vile habit strikes me since I have been in this country.

Before quitting the subject of Niagara, I may as well mention an incident which occurred shortly afterwards, on my last visit to the town, which interested me much at the time, and threw the whole of this little community into a wonderful ferment.

THE SLAVE.

A black man, a slave somewhere in Kentucky, having been sent on a message, mounted on a very valuable horse, seized the opportunity of escaping. He reached Buffalo after many days of hard riding, sold the horse, and escaped beyond the lines into Canada. Here, as in all the British dominions, God be praised! the slave is slave no more, but free, and protected in his freedom.[5] This man acknowledged that he had not been ill treated; he had received some education, and had been a favourite with his master. He gave as a reason for his flight, that he had long wished to marry, but was resolved that his children should not be born slaves. In Canada, a runaway slave is assured of legal protection; but, by an international compact between the United States and our provinces, all felons are mutually surrendered. Against this young man the jury in Kentucky had found a true bill for horse-stealing; as a felon, therefore, he was pursued, and, on the proper legal requisition, arrested; and then lodged in the jail of Niagara, to be given up to his master, who, with an American constable, was in readiness to take him into custody, as soon as the government order should arrive. His case excited a strong interest among the whites, while the coloured population, consisting of many hundreds in the districts of Gore and Niagara, chiefly refugees from the States, were half frantic with excitement. They loudly and openly declared that they would peril their lives to prevent his being carried again across the frontiers, and surrendered to the vengeance of his angry master. Meantime there was some delay about legal forms, and the mayor and several of the inhabitants of the town united in a petition to the governor in his favour. In this petition it was expressly mentioned, that the master of the slave had been heard to avow that his intention was not to give the culprit up to justice, but to make what he called an _example_ of him. Now there had been lately some frightful instances of what the slave proprietors of the south called "making an example;" and the petitioners entreated the governor to interpose, and save the man from a torturing death "under the lash or at the stake." Probably the governor's own humane feelings pleaded even more strongly in behalf of the poor fellow. But it was a case in which he could not act from feeling, or, "to do a great right, do a little wrong." The law was too expressly and distinctly laid down, and his duty as governor was clear and imperative--to give up the felon, although, to have protected the slave, he would, if necessary, have armed the province.

In the mean time the coloured people assembled from the adjacent villages, and among them a great number of their women. The conduct of this black mob, animated and even directed by the females, was really admirable for its good sense, forbearance, and resolution. They were quite unarmed, and declared their intention not to commit any violence against the English law. The culprit, they said, might lie in the jail, till they could raise among them the price of the horse; but if any attempt were made to take him from the prison, and send him across to Lewiston, they would resist it at the hazard of their lives.

The fatal order _did_ at length come; the sheriff with a party of constables prepared to enforce it. The blacks, still unarmed, assembled round the jail, and waited till their comrade, or their brother as they called him, was brought out and placed handcuffed in a cart. They then threw themselves simultaneously on the sheriff's party, and a dreadful scuffle ensued; the artillery men from the little fort, our only military, were called in aid of the civil authorities, and ordered to fire on the assailants. Two blacks were killed, and two or three wounded. In the _melee_ the poor slave escaped, and has not since been retaken, neither was he, I believe, pursued.

But it was the conduct of the women which, on this occasion, excited the strongest surprise and interest. By all those passionate and persuasive arguments that a woman knows so well how to use, whatever be her colour, country, or class, they had prevailed on their husbands, brothers, and lovers to use no arms, to do no illegal violence, but to lose their lives rather than see their comrade taken by force across the lines. They had been most active in the fray, throwing themselves fearlessly between the black men and the whites, who, of course, shrank from injuring them. One woman had seized the sheriff, and held him pinioned in her arms; another, on one of the artillery-men presenting his piece, and swearing that he would shoot her if she did not get out of his way, gave him only one glance of unutterable contempt, and with one hand knocking up his piece, and collaring him with the other, held him in such a manner as to prevent his firing. I was curious to see a mulatto woman who had been foremost in the fray, and whose intelligence and influence had mainly contributed to the success of her people; M----, under pretence of inquiring after a sick child, drove me round to the hovel in which she lived, outside the town. She came out to speak to us. She was a fine creature, apparently about five-and-twenty, with a kindly animated countenance; but the feelings of exasperation and indignation had evidently not yet subsided. She told us, in answer to my close questioning, that she had formerly been a slave in Virginia; that, so far from being ill treated, she had been regarded with especial kindness by the family on whose estate she was born. When she was about sixteen her master died, and it was said that all the slaves on the estate would be sold, and therefore she ran away. "Were you not attached to your mistress?" I asked. "Yes," said she, "I liked my mistress, but I did not like to be sold." I asked her if she was happy here in Canada? She hesitated a moment, and then replied, on my repeating the question, "Yes--that is, I _was_ happy here--but now--I don't know--I thought we were safe _here_--I thought nothing could touch us _here_, on your British ground, but it seems I was mistaken, and if so, I won't stay here--I won't--I won't! I'll go and find some country where they cannot reach us! I'll go to the end of the world, I will!" And as she spoke, her black eyes flashing, she extended her arms, and folded them across her bosom, with an attitude and expression of resolute dignity, which a painter might have studied; and truly the fairest white face I ever looked on never beamed with more of soul and high resolve than hers at that moment.

[Footnote 5: Among the addresses presented to Sir Francis Head in 1836, was one from the coloured inhabitants of this part of the province, signed by four hundred and thirty-one individuals, most of them refugees from the United States, or their descendants.]

* * * * *

NIAGARA IN SUMMER.

Between the town of Queenston and the cataract of Niagara lies the pretty little village of Stamford (close to Lundy Lane, the site of a famous battle in the last war), and celebrated for its fine air. Near it is a beautiful house with its domain, called Stamford Park, built and laid out by a former governor (Sir Peregrine Maitland). It is the only place I saw in Upper Canada combining our ideas of an elegant, well-furnished English villa and ornamented grounds, with some of the grandest and wildest features of the forest scene. It enchanted me altogether. From the lawn before the house, an open glade, commanding a park-like range of broken and undulating ground and wooded valleys, displayed beyond them the wide expanse of Lake Ontario, even the Toronto light-house, at a distance of thirty miles, being frequently visible to the naked eye. By the hostess of this charming seat I was conveyed in a light pony carriage to the hotel at the Falls, and left, with real kindness, to follow my own devices. The moment I was alone, I hurried down to the Table-rock. The body of water was more full and tremendous than in the winter. The spray rose, densely falling again in thick showers, and behind those rolling volumes of vapour the last gleams of the evening light shone in lurid brightness, amid amber and crimson clouds; on the other side, night was rapidly coming on, and all was black, impenetrable gloom, and "boundless contiguity of shade." It was very, very beautiful, and strangely awful too! For now it was late, and as I stood there, lost in a thousand reveries, there was no human being near, no light but that reflected from the leaping, whirling foam; and in spite of the deep-voiced continuous thunder of the cataract, there was such a stillness that I could hear my own heart's pulse throb--or did I mistake feeling for hearing?--so I strayed homewards, or housewards I should say, through the leafy, gloomy, pathways,--wet with the spray, and fairly tired out.

* * * * *

The good people, travellers, describers, poets, and others, who seem to have hunted through the dictionary for words in which to depict these cataracts under every aspect, have never said enough of the rapids above--even for which reason, perhaps, they have struck me the more; not that any words in any language would have prepared me for what I now feel in this wondrous scene. Standing to-day on the banks above the Crescent Fall, near Mr. Street's mill, gazing on the rapids, they left in my fancy two impressions which seldom meet together,--that of the sublime and terrible, and that of the elegant and graceful--like a tiger at play. I could not withdraw my eyes; it was like a fascination.

The verge of the rapids is considerably above the eye; the whole mighty river comes rushing over the brow of a hill, and as you look up, it seems coming down to overwhelm you. Then meeting with the rocks, as it pours down the declivity, it boils and frets like the breakers of the ocean. Huge mounds of water, smooth, transparent, and gleaming like the emerald, or rather like the more delicate hue of the chrysopaz, rise up and bound over some unseen impediment, then break into silver foam, which leaps into the air in the most graceful fantastic forms; and so it rushes on, whirling, boiling, dancing, sparkling along, with a playful impatience, rather than overwhelming fury, rejoicing as if escaped from bondage, rather than raging in angry might,--wildly, magnificently beautiful! The idea, too, of the immediate danger, the consciousness that anything caught within its verge is inevitably hurried to a swift destination, swallowed up, annihilated, thrills the blood; the immensity of the picture, spreading a mile at least each way, and framed in by the interminable forests, adds to the feeling of grandeur; while the giddy, infinite motion of the headlong waters, dancing and leaping, and revelling and roaring, in their mad glee, gave me a sensation of rapturous terror, and at last caused a tension of the nerves in my head, which obliged me to turn away.

The great ocean, when thus agitated by conflicting winds or opposing rocks, is a more tremendous thing, but it is merely tremendous,--it makes us think of our prayers; whereas, while I was looking on these rapids, beauty and terror, and power and joy, were blended, and so thoroughly, that even while I trembled and admired, I could have burst into a wild laugh, and joined the dancing billows in their glorious, fearful mirth,--

Leaping like Bacchanals from rock to rock,
Flinging the frantic Thyrsus wild and high!

I shall never see again, or feel again, aught like it--never! I did not think there was an object in nature, animate or inanimate, that could thus overset me!

* * * * *

To-day I accompanied the family of Colonel Delatre to the American side, and dined on Goat Island. Though the various views of the two cataracts be here wonderfully grand and beautiful, and the bridge across the rapids a sort of miracle, as they say, still it is not altogether to be compared to the Canadian shore for picturesque scenery. The Americans have disfigured their share of the rapids with mills and manufactories, and horrid red brick houses, and other unacceptable, unseasonable sights and signs of sordid industry. Worse than all is the round tower, which some profane wretch has erected on the Crescent Fall; it stands there so detestably impudent and _mal-a-propos_,--it is such a signal, yet puny monument of bad taste,--so miserably _mesquin_, and so presumptuous, that I do hope the violated majesty of nature will take the matter in hand, and overwhelm or cast it down the precipice one of these fine days, though indeed a barrel of gunpowder were a shorter if not a surer method. Can you not send us out some Guy Faux, heroically ready to be victimised in the great cause of insulted nature, and no less insulted art? But not to tire you with descriptions of precipices, caves, rocks, woods, and rushing waters, which I can buy here ready made for sixpence, I will only tell you that our party was very pleasant.

The people who have spoken or written of these Falls of Niagara, have surely never done justice to their loveliness, their inexpressible, inconceivable beauty. The feeling of their beauty has become with me a deeper feeling than that of their sublimity. What a scene this evening! What splendour of colour! The emerald and chrysopaz of the transparent waters, the dazzling gleam of the foam, and the snow-white vapour, on which was displayed the most perfect and gigantic iris I ever beheld,--forming not a half, but at least two thirds of an entire circle, one extremity resting on the lesser (or American) Fall, the other in the very lap of the Crescent Fall, spanning perhaps half a mile, perfectly resplendent in hue--so gorgeous, so vivid, and yet so ethereally delicate, and apparently within a few feet of the eye; the vapours rising into the blue heavens at least four hundred feet, three times the height of the Falls, and tinted rose and amber with the evening sun; and over the woods around every possible variety of the richest foliage,--no, nothing was ever so transcendently lovely! The effect, too, was so grandly uniform in its eternal sound and movement: it was quite different from that of those wild, impatient, tumultuous rapids. It soothed, it melted, it composed, rather than excited.

There are no water-fowl now as in the winter--when driven from the ice-bound shores and shallows of the lake, they came up here to seek their food, and sported and wheeled amid the showers of spray. They have returned to their old quiet haunts; sometimes I miss them: they were a beautiful variety in the picture.

* * * * *

BUFFALO.

After an absence of a few days, during which there had raged a perpetual storm, I came back to the Clifton Hotel, to find my beautiful Falls quite spoiled and discoloured. Instead of the soft aquamarine hue, relieved with purest white, a dull dirty brown now imbued the waters. This is owing to the shallowness of Lake Erie, where every storm turns up the muddy bed from the bottom, and discolours the whole river. The spray, instead of hovering in light clouds round and above the cataracts, was beaten down, and rolled in volumes round their base; then by the gusty winds driven along the surface of the river hither and thither, covering everything in the neighbourhood with a small rain. I sat down to draw, and in a moment the paper was wet through. It is as if all had been metamorphosed during my absence--and I feel very disconsolate.

The whole of this district between the two great lakes is superlatively beautiful, and was the first settled district in Upper Canada; it is now the best cultivated. The population is larger in proportion to its extent than that of any other district. In Niagara, and in the neighbouring district of Gore, many fruits come to perfection, which are not found to thrive in other parts of the province, and cargoes of fruit are sent yearly to the cities of Lower Canada, where the climate is much more severe and the winter longer than with us.

On the other side the country is far less beautiful, and they say less fertile, but rich in activity and in population; and there are within the same space at least half a dozen flourishing towns. Our speculating energetic Yankee neighbours, not satisfied with their Manchester, their manufactories, and their furnaces, and their mill "privileges," have opened a railroad from Lewiston to Buffalo, thus connecting Lake Erie with the Erie Canal. On our side, we have the Welland Canal, a magnificent work, of which the province is justly proud; it unites Lake Erie with Lake Ontario.

Yet from the Falls all along the shores of the Lake Erie to the Grand River and far beyond it, the only place we have approaching to a town is Chippewa, just above the rapids, as yet a small village, but lying immediately in the road from the Western States to the Falls. From Buffalo to this place the Americans run a steam-boat daily; they have also planned a suspension bridge across the Niagara river, between Lewiston and Queenston. Another village, Dunnville, on the Grand River, is likely to be the commercial depot of that part of the province; it is situated where the Welland Canal joins Lake Erie.

As the weather continued damp and gloomy, without hope of change, a sudden whim seized me to go to Buffalo for a day or two; so I crossed the turbulent ferry to Manchester, and thence an engine, snorting, shrieking like fifty tortured animals, conveyed us to Tonawando[6], once a little village of Seneca Indians, now rising into a town of some size and importance; and there to my great delight I encountered once more my new friends, Mr. and Mrs. MacMurray, who were on their return from Toronto to the Sault-Sainte-Marie. We proceeded on to Buffalo together, and during the rest of the day had some pleasant opportunities of improving our acquaintance.

Buffalo, as all travel-books will tell you, is a very fine young city, about ten years old, and containing already about twenty thousand inhabitants. There is here the largest and most splendid hotel I have ever seen, except at Frankfort. Long rows of magnificent houses--not of painted wood, but of brick and stone--are rising on every side.

The season is unusually dull and dead, and I hear nothing but complaints around me; but compared to our Canadian shore, all here is bustle, animation, activity. In the port I counted about fifty vessels, sloops, schooners and steam-boats; the crowds of people buying, selling, talking, bawling; the Indians lounging by in their blankets, the men looking so dark, and indifferent, and lazy; the women so busy, care-worn, and eager; and the numbers of sturdy children, squalling, frisking among the feet of busy sailors,--formed altogether a strange and amusing scene.

On board the Michigan steamer, then lying ready for her voyage up the lakes to Chicago, I found all the arrangements magnificent to a degree I could not have anticipated. This is one of three great steam-boats navigating the Upper Lakes, which are from five to seven hundred tons burthen, and there are nearly forty smaller ones coasting Lake Erie, between Buffalo and Detroit, besides schooners.

[Footnote 6: Near this place lived and died the chief Red-jacket, one of the last and greatest specimens of the Indian patriot and warrior.]

* * * * *

THE ENGLISH EMIGRANT.

June 27.

In a strange country much is to be learned by travelling in the public carriages: in Germany and elsewhere I have preferred this mode of conveyance, even when the alternative lay within my choice, and I never had reason to regret it.

The Canadian stage-coaches[7] are like those of the United States, heavy lumbering vehicles, well calculated to live in roads where any decent carriage must needs founder. In one of these I embarked to return to the town of Niagara, thence to pursue my journey westward: a much easier and shorter course had been by the lake steamers; but my object was not haste, nor to see merely sky and water, but to see the country.

In the stage-coach two persons were already seated--an English emigrant and his wife, with whom I quickly made acquaintance after my usual fashion. The circumstances and the story of this man I thought worth noting--not because there was anything uncommon or peculiarly interesting in his case, but simply because his case is that of so many others, while the direct good sense, honesty, and intelligence of the man pleased me exceedingly.

He told me that he had come to America in his own behalf and that of several others of his own class--men who had each a large family and a small capital, who found it difficult to _get on_ and settle their children in England. In his own case, he had been some years ago the only one of his trade in a flourishing country town where he had now fourteen competitors. Six families, in a similar position, had delegated him on a voyage of discovery: it was left to him to decide whether they should settle in the United States or in the Canadas; so leaving his children at school in Long Island, "he was just," to use his own phrase, "taking a turn through the two countries, to look about him and gather information before he decided, and had brought his little wife to see the grand Falls of Niagara, of which he had heard so much in the old country."

As we proceeded, my companion mingled with his acute questions, and his learned calculations on crops and prices of land, certain observations on the beauty of the scenery, and talked of lights and shades and foregrounds, and effects, in very homely, plebeian English, but with so much of real taste and feeling that I was rather astonished, till I found he had been a printseller and frame-maker, which last branch of trade had brought him into contact with artists and amateurs; and he told me, with no little exultation, that among his stock of moveables, he had brought out with him several fine drawings of Prout, Hunt, and even Turner, acquired in his business. He said he had no wish at present to part with these, for it was his intention, wherever he settled, to hang them up in his house, though that house were a log-hut, that his children might have the pleasure of looking at them, and learn to distinguish what is excellent in its kind.

The next day, on going on from Niagara to Hamilton in a storm of rain, I found, to my no small gratification, the English emigrant and his quiet, silent little wife, already seated in the stage, and my only _compagnons de voyage_. In the deportment of this man there was that deferential courtesy which you see in the manners of respectable tradesmen, who are brought much into intercourse with their superiors in rank, without, however, a tinge of servility; and his conversation amused and interested me more and more. He told me he had been born on a farm, and had first worked as a farmer's boy, then as a house-carpenter, lastly, as a decorative carver and gilder, so that there was no kind of business to which he could not readily turn his hand. His wife was a good sempstress, and he had brought up all his six children to be useful, giving them such opportunities of acquiring knowledge as he could. He regretted his own ignorance, but, as he said, he had been all his life too busy to find time for reading much. He was, however, resolved that his boys and girls should read, because, as he well observed, "every sort of knowledge, be it much or little, was sure to turn to account, some time or other." His notions on education, his objections to the common routine of common schools, and his views for his children, were all marked by the same originality and good sense. Altogether he appeared to be, in every respect, just the kind of settler we want in Upper Canada. I was therefore pleased to hear that hitherto he was better satisfied with the little he had seen of this province than with those States of the Union through which he had journeyed; he said truly, it was more "home-like, more English-like." I did my best to encourage him in this favourable opinion, promising myself that the little I might be able to do to promote his views, that I _would_ do.

[Footnote 7: That is, the better class of them. In some parts of Upper Canada, the stage-coaches conveying the mail were large oblong wooden boxes, formed of a few planks nailed together and placed on wheels, into which you entered by the windows, there being no doors to open and shut, and no springs. Two or three seats were suspended inside on leather straps. The travellers provided their own buffalo-skins or cushions to sit on.]

THE DRUNKARD.

While the conversation was thus kept up with wonderful pertinacity, considering that our vehicle was reeling and tumbling along the detestable road, pitching like a scow among the breakers in a lake-storm, our driver stopped before a vile little log-hut, over the door of which hung, crooked-wise, a board, setting forth that "wiskey and tabacky" were to be had there. The windows were broken, and the loud voice of some intoxicated wretch was heard from within, in one uninterrupted, torrent of oaths and blasphemies, so shocking in their variety, and so new to my ears, that I was really horror-struck.

After leaving the hut, the coach stopped again. I called to the driver in some terror, "You are not surely going to admit that drunken man into the coach?" He replied coolly, "O no, I an't; don't you be afeard!" In the next moment he opened the door, and the very wretch I stood in fear of was tumbled in head foremost, smelling of spirits, and looking--O most horrible! Expostulation was in vain. Without even listening, the driver shut the door, and drove on at a gallop. The rain was at this time falling in torrents, the road knee-deep in mud, the wild forest on either side of us dark, grim, impenetrable. Help there was none, nor remedy, nor redress, nor hope, but in patience. Here then was one of those inflictions to which speculative travellers are exposed now and then, appearing, _for the time_, to outweigh all the possible advantages of experience or knowledge bought at such a price.

I had never before in my whole life been obliged to endure the presence or proximity of such an object for two minutes together, and the astonishment, horror, disgust, even to sickness and loathing, which it now inspired, are really unspeakable. The Englishman placing himself in the middle seat, in front of his wife and myself, did his best to protect us from all possibility of contact with the object of our abomination; while the wretched being, aware of our adverse feeling, put on at one moment an air of chuckling self-complacency, and the next glared on us with ferocious defiance. When I had recovered myself sufficiently to observe, I could see that the man was not more than five-and-twenty, probably much younger, with a face and figure which must have been by nature not only fine, but uncommonly fine, though now deformed, degraded, haggard with filth and inflamed with inebriety--a dreadful and humiliating spectacle. Some glimmering remains of sense and decency prevented him from swearing and blaspheming when once in the coach; but he abused us horribly: his nasal accent, and his drunken objurgations against the old country, and all who came from it, betrayed his own birth and breeding to have been on the other side of the Niagara, or "down east." Once he addressed some words to me, and, offended by my resolute silence, he exclaimed with a scowl, and a hiccup of abomination at every word, "I should like--to know--madam--how--I came under your diabolical influence?" Here my friend the emigrant, seeing my alarm, interposed, and a scene ensued, which, in spite of the horrors of this horrible propinquity, was irresistibly comic, and not without its pathetic significance too, now I think of it. The Englishman, forgetting that the condition of the man placed him for the time beyond the influence of reasoning or sympathy, began with grave and benevolent earnestness to lecture him on his profligate habits, expressing his amazement and his pity at seeing such a fine young man fallen into such evil ways, and exhorting him to amend,--the fellow, meanwhile, rolling himself from side to side with laughter. But suddenly his countenance changed, and he said, with a wistful expression, and the tears in his eyes, "Friend, do you believe in the devil?"

"Yes, I do," replied the Englishman with solemnity.

"Then it's your opinion, I guess, that a man may be tempted by the devil?"

"Yes, and I should suppose as how that has been your case, friend; though," added he, looking at him from head to foot with no equivocal expression, "I think the devil himself might have more charity than to put a man in such a pickle."

"What do you mean by that?" exclaimed the wretch fiercely, and for the first time uttering a horrid oath. The emigrant only replied by shaking his head significantly; and the other, after pouring forth a volley of abuse against the insolence of the "old country folk," stretched himself on his back, and kicking up his legs on high, and setting his feet against the roof of the Coach, fell asleep in this attitude, and snored, till, at the end of a long hour, he was tumbled out at the door of another drinking hovel as he had tumbled in, and we saw him no more.

HAMILTON.

The distance from the town of Niagara to Hamilton is about forty miles. We had left the former place at ten in the morning, yet it was nearly midnight before we arrived, having had no refreshment during the whole day. It was market-day, and the time of the assizes, and not a bed to be had at the only tolerable hotel, which, I should add, is large and commodious. The people were civil beyond measure, and a bed was made up for me in a back parlour, into which I sank half starved, and very completely tired.

The next day rose bright and beautiful, and I amused myself walking up and down the pretty town for two or three hours.

Hamilton is the capital of the Gore district, and one of the most flourishing places in Upper Canada. It is situated at the extreme point of Burlington Bay, at the head of Lake Ontario, with a population, annually increasing, of about three thousand. The town is about a mile from the lake shore, a space which, in the course of time, will probably be covered with buildings. I understand that seventeen thousand bushels of wheat were shipped here in one month. There is a bank here; a court-house and jail looking unfinished, and the commencement of a public reading-room and literary society, of which I cannot speak from my own knowledge, and which appears as yet in embryo. Some of the linendrapers' shops, called here clothing stores, and the grocery stores, or shops for all descriptions of imported merchandise, made a very good appearance; and there was an air of business, and bustle, and animation about the place, which pleased me. I saw no bookseller's shop, but a few books on the shelves of a grocery store, of the most common and coarse description.

I should not forget to mention, that in the Niagara and Gore districts there is a vast number of Dutch and German settlers, favourably distinguished by their industrious, sober, and thriving habits. They are always to be distinguished in person and dress from the British settlers; and their houses and churches, and, above all, their burial-places, have a distinct and characteristic look. At Berlin, the Germans have a printing-press, and publish a newspaper in their own language, which is circulated among their countrymen through the whole province.

At Hamilton I hired a light _wagon_, as they call it, a sort of gig perched in the middle of a wooden tray, wherein my baggage was stowed; and a man to drive me over to Brandtford, the distance being about five-and-twenty miles, and the charge five dollars. The country all the way was rich, and beautiful, and fertile beyond description--the roads abominable as could be imagined to exist. So I then thought, but have learned since that there are degrees of badness in this respect, to which the human imagination has not yet descended. I remember a space of about three miles on this road, bordered entirely on each side by dead trees, which had been artificially blasted by fire, or by girdling. It was a ghastly forest of tall white spectres, strangely contrasting with the glowing luxurious foliage all around.

The pity I have for the trees in Canada, shows how far I am yet from being a true Canadian. How do we know that trees do not feel their downfall? We know nothing about it. The line which divides animal from vegetable sensibility is as undefined as the line which divides animal from human intelligence. And if it be true "that nothing dies on earth but nature mourns," how must she mourn for these the mighty children of her bosom--her pride, her glory, her garment? Without exactly believing the assertion of the old philosopher, quoted by Evelyn, that a tree _feels_ the first stroke of the axe, I know I never witness nor hear the first stroke without a shudder; and as yet I cannot look on with indifference, far less share the Canadian's exultation, when these huge oaks, these umbrageous elms and stately pines, are lying prostrate, lopped of all their honours, and piled in heaps with the brushwood, to be fired,--or burned down to a charred and blackened fragment,--or standing, leafless, sapless, seared, ghastly, having been "girdled," and left to perish. The "Fool i' the Forest" moralised not more quaintly over the wounded deer, than I could sometimes over those prostrate and mangled trees. I remember, in one of the clearings to-day, one particular tree which had been burned and blasted; only a blackened stump of mouldering bark--a mere shell remained; and from the centre of this, as from some hidden source of vitality, sprang up a young green shoot, tall and flourishing, and fresh and leafy. I looked and thought of hope! Why, indeed, should we ever despair? Can Heaven do for the blasted tree what it cannot do for the human heart?

The largest place we passed was Ancaster, very prettily situated among pastures and rich woods, and rapidly improving.

Before sunset I arrived at Brandtford, and took a walk about the town and its environs. The situation of this place is most beautiful--on a hill above the left bank of the Grand River. And as I stood and traced this noble stream, winding through richly-wooded flats, with green meadows and cultivated fields, I was involuntarily reminded of the Thames near Richmond; the scenery has the same character of tranquil and luxuriant beauty.

In Canada the traveller can enjoy little of the interest derived from association, either historical or poetical. Yet the memory of General Brock, and some anecdotes of the last war, lend something of this kind of interest to the Niagara frontier; and this place, or rather the name of this place, has certain recollections connected with it, which might well make an idle contemplative wayfarer a little pensive.

THE CHIEF BRANDT.

Brandt was the chief of that band of Mohawk warriors which served on the British side during the American War of Independence. After the termination of the contest, the "Six Nations" left their ancient seats to the south of Lake Ontario, and having received from the English Government a grant of land along the banks of the Grand River, and the adjacent shore of Lake Erie, they settled here under their chief, Brandt, in 1783. Great part of this land, some of the finest in the province, has lately been purchased back from them by the Government and settled by thriving English farmers.

Brandt, who had intelligence enough to perceive and acknowledge the superiority of the whites in all the arts of life, was at first anxious for the conversion and civilisation of his nation; but I was told by a gentleman who had known him, that after a visit he paid to England, this wish no longer existed. He returned to his own people with no very sublime idea either of our morals or manners, and died in 1807.

He is the Brandt whom Campbell has handed down to most undeserved execration as the leader in the massacre at Wyoming. The poet indeed tells us, in the notes to Gertrude of Wyoming, that all he has said against Brandt must be considered as pure fiction, "for that he was remarkable for his humanity, and not even present at the massacre;" but the name stands in the text as heretofore, apostrophised as the "accursed Brandt," the "monster Brandt;" and is not this most unfair, to be hitched into elegant and popular rhyme as an assassin by wholesale, and justice done in a little fag-end of prose?

His son, John Brandt, received a good education, and was member of the house of assembly for his district. He too died in a short time before my arrival in this country; and the son of his sister, Mrs. Kerr, is at present the hereditary chief of the Six Nations.